The end of Strange World comes together as one would expect of a Disney offering, but there’s a sweetness to it that may move even the most committed cynic.

Disenchanted lacks the charisma and curiosity of its predecessor.

Scenes with her family members — especially her younger sisters — reflect a people growing more disenchanted with the state of affairs. The interviews with the Taliban — which grow repetitive and often feel like part of a different project entirely — contextualize the group’s ambitions and increased brazenness. In Her Hands starts to resemble a high-stakes drama in tone and style.

As Joyland heads toward its end, the film grows increasingly moving. Secrets and their attendant lies collapse under pressure. The weight of what’s left unsaid strangles interactions.

Rare is the reflection on Black cinema that even tries to address all these critical points. Still, it makes digestion, especially on the first watch, overwhelming. Is That Black Enough for You?!? is layered and informative but, like a scholarly thesis, requires a bit of work to unpack. It’s a challenge worth accepting.

For all the surface wildness of Lawrence’s Slumberland, it’s about as rule-following a family pic as you can find.

A neat and efficient globe-trotting journey, full of insightful trivia and fun details, driven by impeccably selected main characters, who either go through interesting personal arcs in just 87 minutes or, like Raden, unleash a nonstop torrent of cleverness.

There’s so much potency in Heineman’s snapshot of sadness, disappointment and resignation, that I frequently and ultimately found myself wishing it could be the full tapestry that a six-part miniseries might have allowed.

This sub-Hallmark dreck made by a bunch of hacks that don’t deserve to be named is the first film out of Lohan’s Netflix deal and her first feature in three years. Not to beat up on a former child star who has overcome more than her share of demons, but if this is the best vehicle she could find, waiting another three might not have been a bad idea.

Spirited owes its buoyancy primarily to the lively rapport of Ferrell and Reynolds, ultimately playing out the movie’s most convincing love story.

It’s impossible for Wakanda Forever to match the breakthrough impact of its predecessor, but in terms of continuing the saga while paving the way for future installments, it’s amply satisfying.

Dig deeper and Huesera reveals itself to be a wilier film — an astute study of desire and self-deception.

Despite its uneven patches, this absorbing experimental film (which includes documentary elements toward the end) seemingly conjures the voice of its deceased subject to tell a gripping and painful story of dislocation and belonging.

Unlike other music documentaries (a popular format, as of late, for recalibrating celebrity images), Gomez’s project operates at a rawer, grittier register. It’s textured by the 30-year-old star’s relative youth and her attempts to communicate honestly, instead of perfectly.

The day-to-day takes on an understated eeriness that matches the unarticulated ache of the bereaved.

This is a work of unfailing restraint, which makes its stealth emotional heft all the more remarkable.

While it zips along with pleasingly brisk economy in the expository establishing scenes, newcomer Evan Parter’s Black List screenplay indulges in too many movie-ish contrivances to offer a genuinely provocative spin on Beltway shenanigans.

A delightful experience for jazz buffs and more than an eye-opener for any youngsters who barely know who Armstrong was, it’s worth applauding just for its belief that it can meaningfully touch on private life, public persona, musical legacy and everything else — even if, on each front, it leaves one wanting more.

Enola Holmes 2‘s shortcomings don’t wreck the film — it’s a serviceable sequel — but the tension between the topics the film tackles and the soft-pedaled approach is one that hopefully won’t haunt future projects.

The movie’s premise has the potential to bring something fresh to the horror genre, and Balinska and Asbaek commit fully to their characters. But the script is flat and unimaginative; there’s at once too much information and not nearly enough that reflects how people actually talk to each other.

It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but Marcello has a talent for making such material come alive through his inventive direction, whisking us away to a time and place that we experience as if we were actually there. It’s not enough to make Scarlet a great movie, but it’s one that manages to puts us in its shoes the way few films nowadays do.

It’s a hoot with a bit of heart, and if you can accept that the main character’s actions ultimately hurt nobody — with the possible exception of a few Pez executives — its fizzy pleasures and compact running time are easy to enjoy.

Despite participation from many bigwigs within the Biden team, Year One fails completely as any sort of chronological overview, which is how the documentary presents itself. And the argument that it seems to actually be making is far too complicated to be made by people still embroiled in the middle of it all with no space for introspection.

Assembled with seemingly deliberate disjointed editing that scrambles the time line, and shot through with unsettling shock cuts backed by Oliver Coates discordant, droning minimalist score, The Stranger definitely feels like an elevated genre exercise — more challenging than the average crime drama but also more interesting.

