It’s unsettling how every minute of this 94-minute flick delivers a new level of boredom. You have to feel for the actors.

As much as “Top Gun: Maverick” whips from a technical, visceral, thrill-making, supersonic-level, the entire endeavor and every little moment of introspection, suffering and determination is all the more accentuated, strengthened and fist-pumpingly good because you care so damn much about the story, the people and their very human concerns.

When Operation Mincemeat is focusing on the nitty-gritty, the clinical elements of the operation and how these people hope to pull it off in a way that doesn’t get people killed, it can be thrilling.

As the clock ticks, the film asks, who can this qualified woman trust, but mostly, we’re just looking at our watch, waiting for the dull torment to end.

In the end, Men works best as a surprising slice of cosmic horror and a showcase for Buckley in a near-constant state of emotional duress, particularly her on-screen screaming abilities.

For all its emotional horrors—witnessing the worst of ourselves and hoping for the best versions of ourselves eventually triumph over our inherent faults—Multiverse of Madness is arguably lacking the humanity, the heart, and soul of Marvel that works so well when balanced with humor and spectacle.

While Trocker attempts to connect the form to the content of the film, he gets lost in his formalist conceits, never creating fully realized characters to hold the weight of his structural choices.

The biographical and fictional afterlives of Monroe are particularly interesting, and probably tell us more about the authors who choose to dedicate their lives to researching her than anything new about Monroe, herself. One wishes that Cooper, and Summers, would’ve realized this.

Brunner puts his ability to invest anything and everything with a malevolent charge to chillingly effective use.

We’re a dozen action thrillers deep now, and you start to wonder: is Neeson really making these for us anymore?

Onoda – 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, which runs two hours and 45 minutes, is an achievement: a moving and multifaceted film about one man’s quixotic attempt at leading a meaningful life.

Writer/director Kate Tsang cleverly straddles childhood fantasy with the baser impulses of adolescence, drawing an angsty portrait of teenage girlhood in transition. But even as a movie geared towards young adults, Marvelous and the Black Hole feels innocent to a fault.

It’s a sweetly funny, damning, and poignant depiction of this very specific time in life–at once angsty and lovely–when anything is possible. And it has a killer soundtrack to boot.

Make no mistake: The Innocents is no young adult novel adaptation, and things get very dark very quickly.

A seemingly straightforward drama that details a complex portrait of a nation, through the journey of a single, determined man.

When the film drifts into the larger discourse of Abercrombie’s fall, it favors simplistic answers — namely the democratization of social media — over a more critical interrogation of why Abercrombie fell, and how they are still trying to claw their way back to relevancy.

Edralin’s Islands is a patient debut that reminds us that while our parents are important, our own happiness cannot be understated or ignored. In this sense, through its final seconds, “Islands” is a life-affirming achievement.

Even though it’s more of a vision board of what it could be, the film introduces a nifty premise that recalls not just “A Nightmare on Elm Street” but how that series was able to make multiple irresistible sequels. Choose or Die is also the rare mid-budget Netflix movie that gets better and better as it goes along, owning its weirdness and not playing it easy.

While a bit too opaque near the end, and perhaps not the horror show that one might expect, it’s nevertheless an impressive debut.

Charlie McDowell’s lockdown project Windfall is a farcical comedy that attempts to have some bite about capitalism.

By showing mainstream audiences what the everyday lives of these young women looks like, and by showing the metaphorical and political significance of reversing the racist tropes that dominate popular culture, the film makes a substantial contribution to the ongoing discussion of North American history generally, and more importantly, who gets to tell their own stories.

Soft and Quiet begins as subtly as its title implies. It sneaks up on you. By the time you realize what it’s actually about, it’s too late and you are swept into a narrative (and a world) that you do not want to be a part of.

It’s good without being elevated or necessarily great. But it has enough scares to qualify as a decent “dark place” movie without breaking the mold.

Meet Me in the Bathroom feels like a surface-level music documentary with little mindfulness for creative expression or the shades of reality outside the fame of its subjects.

A staggering feat of visceral filmmaking, The Northman, like Eggers’ previous films, warrants profound analysis while still delivering a high-octane action odyssey. Some of the flourishes the director opted for, as well as the film’s overall demeanor (neither entirely self-serious nor fully whimsical), may receive mixed reactions. Still what Eggers has ambitiously crafted lands as an invigorating beacon for an industry in need of studio fare with substantial ideas and artistry.

Although some of the emotional and familial nuances are omitted here, as is any attempt to recontextualize the group and its legacy in hip-hop today, the movie has a bounce and a buzz the entire time, as though the frenetic surplus energy of the ’90s had finally found a place to go.

People who hand-wring about movies being dead really need to check this one out. RRR proves that, yes, cinema is alive and well, but only if you’re willing, every now and again, to look past your backyard.

Unfortunately, as its title implies, Meat the Future is more glorified advertisement than deep-dive into the clean-meat movement.

