Rhys Darby is perfectly cast as the wholesome, dopey time traveler in Relax, I’m From the Future, a sci-fi comedy with a modest sense of humor but tangled message to share with humankind.

The film might have benefited from a lengthier treatment and more exploration of all the themes at work. As it is, "Barber" is a fairly rote crime drama but a fascinating glimpse of a world in transition.

While “Creation of the Gods I” is not yet a personal, let alone essential, series, you can see glimpses of the epic that director Wuershan has arguably been working his way up to since “The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman,” his wildly uneven, but occasionally disarming 2010 breakthrough.

Although it attempts to tackle the heavy theme of generational trauma, it too often forgoes the more insightful aspects of its family drama in favor of an overly trite twilight romance.

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, about the career of one of the most important film producers of the last 50 years, is one of Cousins' best and most entrancing films.

This family isn’t picture perfect, but the way De Filippis tells their story is pretty flawless.

The web spun by The Origin of Evil arguably features one twist too many, but the viewer is in for more than a pound by the time it happens. Largely thanks to Calamy’s rock-solid performance.

What follows is a movie that wants to be a teen movie and an allegory for the immigrant experience but never wholly coheres.

There are many points where Expend4bles feels less like a legitimate continuation to a franchise that has been quite profitable to many involved and more like a cheapo television pilot that was mercifully scuttled before it could air.

It’s more of the same, without any discernible improvement in quality, despite the massive technological leaps over the past two decades.

The opening moments of the first act are rendered as the film’s best, as No One Will Save You continues to fall apart due to a frustrating lack of narrative context.

The best parts of Morgan Neville & Jeff Malmberg’s The Saint of Second Chances are like hearing stories from a good friend over beers after a game.

This isn't a bad film by any means: it does a creditable job of convincing us that Penn's heart is in the right place (as an activist) even when the execution is sometimes impulsive or clumsy; but it lacks focus.

It’s an admirably vicious piece of work when it wants to be—although arguably could have gone even further and more frequently.

It’s almost more like a companion to some of the most popular books of all time—not an explainer or even piece of historical trivia about their execution. Instead, this documentary reveals how even the most complex spy fiction can have a foundation in the relationship between a son and his father.

This wickedly funny, blood-soaked portrait of a decaying tyrant hits streaming on the week of the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s coup against President Allende. Larraín offers no false hopes about eradicating the ideologies that allowed it to happen and last. Instead, he warns that evil never truly perishes—it just transforms to poison new minds.

As he impresses by nailing each facet of the Western genre on the page and behind the screen, White's strongest suit is his consistent straying from any cynical territory. He doesn't try to aim for the same traits that made "Black Dynamite" a hit, nor does he try to be as outrageous as other Western parodies.

By playing with formalism, using faux documentary, and cranking out hedonistic scenes of excessive drug taking and partying, Yates aims to blend “Erin Brockovich” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” But the director’s filmic language never offers quite enough sex, quite enough excess, quite enough of capitalism’s depravity. Pain Hustlers just doesn’t know how to commit.

While Cassandro is not a winner, Williams and his cast put up enough of a show to make things interesting.

In capturing Hardison's breakthrough as a model to her trailblazing as an activist, Invisible Beauty is profoundly inspiring and thoroughly adoring.

The exceptionally talented Richardson does her best with a woefully underwritten character.

Not dunking on social media teens is a refreshing angle, enough to make you want to care about their inevitable deaths. But the movie's by-the-numbers horror will make you feel otherwise.

If there’s a note of reflexive nostalgia in the proceedings, that inevitably has to do not just with the man at the film’s center but with the era that produced him, a time when magazine and print journalism could take writers and make instant celebrities and hugely influential cultural figures out of them. That day is long gone, but Radical Wolfe makes a strong case that it’s well worth remembering.

Adil and Bilall clearly care about the story they’re telling, but their penchant for maximalism (they list “La Haine,” Malcolm X,” City of God,” and “JFK” as touchstone films) ultimately betrays the most emotionally affecting moments in Rebel.

The Holdovers is a consistently smart, funny movie about people who are easy to root for and like the ones we know. Its greatest accomplishment is not how easy it is to see yourself in Paul, Angus, or Mary. It’s that you will in all three.

Four Latinx-themed horror segments of variable quality are sandwiched between a modestly amusing wrap-around story about a haunted traveler, simply called “The Traveler.” It’s not enough, despite some amusing performances and effects-driven thrills.

A Haunting in Venice is the best of Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot movies. It's also one of his best, period, thanks to the way Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green respectfully adapt the source material (Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party) while at the same time treating it as a chance to make a relentlessly clever and visually dense "old" movie that uses the latest technology.

For a movie so driven by music, it’s unfortunate that its final number is somewhat of a mess, its lyrics weaker than the performances that led up to it. Tense situations quickly resolve themselves, and everyone in the makeshift group conveniently has a part to play. I only wish it felt more like music to my ears.