Many moments of laugh-out-loud comedy. But somehow those moments never add up to a fully satisfying viewing experience.

Rarely have so many classy ingredients added up to such a muted, muddled, multi-story mess. Of course, it is still better to make an ambitious failure than a boring success. A true disaster movie, in all senses, High-Rise is ultimately an ambitious, brilliant failure.

Never intending to rationalize away the seedier aspects of Newton's work, the film hopes instead to make us recognize the humor and inventiveness lurking there as well — and to persuade us that an artist's unruly erotic imagination doesn't necessarily tell us much about what he thinks of women.

The Wheel may not, well, reinvent the wheel. But in its expansive empathy, it delivers something that nevertheless feels new and surprising.

Superficially provocative but ultimately pointless, this is one punishing vacation.

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.

The drama around them too often lands rather neatly on the surface, saying exactly what it means, but through the unpredictability of its two leads, Keener especially, and in the knotty connection between their characters, the movie gets under the skin and goes beyond the bromide-laden playbook.

What's ultimately very endearing about Swift is her intelligence and self-awareness, qualities that also make her music compelling, sophisticated and capable of appealing both to adolescent kids and hipster musicologists.

Ultimately, most audiences will be left scratching their heads, wanting to know more about why this man, Hans Rettenberg, does what he does.

A highly satisfying documentary tracking the hoop dreams of basketball bright light Sebastian Telfair as he made that rare leap from high school all-star to NBA draft pick.

An officially sanctioned but pleasingly gush-free cinematic monograph.

Narratively, Wild Grass is a fractured romance, that never jells on any level, except for the backdrop visuals. Visually scrumptious, as if culled from the pages of good-taste magazines, it has the appeal of a designer catalog, and also the depth.

Despite its apparently sincere identification with its protagonist, Entertainment feels like a sick joke.

Twisters gets the job done in terms of whipping up life-threatening tornadoes that leave a trail of wreckage in their wake. But the extent to which all this is conjured with a digital paintbox lessens the pulse-quickening awe of nature at its most destructive.

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.

Provides Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche with comic roles that fit them like designer threads.

Never achieves the propulsive traction and outrageous/endearing balance that made "The Hangover" such a smash this time last year.

For a film about big themes like mortality, memory, truth and redemption, Oh, Canada feels both slight and stubbornly page-bound, too unsatisfyingly fleshed out to give its actors meat to chew on.

While the beats of its plot may be nothing very new, the tone, language and performances here make Self-Defense its own beast.

A juicy Chinese-American romance about preserving "face" at the sacrifice of your whole being. This Sony Pictures Classics release is a comic gem.

In watching this film, it's best not to worry much about the film's fidelity to history but rather simply lean back and enjoy one great jam session on film.

Lacks the powerful focus of the filmmaker's debut effort and often flounders under the weight of its melodrama and contrivances. But it also boasts many well-observed moments and features stellar performances by its youthful cast.

Palmer keeps his focus tightly on the families, which makes the movie admirably unpretentious but also incomplete. Nevertheless, the picture has a vibrant central character in James McDonagh, the leading fighter in the clan who begins to question the rites of violence.

Well conceived and unmanipulative, it will play well with auds attuned to its social-justice themes.

Images and metaphors whimsicially combine in a fine, fast-flowing documentary introducing the Baha'i faith.

Through interviews and photos, Crump susses out the appeal of moving boulders and dirt with massive construction machinery.

Working from a snappy but never snarky screenplay by first-timer Shelby Farrell, helmer Freeland (Drunktown’s Finest) maintains a strain-free upbeat energy yet keeps the action rooted in a strong sense of place and class.

While death by bloodsucking is very much a factor, this is actually a subdued, contemplative drama about the lingering trauma of grief and the efforts of an introspective teenager to invent an invulnerable persona to shield and ultimately release him.

This labor of love should be embraced wherever the term cinephile means anything.

An easygoing, unashamedly old-fashioned picture executed with a light touch that conceals a serious and sharply topical subtext.

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.

Landon’s command of suspense, coupled with a compelling romantic thread and delightful performances from Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus) and Brandon Sklenar, make Drop a solid popcorn movie.

A shot of a bear sitting on a clifftop gazing out over Hudson Bay while waiting for the waters to freeze — flashes of seals, beluga whales and other prey shuffling through its head along with images of traps, cages and vehicles in pursuit — is one of the more heartrending movie images in recent memory.

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

It’s an all-in performance for the ages, layered with as much vulnerability as anger, and it’s to Majors’ credit that our hearts ache for Killian even — or perhaps especially — when he’s out of control.

It has enough laughs, character arcs, politically incorrect rants and a satisfying emotional ending to more than justify this whim on Smith's part.

