Snoop has obviously made a real-life impact in his community. Too bad he couldn’t make one in reel life as well.

The wordless, elderly Kiefer is enigmatic, and a bit intimidating. His work is impressive, though, especially in 3D.

Essentially, “I.S.S.” is a fine movie for what it is, and the only reservation is what it is. It’s a cramped-space movie in which the stakes feel higher to the characters than they do for us.

Whatever it is, it’s the rare case of an intelligent disaster movie.

The movie starts to fray once we realize that DuVernay is not going to make a case for Wilkerson’s ideas. Rather, she plans to serve them up as undeniable truths.

The Beekeeper is the purest stupid fun I’ve had in a movie theater since “F9: The Fast Saga” in 2021.

This is one of those projects in which everyone on set seemed to have fun making a movie. That joy comes through, even if the finished film induces a good-natured shrug.

Even with its floating hookah smokers, this movie feels far more grounded than most shows that grapple with the divine.

Germain and Brown open up the stage play with flashbacks, which are not nearly as effective as the two guys talking. But as long as they’re talking, and they talk enough, “Freud’s Last Session” is very much worth seeing.

Despite some missteps, this version of “Mean Girls,” especially in its reframing of Janis, promotes feminism and inclusion almost as fervently as “Barbie” — although its characters still only wear pink on Wednesdays.

This may not be Martin Scorsese's most sophisticated film, but it actually takes a smart filmmaker to understand that, with a subject like Fran Lebowitz, the best thing you can do is let her talk.

Maybe Glazer’s movie will be of use to people naïve enough to believe that nobody without horns and a pitchfork can be the devil. Everybody else will learn nothing from this film.

The tone is low-key, and Franco never presses the audience. Instead, he lets scenes happen, avoiding close-ups and all other means of exaggeration or emphasis.

While not offering anything particularly surprising or challenging in its take on the unpredictable shadow of loss, “Good Grief” delivers plenty of heart.

The good news is you can bring the kids. When it comes time for swimming lessons next summer, there’s nothing they’ll remember from this that’ll make them afraid of the water.

A very fine actor when he’s not directing bad “Insidious” sequels, Wilson is the only performer here who extracts conflict, growth and genuine wit out of David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick’s surface-skimming script.

Though “Society of the Snow” has its moments, it’s difficult to see what was gained by telling the story as a dramatic feature. Yes, in a documentary we’d lose the amazing crash scene, but the story would otherwise be better served by a straight laying out of the facts.

The character moments here resonate, and there are enough stakes to make the final scenes feel meaningful.

No, you don’t have to be a fan of fake wrestling to appreciate “Iron Claw.” A love for classic Greek tragedy wouldn’t be misplaced, though.

The Color Purple now has been a movie, a Broadway show, a revived Broadway show and movie musical when it always should have been a TV miniseries.

While many of the film’s action sequences are in slow motion, it’s the story’s narrative (credited to Snyder, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad) that really crawls.

With any other actor, All of Us Strangers was bound to be an emotional film, but Scott has a way of going down to the nerve endings. He makes the movie into something raw and deep.

American Fiction is not a perfect film. The book trails off at the finish, and though the movie comes up with something better, the end still doesn’t feel ideal. But none of that matters as much as it might, because Wright gives the perfect performance.

As Enzo Ferrari, Driver looks stylish and commanding, but the movie doesn’t figure out how to make him into an interesting man.

The verdict is sad but unavoidable. Poor Things is a 141-minute mistake.

The Boy and the Heron is unquestionably a personal vision, with its own internal logic. It has a direct conduit with the mind of its creator, who happens to be a genius and one of the best to ever do it. If this is it for Miyazaki, well, what a finish.

The main effect this film’s commitment to emotional intelligence has is to show us what has been missing from the franchise all along. That, and to deliver a climax that will bring tears to your eyes — unless you’re some sort of beast.

Clearly, the goal was to make a visually opulent Christmas movie, but these visuals end up sucking up much of the film’s life and spirit. It de-emphasizes the human element, and it makes the movie too long.

The only surprise is that there are no surprises.

