Deftly playing Tina Fey's feminist-icon mother, Lily Tomlin all but steals Admission, a knowing but uneven comedy about the neuroticism of the college-admission process on both sides of the equation.

Even acknowledging and regretting the conceptual misjudgments that mar the film, there are moments to enjoy. The conversations between the doctor and the don remain stimulating, and the two central performances add to the electricity.

Striving to be an inspirational story about personal and professional redemption, the film mainly comes across as a self-aggrandizing promotional project that the famously arrogant pop star would have once sneered at.

It ultimately lacks the singularity to make it stand out among the glut of similarly themed entries.

For better or worse, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the most overtly sci-fi film in the series, and on that level, it succeeds very well.

This prosaically competent comedy-thriller turns a rich true story into a tonally uneven blend of lukewarm laughs and low-level suspense.

The clash of cultures isn't exactly groundbreaking but Qasim "Q" Basir's feature debut is told through the eyes of a young, black American Muslim, a perspective that has rarely been seen.

The storyline is hardly original, but it does provide the opportunity for Rebeck to unleash wickedly scathing observations about the sort of self-obsessed show business types who pursue their own interests no matter who it hurts.

This lugubrious drama fails in its essential goal of making us care about its central character’s existential crisis.

A spookily effective fright-fest.

Unfortunately, Kampai! For the Love of Sake is more cheerleading than informative, concentrating largely on personality profiles of three figures—two of them Westerners--obsessed with the Japanese rice wine.

The Epstein conspiracy here is ultimately merely an excuse for taboo fetish play, culminating in a bloody finale that any viewer could see from a mile away. In the end, Nekrasova is too preoccupied with cultural relevance to actually craft a compelling film.

What Jolt lacks in originality and subtlety it at least somewhat makes up for in verve.

The film would have benefited from director Jeff Celentano perhaps picking up the pace a little, and the deletion of some extraneous subplots. But the climactic sequence, in which Rickey bats through the pain while encountering the toughest pitchers he’s ever faced, provides the perfect stirring conclusion.

The results are visually disorienting, to say the least. Although Notary and the special effects team do as good a job as technology allows, the expressive Buck never quite looks real. And you keep expecting him and the rest of the animals to burst into song.

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.

Those who stick with Martian Child won't entirely avoid mush, but they will find terrific performances.

Despite its occasional missteps, the film relates its important and sadly too-little-known story with skill and efficiency.

You ought to have to be an unusually interesting person, or at least be capable of presenting your commonplace tribulations in an interesting light, before you can ask moviegoers to spend fifteen bucks to watch you onscreen. Nina Davenport's First Comes Love doesn't buy into this rule.

The film veers between inspired and strained and finally settles into the realm of self-improvement pop psychology.

Yelling to the Sky drips with a strange but sometimes moving nostalgia for environs its characters clearly want to escape.

This intense drama co-starring Jeanne Tripplehorn and writer-director Leland Orser is at times too minimalistic for its own good, but it has a powerful emotional immediacy that fully grips the viewer by the time it reaches its wrenching conclusion.

The film is a mess, opaque in its argument and tiring in its effortful weirdness, and yet in its best moments has a hypnotic pull.

What really helps Mountain overcome its far-fetched scenario is the pairing of Winslet and Elba, who know how to turn up the charm tenfold yet make Alex and Ben seem (mostly) like real people.

The film brings a spectacular but little-known chapter of World War II to the big screen with meticulous attention to period detail -- and almost none to compelling narrative.

Despite its obviously strong philosophical and emotional interest in the nature of memory, the picture is most satisfying as a whodunit, observing Dinklage's deeply empathetic interviews with those who've been wounded, not helped, by a procedure that was meant to be therapeutic.

This holiday extravaganza with an all-star cast has a lot of failings. But it seems likely to tap into the audience’s enthusiasm for uplifting entertainment.

Director Levy struggles to find a uniform pitch that would agreeably blend together the gags, the visual effects and the obligatory heart moments. In its absence, there's a stop-and-start hollowness that confuses noise and chaos for comic energy.

Director Michael Damian does not bring any special spark to the film, but he recognizes the talents of his cast and allows them to shine.

Works better than you might imagine at times but stumbles awkwardly other times. The unevenness in the writing is matched by directorial overkill in certain comic sequences.

Ultimately Adam & Steve mainly goes to prove that indie gay romantic comedies can be just as witless, vulgar and over the top as their straight, major studio counterparts.

Buried beneath all the increasingly tired visual gags and well-worn character conventions is a workable message about following one’s muse, but director Ash Brannon, a Pixar veteran, along with at least eight other writers, seem content simply to lay down the same old licks.

The film is engrossing, thanks to the director’s skill at delivering sustained tension, and the excellent performances.

Avoids easy shtick and saccharine conclusions, opting instead for character dynamics that the two leads deliver with consummate skill.

