Coupled with Stewart’s exposed nerve of a performance, the suffocating intensity of Larraín’s filmmaking, and Jonny Greenwood’s droning score, the movie brings a fresh sense of tragedy and loss to a tale that might otherwise feel familiar.

September 5 is effective because it doesn’t claim to say anything original about the perils of reporting and consuming breaking news. It’s simply—and bluntly—showing how easily those familiar perils can be overlooked.

Anytime King Richard threatens to follow an anodyne sports-movie arc, Williams’s forceful personality rears its head again.

Decker’s filmmaking is often dreamlike, but her storytelling has a cruel bite of reality to it—just as Jackson’s writing did decades before.

This is a demanding film, and there is one grisly (though in no way gratuitous) twist near the end that will test the endurance even of those who appreciated what came before. So be forewarned: Aronofsky has made precisely the movie he set out to make. But it may very well not be the movie for you.

The Woman King is a barn burner if you’re just looking for an invigorating night at the movies. But Prince-Bythewood’s real triumph is in grounding that sterling entertainment in a challenging dramatic text.

It pairs his inimitable visual elegance with an impassioned argument about the power of storytelling. And it’s a reminder that Anderson remains one of cinema’s best.

Nouvelle Vague is a fairly straightforward making-of story—funny, considering how form-breaking Breathless was. But Linklater understands that his movie’s appeal lies in character-based humor.

Everyone plays it reliably straight, a contrast that helps the film maintain its zany energy—and, in the spirit of the original trilogy, maximize the number of jokes per minute. If one bit flops, another arrives in a few seconds to make up for it.

At heart, the film is mostly a buddy comedy, an odd-couple clash between an old-fashioned stick in the mud and his more easygoing replacement. That makes it a breeze to watch—one just wonders if a movie about the modern papacy should be so cheerful.

Fyre is primarily a journalistic exhumation of the Fyre Festival’s ridiculous excesses. But via interviews with both dissatisfied ticket-buyers and nervy ex-employees, the movie also scrapes away the sheen of the flamboyant “influencer” lifestyle that McFarland leveraged to sell tickets and hook investors.

It moves quickly but exhaustingly; if you’re tired of one trope, there’s always a new one waiting excitedly around the corner.

Much of what does work is owed to Theron and Davis’s incredible performances.

I think Thyberg could have found even more to mine in a fully nonfiction movie; the biggest drawback of Pleasure is that it follows a fabricated protagonist who’s remote and one-dimensional. Bella is so defined by her stock story that it’s hard to grasp what’s motivating her beyond a desire for success, and the film gets bogged down in this staid narrative.

Wright has found an ideal collaborator in Oldman, an actor who knows how to embrace his most dramatic side but who still excels in his quieter moments.

It’s a perfect bit of shlock.

It’s a sweet and engaging movie, but one that sacrifices some profundity in order to faithfully capture the world through a boy’s eyes.

As with all of his movies, Garland doesn’t provide easy answers. Though Civil War is told with blockbuster oomph, it often feels as frustratingly elliptical as a much smaller movie. Even so, I left the theater quite exhilarated.

Blindspotting has enough verve, humor, and passion to recommend it—even as it overplays its hand in its final minutes.

For those seeking a wickedly dark little confection, Thoroughbreds should prove a diverting watch; but those looking for anything deeper will find a lot left to be desired.

Bring Her Back is far more confident in its portrayal of Laura’s own story, building to a devastating and intense conclusion about the extent of her loss and her inability to deal with it. Hawkins is up to the challenge, and the rest of the ensemble is strong enough to keep pace. But many of those story beats feel perfunctory; the film comes to life in the nastier, grislier set pieces.

It’s only right that a film about her challenges—and maybe even disturbs—its audience in turn.

Ducournau challenges viewers to find the humanity in a character who seems intent on rejecting her own, all while provoking as many laughs as gasps.

The spectacle of a fantasy world can do only so much; a beautiful setting can’t compensate for a superficial story line. Raya loses sight of its heroine’s own connection to the cultures that the filmmakers had put so much care into depicting authentically.

Perhaps this really is the last Jackass; regardless, the series has survived so long not just because of the extravagance it conjures, but because of the camaraderie it inspires.

Even with the gore and the gorgeous visuals that typically accompany a Guadagnino project, Bones and All too often feels frustratingly tame.

Ferguson is the star of the show, imperious one moment and fragile the next, torn between nurturing her son’s purpose and protecting him from becoming a monster.

Disobedience finishes on an annoyingly vague note, almost as if Lelio and Lenkiewicz had stumbled on a more interesting, expansive narrative in the final act but didn’t quite know how to pursue it. The result is a film that, from beginning to end, feels as hopelessly lost as its characters do.