The movie’s length is, at times, a challenge, but Dune is so original and contains so many strong scenes that the length mostly isn’t a problem.

The movie is almost all conversations, most of which are intriguing and sensitively structured, with little action. It’s enough, but not worth changing the world for.

Antlers is a very effective, chilling film. It doesn’t have the franchise flash of Halloween Kills or the bizarro artifice of Lamb, but there’s authenticity to this movie that’s so effective and, at times, emotionally overwhelming

The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott, gives us the texture of life in 14th century France, so much so that we feel that we are there, in this place that’s desperate and foreign and yet human and familiar.

If you ever liked Madonna, this concert film will remind why you weren’t wrong. Madame X is somewhere between a success and a triumph.

The Manor establishes itself as a solid piece of paranoia horror.

The narrative doesn’t generate much interest; the nature of the ultimate ending is discernible from a distance, and the movie’s message about nature and the natural order seems forced. Still, there’s a lot here that’s impressive. Lamb is too vivid and original to forget.

Writers David Bryan and Joe DiPietro are somehow always generous yet trenchant with their rich source material. It’s a fairy tale with a “a pretty, pretty girl in a pretty, pretty dress,” but one with a rotten foundation — a royal marriage less built on love than strategized by cold pragmatism.

The story is the story, and you’ll either connect with it or you won’t. But no matter how you react, Titane has the integrity of sincerity and the authority of a filmmaker’s real skill and vision.

To say Venom: Let There Be Carnage is not worth seeing is not enough. It’s not worth admitting into your life, even as an option. You’ve read a review of it. That’s enough. Now, never think of it again for the rest of your life.

Craig leaves the series in a mammoth, 163-minute extravaganza that audiences will be enjoying for decades. It’s a lovely thing to see.

Britney Vs Spears often feels just as exploitative as the case it portrays.

So while Fuqua’s The Guilty is not much different from the original, his direction is crisp, Gyllenhaal’s performance grows on you and Riley Keough (Zola), as the voice of the woman who is abducted, is terrific.

The absorbing rags-to-riches-to-rags story — a must for any classic film fan — is told in The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, directed by Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri.

Director Stephen Chbosky needed to bring this stage musical into greater balance with the film medium. He needed to make Dear Evan Hansen less grandiose. He needed to pick up the pace and chop 10 minutes from the running time. It’s still possible that wouldn’t have saved it, but it might have made it less awful.

If you know the world of “The Many Saints of Newark” — maybe you’re Italian American from the East Coast, and have at least a dim memory of the late 1960s — this prequel to “The Sopranos” TV series is both accurate and oddly hilarious.

It’s an innocuous and cuddly film, even with Caine holding forth. It’s hard to tell if he transcends the role as written, or if he merely seized on the one shred of the screenplay worth showcasing. In any case, Caine brings his own shine to this rather dull affair, and shows again that he’s not ready to go gentle into that good night.

In 90 brisk minutes, we get a three-dimensional portrait of a private, gender-nonconforming trailblazer who not only paved the way for Black Americans, but also for women and LGBTQ people.

Showalter’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which credits the documentary as its inspiration, recreates some of the doc’s scenes almost verbatim. But while imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, Abe Sylvia’s ambitious but shallow script has something spiritually missing — namely, a point to it all.

But Eastwood is undercut by the unbearably weak screenplay by Nick Schenk, who adapts a 1975 novel by N. Richard Nash. Schenk has turned in good work for Eastwood before, including “Gran Torino” and “The Mule,” but here his strategy seems to be having his characters explain everything that they’re doing and feeling, much of which should be delivered visually. Action is character, after all.

McCarthy is one of our finest physical comedians. Every moment of physical comedy she performs here is cringey.

We’re supposed to be taking a fun thrill ride here, with a little existentialism to boot, but Copshop can’t escape its arrested development.

The film has a fairly clever and original premise — one that’s better left unspoiled as a third act reveal. But the path to it is bizarre and beguiling with too many moments that feel like an episode of “CSI” or “Without a Trace” with much better cinematography and worse dialogue. It kind of makes you wonder what the hell Wan was doing here.