There’s nothing here to match the ingenious audacity of, say, the hospital-shootout-with-infant sequence in 1982’s “Hard Boiled,” but once Silent Night finally unwraps its gratuitous gifts, the faithful Woo fans should find them worth the wait.

Eileen builds and builds and builds, and it definitely goes somewhere, but in a way more gimmicky than true — and that leaves us feeling like we were wrong for taking it seriously.

Jackson tells Mack’s life in detailed close-up, and it is as if we are passing the years alongside her.

Luther, who identifies as gay, never explicitly assigns labels to these young characters, which makes perfect sense in a story that openly embraces freedom and tenderness. Here’s hoping for many more films from this sensitive, nuanced talent.

Because “Leave the World Behind” is weak and unconvincing when it comes to character interaction, the film drags in the moment-by-moment, despite its stellar cast.

Maestro exposes a truth about marriage that I always knew but could never quite articulate: To be truly known and understood can actually be scary.

There’s a weepy turn in the sentimental third act, and why not? Nothing else was working.

Saltburn is a remarkable combination of smart and stupid. Its problem is that it’s superficially smart and deeply stupid. It’s clever and amusing in 20 different ways, but when it really matters, it descends into ridiculousness.

The only thing that keeps Wish afloat is DeBose’s voice, who elevates so-so songs such as “At All Costs” and “This Wish” with a powerful lilt.

The problems with Thanksgiving are many, starting with the awful script by Jeff Rendell. Not only is the story — concocted by Roth and Rendell — predictable, but there is not one clever line of dialogue in the whole 107-minute film. The cast and characters are bland.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has an overwrought title, but it’s the best movie of the film franchise.

May December is light and amusing, but also profound and serious. See it once — and then think about it for a long time.

It is full of joy and laughter, as well as tears. It is about many things, among them sisterhood, the difficulties of parenting, processing trauma in a patriarchal society, and religious extremism. But most of all, it’s filled with life, and all the triumphs and pleasure, pain and disappointments that go with it.

Downbeat as it inevitably is, the film...is sure to delight for nostalgic Boomers and music historians, with its unseen footage and insights from survivors who were there.

The film starts off akin to a tongue-in-cheek “Twilight Zone” episode, then becomes a meditation on fame before transforming into a scathing satire of several things at once: Gen Z, cancel culture, and even the people who complain about cancel culture. Written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, it’s bleak and funny and provides Cage with his most satisfying role since 1997’s “Face/Off.”

An unforgiving little thriller with a conscience and irony to burn (and boy, do they burn), Your Lucky Day is one of the last chances to see beloved Oakland native Angus Cloud onscreen.

Thankfully, the movie clocks in at a mere 105 minutes. The Marvels doesn’t have much to say, but at least it says it quickly.

This is a rare film and a rare use of cinema. Other documentaries are like filmed news stories. This one is like a poem. If you see this, you will never again think of hearing in quite the same way, and you will hear sounds that are so haunting that they will be with you for the rest of your life.

Stallone, often tortured in his movies, is cinema’s most tortured optimist.

It takes about half the movie, but gradually we realize that we’ve stumbled into something wonderful, that there’s magic happening here, both onscreen and within the lives of the characters.

Domingo, who began his career as a stage actor in San Francisco, brings velocity to all the scenes involving the march. He seems unbound, possessed by an understanding that he’s doing something bigger than himself.

Radical follows a predictable formula, and Derbez, a major star in Mexico whose last American projects were the Hulu film “The Valet” and the Apple TV+ series “Acapulco,” lifts the material with his typical vibrant energy.

The problem with Fingernails is it takes itself too seriously. Co-writer and director Christos Nikou takes a clinical, dramatic approach to such a high-concept, over-the-top and ridiculous premise. He seems so enamored by the concept of the movie that he forgot that the movie was supposed to be about relationships and not the testing.

Emily Blunt is so emotionally present that she almost redeems the movie. She doesn’t, but she at least makes the first half of Pain Hustlers watchable.

Priscilla could be described as the story of how the virginal wife finally got a clue, but it takes her too long. We’re left with a movie that mostly consists of a confused woman-child stumbling around a mansion in high heels.