Whether you call it a relaunch, comeback, return or rebirth, it’s captured in a fittingly down-to-earth, memory-infused documentary that’s a gift to fans — moving, thoroughly engaging, and a chance to see a remarkable sexagenarian at a turning point, doing what she does best.

This is a uniquely tiresome slog — madly over-plotted, thuddingly derivative, insanely overlong and slathered in a big symphonic score that strives to infuse momentum into a saga with minimal emotional stakes.

Johnson creates a magnetic antihero, volatile and antisocial. He doesn’t fly so much as stalk the sky; he swats opponents like the bundles of weightless CG pixels they are. And this passion project serves the character well, setting him up for adventures one hopes will be less predictable than this one.

Clearly made with the best of didactic intentions, and especially affecting when paying tribute to “original gangster” film theorist Laura Mulvey, interviewed all too briefly here, the film is founded on a simplistic, poorly argued thesis that is way out to sea, many waves of feminist film theory behind from what’s going on these days in academic circles and feminist discourse.

The film — based on their book of the same title — is sensible, dutiful and, thanks to key performances, more engaging than the average newsroom procedural.

In short, this film leaves us moved and provoked — and impressed with its technical accomplishments — even if it isn’t a perfect distillation of our ongoing national nightmare.

The film’s immersion into the anti-abortion movement — with a smattering of pro-choice voices woven in — is consistently fascinating. But Lowen’s measured approach also raises a question: How loud does a warning cry have to be to register? Eye-opening though it is, at times Battleground is muted to a fault.

The deep fondness for the source material comes through, and the painterly hand-drawn aesthetic is enchanting.

Though frustratingly unfocused and sometimes overreaching (even compared to Philippe’s other docs, which are never what you’d call precision-crafted), the film is consistently enjoyable, with just enough flashes of insight to justify its existence.

Luckiest Girl Alive struggles to balance its dual aspirations: delivering an emotionally wrought tale about survival and wrapping its gravity in the cheeky breeziness of publishing comedies like Freeform’s The Bold Type.

It’s all harmless fun, containing enough mild laughs and genuinely sweet moments (if you can contain your emotions during the reunion scene between Lyle and Hector, you’re made of stronger stuff than I am) to keep its target audiences entertained.

The team manages to hit most of the right notes with this perky, peculiar adaptation. Or maybe the film has just enough bright shiny objects and tightly synchronized dancing-child chorus lines to stop anyone from caring about all that problematic whatnot. In any case, it mostly works.

Fans will be relieved to know that this Hellraiser definitely doesn’t skimp on the gore, providing enough viscera and flayed skin to satisfy the most bloodthirsty viewers.

Unfortunately, despite its intriguing premise, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone lacks the necessary ingredient to make it truly memorable; it simply isn’t very scary.

Till is more effective as an intimate portrait of devastating loss than a chronicle of the making of an activist. But the film has a powerful weapon in its arsenal in Danielle Deadwyler’s transfixing performance as a broken woman who finds formidable strength within herself.

This far into the pandemic, with most Americans choosing to act as if it no longer exists, there may simply be no audience left for a gimmicky experimental narrative about people failing so completely to connect with those around them.

The Last Out is a moving reminder of how hard it is to make it to the big leagues.

Inviting us to sit a while in this world of tradition, What We Leave Behind offers a vision of a good death as well as one of a good life. The time will go by quickly enough, and they both matter.

Recycled plot points, jaunts down memory lane and knowing winks at the broader fandom are rolled into the type of sleek CGI package that’s typical of Disney offerings these days. The result is a thin but satisfactory piece of entertainment.

Perhaps inevitably, the film moves toward a deeply poignant conclusion, but there are enough rambunctious and slightly zonked-out moments to provide a vivid, full-blooded portrait.

What Demoustier has done here, and done quite successfully, is taken a basic mystery plot, like something out of a TV movie, and used it to ponder how each one of us could react to a ghastly crime, and how we expect others to react in turn.

David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a lot of movies inelegantly squidged into one — a zany screwball comedy, a crime thriller, an earnest salute to pacts of love and friendship, an antifascist history lesson with fictional flourishes. Those competing strands all have their merits, bolstered by entertaining character work from an uncommonly high-wattage ensemble

D’Ambrose’s drama is attuned to how much sensitive kids keep inside, watching and holding their breath while the adults convince themselves they’re not making a mess of things.

Reginald Hudlin’s documentary about Sidney Poitier should be considered the beginning, not the end, of appraising the prolific actor’s career.

The film makes an extremely powerful, timely and important statement, especially coming from someone whose name carries such symbolic weight. Disney deserves tremendous credit for standing up for what’s right, even if it means biting the family hand that feeds her.

