Red Rocket could have soared in a traditional Hollywood feel-good way but instead stays small and down to the ground, sticking with you uncomfortably and brilliantly.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest... is part noir, part comedy of remarriage, and part Freudian fever dream about past lives.

It’s often hard to see comedies for what they are, or what they might be, on first viewing. But “Eurovision” is that rare film that strikes the right chord from the start. And, weirdly, it might even spark some interest in the actual show.

Regardless of your familiarity with Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, “The Piano Lesson” is a worthwhile, captivating and moving watch full of charismatic performers.

[An] absorbing new documentary.

As played by Johansson, excellent here, every action for Natasha is tinged with acceptance and revulsion for her own nature. Black Widow becomes, kind of stirringly, a movie not about franchise extension but sisterhood, improvised families and traumatic pasts.

Beneath the beauty and the violence is a story about the ties between siblings, fatherly expectations, the modern world’s demands versus traditions and our own legacies.

The story of centerfold girl Dorothy Stratton has been told before, in a television movie and countless articles. But Fosse gives it new and immediate strength through his superior talent as a filmmaker. [7 Nov 1983]

How do you go back and yet forward at the same time? The filmmakers have rather cleverly done that by incorporating plot points from the first two movies and building out with new characters and blurring the divide between flesh and digital worlds.

Ultimately, it’s an effectively minimalistic thriller that leaves much room for interpretation and debate, and a good option for anyone looking for something creepy to watch this Halloween without the gore.

There are lots of laughs in the script by Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson, as well as wry insights into modern relationships. [20 Dec 1982]

It takes a little while to get going...The “Borat” sequel will make you laugh and squirm as much as it will send shudders down your spine.

The story itself is unremarkable, even thin — there are no surprising twists or turns, no big lessons in the script by Nicolaas Zwart — but the relationship at its core is hugely entertaining to watch.

Somehow, this amusingly chaotic mashup of genres finds a way to strike a final note that’s simple and true.

The plot is simplistic, but the film makes no pretense. It is aimed at the action fans, and it should immensely please them. [11 Apr 1983]

In the end, Chevalier may be more fiction than history, but it’s worthwhile with effective acting, tension (helped by Kris Bowers’ score) and a decadently beautiful production.

Fire and Ice combines fairy tale with sword-and-sorcery for a visually impressive, often exciting feat of animation. [05 Sep 1983]

What distinguishes The Nun is its silky, sumptuous shadows. Directed by British filmmaker Corin Hardy (“The Hallows”) and shot by Maxime Alexander (who was also cinematographer on the “Conjuring” spinoff “Annabelle: Creation,” The Nun shrouds itself so much in darkness that it at times verges on becoming a nightmarish abstraction. You almost lose sense of what exactly is going on, as Sister Irene falls into a labyrinthine abyss.

Cortés argues that Little Richard created the template for the rock icon and she’s got the receipts, tracing his musical and stylistic influences through everyone from the Beatles to David Bowie, Elton John and Lizzo. If there was a king, he was it.

Testament makes nuclear war a disaster that must never happen, not by showing its massive devastation, but by depicting humanity's capacity to love. [29 Nov 1983]

Hatching is an assured and promising debut for Bergholm with a jaw-dropping ending that may just cement it as a cult classic in the making.

While Green’s Halloween, which he penned with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, has faithfully adopted much of what so resonated in Carpenter’s genre-creating film — the stoic killer, the gruesome executions, the suburban nightmares — what makes his Halloween such a thrill is how it deviates from its long-ago predecessor.

The Death of Stalin may be both Iannucci’s darkest and most timely satire yet. More than anything he’s done before, Iannucci has narrowed the distance between slapstick and savagery, prompting us to contemplate — even as we’re cackling — their uncomfortable proximity.

What “Blonde” IS is ambitious. Far-reaching, at times perhaps too far.

In our world of gross TikTok hacks for one pot meals, it’s a balm to see things slowed down and with many, many beautifully rustic copper pots and cast-iron pans.

Working with a script from Drew Pearce (“Hobbs & Shaw”), Leitch packs the film with wall-to-wall action, in both the film’s movie sets and its real world. And with the self-referential humor, the industry jokes and the promise of a little romance, it feels like one of those movies we all complain they don’t make anymore.