For le Carré fans, The Pigeon Tunnel is a must-see, but the film will also be useful to people wanting an introduction to his work.

This is a perpetrator’s perspective on the business of violence, carried out with notions of professionalism while slowly shaking the sociopath’s sense of self. Michael Fassbender’s unnamed contract killer is as delusional as he is dead-aimed focused; it’s both chilling and humanizing.

The Persian Version tries to pivot and fashion itself as a celebration of women’s strength across the generations, but it’s transparently something else — a daughter’s attempt to come to terms with a problematic mother. And it’s an effort in which there can be no suspense because Keshavarz’s strenuous effort to whitewash mom tells us that the movie, and the relationship, can only resolve in one way.

Here and there, there are moments when the energy dips, but what carries the film from scene to scene are the truthful performances and the genuineness of the storytelling.

Though Butcher’s Crossing has its share of conflicts and drama, it can move as slowly as the glaciers that cut its imposing scenery.

The movie explores the real essence of determination, and it’s not what people imagine as they recite affirmations to themselves. Nyad shows us determination almost at a level of pathology, as a single-mindedness that could be considered sick, except that Nyad wasn’t delusional about her capacities.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a bladder-buster of a movie with no obvious bathroom break, no section where the story starts to sag. This makes it, almost by definition, a good and admirable piece of work. But Killers of the Flower Moon is also a lumbering mess, an ungainly and tonally odd film that, for all the strength of its parts, has little cumulative impact.

In The Burial, every character gets a chance to shine, but not like in a “Star Trek” movie, where Sulu gets his moment and then Chekov. Rather, it all feels natural and organic. There’s something almost philosophical in a directorial point of view that understands that supporting and featured players are just as human as the main characters.

The bottom line on Joan Baez I Am a Noise is that if you absolutely love Baez and her work, you will find nothing here to challenge your preconceptions and will probably learn some things you didn’t know. But if you’re merely Baez-curious, this documentary will not satisfy and might even make you less curious.

It would be easy to dismiss Foe as a lugubrious downer, except that the reality of its world feels palpable and that marriage seems real. I believed Ronan and Pescal as two people bound up in love, shared history and torment.

For all the movie’s modest but palpable virtues, The Exorcist: Believer has one problem it cannot solve: No one has come up with a new way to do an exorcism.

It’s a deliriously demented LGBTQ+ riff on “The Parent Trap” about accepting love in all forms, repairing broken families and finding your true self, but it accomplishes all of that in the raunchiest way possible.

Miller pulls the various threads together at the end in a rush, like a college student dashing off the final pages of a term paper in the wee hours. But until then, she hops from one plotline to another, leaving the audience scratching their heads and waiting for another visit to the opera house.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is tasteful and restrained, and though it was made by someone known as a wild man, there’s no grandstanding here. The performances are modulated, not pushed. If anything, the viewing experience is like being a fly on the wall of a real court-martial. The difference is that every minute of it is interesting.

First-time director Lindsey Anderson Beer and her co-adapter Jeff Buhler have some nice ideas that never quite gel.

Despite some gruesome brutality, Totally Killer has a very light-on-its-feet quality. But as artificial entertainment goes, this one’s put together with ruthless care.

As always in Carney’s films, the music is emotional and lovely, with instruments played by its actors. The songs feel like they’re improvised on the spot, and Dublin is as inviting of a setting as usual.

Would you like a side of erotic revenge this evening? How about a nightcap of noir? If you have a taste for the savage, you might easily split the difference with Fair Play.

Saw X is “Saw 1.5” chronologically, taking place between the first and second films in this granddaddy of torture porn franchises. Quality-wise, though, it is closer to a 10 than a zero, which cannot be said about most of the other nine movies in this distressingly popular series.

If The Creator were any more slanted, any more in the tank for the coming AI onslaught, you would think it was produced, written and directed by AI.

In his feature director debut, Grant Singer (previously a music video director who’s worked with artists from Sam Smith to Skrillex) adopts a measured pace that lends the movie a somber, mysterious aura. But he breaks that up with smart, psychologically insightful cutting.

