Neither the masterpiece nor the atrocity it will be described as from here on out by fans and critics alike, Jojo Rabbit is pretty funny, mostly fine, and (perhaps worst of all) well-made.

Andersson’s sketches feel sketchier—sparser and more suggestive—with every film; About Endlessness hits perhaps a handful of blackly humorous punchlines, and the only irony is cosmic.

As It Was is a tremendously entertaining, surprisingly moving film.

We need more unrelenting work like this to use as catharsis for a youth put in peril by the inaction of aging politicians. Riot Girls proves just as much about a new generation taking the reins as it does empowered women expunging toxic male entitlement.

It all culminates in a final scene that is as eloquent as it is wise.

Dolemite Is My Name sadly coasts on a reliable biopic structure and handsome production values.

It is impossible to walk away from Just Mercy unmoved. ... Yet Destin Daniel Cretton’s third feature also feels a bit predictable, a bit obvious, and never quite as compelling as one might expect.

No matter how strong the performances or how assured the direction may be, The Truth can’t shake how, on a writing level, Kore-eda is out of his element.

Ms. Purple is lived-in drama, expanding off familiar beats with fresh POVs, an authentic setting, and a DIY style that never feels cheap

As indebted to the mood and visual language of Game of Thrones as it is to the Bard’s texts, Michôd provides finely worked entertainment with a compelling and significant central performance from Chalamet–who frankly hasn’t had to carry a film in quite this way before.

Jenkin’s script is peppered with comedy, occasionally of a more subtle variety than men dressed as penises—even if that drew the biggest laugh.

More than a film about physically different people, this dryly humorous and ever-perceptive oddball focusses on our relationship toward that difference, and the uplifting moment when cinema ceases to sensationalize it, but lets it act as an engine of creation.

The Laundromat is an air-tight, tumultuous info-graph about our rotten to the core financial systems and, in particular, the 2016 Mossack and Fonseca leak, when millions of the Panamanian law firm’s files were anonymously leaked to the press.

For all its merits, however, Joker relies on perhaps a touch too much exposition as it attempts to shape a digestible origin story.

Marriage Story shows Baumbach reaching an entirely new level in his most consummate film to date.

Nothing is more subjective than comedy and this brand will surely turn many off. No matter. Those behind Greener Grass are clearly unfazed by the weirdness. They wallow in it, unabashedly. If only they kept it up for the whole one-hundred minutes.

Though Kiyohara does balance the film’s bifurcated narrative and tone adequately, one cannot help but feel somewhat stranded in a middle ground where neither thrill nor emotion are elicited as strongly as they could have been. Because of this, the narrative comes off a bit monotonous.

Ad Astra is, for all other intents and purposes, as straight faced as they come, a film that considers the big questions of interplanetary travel and contact but signposts its conclusions too early–and can’t help getting bogged down by them.

If you enjoy hooting at corrosive and inept cinema that is neither worthwhile or giddily reprehensible then you might have found a new subject for fanaticism.

Both Pellerin and Abita are tremendous, each fiercely charismatic in a way that doesn’t compromise the vulnerability of their characters.

The tone management in this film is remarkable, and the blur of the absurd and the real is such that both the horror, the drama, and the comedy is kept on a dizzying high wire.

There’s simply too much happening with little to no purpose besides distraction from the task-at-hand to fill out the run-time.

End of the Century is a love story drenched in a nostalgic magical realism that constantly shifts its own logic, as if recognizing the futility of containing its uncontainable romance.

One imagines how over-the-top zany this could have been made, had the adaptation been overtly faithful, yet Linklater is able to extract the heart of the story while injecting some of his own characteristic themes.

Driven is a well-told, strongly-acted drama with real heart.

It’s an interesting glimpse at his process with Buñuel doing despicable things alongside beautiful ones.

The X-factor is Costner. A household name for over thirty years, his vocal presence alone does wonders.

What it lacks in formal finesse or educational scope, the film more than compensates as a taut illustration of the profound disconnect between high-level social engineering and the lived social realities that totalitarian policies entail. It’s quiet, feminist rage against Big Brother.