Unfortunately, despite his obvious passion for the genre, Luke doesn't yet have the cinematic chops (or clearly, the budget) to effectively put his vision onscreen.

What Kovgan's utterly transporting film does, through a thoughtful and dynamic combination of curated material and new performances, is radiate the rapturous power of dance.

Demanding attention, imagination and critical viewing from the audience, Chinese Portrait is nevertheless one for posterity.

Initially a sluggish stalker flick whose undergraduate moral debates are tiresome instead of provocative, it eventually transforms into a patriarchy metaphor as obvious as, well, all those Greek-lettered paddles that decorate both the frat's and the sorority's clubhouses.

Ploddingly paced (it runs nearly 20 minutes longer than the 1977 film, to detrimental effect), poorly scripted and featuring largely amateurish performances and cheesy special effects, this Rabid strives to emulate the striking body horror of the original but mainly comes across like a half-baked imitation.

You might think that director Michael Bay is angling to make his star, Ryan Reynolds, the Tom Cruise of a dumber, car-crashier version of the Mission: Impossible films. But what his new 6 Underground actually feels like is the over-serious pilot episode of a gimmick-d

A large part of the first film's pleasure came from watching adult actors, very sure in their screen personae, pretend to be children who were awed (or disgusted, as the case may be) by their new bodies and abilities. This time around, that getting-to-know-you phase is much less fun.

While its take on activist rage (rooted mostly in the use of deadly force against people of color) has academic overtones and is directed at an artsy fringe, there's also a deep political paranoia at the film's core that, sadly, has a much broader resonance for Americans circa 2019.

The actors throw themselves into their roles with terrific zeal, enlivened by the often blunt dialogue and the issues at stake.

Although the movie acknowledges the economic threats to many Americans, it succeeds best not as a social drama but as a rich character piece, emblazoned by Allen, who relishes her rare leading role.

The filmmakers’ reliance on romantic situations throughout the midsection may have some older teens and adults rolling their eyes, but the final scenes over-deliver with a literal flood of action that enables Hinako to definitively prove herself and discover her true calling.

There has been no shortage of first-hand accounts of this horrific period in history, nor of films relating to the topic. With its haunting story of one young life irretrievably shattered and another tragically lost, Broken Dreams proves one of the most powerful.

Infused with enough deadening scientific jargon to lull a graduate student to sleep, the film, which feels much longer than its brief 80-minute running time, never succeeds in effectively dramatizing its outlandish premise.

Far stronger on atmosphere than actual suspense, Grand Isle plods along in tedious fashion, not helped by its awkward framing device that gives it the feel of a Southern fried police procedural.

As in Schechter's previous movies, an unusually strong cast is key to making this touchy material work, with supporting players Lynn Cohen and Richard Schiff especially crucial.

Although it eventually settles into familiar genre tropes, for much of its running time Daniel Isn't Real proves a genuinely provocative shocker.

Somewhere between Hayao Miyazaki and Terrence Malick lies Away, a gorgeously made minimalist cartoon that’s long on beauty and breathtaking scenery, if somewhat short on traditional narrative.

Befitting the subject's personality and entertainment predilections, What She Said is adamantly engaging, full of lively, appreciative voices that, more than anything else, bring her enthusiasm and keen-mindedness back to life.

Gourmel's film never stops identifying with the teen; that unshowy compassion will win some viewers over to a debut feature whose pulse rate never rises to the level its plot would seem to demand.

There's a wrenching sadness to this simply told story, but also but also a heartrending hope.

There's nothing at all original about Locusts, from its rather too symbolic title to its all-too-contrived plot. But director Davis, working in collaboration with producer-director Angus Watts, has crafted an uncommonly stylistic example of its genre, infused with mordant humor and, true to its locale, plenty of exotic dead animals lying in the road.

Unfortunately, the film's execution doesn't quite live up to its promising set-up. Feeling attenuated despite its brief 84-minute running time, it too often seems like an unnecessarily stretched-out version of the short film it was originally conceived as. Not that it doesn't offer some compelling moments along the way.

The pile-on of frenetic action sequences, especially toward the end, eventually becomes more wearisome than thrilling. Nonetheless, White Snake, a Warner Bros. co-production and box office hit in its native country, proves a superior effort that should find enthusiastic audiences on our shores.

Revolving around the recollections of Barrie Wentzell, who served as the magazine's chief photographer from 1965 to 1975, and several of his colleagues, Melody Makers will make music lovers desperately wish for a time machine to return to those halcyon days.

The film (which isn't a good place to start, for those new to Up) is far from a downer; it suggests that the next installment (and hopefully a couple after that) will have the feel of warm, sometimes bittersweet family reunions.

