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.

Told with clarity, respect and empathy, and not just for the women on whom Weinstein preyed, Macfarlane's film offers a timely and fascinating overview of his story, one that's almost emblematic of the pathology of serial sexual abusers.

Netflix's To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You is a charmless sequel to a charmless YA rom-com. (Extra rom, hold the com.)

Jenkins' one and only feature weaves living history, charged and messy, into a homespun, hopeful tale. It's impossible not to wonder about — and wish for — what he might have done next.

Whatever exactly is going on (a misguided few will debate the literal meaning of closing scenes), the film is more serious than it appears; though odd and not for everyone, it's an ideal vehicle for Brie, using qualities she's displayed in excellent small-screen roles as an entry point to disturbing inner states.

No good performance can hide the fact that what happens during roughly the first hour is perhaps beautifully laid out and told but also extremely familiar. There is an expectation that Akin, also credited with the screenplay, will somehow step it up in the second half with a new twist or unexpected insight. But quite the opposite happens, as the narrative becomes both more melodramatic and erratic.

Unfortunately, the movie is far more effective in its first half than its second, which degenerates into cheap shocks, absurd plot contrivances and vulgarism for its own sake (including an excrement-covered pen). It's a shame, because the opening section proves deliciously unsettling, thanks to the screenplay that keeps you off-balance and the terrific performances.

The episodic screenplay lacks narrative momentum, and the use of faux-documentary commentary by older versions of Sawchuk's colleagues (played by actors) doesn't come across convincingly.

If you're reading this review because you're wondering what to cue up on your Disney+ subscription, Timmy Failure is the best of the new service's original programs by a wide margin. (Take that, you one-note Baby Yoda.)

Despite its laudable intentions, Waiting for Anya proves less impactful than it should be. The film certainly doesn't have the thematic weight of "War Horse," another film (and acclaimed stage play) based on a war-themed book by Morpurgo that was geared to young readers.

Extravagant action choreography makes the most of colorful set design, unlikely gimmicks and wrasslin'-style brutality. But Hodson's script offers far less diverting banter than it might've between the fight scenes, and has a hard time imagining the unconstrained id that makes Harley Quinn so magnetic.

De Wilde and Catton deliver a largely faithful and unchallenging adaptation, beautifully staged and sharply acted by a cast adept at balancing wit and romance.

Whether or not you identify as queer, Welcome to Chechnya will leave you shaken by the evidence of an amoral autocracy taking extreme action under the hypocritical guise of religious purity.

The degree to which the Tesla story syncs with Almereyda's abiding fascinations is clear in every frame of this contemplative, questioning, soulfully philosophical film.

It's a testament to the complexity of the subject and her positivity even in the face of the most culturally entrenched caveman attitudes that we come away from this flawed, chaotic film with a warm appreciation for her achievements and her indestructible generosity of spirit.

Grim and gritty though seldom emotionally affecting, Lost Girls loses momentum just like the half-assed investigation of cops whose possible corruption is coyly suggested but unexplored, leaving another hole in an already incomplete story.

For all the film's intellectual pretensions, both good and bad, Duke's great gravitas and Beetz' spontaneity lift the film partway out of its quasi-spiritual morass; they provide a hint of the real, of a beating heart, even if the drama itself exists in a parched desert realm devoid of actual life.

The Nowhere Inn is simultaneously satire and fan service, frothy fun and pretentious nonsense, depending on what the viewer wants it to be.

The best film about the wages of aging since Amour eight years ago, The Father takes a bracingly insightful, subtle and nuanced look at encroaching dementia and the toll it takes on those in close proximity to the afflicted.

Falling doesn't transform its emotional landscape into a simple question of rejection or forgiveness. It's comfortable knowing that meanness and affection can exist in the same person, and that tolerance, even when it only flows in one direction, benefits both giver and recipient.

Like horse racing, filmmaking is a high-risk gamblers' game, but the team behind Dream Horse, the resulting dramatization of the Vokes' story, have surely bred a winner with this endearing, determinedly crowd-pleasing adaptation.

Sadly, despite its title referencing a dirt bike gang, Charm City Kings doesn’t really show us anything we haven’t seen before. Unable to harness the story’s potential, the filmmakers instead deliver a mostly canned movie that flatlines 20 minutes before it comes to an end.

Ryan White crafts a piercingly observant investigative documentary that methodically pieces together a complex collage of incriminating evidence outlining a carefully orchestrated attempt to conceal the sinister implications behind Kim’s assassination.

It's so distinctive, in fact, that that it's hard to tell exactly whether it's sublime or terrible, but either way, it's one of a kind.

Sadly, the script for this debut feature, written by Louis Godbout, is less persuasive: No single event is fatally implausible, perhaps, but taken together it doesn't ring true.

Despite its obvious lack of objectivity, Clarence Thomas: In His Own Words proves an undeniably important historical document, if only for the rare opportunity it provides to hear from its subject directly. Unfortunately, the unintentional portrait it paints is hardly a flattering one, although obviously many will disagree.

There’s a lot to enjoy here in the performances of an appealing ensemble and the teasing, testy romantic badinage in which they engage.

Sentimentality and pathos are banned from Hikari’s screenplay, which surprises with its fresh, often humorous realism. This is one of those films that starts slowly and predictably, but when the turning point comes, it lifts the pic into another dimension.