Chastain gets some huge, showstopping moments – her final scene is genuinely terrific, and another scene that recreates Tammy Faye's on-air conversation with gay minister and AIDS activist Steve Pieters is effective and tender – but it would've been nicer if the movie itself was more worthy of her considerable talents.

Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers may at first present like a run-of-the-mill effort from the face of Spanish cinema, but there's a deceptive amount of variation here. It's both a perfect distillation of his artistic fascinations and marked evolution in the depth of his thematic explorations.

A foreboding tone blankets "The Power of the Dog," putting us on edge nearly from the jump. Even when mundane, harmless things are happening, the tension mounts. The harmless seems harmful. Silence speaks volumes. This is a subtle movie that manages to knock us flat. 

Ultimately, Scott knows when to let the script beguile the mind and when to let the action dazzle the eyes.

As a showcase for Gyllenhaal's talents, The Guilty is passable, but that's just not enough.

The lack of true scares may be a deal-breaker for some. And indeed, the overall outlandishness at work on the screen is going to flat-out annoy certain viewers. But then there will be those who revel in the audacity of Malignant, and boy oh boy are those folks in for a treat. This isn't even close to being James Wan's best horror movie, but cripes, it sure is a lot of fun. 

Vacation Friends" probably wouldn't work that well in a movie theater, but at least there, you'd have the potential of infectious laughter. At home, Vacation Friends falls totally flat.

There's good reason to be excited for how Green will bring this all to a head in his grand finale. Halloween Kills manages to put a playful but petrifying spin on mythology without resorting to cheap self-referentiality.

Queenpins boasts a cast of talented ringers, who elevate the muddled material far more than it deserves, without actually resulting in an all-around good movie.

There are moments of dread and tension, and as the narrative wears on it goes to some commendably weird places. But by then it's too little too late, and the movie ends with us wishing that the characters really had done something — anything, really.

Mogul Mowgli is an imperfect exploration of cultural identity and generational trauma, but in its messiness and chaos, it feels all the more genuine.

Last Night in Soho, with all its warts and wonders, shows you can teach an old dog some new tricks. Wright shows he still hasn't hit his ceiling as a filmmaker, but's heartening to see him stretch and reach rather than just keeping his artistic ambitions planted on the floor.

Audiences deserve to see the conclusion of an action film so immaculately crafted and patiently paced, one that's more focused on inspiring reverent amazement through the simplicity of durable storytelling structures rather than the complexity of cinematic universe building.

The element that keeps The Card Counter truly alive is Isaac, who turns in one of the best performances of his career here, using his eyes to convey things dialogue never could. To watch him work here is something special, even if the movie as a whole can't ever quite match his intensity. 

A dark, ominous undercurrent runs through "Candyman," signaling Nia DaCosta as a filmmaker with a firm, unique grasp on the genre. The original "Candyman" already had a few sequels, but none of them are as clever, as interesting, as effective as this. Go ahead. Dare to say his name five times in the mirror. "Candyman" will live on.

As Marvel remixes go, Shang-Chi is one of the more successful ones. Maybe not as stylistically strong as Black Widow and certainly not as much of a watershed moment as Black Panther, it is elevated by the strength of its hard-hitting fight scenes and the supporting performers — especially the Tony Leung of it all.

All in all, The Protégé is a dull assassin movie misfire that does no justice by Maggie Q and can’t be saved even by Keaton and Jackson making a meal of their scenes.

Reminiscence is so very, very close to succeeding. Joy has a great visual style – there’s a fight scene in a flooded room with a piano that’s genuinely stunning to watch – and the noir/sci-fi mash-up is often enjoyable. But Reminiscence never manages to feel like a memory worth revisiting.

Everything feels so sterile, filmed under cold, harsh lights. It’s one of the most horror-free horror movies in recent memory. Maybe Blomkamp should give sci-fi another shot.

A mesmerizing exercise in the mundane, Days is almost completely free of dialogue — and intentionally unsubtitled for this reason — inducing a kind of calm hypnotic state that makes the viewer even more aware of the sharp stabs of loneliness felt by his longtime muse Lee Kang-sheng.

Perhaps Don’t Breathe 2 would work better for people who haven’t seen the first movie at all – they wouldn’t be lost, and they wouldn’t be witnessing the total character shift from unstoppable killer to flawed savior.

Free Guy is the equivalent of a pop earworm – something a little tinny and artificial that nevertheless worms its way into your brain, whether you want it or not. Which makes it rather fitting that the big emotional crux of the movie is actually based around a pop song. And that the film’s star is epitome of pop likability: smooth, digestible, inoffensive — yes, even with all the curses that roll off his tongue.

Despite its very flawed ending and baggy structure, Stillwater goes against the tide of our expectations and offers us a disarmingly affecting character study, anchored by an exceptional performance by Damon. Not even his bad beard could distract from that.

Vivo is plenty colorful, with a bright pastel palette both when the film’s action takes place in Cuba and in Florida, though the backgrounds are far less detailed than would be ideal. It’s good, but not good enough. The same is true of the story, and of the songs.

At times, The Suicide Squad feels less like a movie than a mission statement from a director. Behold, look what I can do with a budget and all the comic book characters I can play with. But, the unexpected heart at the center of the film, a sneaky anti-imperialist bent, and Gunn’s wild visual leaps make The Suicide Squad a bloody, gory delight.

Jungle Cruise is, on the whole, not quite as enjoyable as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and of course nowhere near as good as the Indiana Jones franchise or even The Mummy, partly because it is entirely unable to shake loose of those reference points. But it’s still a solid summer action film, or at least a solid enough entry for this specific summer

For a debut to be this assured, and for a script to so deftly dance around the obvious challenges and result in a film that’s delightfully, darkly comedic, The Unknown Saint shows that despite all the obvious ways in which this work could have gone horribly, risibly wrong in these rare cases miracles can come true.

The enormity of this film intimidates me. And it hypnotizes me, and seduces me, and captures me until it feels as if the green has grown like moss over my entire body. But rather than threatening to choke, The Green Knight injects a new source of oxygen into the sword-and-sorcery genre.