Even if the film is mostly hitting familiar notes in terms of story and theme, it expresses a concise, focused and expertly managed vision with which there’s little to quibble, and the extraordinary style represents the fruition of a long-imagined dream on the part of many directors and cinematographers. From now on, when the discussion turns to great works of cinematography and camera operating, 1917 will always have to be high on the list.

Delivers enough tense atmospherics to make it worth checking out for sci-fi fans.

Gerwig skillfully navigates the line between respecting the story's old-fashioned bones while illuminating the modernity of its proto-feminist perspective, only occasionally leaning into speechy advocacy of a woman's right to self-actualization beyond marriage. Her cast may be slightly bound by their canonical character types, but there's lovely ensemble work here, captained with coltish physicality and hard-charging pluck by the luminous Saoirse Ronan as Jo.

The film succeeds as an astutely constructed, sensitive piece of journalism that becomes a moving account of dealing with grief and irreparable loss.

Though viewers who follow the subject in print won't learn a whole lot they don't already know here — and, given technology's pace, it may be irrelevant in a year — the documentary gathers news in a useful way, prompting discussions about what variety of a computer-guided world we'd like to live in

Age Out stands beyond the shadow cast by these artists; it is its own strong film and, whatever flaws it might have, deserves a much more visible release than it is getting.

Before it turns intense, the film gently captures the flavor of life in a place where locals play a part in their own law enforcement and it takes a bit of walking even to get to a road and hitchhike.

Orner succeeds at evoking a deep sense of empathy for the survivors of Choudhury’s abuse, and although that’s not the same thing as justice, perhaps it’s a place to start.

Gorgeously photographed and edited, the film has the look and pacing of a thriller, albeit one with near-Shakespearean dramatic dimensions.

It’s Hauser who carries the film in a rare and unlikely role, that of a presumed loser in life (the man did die just a few years later, at 44) who suffered very unwanted attention — but who, when he needed to, found a way to rise to the occasion.

Mildly informative but superficial, Shooting the Mafia is much less dynamic than its title.

The ever-righteous profile maintained by Boseman’s detective gets to be a bit limiting after a while; if anything was going to have multiple dimensions in this film, it should have been him, but the script is instead built around the goal of providing maximum movement and hoped-for tension. It’s got the former but only sporadically achieves the latter.

The pacing is a bit flat in parts, with a little too much dead air, but the drama builds its way to an emotional finale where Sidi’s long and difficult life in exile comes full circle.

Lee’s film plays it disappointingly safe, never deviating from romantic comedy conventions; there are no real surprises that you can’t already see coming.

A less muddled, less self-conscious Queen & Slim could have been an indelible waking dream. Instead, it's hit-and-miss. But Waithe and Matsoukas are on to something, and it's the undercurrents rather than the filmmakers' more obvious exertions that hit the mark.

Fortunately, the new actioner directed by the prolific Steven C. Miller (First Kill, Arsenal, Marauders) proves fast-paced enough to overcome its more ludicrous plot elements.

A look at the infamous paper that emphasizes color over critique, it's a blazingly paced film that entertains and informs, even if many viewers who value journalism will groan as they watch.

Buoyed by enjoyable performances by character actors like Paul Ben-Victor, the picture is slight but likeable, especially for fans of its younger leads.

Set in the tense hours between a calamity and the societal breakdown it'll almost certainly cause, Ben McPherson's Radioflash begins as a visually rich, calmly serious take on apocalypse drama.

Frozen 2 has everything you would expect — catchy new songs, more time with easy-to-like characters, striking backdrops, cute little jokes, a voyage of discovery plot and female empowerment galore — except the unexpected.

Successfully restraining himself throughout from getting fancy or experimental, Haynes has intently devoted himself to the story and his actors, with strong, unshowy work that ideally serves the tale being told.

For all its familiar elements, Crown Vic is a well-made and strongly acted effort showing real talent on the part of its writer-director.

There are teasing glimpses of artistic genius in A Dog Called Money, but eccentric choices and muddled intentions, too. A talent as strong and singular as Harvey deserves a more probing, less indulgent film than this.

Banks brings Charlie’s Angels into the modern age with flair, all while unapologetically raising a feminist flag, championing female friendships and subtly making a point about the urgency of the ongoing climate crisis.

Marc Lawrence's story about Santa's daughter, despite its solid cast, aims squarely at not-too-picky kids and mostly ignores parents' desire to be entertained as well.