Fuqua is a lyrical director who directed Washington to an Oscar in “Training Day.” He’s not afraid to spend time in the still darkness with McCall and likes to focus on small moody elements, like rain hitting the gutters. But he can also deliver red meat: A sequence in which McCall fights off a passenger in the back seat of his car is a mini-masterpiece of taut, sinewy direction.

Preposterous? Of course, but somehow the movie watcher becomes thoroughly involved in the author's chase after the mad killer. [13 Aug 1979]

Vol. 3 is a messy, overstuffed finale. But you rarely question whether Gunn’s heart is in it. Sometimes it spoils some of that effect by trying too hard to juxtapose tonal extremes, and show off its brash juggling act. Yet whatever this sweet, surreal sci-fi shamble is that Gunn has created, everyone here seems to believe ardently in it.

Usually a cinematic heist is spectacular — in its success or its failure. Reichardt has removed all spectacle, telling instead a moody tale of a man who makes a dumb mistake and slowly loses everything, like a tumble down a mountain in slow motion.

Of course, you might ask, at a time of such turbulence in the world, what do 19th century upper-class romantic machinations have to do with, well, anything? To which we say: Whatever! Bring it on. Distract us with your lovely frocks flowing straight from the bosom, your exquisite bonnets with feathers, your real-estate porn in the countryside and your smart dinner-table repartee. We could do a lot worse.

Like “Boys State,” this film presents a fascinating microcosm of American teenagers.

Regardless of any incongruities, “Monkey Man” makes for a forceful directorial debut from Patel. More than anything else, he brings a compelling gravity to a film that is quite serious about getting seriously brutal.

Morrison is a celebrated cinematographer known for “Black Panther,” “Fruitvale Station” and “Mudbound,” making her feature debut as a director. And it’s a promising one, full of beautiful shots, unexpected choices and rousing fights inside the ring, anchored by a thoughtful, engaging script and compelling lead performances.

In Us, Peele has produced a terrifying artifact: a sinister ballet of doppelgangers and inversions that makes flesh the unseen underbelly lurking beneath every sunny American dream and behind every contented nuclear family. It’s a scissor-sharp rebuke to anyone who’s ever held hands and sang “Kumbaya.”

Assuming it’s true, the film is a poignant and moving coda to a career spent chronicling personal indignities amid broader social ills like poverty and unemployment.

Since the men are Anthony Quinn and Kevin Costner and their mutual love is a stunning newcomer, Madeleine Stowe, the film rises above formula. [13 Feb 1990]

A diversion like Save Yourselves! might just save your week.

Some have likened Passages to a horror movie (though aren’t all coming of age movies horrors in some way?) Regardless, it would make a fitting double feature with Christian Petzold’s “Afire”. They are both films that let you dabble in the feeling of having had a semester abroad, tumultuous feelings and all, without all the actual emotional fallout or jetlag.

Paolo Sorrentino’s films can be overwrought, grotesque and uneven but they are rarely not alive. His latest, The Hand of God, is a catalog of wonders — of miracles both banal and eternal.

This latest film by the great and astonishingly prolific Steven Soderbergh is not out to give the audience what they think they want from him. Instead, it’s a meditation on art, legacy, creativity and the oh-so-touchy subject of who has the right to critique.

It doesn’t always work, but has a natural engine and spirit to it that keeps you focused.

By breaking down some of the old mythology, Johnson has staked out new territory. For the first time in a long time, a “Star Wars” film feels forward-moving.

Chris Columbus, who wrote and directed as he did for Home Alone, enhances the comedic bits with commentary on the human condition: the emergence of male-female love; the silver cord between mother and son; the plight of aging single men whose only ties are their pub companions.

Science and belief clashes aside, The Wonder is a transfixing, transportive film, anchored by the incomparable Pugh.

Will you exit with any sort of elevated understanding of artists or love or tragedy? Maybe not, but, again, this thing called Annette has a way of taking up residence in your mind, whether you like it or not. If you’re even the slightest bit intrigued, you should let Carax and the Maels take you on this bizarre journey.

