[Perry's] approach is one of a consummate enthusiast and completist, and he does manage to convey that dedicated fan energy on screen. But he doesn’t necessarily make it feel contagious enough.

Gaga is a compelling live-wire presence, splitting the difference between affinity and obsession, while endearingly giving Arthur a shot of joy and hope that has him singing “When You’re Smiling” on his way to court. Their musical numbers, both duets and solos, have a vitality that the more often dour film desperately needs.

This story of corruption and conspiracy in a small Louisiana town might have passed as a taut if familiar action thriller — if it had actually been taut.

In Queer, Luca Guadagnino meets William S. Burroughs on the iconoclast’s own slippery terms and the result is mesmerizing.

Swinton and Moore imbue the movie with heart that at first seems elusive, along with the dignity, humanity and empathy that are as much Almodóvar’s subjects here as mortality.

Ross, honoring the perspective shift that characterizes Whitehead’s novel, switches between Elwood and Turner’s points of view, remaining, at all times, in the subjective mode. The commitment to this way of storytelling imbues Nickel Boy with an overwhelming intimacy and becomes another way that Ross, as a filmmaker, stretches what it means to represent Black people.

Both fun and thin at the same time, it’s not about much in the end except the idea of reuniting Pitt and Clooney to see if they still have their magic, which they mostly do.

September 5 doesn’t skimp on any of the technological details — we also learn that Jennings reported events over a telephone, with the receiving end rigged to a studio mic — but Felhbaum steps back often enough to help viewers see the bigger picture at play.

This film, so fresh and enterprising at many moments, ultimately disappoints.

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.

The Brutalist is a massive film in every sense, closing with a resonant epilogue that illustrates how art and beauty reach out from the past, transcending space and time to reveal a freedom of thought and identity often denied its makers.

Is any of this believable? Not really. Is some of it plain silly? Definitely. But it’s mostly enjoyable to watch, even if the film flies so far off the rails that there’s less suspense here than in the director’s stronger works.

This is a fresh, unsentimental yet touching story.

The Order is the kind of tense reflection on American violence that Hollywood rarely puts on the big screen anymore.

Berger does a fine job controlling all of these performances, and he also creates a rich atmosphere for the production.

While inventive, Neville’s doc can’t quite avoid the trappings of the celebrity-produced biopic, and is expectedly marked by typical hagiographic evasiveness.

It’s perverse, juicy fun of a kind we don’t get much of anymore.

Chris Weitz (most famously About a Boy and most recently Operation Finale) works hard to make Afraid a smarter-than-average horror movie, but the effort is conspicuous, and in the end the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can’t make us feel frightened in a way we couldn’t imagine ourselves, why bother?

In the end, it all feels a bit like a fashion film or some other branded exercise in style — except that the brand is Ortega’s peculiar and unique vision.

The movie is like a glittering jewel in a glass showcase, inviting you to look but not touch.

Falco, involving as ever, might not be engaged in a wild gamble here, but there’s a certain risk in the ways that she and the movie circle a neat conclusion. And there’s wisdom in the way they wind up somewhere far messier, sweeter and more satisfying.

Most of the major events in Reagan’s life are covered, but few of them are recounted in an incisive fashion.

The result feels more like a B-grade thriller that’s been elevated by a good cast and a script with some clever moves.

The zippy pacing, buoyant energy and steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments hint at the joy Burton appears to have found in revisiting this world, and for anyone who loved the first movie, it’s contagious. That applies also to the actors, all of whom warm to the dizzying lunacy.

One of the strengths of John McDermott’s film is that it breaks the rock-doc mold by not relying on a starry roster of talking heads.

Part of the appeal of Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareisa’s subtly powerful second feature, Drowning Dry (Seses), is that you never know if what you’re watching is taking place in the present, past or future.

If anything, Diaz succeeds in conveying how fatal the conflict in his homeland truly was, making its way into foreign lands and tearing loving families apart.

If his new movie feels 25 years too late, it’s also a reminder of what made the original so special in its day. Those who manage to discover The Killer through this serviceable remake would be better off revisiting the one that started it all.