Playing Kane, a flamboyant crime boss who lives up to his name by using a walking stick, Flanery chews the scenery with gusto, as if auditioning for the next Quentin Tarantino movie. He's the most enjoyable element in what otherwise proves a flimsy vehicle for its producer/star Natalie Burn.

Good Girls Get High is sweetly amusing throughout, knowing enough not to wear out its welcome thanks to its fast-paced 77-minute running time. It also benefits enormously from the highly appealing performances of its two leads who don't seem to be faking their enjoyment during the energetic dance interlude performed during the end credits.

Playing With Fire strikes strictly predictably beats. Key and Leguizamo, comic talents who are wildly overqualified for this sort of thing, work hard, very hard, to infuse the tired material with laughs. But they're mostly hamstrung by their one-note characters

For all its nasty twists and turns, its fake-outs and flashbacks and pile-up of double-crosses, this story of an elderly con man and the wealthy widow he targets feels fatally devoid of danger. Square, tame and tidy as the London-area house kept by Mirren’s primly elegant, creamy-complexioned septuagenarian, The Good Liar is a work of skill but little spark.

It would have been nice if Cold Brook had added up to something more substantial, but at least it's a film about grown-ups who generally try to behave that way, and these days that feels like a rare thing.

Drowns in its own preciousness.

No film involving Nicholas Cage and a blowgun with curare-tipped darts can be all bad, and Primal gives us at least a little of everything we'd want in this kind of yarn.

It's a misfire by just about any measure, but it earns some warm feelings for its determination not to be like anything else currently in circulation.

Wes Tooke offers stiff dialogue and sometimes oddly structured action, leaving much dramatic potential unexploited. Yes, Emmerich stages plenty of aerial battles in which fighter pilots plunge through hailstorms of sizzling projectiles. But those hoping to get a thrill would be better served by revisiting his Earth-vs-aliens war flick Independence Day.

Sergio Pablos' Klaus invents its own unexpected and very enjoyable origin story for the big guy who gives out toys every Christmas eve. Shaking off most Yuletide cliches in favor of a from-scratch story about how even dubiously-motivated generosity can lead to joy, it contains echoes of other seasonal favorites (especially, in a topsy-turvy way, Dr. Seuss' Grinch) while standing completely on its own.

For all its aggressive energy, The Current War is an uninvolving bore, making it unlikely to measure up as the kind of Oscar-baity prestige entry The Weinstein Co. obviously had in mind.

The story gets a bit more involving as it goes, though some elements that might've been memorable (a musical number from a dog played by Janelle Monáe, for instance) fall flat.

The computer animation proves competent if uninspired, and somehow manages to make even its presumably fail-safe puffins devoid of cuteness.

While Cox's typically sterling performance is not quite enough to rescue The Etruscan Smile from succumbing to bathos, it goes a long way toward making the film palatable.

Susanne Wolff, who impressed critics last year in Wolfgang Fischer's "Styx," makes another strong turn here, grounding what could have become a merely lurid tale of dissipation, danger and sex work.

The film maintains its edge because el-Toukhy serves up this unsavory dish cold, without any mollifying humanistic judgments or reassurances that people are actually better than this. The central character is as heartless as any treacherous double-crosser in a film noir, but without the constant stylistic reminder that we live in a nasty, dark, dog-eat-dog world.

The film, directed by Danny Gold, offers an alternately moving and amusing exercise in infectious nostalgia that should prove appealing even to viewers who weren't in the 1949 graduating class of DeWitt Clinton High School.

It doesn’t have Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick or even much of the Overlook Hotel, but Rebecca Ferguson and other good actors provide some shine of their own in Doctor Sleep, a drawn-out and seldom pulse-quickening follow-up to The Shining that still has enough going on to forestall any audience slumber.

A highly original and rather touching account of loss, both physical and emotional.

While there are a lot of names, facts and intriguing assertions to absorb here, Gibney and editor Michael Palmer weave the dense narrative into a brisk, gripping and fascinatingly detailed thriller, enhanced by Robert Logan and Ivor Guest's suspenseful score.

Thanks to the efforts of the talented filmmakers and the committed performances by the all-in cast, there are some undeniably spooky moments. But you have to sit through an awful lot of tedium to get to them.

Tiresomely unimaginative feature.

Words can't do justice to the truly lavish sets and costumes on display here which are so dazzling, intricate and bizarre they serve as a useful distraction from the awkward dialogue and plot holes.

Although earnest to a fault and certainly fulfilling its goal of being family-friendly entertainment, The Great Alaskan Race ultimately proves less exciting and not nearly as adorable as Balto, the 1995 animated film inspired by the same events.

