Downhill is not a funny movie and wasn’t intended to be. It has moments of humor, but of the more uncomfortable variety, not the kind that provoke laughter, but cringing.

Best of all, the laughs often arrive in small moments, not in the obvious ones.

There are many great acting moments in this film, but you should especially savor the final shot, the long close-up of Haenel in profile. Put simply, it’s why we go to the movies.

It’s not for people in the midst of their teen years, but for kids who are right on the edge of that social, hormonal discombobulation and are anticipating it with fear and dread. If “To All the Boys” gives courage and reassurance to apprehensive preteens — and is there any other kind? — then it will have served its public service. Still, as a movie, as entertainment … eh, it’s OK.

The biggest betrayal of The Traitor is its crime against the usually compelling Mafia movie genre. This is an offer you can refuse.

Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is more than horrible. It should not exist. Money should never have been raised for it. The screenplay should never have been filmed. Margot Robbie shouldn’t have produced it. She certainly shouldn’t have starred in it. It’s just a terrible thing to inflict on audiences, who, after all, didn’t hurt anyone and just hoped to have a nice time.

The Assistant isn’t a particularly enjoyable film, but its message and quiet power linger for days.

Chinese Portrait is a great art installation, but a thoroughly unsatisfying film.

It’s Lively’s movie, and it’s she who kicks this superior thriller up an extra notch, to the point that it’s not only worth seeing for the excitement and thrills, but for her.

Of course, the real problem here isn’t that Ritchie isn’t Noel Coward, but that he’s not clever or funny in his own right. The Gentleman isn’t offensive, and it’s not even good enough to qualify as coarse. If it weren’t mildly annoying, it would be as close to nothing as an experience can be.

So there you have it, a so-so movie with a lot of good parts. In truth, The Last Full Measure has more good parts than most better movies, but everything connecting those parts feels rote, sometimes ham-fisted.

That’s a strength in this documentary. It becomes clear that it’ll take a strongman to bring down a strongman, at least in this case.

Color Out of Space is a trashy, ridiculous science fiction/horror film. It is silly, poorly written and, well, I liked it.

Clemency is slow and without much suspense. The real question isn’t whether this person or that person will be executed, but whether Bernardine will go to pieces, and yet with a performance like Woodard’s at the center, that’s all a movie needs.

Gaffigan is able to do a lot with a little, and the comedian is a perfect fit for Ramsey’s gentle cluelessness. He’s effortlessly charismatic in this kind of role, and the arc of his relationship with Christmas is lovely for all the ways it doesn’t fall into easy, empty melodrama.

It’s essentially an animated film, fronted by a live-action Downey and Michael Sheen’s one-note villain. Only Antonio Banderas, in a small role, truly seems to be having a great time.

A funny, satisfying action comedy that never disappoints.

As a slice of life, Les Misérables is satisfying enough, but as the film wears on, the movie goes beyond the slice of life. It steers in the direction of drama and consequences, as the story narrows, and pressures come to a boil.

The best part of the film is early on, when Innis Dagg’s story is enlivened by beautiful color 16mm footage she took in the 1950s and ’60s.

Eubanks takes someone else’s screenplay, one that’s full of incident, and infuses it with his own sensibility. Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t a writer, either. Being a good director with a real point of view — that’s plenty.

It’s just cheap, it’s bad, and a completely out-of-left-field Pink Floyd reference — one of their employees is named Syd, the other Barrett — doesn’t help. It just feels like part of the general sloppiness.

Just an odd mess of a movie. That you feel anything at all is a tribute to the acting talent of Dinklage and Goggins, who occasionally make us care.

Just Mercy isn’t the best movie that could have been made from its subject, but it’s good enough.

I saw this movie in the middle of the day, having had a great night’s sleep, and I had to slap myself awake a few times.

In Cunningham, the presentation is riveting.

Invisible Life is not an entirely fun watch, and its 139-minute running time is an investment and sometimes feels like it. But it offers something more than the usual experience.