It doesn’t all fit together, and I Care a Lot has ultimately no way of resolving its fairly ludicrous plot. But it’s strong, gripping, unpredictable pulp, and Pike pulls something off that few else could as a protagonist. She’s quite detestable and completely compelling.

For an actress who’s hustled to get to this point, “One of Them” days is perfect platform for Palmer, scrappy and unstoppable.

In this forensic portrait of war, the only way to not get what’s happening on the ground is to be too far from it. François Truffaut famously said there’s no such thing as an anti-war film because movies inherently glamorize war. “Warfare,” though, is intent on challenging that old adage.

The film itself might not wrap up in any sort of tidy or satisfying way, but nothing leading up to the conclusion would lead you to expect something so basic.

Dosa uses July’s narration to frame the Kraffts’ story with a playful sense of wonder and whimsy — a sometimes overly intrusive, too neatly packaged device in a film where what’s on screen is so overwhelmingly powerful that it might not need the extra layer.

Radio Days maintains a joyful balance between reality and a world of dreams. [14 Mar 1987]

Gunda ultimately falls somewhere between banal and profound. Maybe it’s both.

We walk away from this funny, sad, scary film acutely reminded that if fame has two sides, one of them is pretty darned horrible.

What makes “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” especially enjoyable, then — and the best since the 2001 original — is not that Bridget finds a way yet again to triumph over doubts and obstacles. It’s that she still makes us care so darned much.

Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, a rollicking virtual-world geekfest flooded by ’80s ephemera, doesn’t just want to wade back into the past. It wants to race into it at full throttle. For those who get their fix through pop nostalgia, “Ready Player One” is — for better or worse — an indulgent, dizzying overdose.

It has the makings of a stealth classic.

The film looks of its time, but it also feels fairly modern in its sensibilities which makes it always seem more like a re-telling than an in-the-moment experience. This may be to its detriment, yet it’s still an undeniably riveting and compelling watch.

It lulls the viewer, along with the protagonist, into a misty, dreamlike delirium until you’re not even certain of what’s right in front of your face.

Perhaps there is something to the fact that fairly or not, some of the luster has dulled due to familiarity, but The French Dispatch remains a highly enjoyable, sophisticated and experimental ode to the romantic, and fictionalized, idea of the midcentury heyday of magazines like The New Yorker and The Paris Review.

Piani has constructed a rare gem in “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” which manages to be literary without being pretentious.

Many of the best scenes are silent, enhanced by a wonderfully wistful score by James Newton Howard.

It may not be great cinema in any traditional sense, but it’s great fun and a much-needed antidote to all the bad cover versions floating around.

On the whole, the Ross brothers’ observational, immersive filmmaking gets close to something bracingly real.

In the Burtonian spirit, let’s just say it took a long time to bake it, yes, but the director has recovered the recipe — at least enough to make us smile, chortle, even guffaw, for 104 minutes. And we can be happy with that.

By the end of this illuminating film, we’re forced to confront something much deeper and more insidious: society’s need to divide humans into a binary system, and the sometimes disastrous results for those born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that isn’t neatly “male” or “female.”

“Let me entertain you,” Williams seems to be screaming through every scene. Mostly, he succeeds.

Literal-minded moviegoers will find it easy to hate Pennies from Heaven. But those willing to go along with the device will find the film a source of constant surprise and delight. [14 Dec 1981]

First-time director Arnold Zwick does a fine job of capturing the vitality of the singles scene. [30 July 1986]

It’s an absorbing ride, and Schimberg works with confidence and brio.

A Shock to the System marks a promising entry into feature films for Jan Egleson, who has directed prestige films for public television. He skillfully plays the murderous events against the normality of New York high rises and peaceful suburbia. [02 Apr 1990]

All these elements, wacky or not, come together in a charming mishmash that adds something ultimately very important to the childbirth comedy genre: the message that childbirth is profound, yes, and full of wonder. But also, like life, it can be funny — and a bit of a mess.

Perfect is gorgeous to look at, with its disciplined bodies (there is even a visit to a male strip joint) and modern cityscapes. Travolta was never more personable; doubts concerning his star presence are dispelled here. Jamie Lee Curtis matches him charismatically, despite her ambivalent role. [21 May 1985]

Reynolds is once again at his arch and nihilist best here, while acting and jumping in so much facial prosthetics that it makes him look like he’s inside melted cheese — or, as the first movie put it, an avocado that had relations with an older avocado.