One wonders how a master of truly twisted movies — say, a David Lynch or a Brian De Palma — would have approached “The Voyeurs.” One suspects they would have a bit more fun and taken us further down the moral rabbit hole. And the sex would have been better too.

Schrader’s characters are haunted (please see “First Reformed” if you haven’t). They’re also deeply moral, not in a dime-store virtue kind of way but in the sense that they struggle mightily to do the right thing. In the end they’re painfully human, which is why they keep resonating after the lights go up.

Kate looks like most other productions from 87North, the company behind such cinematic cage fights as Atomic Blonde and the John Wick films. Honestly, this could have been called “Nuclear Brunette.” But with heart.

The strength of Fauci is its underlying theme, which is really not about Fauci at all. Hoffman and Tobias jump back and forth in time, from the AIDS to Ebola to the COVID years, and surreptitiously a portrait emerges of the uneasy relationship between the scientific community, the general public and the political establishment.

To see Come From Away onscreen now — directed by Christopher Ashley, who won a Tony Award for his Broadway direction of the show — is to see a path to mercy and compassion off in the distance and wonder if we can still get there — or if it’s too late for us.

Blood Brothers explores compelling, often heart-wrenching moments; and if there’s a flaw, it’s in how little time the film devotes to the aftermath of that tragic rift.

Here, where even the stepmother has a backstory, Cannon seems intent not just on trying to blot out the original’s sexism but also its mystery. In trying to be safe and copacetic with modern sensibilities, this Cinderella neuters itself.

Tariq began his career as a documentary filmmaker, and now he has made a drama that rings with truth, about a musician’s ambition, a son’s relationship with his father and how the immigrant experience shapes following generations.

Directed by Mark Waters, cast members seem to operate on the belief that they can best deal with the plot’s improbabilities by grimacing their way through and not giving anyone time to react to them. Pesky details brushed aside, the film can play to its strength, which is the charm of its leads.

Of course, DaCosta’s restraint keeps its interesting. There’s an elegance to her storytelling, always giving us just enough to keep us moving forward without signaling too much of what’s to come.

“Shang-Chi” gives us Shang-Chi, a likable, thrilling-to-watch and ultimately very welcome addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

As good as both actors are, watching characters sitting around talking gets old. But the film perks up considerably midway through, becoming a taut beat-the-clock thriller as it covers the days just before Bundy’s 1989 execution, the tension lying in whether Ted will fulfill his 11th-hour promise to confess.

Both McAvoy and Horgan handle the rapid-fire dialogue with gusto, and for a while, their devastating banter is amusing. But eventually the effect begins to wear thin: These vocal diatribes need a more developed story to hang on.

The new Netflix documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed, produced by husband-and-wife team Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone, paints a picture of naked opportunism that shattered Ross’ legacy. It’s the story of how a man became an industry, and how his family was gradually, systematically left out in the cold.

To be sure, Big Pharma execs make for natural movie villains these days, but this story could have used a tad more subtlety, something that was in short supply here.

Maggie Q has been in good movies before, but The Protégé is the first movie that’s good because she’s in it.

In every way, Cryptozoo is a more ambitious achievement than Shaw’s coy but pleasing first feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2016). And while its hippie-era setting and hallucinatory imagery give a nostalgic kick, the film’s darker conflicts speak to dire issues of today.

It’s not an exciting film, and it’s not a film with some wider social relevance. But it’s a film that’s wise about people in a way that’s rare. It also launches Dylan Penn, and someday that will matter.

Reminiscence is never not interesting, but Joy leaves a lot of the intriguing issues unsatisfactorily explored.

We don’t always get a full picture of Barbara Lee, however, there’s no doubt for a single frame that this consummate politician — a pragmatic firebrand — is long overdue for recognition beyond the Bay Area.

CODA is lovely. If you want to see a movie that will make you feel good, this is it.

Apart from a few lapses, Filomarino is straightforward and gets the job done. Along the way, he taps into everyone’s most paranoid fantasy about foreign travel — where the police and authority figures turn on you, and the Constitution or Bill of Rights are a few thousand miles away.