There’s a mystery at the heart of The Song of Names, but it isn’t much of a mystery, and once it’s solved, the movie loses what little interest it has. Though not exactly a Holocaust drama, the film is one in which the Holocaust figures tangentially, but crucially. Yet the movie’s overall effect is strangely inert.

The result is a film that feels like unfinished business. At the end, there’s a compendium of scenes from the previous “Ip Man” films, and it’s a sweetly nostalgic way to go out. If only what had come before it had been more satisfying.

So the most noticeable thing about the first minutes of Greta Gerwig’s new screen adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic is that the women in Little Women seem just a little bit snooty here, more like privileged actresses from 2019 than like a Northern family living in genteel poverty during the Civil War.

Feels like a regifting of previous action adventure favorites, lifting elements from the “Mission: Impossible” series, “Skyfall” and, most of all, “The Incredibles.” It’s fast-moving, entertaining, kinda clever and instantly forgettable.

By the time it ends, Mendes has built within the audience an intense desire to see the men’s message successfully delivered, and like a true dramatist, Mendes milks it for every drop of tension. He does not blow his big finish.

I found “Cats” pretty bland, but it has its moments of catnip, and as a holiday movie option that anyone could see, it might be just the ticket.

Uncut Gems remains, from start to finish, a tale told about an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. By the time it’s all over, nothing is exactly what you might feel. But Sandler and Fox give it the humanity the Safdies wanted there. The movie needed it and got it from the actors.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker does the most important thing, the one thing it absolutely had to do. It ends well.

There’s nothing wrong with a big, dumb-as-dirt action flick. You’ve made some enjoyable ones over the years — the first “Transformers,” “Bad Boys” — but 6 Underground, a nonstop stunt reel with a few, admittedly impressive displays of your usual visual verve — is just “Fast & Furious” crossed with an old Whitesnake music video, but with fewer functioning brain cells.

Jewell is not just a man, but a type, and his story is a warning, not just about the excesses of power, but about our own reflexive assumptions. Paul Walter Hauser gives us the soul of a man that deserved respect even before he did something heroic, but one that people might never have noticed.

A superb drama about sexual harassment at Fox News.

Quite remarkably, “The Next Level” actually does manage to level up — both in terms of different landscapes and scenarios and surprising new characters (and actors to play them) — ably matching its predecessor for emotional investment while exceeding it in ambition.

Bannon is an intriguing figure, a former liberal who went to Harvard Business School and did a hitch in the Navy. His turn in philosophy is worth exploring. He can undeniably hold attention — American Dharma is not a hard watch.

Even worse, Little Joe is a horror movie that, rather astonishingly, lacks a climax. The ending falls off a cliff. The result is not to make viewers ponder the unresolved and wonder what might happen next, but to question how they’ve spent the past 105 minutes.

If you have any fear of heights, The Aeronauts is one of the most excruciating movie experiences since “The Walk” (2015), which replicated Philippe Petit’s high-wire stunt between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.

The Two Popes is movie nirvana, but anyone watching could appreciate the clash between these opposing dispositions and world views.

It all gets a little unwieldy at times, but Shooting the Mafia is far from boring. We can’t take our eyes off it, just like a photo that’s out of focus, yet somehow remains arresting.

The brilliance of Dark Waters is that it is able to lay out the case against DuPont without getting too wonky.

One of the consistent pleasures of Knives Out is that, while its style evokes an earlier era, the script is very much a witty response to today’s world.

Essentially, this is a two-person picture that falls flat.

But let’s be fair: If this were the first cop movie ever made, we’d be grateful for it. It holds interest. It’s never quite boring. And there are worse things you can do with your time than watch Boseman, Miller and Simmons for an hour and a half. Just know that 21 Bridges is the kind of movie you’ll forget five minutes after seeing it.

Given its many twists, Atlantics is best experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible. Suffice it to say, it’s a fascinating window into a culture that doesn’t get nearly enough focus through the camera lens, and it takes full advantage of the cinematic form to envelop the audience in feelings of unease and uplift that are equally effective and affecting.