Luckily we get to look long and and hard at this Emily, brought provocatively to life by O’Connor and her star. Strange or not, it’s hard to look away.

Tenet lacks the elegant mastery of “Dunkirk” or the cosmic soulfulness of “Interstellar,” but it has a darkly grand geometry.

The Border is a well-made action-adventure film enhanced by authentic settings and a superlative performance by Jack Nicholson. [08 Feb 1982]

What distinguishes this debut feature from Andrew Onwubolu, aka Rapman, is firstly its storytelling structure, making welcome use of the writer-director’s rap talents to serve as a Greek chorus. And secondly its cast, with several vital performances of note, especially from heartbreakingly vulnerable newcomer Stephen Odubola.

When “F1” does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It’s not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it’s enough to glimpse another road “F1” might have taken.

Have plenty of tissues nearby when you watch the top-notch Netflix film All Together Now, a teary tale of fellowship.

Hallgren weaves together a compelling narrative with these public and private interviews that builds chronologically to the present.

Fitting for a movie with an actual skeleton in a closet, “Adulthood” is about legacy and how we become our parents. It’s also about recognizing that our parents are human and complicated.

The ambitions of Wonder Woman 1984 may be just outside its grasp, but it seldom feels predestined or predictable — a preciously rare commodity in the genre.

The Lost Bus is about a few ordinary people in an impossible situation just trying to survive. While it’s not hard to wring emotion out of an audience watching kids in peril, it also, in some ways, gets right to the very heart of the matter.

The film buzzes along with introspective conversations, all-too human moments, a terrific soundtrack with everyone from Marianne Faithfull to The Pretenders, and a few delightfully awkward scenes that really drive home the whole “don’t meet your idols” conceit.

A charismatic ensemble cast, a sharp script and a few well-placed twists make Game Night one of the more enjoyable big studio comedies in recent memory.

Even though it might be difficult to watch at times, it’s done with such evident love and sensitivity that it’s hard to imagine a human being not connecting in some way, and perhaps even learning something along the way.

With Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson as the Three Men, you can forgive the artifice. All three have affable, winning personalities - not a hint of darkness in any of them. And it's refreshing to see a buddy movie without blazing Uzis and crashing cars. [19 Nov 1990]

Teen Titans GO! to the Movies is the sort of silly film you and your kids can both enjoy, a slice of pure escapist fare in these divisive days.

There is nothing terribly new in the telling, no huge revelations or bombshells. Most of the details — including King’s infidelity and the use of Withers as an FBI informant — have been known for years. But that’s not Pollard’s interest. His canvas is large, stretching back to post-Civil War Jim Crow, exploring how notions of Black sexuality were turned into social weapons and into the way FBI agents were made mythical in popular culture.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t does what sequels apparently must do these days — load up the characters, return to favorite bits and go global — but nails the trick, a crowd-pleasing return that already has a fourth in the works.

With flashy, colorful and user-friendly graphics, the film traces industry consolidation: the few companies who have 70% of the carbonated drinks market, for example, or 80% of the baby food market. Such realities violate the spirit of antitrust legislation, they argue.

This very American fable has been blessed with three remarkable performances.

Karam is adapting his own Tony-winning work here, a play inspired by the 2007-2008 financial crisis. In doing so he achieves something quite rare: He makes an intimate and devastating family drama even more intimate and devastating.

If the knock on “The Secret Life of Pets” was that it was a rip-off of “Toy Story,” then the second film better grounds itself in its own universe. Like its main three characters, it has learned to be comfortable in its own animated skin.

[Michell] imbues his last film with so much charm, wit and good storytelling that he, too, cannot help but win.

Is it a little glossy and sanitized with a jaunty score? Sure. But it also thoughtfully explores themes of redemption, invisibility, pride and sportsmanship without being preachy or condescending.

This is a premise that could turn horrifically treacly or maudlin. But Greg Kwedar — who directs and co-writes with Clint Bentley — has a firm, no-nonsense but emotional hand, even if he uses a few too many razor wire-though-the-window shots.