While the movie isn’t quite as clever as it thinks it is, the Zellners have a sweet, likable sense of humor tinged with tragedy. And they remain filmmakers to watch.

Like a haphazardly planted garden, it’s lot of ideas that don’t seem to create anything terribly coherent but it has its individual pleasures nonetheless.

This fabulous, moody film isn’t your typical jock flick where bitter rivals compete to a crowning, sweaty end. There isn’t a real victor in Borg Vs. McEnroe and the points don’t prove anything. It’s less a tennis movie than a meditation on the personal costs of chasing excellence.

Unsane, a pulpy psychological thriller, is an exercise in both genre and technology. It’s a B-movie iMovie. And it’s 98 minutes of proof that the laborious apparatus of filmmaking can be not only light on its feet, but fit snuggly inside your pocket.

A first-class thriller that will strike a terrifying note with anyone who's ever met the roommate from hell. [12 Aug 1992]

Someone Great has not exactly rewritten the rom-com rule book. Where it distinguishes itself is in the fresh faces of it cast (the rom-com is not known as the most diverse of genres) and in focusing on the hard realities of breakup rather than the fairytale of falling in love.

Triangle of Sadness, which clocks in at almost two and a half hours, is at its sharpest before the symphony of bodily fluids and survival plots arrive.

Both Lane and Costner, direct and earthy performers from the start, have only added depth with age. As long-married Montana ranchers in Let Him Go (in theaters Friday), they’re basically the platonic ideal of an old-fashioned, homespun Americana. They could sell you a mountain of jeans if they wanted to.

Is it all a little much? Of course, but that’s kind of the point of Maria.

Many of its twists aren’t hard to see coming, and the movie sometimes lacks the scale needed for a sprawling battle. But a mustachioed Odenkirk with a shotgun is, by most metrics, more than enough firepower for any movie.

The battle of the heads in "How to Get Ahead in Advertising" is curious, bizarre and at times distasteful. The plot becomes almost existential, but the ending is a cop-out. [21 Nov 1989]

As a B-movie with a couple of A-listers, “The Rip” will probably go down as a minor and flawed genre exercise. But even in their lesser efforts, the sincerity of Damon and Affleck’s buddy routine remains winning.

I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who just wants to see her and these actors together again. But the movie, well stocked in Prada, could have used a bit more of Streep’s unflappable devil.

Beau Is Afraid takes a long road — and one with a lot of yelling and sniveling along the way — to not get very far. That could, of course, be the point. But the simpering sad sack Beau — despite Phoenix’s typically committed and sympathetic performance — remains curiously void, stuck in a one-note nightmare.

Kenneth Branagh indulges in the kind of macabre theatricality that only a crumbling Venetian palazzo on a stormy Halloween night can provide in A Haunting in Venice.

But if defying one’s heteronormative programming and entering the Matrix was once a balletic finesse, in “Resurrections” the battle is blunter and the tone less exultant.

The pleasures of Uncorked are in how it gently eludes stereotype and brings a rich sense of texture to even its smaller moments.

It’s a kind of over-the-top, “Misery”-styled meditation on entrenched gender cliches in heterosexual dating.

“Solo” is a straightforward piece of pulpy entertainment with some very agreeable performances from Ehrenreich and Glover, who seems to be having the most fun of all the actors in playing up Lando’s suave demeanor, and fun classic Western flourishes, despite the excessively big action sequences.

Call Jane distinguishes itself as a stirring portrait of the birth of an unlikely abortion-rights activist.

Joy is not all joy. There is frustration and loss and tears along the way, but it is a triumphant film about the way humans can make the world better and how a baby’s cry can be a priceless gift.

The broader history is there for those who are curious and on its own terms this is a story that will keep you engaged. Much of that has to do with Ridley.

A cerebral approach to espionage and defection, often suspenseful but sometimes dull. [26 Jan 1980]

A film like this, as authentic and raw as it is, should probably leave audiences in a puddle and not exiting the theater wondering why they’re not.

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.

Ultimately, it’s not earth shattering but it’s also perfectly pleasant for what it is and what it knows it isn’t. Red, White & Royal Blue is a beach read in movie form and one that can and should be watched with friends.

A dynamic political drama with superior acting and wide significance. The competing forces of city governance have rarely been portrayed with such immediacy and incisiveness. [17 Feb 1996]

What’s most disappointing about the film, considering its origins, is just how distant anything like real life feels. From the first moment Jamie slides on a pair of ruby red stiletto pumps, there’s not any doubt things are going to work out for him.