Waves is a movie that tears itself apart halfway through with an unspeakable act of violence, then miraculously heals itself. Whatever your reaction to this ambitious, boldly original and hard-hitting family drama, you could never accuse writer-director Trey Edward Shults of holding anything back. He leaves it all on the floor, as they say in basketball.

What makes the film emotionally satisfying, beyond the stirring music, is that we witness the healing and enlightenment of chorus members, some of them bearing scars from their oppressive red-state upbringings.

As Mister Rogers, Tom Hanks does something very important, besides looking and sounding enough like Fred Rogers that we can accept him in the role. He captures the supreme self-confidence it takes to be that nice and giving.

At its best, and it’s mostly at its best, Frozen II has an air of enchantment.

The fact is that too much time is spent with the British characters in the film, time that could have been spent really getting into Rani’s story. She was fighting for the independence of India, but the filmmakers lost their own colonial battle.

Ultimately, Marriage Story celebrates life and the journeys all of us are on. Noah Baumbach is the writer-director, and to watch such an incisive, deep-feeling script be given life by actors — Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and those around them — at the top of their game is to rediscover movies as a powerful medium of personal expression.

Eventually, the imperfect Honey Boy — it could have used more from the older Otis; Hedges is almost wasted — achieves a raw, hard-won honesty.

As a movie, Charlie’s Angels has serious problems, but the new Angels trio is promising and shows there’s life yet in the old formula. There’s something going on here. It’s just not quite there yet.

This is interesting, at least reasonably. But to a large extent, how you perceive the film will have much to do with how you see the story as relating to today’s headlines.

Ultimately, Ford v Ferrari is about art versus commerce, devotion versus cynicism, and inspiration versus deadness. It’s one of the year’s great films, and of all the great films so far, the most accessible.

The back and forth, the listening and reacting between Mirren and McKellen, as each of their characters gauges the other and as we mark the incremental shifts and exchanges of power, is pure pleasure.

Despite the paint-by-numbers nature of its plot construction potentially working against audience engagement, the film moves along briskly, benefiting from strong performances virtually across the board.

Three years ago Tsang made “Soul Mate,” an enchanting tale about female friendship that offered an engrossing look at modern, urban China. Yet, that film isn’t quite adequate preparation for the emotional wallop of Better Days. Don’t think, just close your eyes, and jump in.

A soul-killing sequel that gets its kicks torturing and murdering children and offers little hope or redemption. King has long wanted to commit “Redrum” on the reputation of Kubrick’s film, which he openly despises. Nearly 40 years later, this adaptation of King’s 2013 book “Doctor Sleep” doesn’t so much tarnish Kubrick as embarrass itself.

Most of Last Christmas consists of watching this young woman stumble and fumble through life, and thanks to Clarke’s effortless ability to engage a viewer’s sympathy, that’s almost enough.

From the beginning, Midway has awkward dialogue and an atmosphere that seems a bit too 2019, but for a time, the movie’s high stakes make up for that.

The Irishman is all about the end of something. It is to gangster movies what John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” was to westerns. Without a doubt, it’s a masterpiece.

It’s like a Syrian “MASH,” except real.

By the Grace of God begins to spin its wheels, with unnecessary scenes that give color to the events, when we’re more interested in the grand movements.

It becomes somewhat pleasantly watchable because the muddled script and dangling story lines are delivered and explored by truly charismatic actors who can, at least for a while, breathe life into something where none should exist...Even if they’re moping in a corner.

In the end, the great fault of Terminator: Dark Fate is that the filmmakers didn’t trust what they had. They didn’t trust how much audiences enjoy Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They didn’t trust their audience’s interest enough to let the movie breathe. They thought Hamilton and Schwarzenegger could be seasonings for a dish of the usual slop.

It’s far from the worst movie ever produced, but it’s a one-of-a-kind disaster, and therefore interesting.

At times, Harriet is a little too romantic — never quite schmaltzy — but it feels like a movie perhaps a bit more than it should. Still, it’s effective and, at times, moving, and it has a major asset in Erivo.

Between “Jexi” a few weeks ago and now this, October has ended up becoming quite a great month for bad movies about scary software.

