Despite the slick variety of shadings and textures Mandler employs to bring the story to life, the ending feels anticlimactic, like the tidy wrap-up at the conclusion of a TV procedural.

The shooting is picturesque, the acting overbaked.

Mainstream may be up-to-date on stylistic grounds, but its narrative could use refreshing.

The easy chemistry between the characters reflects the real-life friendship of the two stars and it is clear to see that like Emma and Charlie, Haddish and Crystal get a kick out of each other.

The Paper Tigers is still very much a martial arts movie that ends with a late-night rooftop fight, and then a celebratory dim sum meal. But if you already like this sort of lightweight crowdpleaser, you’re bound to find something worthwhile here.

There’s more than enough meat on the bones of this true story for a film like Above Suspicion, but director Phillip Noyce can’t figure out how to tell it in a way that's more interesting than a Wikipedia entry.

The Human Factor is as much about modern day America as it about Israel and Palestine, and how much we have to lose when we give into the easy temptation of demonizing those who think differently—even if it’s as a result of listening to Tucker Carlson.

Through Balvín’s plights, Heineman invites us to consider how entertainers have become commodified and disassociated from their humanity in our eyes. That’s not a cry for pity or compassion, but to investigate our expectations of them as people and not solely as distant figures.

Lewis’ In Our Mothers' Gardens requires time to find its footing, but the documentary ultimately offers a salute to the generationally important women who fought to give their families a more fruitful future.

The completeness and sureness of the movie’s aesthetic is a joy to behold, even when the images capture human beings doing savage things. You don’t really root for anyone in this film. They are criminals engaged in contests of will. But the film is not a value-neutral exercise. There is an undertone of lament to a lot of the violent action.

It’s a traditional thriller with a twist, subverting genre roles and presenting a very specific kind of sociopath, one whose brain was broken by trauma. It’s not perfect but it offers a quick-paced escapism that makes me wonder what Gandhi might do with more time and money.

But with his sophomore feature Limbo, a humanistic, tenderly deadpan plunge into the psyche of a Syrian refugee, Scottish writer/director Ben Sharrock sidesteps potential hazards like a patronizing tone and cultural insensitivity with deft, delivering something insightful, genuine, and universally relatable.

Frustratingly poised on the knife's-edge of "pretty good but not as good as you want it to be," the movie might've benefitted from a more leisurely but focused pace that would've allowed the characters to breathe more, and the legal and scientific concepts to be explained with greater clarity.

William Brent Bell’s Separation is an atrocious piece of work, a movie that fails as both a domestic drama and as a horror flick, and really feels like the kind of thing that everyone involved is going to have to discuss in therapy someday to get to the bottom of why it was even made in the first place.

The “endlessness” of the film encompasses a lot of absurdity and disappointment, but its notes of grace sound the loudest.

The Outside Story is barely 85 minutes long, but Henry's performance is rich enough to make this small film feel rather epic.

In many ways, Zhang’s latest is the coldest film that he’s made in a while, though it might also be his most alluring.

The Disciple is a great example of when filmmaking and acting styles complement each other, and it’s that bond that feels to be a significant part of what makes Tamhane’s film so special, so resonant.

These are important stories that should be seen, but audiences need more than scripts that are primarily acting exercises, with very little insight beyond everyone blaming everyone else and reminders that bad choices by addicts and those around them lead to bad outcomes.

Set in rural Iceland, The County unfurls as if Ken Loach found himself near the Arctic Circle, looked around at the myriad villages and struggling farms, and thought, “Hm, I wonder if there is a labor struggle to found here!” There is.

The unappealingly named comedy Eat Wheaties! is a tedious exercise in patience that, like a bowl of soggy cereal, I would not recommend to anyone.

Director Nick Stagliano doesn’t help matters much by presenting the material with a poky pace that does not exactly bring the narrative to vivid life.

Things Heard & Seen is partly a Gothic horror movie and partly a portrait of a marriage falling apart. It’s more effective as the latter than the former, but by the end these two seemingly separate kinds of movie dovetail in a way that’s surprisingly clever and effective.

This is one of those super-convoluted conspiracy theory movies where nothing makes sense and you simply stop caring. Saviors show up inexplicably at just the right time. People come off as evil for the sole purpose of misleading us. There’s no character development, a lot of patriotic posturing and the villain gives a lecture that must have been written before they cast a Black actor as its recipient. Despite endless gunfire and a lot of shit blowing up, most of the action sequences fail to quicken the pulse.

It’s a shame that the producers of Mortal Kombat movies are convinced that there needs to be long training/prep sections in the middle of their stories. No one wants to play a tutorial an hour after they’ve started the game.

Together Together is not just smart, it's sneaky-smart.

More than anything else, Mekas' footage gives a glimpse of the fascinating aura that Tiny Tim projected.

What is most endearing about the film is the palpable message throughout that Sesame Street was brought to us by the letters LOVE.