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.

Could the movie have hit harder at the self-involved stars we often worship? Of course. But what makes it powerful is not the Hollywood drama. This is a movie for any of us who have missed a child’s school recital, asked an assistant to work late or skipped a family dinner because a client was running behind. It’s about time. It’s about where we choose to spend our time.

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.

Ambiguous and damning at once, John Curran’s Chappaquiddick plunges us back into the summer of 1969: the season of Woodstock, the moon landing, the Manson murders and the lowest ebb of the Kennedy mythology.

While its ideas are often intriguing, the movie feels like high-concept scaffolding that only thinly conceals it hollowness. It’s a Tesla without electricity.

These are interesting and fraught times that deserve an unflinching look at the perils of data rights and online privacy, but The Great Hack is a reminder that documentaries are not always journalism.

Lawrence’s novel may have been shocking when it was published — most famously, it was the subject of a major obscenity trial in Britain — but it is not shocking now, no matter how frank the sex scenes. So any adaptation needs more to distinguish it than heaving bodies, however attractive.

It’s not a perfect film, it lags at times and at over two hours it is far too long, but Theron and Rogen have a natural chemistry that makes spending a couple hours with them, even in the dullish moments, a joy.

The Legend of Ochi, a scrappy and darkly whimsical fable about a misunderstood teenage girl on a dangerous quest, has the feeling of a film you might have stumbled on and loved as a kid. Something tactile, something fantastical and, maybe, something a little dangerous — the kind of movie you knew you probably weren’t supposed to be seeing just yet.

For a long, sun-addled stretch, Lorcan Finnegan’s beach-set “The Surfer” simmers as a deliciously punishing nightmare, driving Nicolas Cage into his most natural state: a boil.

While I certainly enjoyed elements of this odyssey in reverse, I was ultimately left feeling very little — especially about Chuck and the questionable end-of-film explanation that ties it all together.

There are quite a few good pieces and performances in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, but, ultimately, it also has the feeling of a first or second draft that isn’t quite where it should be.

Saving the showstopper for last will certainly leave audiences exiting the theater on a happy high note. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that in attempting to tie everything together, “Mission: Impossible” lost the plot.

Wakanda Forever is overlong, a little unwieldy and somewhat mystifyingly steers toward a climax on a barge in the middle of the Atlantic. But Coogler’s fluid command of mixing intimacy with spectacle remains gripping.

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.

Despite being near the action, we don’t feel particularly close to it. Still, we get to see the wheels turning, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in some of the backstage moments.

Over two hours ends up being too long. But [Finn] has found a great satirical target, given life to a third film easily and showcased another rising star to watch. That’s a reason to, well, smile about.

A splendidly mounted and impressively acted version of the Bram Stoker classic. [09 Jul 1979]

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

Guadagnino gives us a lesson in the history of Hollywood itself, not to mention the birth of the “movie star” and the role fashion has played in that. (It’s great fun.)

A story about the victims of Sept. 11 maybe ought not to focus on a lawyer dispensing the cash. But Keaton — a truly great actor in his responsiveness to those around him — makes a compelling, initially tone-deaf listener to the stories that filter through Worth.

For the big tonal swings in A Simple Favor to work, the characters needed to be more plausibly grounded. Lively and Kendrick’s early scenes ping-pong nicely with odd-couple chemistry, but “A Simple Favor” loses the thread, and never shakes the feeling of a rushed Gillian Flynn knockoff.

Kravitz almost pulls it off. With the help of a terrific cast, she offers strikingly confident, brashly entertaining filmmaking, until everything seems to break down in a mess of porous storytelling.

Director James Watkins and especially his excellent troupe of actors, adult and children alike, do a nice job of building the tension, slowly but surely. Until all bloody hell breaks loose, of course. And then, in its third act, “Speak No Evil” becomes an entertaining but routine horror flick, with predictable results.

The Kitchen may lag at times, but it’s an astonishing and fully realized feat for two first-time feature directors with beautifully raw sequences of both emotion and action.

Missing, building off the related film “Searching” from 2018, manages to make a film about small screens feel electric on a big one.

As director, producer and star, Eastwood has made his most ambitious film, traveling to England and Zimbabwe and working with raging rivers and charging elephants. He has added immeasurably to his stature in all three capacities. [12 Sep 1990]

The script by Jake Crane and Jonathan A. H. Stewart is a slow-burning affair that will have audiences tugging at the leash.