The Crow is a sluggish, overly self-serious gloomfest that never takes wing.

[Daniels] desire to wrest explicit meaning out of the mother’s experience and corral viewers toward a single conclusion unwittingly places The Deliverance in mawkish and disappointingly cartoonish territory.

Unfortunately, the proceedings become increasingly tiresome the more the characters are killed off, with the result that despite an impressive cast, the film comes to feel like a Coen brothers rip-off.

The Union proves as entertaining as its Netflix algorithms would have predicted, balancing its impressive star wattage with lavish production values to remind viewers of the value of their monthly subscriptions.

Whether the characters are forthright or devious, all the performances are in sync with the rugged seclusion of the setting, as is the rustic-meets-old-timey aesthetic of the production design (by Adriana Bogaard) and costumes (Charlotte Reid).

It’s not hagiography when the subject’s generosity of spirit infuses the entire doc.

It’s all tremendously silly but somehow it works, thanks to combat choreography that would make Jackie Chan proud and the introduction of America’s premiere new comedy team, Awkwafina and John Cena.

A final-act development lurches into overblown and slightly daffy extreme sicko horror, but there’s enough that works, especially in terms of sustained tension and big juicy frights, to give the xenomorph-hungry what they want.

Kravitz, who co-wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, quickly establishes Blink Twice as both social satire satire and horror, yet balancing the two proves to be more challenging as the narrative revs up.

It would all feel a little suffocating if it weren’t for the performances from the actresses who play both the younger and older Supremes. Their grounded portrayals make the stakes of The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat feel real, and the inevitable outcome seem earned; they anchor a film that might otherwise feel too wispy.

Roth’s messy storytelling is so anxious to get to the next blast of rote action — amped up by Steve Jablonsky’s hard-working synth and orchestral score and lots of shoddy CGI — that the characters have scant opportunity to form real bonds.

Without understanding more of Lily’s broader community or getting a stronger sense of how she navigates the relationship with Ryle, the film can feel too light and wispy to support the weight of its themes.

The film is a concert movie for Shyamalan’s daughter, the musician Saleka, wrapped in a middling thriller kept afloat by a compelling performance from Josh Hartnett.

When the performers are on stage, Swan Song becomes electric.

The first rule of a good werewolf flick, or any horror flick for that matter, is to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, whereas Farrell mostly keeps us guessing.

Walker and her editors have created an absorbing narrative, so the film never feels as cobbled together as it actually is.

However stilted War Game may feel cinematically, it registers with full force as a realistic depiction of a nightmarish scenario that could easily occur just a few months from now.

Bradley Rust Gray’s blood is a beautifully observed film that never arrives at its desired emotional destination.

While largely predictable in its approach, Ejiofor’s film still evokes a genuine emotional response thanks to strong performances from its cast, especially lead Jay Will.

Although Coup! has a small cast and unfolds mostly in a secluded mansion during the 1918 influenza pandemic, it packs a lot of flavor, suspense and droll comedy into its slim 97-minute running time, making it fun enough to deserve an exclamation point in its title.

It’s not terrible but it’s far from great, instead landing in that dispiriting morass best identified as “passable entertainment,” designed to make critics grasp for new ways to say “Meh.”

The film yearns to capture the stages of this emotional exhumation, but a clunky screenplay makes for a less affecting watch.

The movie star Taylor is the one who most often comes through in the film, but that is engaging enough.

It’s hard not to wish that in the future, Harold will stick to the cartoon world where he belongs.

Even when Mountains’ narrative, which often feels more like a series of beautifully conjured vignettes, doesn’t hit its full potential, the way Sorelle thinks of gentrification rewards our close attention.

Like the investigation itself, the meaning of Only the River Flows gradually finds its focus as the story progresses, leaving the viewer staring into the same abyss the detective does — an abyss that, as in any respectable film noir, stares back at him.

The Fabulous Four aims past the formula trappings and, though its misses might be evident, it also hits the bull’s-eye.

