It's never remotely involving, and you can feel the lead performers straining to handle their acting chores. The exception is Haddish, who is so convincingly scary and menacing here that you wish her character were in a better, dramatic movie.

Barkan proves a highly engaging man, impassioned but funnier than a terminally ill man should be. Intimate scenes with his young family are essential to the appeal of a film whose big issues remain as pressing now as they were during filming in 2018.

Taking itself much less seriously than the Taken series and its predecessors, it's a wish-fulfillment romp just as ludicrous as any of them but more fun than most.

Listening to one of Smith's speaking engagements would be a much more entertaining way for a fan to spend 115 minutes, and non-fans or fence-sitters will likely find this piece too puffy to be very useful. But few will deny that Smith is good company — an always-likable guide happy to make jokes at his own expense while he works to be the "Kevin Smith-iest" Kevin Smith he can be.

A great deal of human drama underlies all this, but not all of it makes it to the screen.

It manages to put a friendly, mostly female face to all the technical exploits and celestial theorizing, underlining how much the desire to uncover the secrets of the known universe is something that's all-too human.

An interrogation of Australia's history of racial violence that also takes on gender, identity and domestic abuse against a backdrop right out of an archetypal high country Western, the engrossing thriller is admirably ambitious but choppy, at times eluding the director's grasp.

At only 67 minutes, Bradley&Pablo's doc is aspiring much more to the former. Less brevity and more depth could possibly have yielded a superior movie, but Alone Together may be an example of a documentary better served by leaving fans wanting more than making casually curious viewers want less.

There's a richer documentary to be made, one you might crave even more after 90 minutes of being inspired and impressed by Lily Hevesh.

Mainly Park lets her actors interact, their humor deadpan, their pain unfathomable, their hormones surging and their flirtations halting.

Somewhere You Feel Free is a love letter to Petty, but also to that most mysterious of alchemies, the chemistry of a rock 'n' roll band.

The story itself finally feels lost beneath the levels of artifice rather than heightened by it.

Feliciano's mix of social commentary and old-school melodrama can be sharp, but it can also be distractingly on-the-button.

What's most notable about Todd Stephens' heartfelt salute to a real-life local legend is that the campiness of its outrageous plot becomes secondary to the soulful poignancy.

Introducing is a remarkably moving portrait of a 40-something woman forced to reevaluate her relationships and her sense of self in the face of a chronic illness that leaves her sometimes unable to speak or control her movements.

It has its own peculiar spirit and casts a very witchy spell, thanks particularly to Gregg's adept handling of both experienced and young, less proven performers.

This is a compelling drama with real-world concerns that shouldn't be ignored, and it deserves better than to be the victim of an actor's offscreen sins.

Ultimately, Happily seems to bite off more than it can chew, proving more successful in its insightful exploration of relationship dynamics than its bizarre storyline. That few of its narrative mysteries are resolved is obviously meant to be purposefully ambiguous, but the results are finally more frustrating than intriguing.

A stirring requiem of rage and resistance.

Though the final product isn’t quite a home run, it is nonetheless a very intriguing work that again suggests Ben Hania is a talent to watch.

The movie's soul, such as it is, remains unimproved, and at 242 minutes, very few of them offering much pleasure, it's nearly unendurable as a single-sitting experience. If it were watched in parts — title cards identify six chapters and an epilogue, and some rumors suggested it would be released as a series — those segments would fail to deliver the shapely balance of energies and pacing that one expects these days from even a merely competent TV show.

One of the most effortlessly absorbing and deeply encouraging nonfiction films of recent memory.

Clever enough to not take his plot too seriously while fully indulging in its sentimentality, the filmmaker has crafted an undeniably feel-good romantic comedy. You'll have to try hard not to fall under its spell.

It stands solidly on its own as a dynamic inquiry into revolutionary culture and Black identity, not to mention the challenge of living with roommates.

There is a palpable sense that this was made by someone who knows Mumbai backwards and truly loves its ochre-colored streets, cluttered sidewalks and peeling billboards advertising old movie releases, right down to every frayed shred of paper.

The script’s skillful tension makes it easy to forgive Operation Varsity Blues its occasionally clunky missteps. At least it tells a tale as old as time — of the insatiable rapacity of those who already have more than anyone else — with novel relish.

It's parental wish-fulfillment that isn't at all interested in what being a kid actually feels like.

An amusing, accomplished debut on its own modest terms, Next Door works best as tart meta comedy, becoming increasingly cramped in scope and setting as it spirals into an obsessive revenge thriller.