The film doesn’t deny that justice must be served, and those who commit crimes must pay. Its question is: How it is paid fairly to the satisfaction of victims and their families and to the benefit of society? The answers are down the road, many miles ahead.

It took the franchise four tries, but with Expend4bles, they’ve finally made a solid and consistently effective action movie.

Dumb Money is a tale of 2020, and the movie captures that 2020 feeling — gray, depressed, anxious and almost comically miserable.

Superpower, one of several documentaries about the war in Ukraine, doesn’t break any news, but Penn, a two-time Oscar-winning actor and director of several feature films, is a skilled storyteller. He and Kaufman do an excellent job of providing a contextual overview of the conflict, from its origins — the trajectory of both Russia and Ukraine in the post-Soviet era — to its political stakes, the mood of the Ukrainian people and the fascinating man who is leading them.

Oftentimes da Vinci is pleasantly lost in the cosmos of his mind, what Willy Wonka called “pure imagination.” The target audience of “The Inventor” will surely relate.

Unfortunately, despite its ready-made storyline and some likable performances, the curiously inert A Million Miles Away never achieves liftoff, even as its hero does.

Cassandro takes place in an inherently goofy arena — this is over-the-top, stagey fighting, after all — but the filmmakers avoided the temptations of cheap laughs and produced a satisfying dramatic story that will appeal to both fans and non-fans of this outlandish wrestling genre. That’s a rope move worth cheering for.

A Haunting in Venice is no downer. The script by Michael Green (“Logan,” “Blade Runner 2049”), who also wrote the first two Branagh Poirots, is at times ingenious, and he wrote a great part for Fey. As the mystery novelist Ariadne, a stand-in for Christie, she brings nice comic touches to a performance that threatens to steal the movie.

This latest installation in the “Big Fat Greek” franchise is colorful and celebratory, eager to entertain and wears its heart on its sleeve. There’s something to be said for that.

The time spent establishing Jane’s and Corinne’s bond pays off by always keeping their scenes on the heartfelt side of maudlin.

The Nun II has some interesting ideas and some thrilling sequences.

It’s a complicated situation despite how morally straightforward it appears. Scout’s Honor deserves some kind of merit badge for trying to untangle the knotty, awful mess.

It seems Joris-Peyrafitte can’t decide what film he is making, and as a result we’re left with a jumbled mess with a slapped-together resolution that will satisfy no one.

Good looks and brutal action can’t hide the fact that the film traffics in Italian stereotypes with the same impunity as simplistic notions of good and evil.

Director Sammi Cohen takes an attention-deficit disorder approach to storytelling, in which every feeling and plot twist is punctuated by a current pop song, and any hint of emotion or thoughtfulness is interrupted by a needle drop.

The Hill is meant to be inspiring, of course, and to some, it might be, but the vibe is more reassuring in the way that it does not deviate from the standard-issue formula of such movies. It is a cinematic case of confirmation bias, designed to fulfill preexisting values and beliefs.

Fremont is content to let small moments stay small, threading them together for a compelling tapestry of shared humanity.

Nattiv, working from a sharp script from Nicholas Martin, expertly mixes in documentary footage to convey a sense of the times and the war.

Neeson’s last few action flicks may have been just for fans, but Retribution is for everybody.

Despite its outlandish conceits, it is grounded in sisterhood. As bloody as it is, the pain the girls dish out to each other is nothing compared to the trauma they’ve experienced.

This is one of those sneakily good movies where at first nothing much seems to be going on, before the parts start adding up to a satisfying whole. Mutt turns out to be a well-crafted character study of not only a trans man, but also of the most important people in his orbit.

The brilliant comic observation behind Strays is that dogs never quite get the complete picture. They misunderstand much of what they see — they believe rival dogs are in the mirror and that the mailman is the devil — and thus by staying entirely inside the dogs’ point of view, the movie taps a major source of humor.

Landscape With Invisible Hand is a bizarre, off-kilter experience that shows us how we are destroying ourselves, no aliens necessary.