The world isn’t the happiest place to be these days, so why not cheer a little bit for a wholesome, decent character in a lovely dress?

While Where the Crawdads Sing is rich in atmosphere, it’s sorely lacking in actual substance or suspense.

Hadžihalilović's latest is both too hazy to make a great adaptation and too focused to be genuinely dream-like.

Marks has a skill with character, and her clear trust in Cho and Isaac is rewarded with a father/daughter chemistry that we believe 100%, which allows the emotional arc to connect even when we can see where it’s going.

The Deer King looks great (and has a lovely score) but it’s repetitive, predictable, and downright dull.

She Will isn't exactly a horror movie. It has its creepy moments, particularly in the visual collages and Clint Mansell's unnerving score, but it's more thought-provoking than scary.

This documentary is about resilience and advocacy, but most of all it is a love story.

The film’s images entangle us with the characters, which makes its indeterminate ending a little more disappointing than it might have been. But this post-cataclysm habitat is worth paying a visit anyway.

For better and worse, Gone in the Night feels like the directorial debut of a podcaster, somebody who knows the value of storytelling novelty and has a gift for narrative economy, but also suggests more by the grace of good casting than their own singular talents.

What I saw was a racially suspect disaster and another exploitation of Black pain for cheap, lazy thrills. Good Madam is a bad movie.

It's torment in cinematic form, made comprehensible and engrossing by its focus on a singular experience, and the performance that anchors it.

The animated movies that have sustained in history trust children to follow complex plots and themes. It’s great to see that kind of trust reemerge in a film that never forgets to be entertaining too.

Murina is a slow burn of a movie, one that doesn’t end in a detonation but with an enigma. Nevertheless, it’s one of the more coherent and satisfying narrative releases of the year.

Both Sides of the Blade is a romance, a love triangle, a marriage drama, an infidelity narrative, all familiar ground, but Denis' approach is her own.

This Much I Know to Be True is masterfully directed, an example of when a filmmaker and a musician are working in unison creatively instead of just going through the motions.

It’s in exploring the iconography of the hotel that the documentary shines the brightest. Van Elmbt and Duverdier are clearly well-versed in the works that were created on the grounds, or by former residents, and do their best to imbue their film with the same timeless cool that pulses through them.

The film’s good intentions are evident, but its assemblage of experts and statistics is more lecture than movie. There is too much focus on families of comfortable or better means and too little focus on the impact that these conflicts have on the other members of the family.

Fire of Love is one of a vanishingly rare breed of documentary that is determined to be "total cinema," not just capturing the facts of what happened to its subjects but creating an entire aesthetic—a vibe—around them.

At first, the story is fascinating. Soon, it becomes dizzying. Quickly, it turns sickening. And eventually, it’s heartbreaking.

While it has too many familiar flourishes and jokes, this entertaining sequel is still a force for good, with enough visual ambition and heart in front of and behind the camera to stand on its own.

Even if you can’t stand the Minions (who are once again voiced in “Minionese” by Pierre Coffin), you might find this one tolerable. Especially if you’re old enough to get the 1976 jokes yet feel young enough to find bemusement in all the goofy slapstick.

Based on the book by Suzanne Allain, who also wrote the script, Mr. Malcolm’s List feels as choreographed as a dance, and that becomes a large part of its welcoming ease across two hours.

This is the kind of earnest but inept and obliviously indulgent indie flick that a film festival's artistic director would program in full awareness of its deficiencies, because they thought the name of someone associated with the project (in this case, the director) will put butts in seats.

McDonagh’s film is well-crafted throughout but ultimately has nothing fresh or insightful to say about the ugliness of white privilege.

A lot of substantial or just different material might have enriched this documentary’s tidy fall-and-rise story.

This is Mesén's debut feature film, and it's a powerful and intuitive piece of work.

The action here, directed by Le-Van Kiet, is reasonably entertaining, but everything that’s hung on that skeleton feels remarkably thin.

Rubikon never offers viewers deep answers to its bigger questions, but it does pose enough questions to keep things moving while you watch.