The best preachers always know how to tell a story and tie it back to a Biblical lesson, but director Sean McNamara has less than a youth pastor’s grasp on his main character’s crisis of faith.

The latest animated blockbuster from Illumination is their most soulless to date, a film that feels like ChatGPT produced it after data and imagery from the games were fed into a computer.

If you love movies about process, about people who are good at their jobs, then you’ll find yourself enthralled by the film’s many moments inside offices, conference rooms, and production labs.

Teyana Taylor holds her head high through it all. Even as the film falters narratively, she’s a force of nature embodying a person more than just playing a role. She captures the soul of a woman who knows her son needs her to navigate this dangerous world. And that she needs him too.

Murder Mystery 2 has no loftier goals than disposable entertainment for 90 minutes, and it gets the job done.

I was riveted by every moment of this haunting weird film. Enys Men made me legitimately uneasy.

The jump scares work (jump scares almost always do; they're the easiest way to convince the audience that they've gotten their money's worth), but Malum is much more impressive when it turns its talented ensemble cast loose on material that was obviously a lot of fun to play with.

Smoking Causes Coughing works because Dupieux’s already been here and done similar things before. This is just a superior collection of shaggy dog jokes.

The Unheard has its shining moments, but they are not enough to cover for some duller missteps. Although the premise is strong, its execution is less-than-convincing.

Coming across as little more than a filmed adaptation of the first two-thirds of Neil Bogart’s Wikipedia page, Spinning Gold is a mess that even those with a keen interest in the subject will find both ponderous and uninformative.

Byun ultimately pulls too many punches, but Kill Boksoon remains impressive, if only for its unexpected sensitivity and considerable emotional range.

It is delicately told, sweet but never sugary.

Allen’s mawkish performance aside, the rest of the cast do the best they can within this all too easy structure.

The documentary is pushed mostly by a maudlin reverence from director Gianfranco Rosi, whose collaging approach does not produce the meditative experience it desires.

What begins as a thorny meet-cute turns into the longest unofficial first date ever, unfolding into a survey of the difficulty of moving on and the joy of quick connection. Rye Lane is a playful rom-com for the modern age.

The lead performances are extraordinary. They're real-seeming, in the manner of so many gifted but relatively inexperienced performers who haven't yet had the spontaneity crushed out of them by the cliches of formal training.

Some sharp dialogue and Freeman and Pugh's committed and insightful performances hold it together.

The Lost King gets sidetracked. Still, it's a great story!

This is one of those movies that shows rather than tells—always preferable, even in the moments when the big picture is still coming into focus.

French writer/director Léa Mysius concocts a compelling witch’s brew with The Five Devils, but the result doesn’t quite come together with the potency she’d desired.

While Hedlund’s character eventually melts into the kind of dissolute puddle that Hedlund has made performance meals of before, no real dividends are paid off on the viewer’s investment of time.

More detailed critical or historical context might have enhanced director Amanda Kim’s already informative and loving portrait of Korean video artist Nam June Paik. But there’s so much in Kim’s movie—especially in actor Steven Yeun’s voiceover narration and talking head interviews with Paik’s colleagues and contemporaries—that this account of Paik’s working life still resonates.

It was and still is a pleasure to see a film that gives actresses characters and storylines that do not reflect or depend on the men in their lives.

The film doesn't burden pinball machines with more meaning than they can stand. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is strictly low stakes. This is part of its knowing charm.

Thankfully, there's a considerable nasty streak that runs throughout Furies, and it isn't limited to the movie's antagonists.

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story is a porn-positive documentary, and its ambition to discuss all ugly shades of the issues boldly makes it fascinating and anti-provocative.

It’s schtickier and less assured than the first “Shazam!” but these leftovers still reheat well enough.

While the tonal shifts from melodrama to mordant comedy don’t always work, Fonda and Tomlin are as good as they have ever been and Moving On proves itself a powerful rumination on the strength it takes to age—mentally, physically, and economically.