I found this movie messy and overstuffed, but I laughed almost as often as I cringed from its obnoxiousness and can’t dispute that a vast audience will delight in every moment. Even if they spend much of the running time sticking blades through each other’s handily regenerating flesh, Reynolds and Jackman make sweet love and appear to be having a great time doing it.

The artisanal spirit and abundant creativity of the enterprise is undeniable, immersing us in a vivid world crafted from clay, wire, paper and paint, without a single frame of CG imagery.

The romance at the movie’s core doesn’t deliver the intended emotional impact, but there’s a tender, potent resonance to other aspects of the story.

McCarthy’s approach to his original script is marked by an admirable economy of both narrative and style. Withholding plot details, limiting the cast to a bare minimum and confining the action to just a few claustrophobic locations combine to amplify an escalating sense of unease.

If the film teeters unsteadily between sci-fi and psychology, it nonetheless confirms Clapin’s visual talents, which are backed by a dreamy score from Dan Levy, who also scored I Lost My Body. In its best moments, Meanwhile on Earth takes us beyond our desolate everyday lives to a place we can indeed dream of — and also witness on screen.

The movie occasionally veers toward cliché, but its delicacy and restraint keep it dramatically compelling and its emotions are never unearned, right through to its lovely open-ended conclusion.

The story of a young singer-songwriter who’s stuck in a nowhere loop until she takes an impulsive leap, the feature is sometimes clunky but often quietly transporting.

The Convert is uneven and doesn’t fully live up to its thematic ambitions. But it’s handsomely made and thankfully avoids falling victim to white savior syndrome.

The Count of Monte Cristo is the kind of movie where, after 180 minutes and many, many more plot points, you walk out of the theater without having felt the time pass. That’s a good thing if you’re looking for a fairly entertaining, swords-and-puffy-shirts revenge tale — and Dumas’ novel is probably the mother of all revenge tales.

The fight scenes are extremely well choreographed, filmed and edited, but they’re so relentless in their non-stop pacing that the viewing experience becomes numbing.

Ultimately, for all its wildly entertaining elements, Kalki 2898 AD feels like too much of a good thing, resembling the sort of lavish buffet meal that leaves you feeling overstuffed and exhausted. But fans of this particular style of cinema are not likely to mind.

There are moments when the film uneasily skirts the line between genre conventions and documentary realism, but the portrait it paints of Casablanca’s underbelly remains credible and bleak.

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.

Veteran television director Greg Berlanti (Riverdale, Everwood), who demonstrated real cinematic talent with Love, Simon, is unable to make any of this remotely convincing or, more problematically, entertaining. The wild tonal shifts leave the viewer in the dust, and not even the two stars are able to make any of it work.

Writer-director Osgood Perkins’ serial killer chiller fully acknowledges a debt to The Silence of the Lambs in its chronicle of a young female rookie agent pulled into the FBI manhunt for a killer wiping out entire families. But the movie is also its own freaky trip, a darkly disturbing experience pulsing with an evil that’s unrelenting in its subcutaneous creepiness.

The Taliban wanted a 90-minute commercial and Nash’at wanted 90 minutes of truth, and what they both got was a portrait of the complicated cost of access — more vital in its universal applicability to documentary filmmaking than its immediacy as a documentary.

While Murphy coasts along on charm, his material is just not sharp enough to generate big laughs.

Commercials director and artist Dan Covert’s absorbing documentary Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life is the first feature-length film to reveal this introspective, consistently innovative creator who’s developed a career on his own terms while remaining engaged with a wide variety of audiences.

The plot can sometimes feel like a chaotic melange stretched too thin, but White, who wrote the Illumination avian charmer Migration, elevates the overall narrative by injecting doses of his perennial interest in the social codes of the rich. The Minions get a zany B plot that becomes one of the film’s strongest threads, and a strong voice cast keeps the film engaging and nimble.