Free Guy is an ode to independence, creativity and the nicer aspects of anarchy.

Aided by the star magnetism of Yen and Tse, and back in his element on the colorful streets of Hong Kong, Chan goes out with both guns blazing.

In the end, Homeroom lacks impact, taken as a whole, but anyone who sees it will derive something from the experience.

The concept might have worked well on paper. But on screen, at least how Chase Palmer has directed and co-scripted it, those clashing elements exert weak gravitational pull.

Respect has everything you could hope for in a musical biopic. It has a good story and great songs and, best of all, it has someone in the lead role who can put those songs over.

Ailey weds forthright interviews and archival footage of abstract beauty with those sweeping dance sequences to conjure a haunting portrait of what it means to be an artist — from the triumphs to the empty, lonely feeling that you’re never as good as you’re supposed to be.

At the very least, it marks the arrival of a filmmaker with great potential. It also presents a metaphysical vision that’s quite peculiar and not very persuasive if you can’t get on its generous wavelength.

On its own terms, Escape From Mogadishu makes for an engrossing, nail-biting Korean history lesson.

Long before the end, audiences will stop worrying about the characters and start worrying about themselves — about when they’ll get to leave.

Mixing in citizens’ harrowing cellphone footage and heartbreaking emergency call recordings, Walker’s teams immerse us in the flaming terror as few features have before.

In The Suicide Squad, writer-director James Gunn has done the seemingly impossible: He has found the fun in the Suicide Squad. He has come up with a way to take what seemed like a dead concept and turn it into an action-packed joke machine.

The film is kindly and well-intended, but it’s also sentimental and lifeless. Swan Song is a rare movie without a single good scene.

Like practically every other animated movie meant for mass consumption, the movie gets lost in the chase — the point where story flow is interrupted so that characters get lost as they try to achieve their objective and a manufactured villain is trying to keep them from their goal.

Mr. Soul! is like a wrinkle in time, a time capsule that needed to be opened. In uncovering rare gold, it’s a film that reminds us just how much we don’t know.

Though there are political elements here, to be sure, Pray Away has more the feeling of witnessing multiple spiritual journeys. These journeys are, by their very nature, moving.

The Green Knight is a strange film — so out of step with current trends, so original in its conception, so willing to take its time and follow its own course — that it must be counted among the better films of 2021.

The film’s writer-director is British-born Sabrina Doyle, who is making her feature debut after spending the past decade in Los Angeles making short films. Her touch is nearly perfect: authentic, patient, guiding — giving her actors plenty of space. And they respond.

To their credit, by the time the movie ends, Blunt and Johnson have made the sale. I believed them and liked seeing them together. They don’t make Jungle Cruise worth seeing or even worth tolerating. But for scattered minutes across this wasteland, they make it less painful.

It’s a telling scene, musicians enjoying the company of other musicians, professionals all. Guy is a bluesman’s bluesman. They flock to see him jam; he’s still playing ’em, and still losing ’em.

There’s one big problem about No Ordinary Man: The Billy Tipton Documentary: It’s not really about Billy Tipton. Instead, it’s about how transgender representation is perceived in the media, chiefly between 1989, when Tipton died, and current times.

Snake Eyes collapses in a crosscurrent of conflicting character motives, joyless plot twists and who-cares violence.

Old is, at times, clumsy and obvious, but it’s different and weird, and it taps into something essential. It might be a distant second to The Sixth Sense, but it’s the second-best movie Shyamalan has made.

While it’s not always as sharp as it could be, the energy in Jolt never falters, and there are definitely amusing bits.

The Val Kilmer we meet has been in the arena, realizes he has been lucky despite the hard knocks, and has now achieved what we hope is a lasting peace. His physical voice might be gone, but his inner voice still has much to say.

Audiences will come away feeling like they’ve really been somewhere, that they were moved by the people they met and expanded by the experience. You can’t ask more from a movie.

It’s a flat, forlorn movie with occasional sparks of life.

Neville’s portrayal is gripping, emotional and therapeutic, but fans looking for clear-cut answers won’t find them.