Immediately joining the first ranks of artists’ memoirs, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is both a vivid capturing of the auteur’s earliest flashes of filmmaking insight and a portrait, full of love yet unclouded by nostalgia, of the family that made him.

Mary Harron’s Dalíland revolves around the titular Surrealist, played with restraint and dignity by Ben Kingsley, while gently nudging the spotlight in the direction of his complicated wife/muse Gala, a role in which Barbara Sukowa more than earns the movie’s attention.

What’s Love Got To Do With It? serves as a master class in how to adhere faithfully to the classic romantic-comedy template and yet still emerge with something that delivers delightfully on both sides of the hyphen.

In the case of Yusra and Sara Mardini’s remarkable survival story, their empowering journey ultimately proves more rewarding than the conventional destination.

As tenderly observed as it is laugh-out-loud funny.

It’s never assembly-line generic: Zlotowski is coloring within the lines here, but with generous strokes of nuance and feeling.

Joel Edgerton’s haunted central performance as former white supremacist Narvel Roth fits the essential Schrader mold of a troubled soul hiding from his demons. But little else rings true in a drama curiously lacking in texture, which misses the mark in lifeless scene after scene.

Good Night Oppy is a lively celebration of unabashed nerdiness and enthusiastic problem-solving, the sort of movie that feels designed to attract Wall-E-loving children, who can then be shaped into the engineers and astrophysicists of the future.

A cracking little one-hander (mostly) that rations glimpses of its well-designed beastie expertly, the picture will please genre fans who don’t mind long stretches with no dialogue.

Strip away the IMAX scope, the booming score and the flyboy swagger, however, and all that remains is a hollow shell of bland, beaten-down war movie tropes that leave Jonathan Majors to effectively fend for himself with his deeply-rooted lead portrayal of the first Black aviator in Navy history.

The latter half of Chevalier obediently fills the holes of its familiar puzzle. The cast — a wonderful bunch — sustain our interest with their congenial performances. Harrison is especially spry as he balances Saint-Georges’ confidence, jovial comportment and rumored temper.

It’s a visceral experience, albeit a less punishing one than some other modern war films.

One of the most absorbing parts of Alice, Darling is watching Alice, Sophie and Tess interact with each other throughout the weekend — to witness the frustrating moments of misunderstanding and the triumphant ones of clarity. Kendrick, Mosaku and Horn sustain a natural rapport, which makes investing in their friendship easy.

A sluggish exercise in formalism ... [Monica] feels like a movie perpetually struggling to connect.

With her angular face and penetrating gaze, Mackey commands the screen, confidently shepherding us through Emily’s mercurial moods. Her eyes — darting nervously at one moment, squinting suspiciously at another — tells us what dialogue can’t.

Matt Sobel’s overhaul tones down the cruelty and eliminates the more grotesque touches, resulting in a chamber drama that never gets under the skin.

Farrelly’s loftier impulses work against the material. The result is a meandering, disjointed production that struggles throughout to find a satisfying tone.

Panahi’s stoical presence at the center of all this is rattled, forcing him to contemplate the repercussions of his work both to himself and to even his most guileless collaborators. The sobering final image resonates with the unspoken cry of an artist exiled in his own homeland, saying, “Enough.”

Thinly scripted rom-com Ticket to Paradise puffs its way through 104 minutes mostly on the vapors of its lead actors gassing around together, albeit with an assist from spectacular Australian scenery standing in for Bali.

A true-crime picture whose chilling effects are generated without a whiff of the manipulation that often comes with such films.

It’s a small-scale film that many might call unambitious, favoring delicate observation over big emotional payoff.

For all the clever satirical touches and asides, the gorgeously intricate, wondrous stop-motion landscape is ultimately pure Selick, imbued with a fitting color scheme of swirling, eerily glowing greens and purples choreographed against a mischievous score by Bruno Coulais that effectively sets the mood for the film’s pre-Halloween arrival.

A Jazzman’s Blues is overindulgent, a narrative feast of twists and turns. The formidable work of the cast paces us, helping viewers digest the plot and saving Perry’s screenplay from the collateral damage of its broad scope.

However intrinsically fascinating the Gibbons sisters’ story might be, Smoczynska and Seigel’s interpretation of the material feels off somehow — a little too pleased with its own quirk, and too preoccupied with surface texture and color to help viewers truly understand its troubled protagonists.

Icarus: The Aftermath is both more intimate and of broader scope than the earlier film. It’s documentary as spy thriller, a portrait of institutional gaslighting, a legal nail-biter, an intimate look at the cost of refuting authoritarian doctrine, and, above all, an affecting character study.