The two elements never mesh convincingly, proving neither substantial enough to work as compelling drama nor sufficiently suspenseful as action-thriller.

It's certainly an imaginative concept for a detective story, but the storyline gets so convoluted and baroque that unintentional humor sets in. By the time we learn the outlandish motivation of the time-traveling serial killer and her true identity, the twists have been coming so fast and furious that we've long stopped caring.

The woman at its center remains opaque, her romance is listless and her journey to self-discovery becomes an endurance test.

Had all those assets been funneled into a movie with some tonal consistency and a script that built credible relationships, the result might have been a nasty bit of fun. Instead, it wobbles awkwardly between creeping mob menace and scrappy sitcom, inching toward a violent climax that still doesn’t acquire cohesion.

The situations might be formulaic, but the teamwork of the two leads brings them to sparkling life.

Thematically diffuse, tonally inconsistent and blighted by an inauthentic feel for its story’s time and place, it sits awkwardly between sober human drama and lighter dysfunctional-family turf, constantly striving for unearned emotions.

While scribe Zac Stanford's premise invites a Charlie Kaufman-like, reality-bending take, Schwartzman plays things straight enough that one has a hard time believing the action. But viewers who get through a credulity-testing second act may laugh enough in the third to be glad they did.

As a depiction of the very public emergence of a marginal movement, Lords of Chaos provokes both awe and repulsion, but not necessarily admiration for a musical form and subculture unwaveringly devoted to literalism, no matter how extreme.

This is the sort of exasperating horror film that whips audiences into a frenzy. Not because they're having fun, mind you, but rather because the characters behave so stupidly and self-destructively that yelling profanity-laden advice to the screen becomes a bonding exercise.

It contains all the elements from the original film...But that's the problem: It's virtually the same movie with new locations. Oh, plus Helen Mirren. Not a bad addition, but the popcorn fun is gone.

Kelly spends so long establishing these two relationships, looking at the gifts and the internet fame and the inevitable possessiveness, that he has little time for the developments that might've turned a better paced version of this story into a true-crime nailbiter.

Mary Magdalene is an uneasy viewing experience, ponderous and disjointed in places, but also crafted with conviction and a strong aesthetic vision.

Easily the most satisfying of his Hollywood-produced adventures and a respectable cousin to the long string of Japanese ones, the sequel to Gareth Edwards' admirably serious but dullish 2014 film is the first to suggest any promise for what Legendary is calling its "MonsterVerse" — a franchise in which the Japanese kaiju world meshes with that of Hollywood's favorite oversized ape, King Kong.

Comes off as an overly jokey but often quite entertaining spoof that should please families everywhere.

Captivating drama delivers literary flair and Louisiana music and great roles for a grizzled John Travolta and lovely Scarlett Johansson.

Meryl Streep narrates a heartwarming documentary for an up close look at Arctic wildlife.

Kate Clere McIntyre and Saraswati Clere's less than revelatory documentary that incessantly makes the point that yoga is really, really good for you.

The film's saving grace is its fine performances.

The film pushes against the expectation of queer narratives to follow the same dolorous beats by prioritizing fun and crass humor. But there’s just not enough substance to get us to care about reaching the finish line.

The thrilling premise of Morgan eventually gets muddled amid standard thriller-action, blunting the intended impact of a final sequence that should produce chills, but instead merely provides information. Still, those seeking smart, edgy genre fare will find plenty to savor in this well-cast drama.

There are sufficient pratfalls and Miley/Hannah quick-changes to satisfy the fans, while Cyrus retains that natural, unforced likability that made her a star in the first place.

A spare, creepily atmospheric psychological thriller with a death grip on the psychological aspect.

So has "Percy Jackson" successfully cracked the "Potter" code? In terms of overall quality, not even close. Still, the film's carefully calibrated mixture of CGI-enhanced spectacle, diverting (and blood-free) action sequences and adolescent angst could make it a modest hit with the eight to 12-year-old set.

Not so much blasphemous as just outrageous for the hell of it.

At a running time of over two hours, the experience eventually feels as wearisome as riding the same ride over and over again.

Does Cronin’s film have the sharp narrative lines or control of those predecessors? Not even close, but it has enough style and scares, breathless energy and even fiendish humor almost to justify the grandiose inclusion of the director’s name in the title.

Some viewers might find that very cognitive dissonance interesting in itself, but many others may struggle to connect with a story that's essentially about an assortment of extremely entitled, self-absorbed people who ultimately have little new to say about addiction, families or the process of recovery.

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.

Causes don't get much worthier, and Smile is a labor of love, a portion of the film's proceeds earmarked for the humanitarian group.

For the most part, footage of rehearsals and competition is lackluster.

If Weather Girl were to furnish its own forecast, it would be something along the lines of "Warm and breezy before becoming overcast and muggy late in the day."