It has style to burn, eye-catching acting by an international cast and a story that harkens back to many literary classic with its themes of a family torn apart, brothers in conflict and a son's rivalry with a towering father figure.

First-time feature director Frida Kempff embraces and revamps genre tropes, casting them in a trenchant feminist light and a character-specific poignancy. The action unfolds entirely through Molly’s perspective, and Cecilia Miloccco’s performance, by turns guarded and explosive, is gripping from first scene to last.

Besides the raucous, de rigueur action sequences, Transformers One provides numerous witty jokes of both the verbal and visual variety and — surprise, surprise — genuine emotion. Consider this a franchise revitalized.

The story’s final third works even better than the buildup would suggest, shrugging off some of the atmospherics and, with a clever nod to a classic in the serial-killer genre, focusing all the movie’s energies on a sequence that delivers

Spectacle, a love triangle, heritage settings, bravura acting, witty dialogue, a bittersweet finale: There's something for everyone in Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel.

All the acting is solid including a knock-'em-dead single scene by Annabella Sciorra as Jackie's ex-wife.

The sarcasm of superstar director Feng Xiaogang reduces Chinese bureaucracy, the legal system and government inefficiency to ashes in I Am Not Madame Bovary, but risks doing the same for audiences in a caustic, overlong satire whose coy visual effects overpower the story and characters.

Following the fizzle of his coming-of-ager Goodbye Berlin (Tschick) last year, Fatih Akin bounces back and bounces high with an edge-of-seat thriller inspired by xenophobic murders in Germany by a Neo-Nazi group.

The film’s first-person approach and dynamic visual style make it more engaging and livelier than you might expect such a well-researched documentary about this serious subject to be.

Does right by both fans and subjects.

Has its pacing problems, and the special effects are strictly of the cheesy variety, but it provides enough genuine scares to make it thoroughly enjoyable, especially if seen at a drive-in on a hot summer night.

The book Animals is based on, a well-reviewed literary work originally set in Manchester, has been adapted by the novelist herself, Emma Jane Unsworth. So why does the end result feel so inert and contrived, even if it's exceedingly pretty to look at?

Premo’s commitment and grit are palpable — especially when one notes how close to the action he gets during the Capitol insurrection, so that the camera shows every jostle and bump. The sequence, full of shots and footage never seen before , is as chilling, horrifying and disgusting as the many other clips we’ve already seen shot by others.

Anna, who’s caught in a midlife crisis that deepens throughout the movie, clearly doesn’t know what she wants. But the problem is that Weisse, the director, doesn’t always seem to know what she wants either in this prickly, wavering character study that both confounds and compels, and that doesn’t manage to land its ending.

It’s bloated, self-indulgent, rambling, crazily ambitious and commendably odd, but so overstuffed it becomes a lethal combination of baffling and boring.

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.

Well-meaning but implausible story.

The grim drama is undeniably punishing, but Considine's screenplay laces in moments of warm human contact that puncture the harshness like delicate grace notes.

Though individual scenes feel authentic, the overall structure’s rather loose and there’s not a single narrative throughline. This has several advantages... But it also somewhat diffuses the film’s focus.

The glacially paced film is ultimately more interesting for its ethnographic and technical aspects than its rudimentary storyline, although the marvelous deadpan performance by Nyima, an acclaimed Tibetan theater performer, provides a much-needed humanistic quality.

It's also — for better and worse — never quite as grim as its grisly, sometimes gag-inducing action might suggest. Falling in between outright psychological combat and black comedy, Harpoon might flounder a bit without Gelman's ironic tone.

Rodents of Unusual Size proves enjoyably quirky and informative.

The End requires complete submission to the off-kilter rules that govern this family and to Oppenheimer’s ambitions to radicalize the musical genre. It’s an admirable if uneven endeavor.

A grand story of redemption, laced with barbecued wit and slopped with intrigue, Chrystal is a high heaping of brilliant storytelling.

There’s a powerful social commentary running through U.K. horror flick Raging Grace that’s not always served by the film itself, which is neither scary nor all that convincing when it rummages through the toolbox of familiar genre tropes.

The biggest surprise in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist is that there are no surprises.

Yakin and his terpsichorean cast take exhilarating chances of the sort all too seldom seen on screens these days.

Contemplative and absorbing rather than rip-roaring and exciting, the film will likely play better to Western connoisseurs than to general and younger audiences, but it's an estimable piece of work grounded by a fine-grain sensibility and an expertly judged lead performance.

An ingenious micro-budget science-fiction nerve-jangler which takes place entirely at a suburban dinner party, Coherence is a testament to the power of smart ideas and strong ensemble acting over expensive visual pyrotechnics.