The original Space Jam was an out-of-nowhere delight, and Jordan gave space to his fellow live action co-stars, such as Bill Murray, Larry Bird and Wayne Knight. It was also in and out in 87 minutes; Space Jam: A New Legacy, directed by a good filmmaker, Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip, The Best Man), is a bloated 115 minutes, its mayhem and madness wearing pretty thin as it goes along.

Summertime is the first movie ever like Summertime, and on that basis alone, we should appreciate it.

Black Widow is what happens when movies abandon human values for the emotional deadness and emptiness of the superhero movie.

Without an ounce of the polemic, [Ewing] offers a vivid perspective of the United States’ immigration issues through a romantic lens. It’s not a new perspective, by any means, but the way she brings it has a poignant beauty all its own.

It would probably be a mistake to emphasize the relationship aspect of The Tomorrow War too much. At its core, this is just a really good monster movie. All the same, there’s a touch of beauty to it.

First Date is a very ambitious independent film with a charming, casual attitude.

Directed by Everardo Gout, The Forever Purge is non-stop action, which is fine because the script by series creator James DeMonaco, who directed the first three films, never plumbs the depths of its clever concept. The intense, appealing performances by the lead actors get us through.

Even as everyone’s plans unravel, the film does not. The script, by Ed Solomon, is sharp, as is Soderbergh’s direction.

America: The Motion Picture isn’t really a failure, because it doesn’t even try.

In all ways, it’s unexpected — in its subject, in its treatment of its subject, and in its whole look and feel. It’s an original and interesting movie.

It’s Ice Road Truckers with a plot and concentrated, well-staged jeopardy. The film’s vibe is different from the History Channel series, but fans of that show will likely welcome the return of familiar thrills and predicaments.

While False Positive has lapses in logic and could have a quicker pace in the second half, it fully embraces a bizarre sense of the macabre that is irresistible.

A movie can’t just be crazy, lest it go off a cliff and never land. It also needs a human core, and Diesel and Rodriguez are it.

Margaret Cho goes over the top in the new Netflix comedy Good on Paper, mugging and delivering lines too emphatically. But as the movie progresses, you see the San Francisco native’s approach not as overacting, but heroism. She appears to be trying to single-handedly breathe life into this nearly laugh-free movie.

Who Are You, Charlie Brown? can be a little too slick and clean, especially for those of us who harbor fond memories of the rough edges in A Charlie Brown Christmas (which premiered back in 1965, and still gets its moment in the sun here). But overall it’s a smart and pleasant revisiting of the Peanuts gang in all their idiosyncratic charm — a charm that remains remarkably durable and true.

There are some rumblings about the sea monsters wanting to express their true selves and being accepted by humans even though they are different, yadda yadda, but it’s not very well developed and Luca, like its charming village at low tide, is a shallow dip in the water.

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It has a lot of star power: Spielberg, Gloria Estefan, Eva Longoria, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Whoopi Goldberg and her Electric Company co-star Morgan Freeman. But none outshine the feisty subject herself.

It takes a little while, but Fatherhood eventually becomes exactly what you expected. It will make no converts, nor will it push away the faithful. It’s a Kevin Hart movie, after all.

If anything, this modest but entirely charming movie may deserve a tiny slice of immortality by showing the kind of goofy, escapist fun that can be created even in a grim time.

The by-the-numbers film is not hard to sit through and won’t offend anybody, but its lofty, worthwhile message doesn’t feel earned.

The results may be sports-movie predictable in many ways, but the Mighty Mites’ impossible story is one deserving of resurrection from the dusty archives of Texas history.

Full of action without thrills, comedy without laughs, noise without meaning and violence without reason (or even any cool combat choreography), it’s a headache with a Hollywood marketing budget.

To its credit, no matter how self-important and dreary Infinite gets at times, it’s never dull, and there’s always a little sparkle to it and a reason to keep watching.

Awake fails only in the sense that it’s a movie in one note, and thus its story only knows one direction, which is downhill.

The obvious thing to expect here is that writer-director Christian Petzold is using the Undine”myth as a metaphor. But no, he’s doing the actual myth.

Ali has done such a masterful job laying out his tableau that we’re not only enamored with the characters, we want to know where they end up.