A dreary dramedy of a road film that starts off ploddingly and proceeds to only grow more so as it crawls along.

Filmmaker Julia Haslett lacks focus in her ode to the French philosopher.

performances from Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Nixon keep Stockholm, Pennsylvania intense and absorbing, but Nicole Beckwith's initial impulse to tell her confinement story as a stage play feels as if it might have been a sounder choice.

Disparate influences percolate but never quite cohere in Andrew Droz Palermo’s first narrative feature One & Two, which while atmospheric and beautifully lensed ends up being a touch too elliptical for its own good.

The film’s main problem is that it can’t decide what it wants to be and ends up not having enough time to develop anything in any depth.

The picture's mission to shine a light on the expertise of bag-toting sidekicks is admirable, and the story's told in breezy fashion. Just leave your non-golfing loved ones at home for this one.

While there’s something to be said for the communal experience of absorbing an album surrounded by dozens of likeminded fans, what’s actually being served up on screen is more filler than killer.

While the 1977 Fun With Dick and Jane was a reasonably diverting sendup of conspicuous consumption with a subversive if not always razor-sharp comic edge, the new version... replaces smart performances with tired shtick.

The spotlight illuminates a well-chosen quintet of subjects, all wholesomely passionate practitioners of a readily dissed form of entertainment and each at a different point in their career.

Unfortunately, the screenplay contains little real wit, with the result that the various plot machinations have a strained quality that tends to reduce the proceedings of their intended giddiness. On the other hand, the performers are attractive; there's plenty of nudity; the setting is scenic, and the musical numbers -- well, they're pretty bad.

After a very funny start, there just isn't enough content to fill the feature-length curriculum.

It's involving but seldom deeply affecting, with the core drama continually shoved aside to examine more commonplace matters of parenting, abandonment and broken families.

The film's chief asset is its superbly atmospheric evocation of its period milieu.

Weinstock takes you down a well-trod path in romantic comedy, but her characters are smart and funny, the twists are unexpected.

Their heart is in the right place, and their tale is colorful, complete with Indian dancers in ceremonial costumes dancing on a street corner.

Emerges as a frustrating cop-out.

A dramatic story, to be sure, but not exactly grippingly told by its first-time filmmaker.

The novel presumably filled in the blanks to build an engrossing tale, one that here comes across as a rote suspenser, complete with jump scares and a violent climax. The actors nearly elevate the proceedings to something greater.

While Fowler keeps the story moving efficiently, Marsden's easy geniality prevents the simple narrative from feeling rote. Carrey gets a moment or two to cut loose.

Pairing another Firth (no relation) with crackerjack newcomer Taron Edgerton, Kingsman's fizzingly droll chutzpah can't help but make Spooks: The Greater Good, for all Peter Firth's ballast, seem dowdily old-school in comparison.

The Parts You Lose somehow manages to be both unmoving and tension-free, wasting the talents of several notable actors in the process.

The long-awaited third installment of J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World sub-franchise is less clogged with distracting detail than its immediate predecessor, but even a more refined plot can’t save the two-hour-plus film from feeling like an endurance test.

You sense in every frame the strain to be lighthearted. Consequently, A Good Year is at times downright clumsy. You know what the filmmakers are trying to achieve and see the labor going into the attempt, but for them to fall so short is unsettling.

An artistic fiasco that cuts across genre lines and all logic to become, perhaps, an instant midnight movie.

Not that it isn’t entertaining, but the film's premise is certainly well past its “use by” date, resulting in another passably palatable sequel distinguished by a lack of narrative and stylistic coherence that could potentially underpin a really viable franchise.

Unfortunately, although Becoming Nobody will prove a must-see for Ram Dass' ardent fans, and they are certainly legion, the film proves frustratingly unpolished and unfocused, providing precious little biographical information or narrative context. It ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, a labor of love that would have benefited from a little more objectivity.

Making her debut as director with a true story from her native Australia, actor Rachel Griffiths gives the pic a workmanlike, generic feel that would play well on family-centric cable channels. Horse lovers will be the moviegoers most vulnerable to its modest charms.

With less pedestrian writing, there might have been some genuine uplift in the outcome of a family reinforcing its bonds while taking on future missions as a unified team. But Secret Headquarters is mostly just meh.

It's a throwback to Chan's wham-bam action comedies of the past, and a pretty effective one, too.

McConaughey and Parker get stranded with thanklessly predictable scenes, while Zooey Deschanel, Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw garner the film's few laughs.

Sharp, vivacious comedy.

Ultimately, the sex scenes seem of far more interest to the filmmakers than the narrative or characterizations, which are rendered in frustratingly vague and often deliberately confusing fashion.

An artistically arresting yet narratively lame and strangely unfocused cartoon aimed at older children and young adults.