Saint Omer might be fiction, but Diop does not stray too far from her documentary roots. The film maintains a sense of naturalism even during its most tense moments. Diop’s directing style leans observational, as if she is watching and recording her screenplay’s effect on her performers.

Hamm makes plenty of sense in this role, but Mottola and Zev Borow’s screenplay doesn’t totally convince us the character is series-worthy.

Nyswaner and Grandage here let the lads get nude and sweaty, rolling around in a golden haze — lots of arched backs, hungry hands and eyes dilated in rapturous transport — that should at least set Styles fans’ hearts aflutter, albeit while remaining fairly decorous. But stodgy storytelling and clunky shifts between the drama’s two time periods dim the afterglow.

This is a vengeful dark comedy that probes percolating class anxieties (a popular theme in cinema lately). It indulges in opportunities to strip the emperor of his clothes, and while that doesn’t necessarily translate to the most revelatory social commentary, it does make for an amusing ride.

The real star of the show is Dunham, whose sharp dialogue and direction equips every actor with an acidic tongue and knowing gaze.

This picture offers more action, more delicious comeuppances, more daring design and a few genuinely surprising cameos just for good measure. Yet it doesn’t suffer from the usual “give ’em the same thing, but more of it” bloat common in sequels to surprise hits. Its ensemble is more varied than Knives‘, and its critique of the clueless rich more relevant to our age.

Energetic performances and technical precision come together to glorious effect in Prince-Bythewood’s rousing action film. It’s a lush, prime piece of entertainment in many respects.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed takes [the director's] work to new aesthetic heights and wrenching emotional depths.

Funny, sweet and occasionally pointed.

A Compassionate Spy borrows the look and feel of a historical espionage thriller and builds some momentum and moral complexity along the way, but it finds its real potency as a generational family drama.

Isolation, emotional distance and (mis)communication are all on display in Love Life, though these subjects are approached with a disorienting but welcome lightness, underlining the absurdity of family life.

There’s brutality but also an understated hint of poetry in the way Bratton tells his story from deep inside it, making beautiful use of Baltimore experimental pop group Animal Collective’s richly varied electronic score, which often plays in gentle counterpoint to the harshness of what’s unfolding.

Eric Appel’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is relentlessly silly, wholesome at heart and so stuffed with cameos it might give you the idea that a couple of generations of cool people love this guy.

There’s definitely some gas in its tank in the opening sections, which are somewhat promising, but then the story takes a predictable route that fails to deliver enough suspense or interest to go the full distance.

That the story of someone so off-putting climaxes in a moment as profound and moving as the penultimate scene of Return to Seoul speaks to the subtle power of writer-director Davy Chou’s storytelling and the portrayal by Park Ji-Min, a visual artist making a strong impression in her first screen role.

Wanting more is a criticism, but it’s a luxury criticism. This documentary builds a world you want to explore further.

The tragic dimension of a woman adored by the world, devoured by Hollywood and ultimately abandoned to her own despair in an ordinary little house in Brentwood resonates because we know Marilyn’s sad story. But it’s hard to ignore the queasy feeling that Dominik is getting off on the tawdry spectacle. De Armas holds nothing back in connecting with the character’s pain. She deserves better.

Although Hill certainly puts in a few sly tips of the hat to canonical and cult favorites and is clearly enjoying exploiting the audience’s expectations of the genre, Dead for a Dollar isn’t an empty nostalgia exercise. Nor is it a revisionist postmodern deconstruction. It’s somewhere between the two, built on a narrative architecture as classical in its vernacular as Doric columns on a bank, but with details that will surely remind audiences of the future that it was made in the 2020s.

This is Jackman’s movie. He makes Peter’s helplessness intensely moving as he keeps trying, against mounting odds and false breakthroughs, to communicate with a child who remains out of reach. Sadly, that goes for The Son, as much as the son.

Director-screenwriter Cregger displays an obvious perverse glee in guiding his audiences through his outlandish twists and turns.

Its chief merit is the rare opportunity it provides Saoirse Ronan to showcase her skills with bubbly comedy, making her the standout in a ridiculously overqualified ensemble. But despite the promise of that title, this wheezing romp slows to a limp.

In the end, it plays a little too often like an academic pastiche of horror tropes even though its emotional core rings with resonance.

The high-concept, low-satisfaction psychological thriller marks an ambitious upgrade in scope for Wilde from the character-driven coming-of-age comedy of Booksmart, and she handles the physical aspects of the project with assurance. It’s just a shame all the effort has gone into a script without much of that 2019 debut’s disarming freshness.