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]