Waititi adopts a tone that’s wild enough to accommodate all possibilities, so that even while we’re laughing, we’re in a state of anxiety.

The Kill Team serves an essential function by illustrating in agonizing detail not only how easily morality can be subjugated to hate, but how important it is for people of conscience to do the right thing. It’s deeply uncomfortable viewing at times, but it’s no less necessary a story to experience.

Sure, Black and Blue is a minor film, but it’s irresistible.

The Current War is even better than it has to be. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung give the film a swooping elegance, so that shots that start as close-ups gracefully glide into medium shots, and medium shots give way to vistas. The camera is always moving in a way that suggests grace and flow.

Its main virtue is that it provides Murphy with a juicy role.

Pure fun and worth seeing if you want to laugh.

Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s latest masterpiece and the best film I’ve seen so far this year, is about two families of four at opposite ends of the economic spectrum, and how the one on the lower end systematically takes over the lives of the other.

Cohn was a strange mix of self-aggrandizing and self-loathing, or maybe that’s a familiar mix. In any case, he emerges from the film partly sympathetic, if only because he seemed so miserable all his life, but mainly as the prime example of what Shakespeare meant when he said, “The evil that men do lives after them.”

The saddest thing about Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is that it’s not bad, but typical, that this emptiness — this immersion in mass numbification — is the modern style.

The Lighthouse is more than four times longer than a “Twilight Zone” episode, and 100 times worse.

Jexi feels hopelessly out of step with the moment. Despite its subject matter, it’s a flip phone movie in a smart phone world.

The Ground Beneath My Feet consistently serves as a powerful showcase for the talented Pachner, who manages a performance that is both distant and achingly vulnerable.

Yes, there are funny lines, but nearly all of them are familiar to fans; it’s almost like a greatest hits of “Addams Family” quotables.

Obviously, director-writer Billy Senese didn’t have a ton of money to work with, but The Dead Center wisely eschews gore and special effects in favor of setting a dark, malevolent mood.

Incidentally, this is an Ang Lee film, though, beyond the first-rate production values, you wouldn’t know it. Lee seems happy that he has embraced technology, but what’s the point if the technology is in the service of an empty exercise? He has made one movie like this and doesn’t need to make another.

Economically and stunningly, Almodovar combines a high sense of style with a deep sense of humanity, along with a touch of erotic beauty that has always characterized his work.

But throwing fairy dust in our eyes can’t make us think we’ve entered Fairy Land. It just takes a lowdown tale and inflates it until it bursts.

Midnight Traveler gets the bulk of its humanity from little Zahra and Nargis. The resilience of children is often amazing, and near the end of the film, when they play in the snow for the first time, you get a glimpse of hope for their futures.

The Laundromat finds director Steven Soderbergh in a playful mood, but this time he’s a little too playful, and the result is a scattered and seemingly trivial movie about a serious subject — a lighthearted, jolly expose of international money laundering.

It’s a very good movie, and it features a blood-curdling performance from Joaquin Phoenix, in the most frightening portrayal of a violent maniac in decades. One more thing: It’s clearly a response to the times.

Sarsgaard and Jones are good actors, and both are fine. The real star, though, is sound designer Ian Gaffney-Rosenfeld and his team, who bring a depth and dimension to the story that sorely needs it.

To be sure, The Death of Dick Long is a weird one, in that it starts out intense and gradually loses steam, until nothing really matters and the audience might as well leave. This movie could be used in film schools to teach how not to structure a story.

It’s a lovely film that’s poetic, erotic and bittersweet.

The most refreshing thing about the movie is having a more mature woman at the center of the action, and August knows not to overreach here. She is dryly funny, but also subtly affecting, and it’s a pleasure to watch her heart and mind slowly but surely open up to life’s possibilities.

A great movie was within reach with Judy — the new Judy Garland biopic starring Renee Zellweger — but the producers and creators made an epic mistake: They didn’t use Garland’s actual vocals. Instead, they let Zellweger pinch-hit for Babe Ruth and ended up spoiling the movie.

Abominable delivers all the notes you expect from family-friendly animation these days. And, thankfully, a little bit more.