The overall result remains quite light, is occasionally funny but finally never manages to probe very deeply.

A film that’s pleasurable to engage with, even if the latter stretch doesn’t come close to realizing some of the early promise.

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.

While that personal connection lends an undeniably poignant aspect, the film never quite fully captures the essence of the enigmatic legal and political fixer.

Michel Gondry takes an idiosyncratic, funny, unexpectedly poignant snapshot of American youth in The We and the I. Rambling and unpolished, the film has a scrappy charm that springs organically from the characters and their stories rather than being artificially coaxed.

This is a film best experienced in a group setting, among friends, the kind of project that fosters conspiratorial thinking and could inspire multiple watches — if only it got out of its own way.

While the events in the first Omen seemed to be taking place in a real world that just happened to include demonic figures, this film seems more like a fever dream, its outlandish storyline taking a back seat to a nightmarish vision that’s more about mood than narrative coherence.

The movie's pounding heart is the remarkable Ejiofor. Imbuing his role with authority, charisma, mighty strength and wrenching human frailty, he's enough to make believers of all of us.

Wild Diamond features gorgeous and frank observations about influencer culture, but it struggles to assert itself narratively.

The sluggish pacing and digressionary plot elements make the proceedings feel as slow as the gait employed by the film's undead supporting characters.

A wily mix of genres and spoof-edged amusements keep it playful and intermittently thrilling, even though this South Korean actioner sometimes feels like it’s losing its grip on a very good setup.

Some of the most acute pleasures here are in the doctor-patient exchanges, depicting with a rigorous absence of fuss or sentiment a relationship that's as much intimate as professional.

The movie’s wry hijinks and spirited affection for its characters prove gratifying.

An empathetic drama ready to put straight-laced audiences in the shoes of a maligned subculture.

[Hardy] proves himself both a gifted visual stylist and an assured storyteller with a wicked grasp of sustained dread.

There’s a breezy spirit and an agreeable touch of tenderness to the movie that makes it hard not to like, even if it never accumulates much substance.

The overall enterprise, for all its intrigue and visceral impact, feels overly thought out, affected and forced in its stylization.

Writer B.J. Nelson has skillfully combined plot elements and situations which draw from the best of Westerns and anti-Establishment cop films.

To kill time between action set-pieces, del Toro has done an above-average job of avoiding tedium via some flavorsome casting, passably interesting plot contrivances and, above all, by maintaining strong forward momentum. Unlike so many similar crash-bang action spectaculars, this one feels lean and muscular rather than bloated or padded; the combat is almost always coherent and dramatically pointed rather than just splashed on the screen for its own sake.

The Smashing Machine’s greatest attribute may be the way much of it doesn’t feel fake at all.

The idea is cartoonish in its essence but the pic is shot and played with such straight-faced realism that Swallow becomes utterly ridiculous.

The plot is simple to the point of being simplistic, and the characterizations are never more than rudimentary.

The fascinating human portrait that emerges should draw appreciative if limited audiences.

Not for the squeamish, Ovredal's chilly slab of body horror ultimately proves less than the sum of its forensically fileted parts.

The acting from the central four actors is quite soulful, but we don’t get enough access to these characters’ inner conflicts. Too often, the narrative’s configuration feels like an intriguing second draft instead of a ready-to-shoot script, something that someone with an external eye might help finesse into something truly captivating.

More than even the most faithful of the earlier episodes, this film feels devoted above all to reproducing the novel onscreen as closely as possible, an impulse that drags it toward ponderousness at times and rather sorely tests the abilities of the young actors to hold the screen entirely on their own, without being propped up by the ever-fabulous array of character actors the series offers.

Despite its vivid and electric space sequences, the visually striking movie often feels like a throwback analog good time, which certainly worked for me.

Few will fail to be moved by this portrait of selflessness in the face of near insurmountable odds.

While this twisty tale of an "evil miracle" connected to a self-exiled former priest ultimately withholds too much to resolve all of its enigmas, the atmospheric mood and persuasive performances keep you watching.

What makes Leo special are the kinds of lessons on offer. Its message is well-timed for a generation who find themselves held hostage by their parents’ anxieties and stand to inherit a world of problems. Leo encourages adults to let go and reminds kids that growing up doesn’t have to be so scary.

Fortunately, unlike so many similarly politically themed documentaries, the film makes its case with substantial intelligence and conviction.

Fascinating on personal, political and cinematic levels, the film resourcefully plumbs all sorts of resources, including secret tape recordings of Kim himself, but also omits certain aspects of the tale that would merely have added to its intrigue.

This redemptive tale set against southwest Ireland's moody seascape holds its tangible charms.