Collaborating again with The Unknown Country cinematographer Andrew Hajek, Maltz plays with close-ups and other snug camera angles to make viewers co-conspirators in Jazzy’s adventures. There’s an endearing clumsiness to the film, too, reflecting the awkward pauses and missteps of real life.

The documentary ignites a longing to see the movies, whether for the first time or the umpteenth.

Part showbiz send-up and part earnest romantic drama, the film lurches awkwardly between its two modes without settling on a single cohesive tone. Fortunately, both halves are also blessed with the same quality that allows Chris to embody both Zara’s idea of him and Brooke’s: enough charm to make you come away smiling, even as you shake your head at its missteps.

The sophomore writer-director adapts to the requirements of the genre, expertly sustaining tension, peppering big scares throughout and earning our emotional investment in the key characters. Plus a cat.

A glorious paean to the lurid sensuality and gory excess of 1980s sexploitation and horror, MaXXXine completes Ti West’s trilogy of star showcases for his fearless muse Mia Goth on a delectable note.

Intriguing characters and elements of crime fiction prevent the film from being a dour slog, but there’s not much hope to be found here, especially for victims who, due to payoffs and court-ordered silence, can never share their trauma with an outraged public.

Unfortunately, despite everyone’s best efforts to deliver a femme-driven actioner revolving around a central character who comes across like a female Rambo, Trigger Warning, premiering on Netflix, proves distressingly familiar.

It would be easy, at quick glance, to dismiss their mischief as youthful self-absorption. It’s youthful self-absorption, to be sure, but something serious, vibrant and compelling courses through the levity.

I Am: Celine Dion abandons tricks of the eye for an unflinching look at the subject’s new reality.

For a film all about creative fancy, The Imaginary doesn’t always offer the kind of compelling moments one might expect. The fine animation can be blunted by a predilection for obvious exposition, dialogue that doesn’t stretch the imagination as much as it could.

Taken together though, the script’s rather shaky foundations and Crowe’s bombastic performance effectively derail the narrative in the second half.

Working without much in terms of visuals but talking heads and screens, Klose manages to make his film feel both suspenseful and informative.

What makes it truly compelling, however, is its willingness to step outside that perspective and reconsider the phenomenon from a broader context with the wisdom of age.

It’s the balance of basic psychology with abstract concepts and inspired observational comedy that makes this a uniquely captivating coming-of-age tale.

It would be difficult to convince anybody without a pre-existing interest that this constitutes compelling storytelling on any level.

The standout moments in Sacramento highlight behavioral and conversational quirks of old friendships, in scenes that recall the drollness of Joanna Arnow’s recent The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed.

Don’t sell Songs of Earth short, mind you, as an exclusively visual experience. Its sound design and score are every bit as immersive, and that may hold the actual key to best experiencing Olin’s film.

Directed with razor-sharp, naturalistic precision and set over one sweltering Corsican summer, amid stunning Mediterranean vistas that provide a backdrop to all the bloody vendettas, The Kingdom marks the arrival of a bold new talent who’s able to spin a gripping crime thriller while channeling real emotion on screen.

For those of us who have loved Faye Dunaway in movies, Bouzereau’s doc will be bittersweet viewing. It re-examines her run of brilliant, blazing performances in a handful of New Hollywood classics but also leaves us to ponder how brutally she was sidelined, uncommonly so for a movie star of her stature

That story deserves a great documentary. This well-meaning film is far from that. Rebel Nun is pedestrian at its best and cringe-worthy at its faux-arty worst.

The movie deals with familiar subject matter, but in sneakily appealing fashion. Credit goes to Colia’s cast for creating that subtle magic; the committed performances are energizing to watch.

The results aren’t always convincing, with the film’s mannered acting and heightened aesthetics keeping the viewer at arm’s length from any real emotion. But the director also displays a fine sense of craft and a deep understanding of the skewed European attitudes of the period.

The Watchers, sadly, is less disturbing than dull, less harrowing than hackneyed.

Instead of being drawn in by Daniel’s spiral, we observe it from a distance. The result is that Longing, presumably intended as a cathartic meditation on grief, simply feels absurd.