Closely based on the director's own troubled youth, Farming is rooted in rich, complex, potentially gripping material. But Akinnuoye-Agbaje slaps this story together with so little subtlety, he ends up seriously diluting its dramatic power.

Despite superb performances by Nat Wolff as a conflicted young soldier and particularly Alexander Skarsgard as a sociopathic platoon leader, the picture proves only sporadically compelling.

A pedestrian thriller whose personal-tech gimmick is even more thinly imagined than one might guess, it's a jumble of cheap jump scares made watchable by likable leads Elizabeth Lail and Jordan Calloway.

It suffers greatly from obeying the imperative the first sequel established: Trying to blow minds and up the ante the way that FX-pioneering adventure did, this one offers a series of action set pieces that go from big to huge to ludicrous, even as the script's additions to fear-the-future mythology underwhelm.

Modine makes it work anyway thanks to his charm and charisma. His enjoyably playful performance helps prevent Miss Virginia from feeling entirely like an issue-of-the-week television movie.

Director Patrick Lussier and co-screenwriter Todd Farmer were previously responsible for such enjoyable guilty pleasures as "My Bloody Valentine" and "Drive Angry." Unfortunately, their latest collaboration, Trick, is definitely no treat.

While he's not hinting around at the kind of systems of control he'll expand on to surreal effect in Dogtooth, The Lobster and elsewhere, Lanthimos enjoys provoking us visually.

There’s barely any let-up in tension throughout the film, even during interviews with subjects who could either be concealing murderous personal histories or potential victims risking their lives to disclose the excesses of law enforcement.

This remarkable true story is a finely crafted exercise in slow-building suspense, though it works better as a gripping mood piece than as journalistic investigation, its raw confessional style slightly compromised by niggling narrative gaps and dramatic contrivances.

Though Turturro turned this small part into a memorable character for the Coens, Quintana is not so reliably funny here, especially headlining a whole film of very intermittent charm.

Shot over four years in Kenya, the film boasts an undeniable authenticity, thanks to its filmmakers' quarter-century of experience making wildlife films in Africa. And while elephants are naturally camera-friendly subjects, their behavior here is captured with a particularly impressive immediacy.

Rounding up all the original's stars and throwing several more surviving human characters into the mix, the pic is plenty entertaining for those of us who, paradoxically, find zombies comforting in dark times.

Every conceivable button is pushed to achieve rote satisfaction in young viewers, while any notion of creating tension and suspense is dutifully ignored. Not for a moment is actual peril considered as something worthy of a dramatic climax.

Fashion designer and immigrant from Belgium Diane von Furstenburg is the film’s tour guide (and also executive produces). A self-appointed “godmother” of the statue, von Furstenburg is a witty, easy-going host whose confidence and curiosity, not to mention her love of taking selfies, is a boon to the documentary.

With no commentary beyond audio clips and visuals composed almost entirely of historical footage, Periot uses the radicals’ own images and words to show how their discourse evolved over ten years from progressive to militant.

Nearly everything misfires here — bizarrely so, since we can see where the laughs should come, how they would work, and how a more competent movie would get from A to Z. (To be fair, some jokes do land, just not as satisfyingly as you'd hope.)

El Camino is a high-quality piece of suspense and action filmmaking carried by Paul's still-tremendous performance as Jesse Pinkman. It looks great, sounds great and if you're a fan, it's full of cameos and references that are sure to amuse.

This solidly crafted Ridley Scott production is sprinkled with classy ingredients, including Alicia Vikander as headline star. But it is also a fairly flat treatment of over-familiar plot elements, and fatally low on the key psycho-thriller elements of suspense, surprise and dread.

What it has going for it in spades is supremely creepy atmosphere. The hospital virtually becomes a major character in the story itself, its washed-out coloring and neon lights making everyone look like they have a sickly pallor.

It would, after all, take a sleuth of Hercule Poirot-like talents to discern what attracted these supremely talented (not to mention, in the case of one of them, Oscar-winning) thespians to such lame, cliched material.

A movie so bland and forgettable it hardly merits a groan from the Frankenstein-like butler called Lurch, The Addams Family strongly suggests that directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon deserve little credit for 2016's Sausage Party, the hit they directed for writers/producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

The humor is sometimes strained, and Lellouche doesn't always demonstrate the lightest of touches.

For those who like head-on, immersive emotional experiences at the movies, The Sky Is Pink may be a direct hit.

It can't be denied that Gift occasionally borders on being too New Agey for its own good, and, let's face it, its entire ethos can be boiled down to the simple phrase "Pay it forward." But don't be surprised if you're compelled to perform an unexpected act of generosity soon after seeing it.