Return to Space is a bit too neatly packaged and overly idealistic about what SpaceX might mean for space travel. By turning their focus up to the stars, the filmmakers, unfortunately, ignore the myriad issues that private space travel creates on earth.

Ambulance is absolutely ridiculous, and undeniably entertaining.

It’s all pastiche; all surfaces with nothing below. And it leaves one cold.

A need for speed works for Sonic the character, not “Sonic The Hedgehog” the franchise itself. The film never feels like it’s thinking beyond the next laugh line. It’s so caught up in the adrenaline rush of the present moment that Sonic The Hedgehog 2 completely loses sight of the endgame.

It can be said, with some certainty, that ‘Fantastic Beasts’ has finally found its footing. This latest entry is the most fun and most buoyant in the relatively young series. And it’s enough to make you actually look forward to a subsequent installment (should there be one) instead of actively dreading it.

A film that takes so many below-the-belt jabs at the idiocy of Tinseltown blockbusters must, at the very least, be a few IQ points higher than the stuff it makes fun of for being stupid.

While Donbass is far from perfect, hiding too much of its story and message in at-times dull and layered absurdity, it nevertheless presents a harrowing picture of how war and nationalism corrupt and degrade places nowhere near the battlefield.

The nicest thing I can say about it is that it’s short.

Lecoustre and Marre have the good sense to avoid ending the film on too positive a note — their protagonist has carried her grief for a long time, and she will not let it go overnight — but in delicate, truthful touches, they suggest for her the possibility of a future

This gripping, taciturn thriller set in a frozen landscape isn’t necessarily any different from the other titles, but the well-crafted drama is a good reminder of how tangible atmosphere can transcend predictable narrative. At least at first.

A thriller of divided ambitions, that earnestly wants to Say Something Important about the mistreatment of combat veterans by the very government that sends them to war, while also flirting with the opportunity for franchise potential, resulting in a film distinctly cleaved in two, unsatisfying halves.

There’s a vague moral here that it’s better to die than be in service to corrupt methods of governance, but “Black Crab” doesn’t do enough world-building for that point to feel adequate. If only Berg had some of Joon-ho’s signature class-oriented relish, this frigid journey might be more worthwhile.

Andrew Gaynord’s All My Friends Hate Me is an incredibly funny look at social anxiety and a send-up to those risks, mixed with a shot of cringe and a dose of horror.

"Under The Influence" gets more interesting once the doc shifts focus from Dobrik’s rapid rise to fame to peel back the performative layers of his act.

Ultimately Spin Me Round is like a bad vacation where even the gorgeous Italian seaside isn’t enough to make the time spent feel worth it.

By combining petty drama, deadpan humor, and the terror of human emotions, the filmmakers effortlessly straddle a liminal space between comedy and horror, never quite tipping their hand too far into either genre.

Even with a relative lack of action, and a confusing attitude towards introducing and removing characters from the narrative in rapid succession, The Outfit is still a wonderfully atmospheric film and fresh new addition to the genre – thanks in large part to Alexandre Desplat‘s heady score, sharp dialogue from writer-director Graham Moore, and Rylance’s consistently impressive leading performance.

“Until the Wheels Fall Off” may not, no pun intended, reinvent the wheel of sports documentaries. But it’s a compelling dive into skateboarding culture from 1980 onwards and helps to illustrate just how important Hawk was to legitimize the sport.

The blended tones and mixing of rom-com tropes with wry humor and mystery mostly work well until the film makes a hard pivot to biotech horror. By the last act the script begins to resemble "The X-Files," however the same implausibility that made that show a hoot, here unfortunately undermines the spell the film had successfully cast.

Ryan Binaco’s screenplay is full of tiny, keenly observed touches, but its greatest virtue is its attitude towards her addictions, the way it occupies her space with her, looking on passively but not judgmentally. It’s a movie that understands the desperation of alcoholism.

Deep Water contains some earnestly committed performances, a ridiculous car chase, a snail emporium, and a sparkling teaser for Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde.” The dynamic between her and Affleck is fascinating: not ridiculous enough to be camp, but not far off.

Colin West’s Linoleum is the kind of movie that’s all but impossible to review with any specificity, because so much of its achievement lies in its surprises – how it seems to be doing one thing while slyly doing another, without deception, and then revealing its ultimate intentions with grace and style.

I Love My Dad cannot overcome its off-putting premise. Nothing is out of bounds, of course (especially in comedy), but if there’s an approach to make the material palatable, either played straight or broad, it is left undiscovered here.

With its shout-outs to horror classics and juicy pay-offs of its own, X feels like the movie West was born to make.

The jankiness of this structure is a bit much, at least on first viewing, drifting into memoir material for so long that it the picture feeling shapeless for a good long while. But then again, that’s our Linklater, and complaining about narrative aimlessness is kind of like coming out of a Scorsese movie bitching about all the voice-over. It’s a new Linklater, is the point, and that’s good news indeed.

In Gormican’s uproarious The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage delivers a crowd-pleasing triumph that reminds audiences that he’s always been — no matter the part, no matter the reviews — a star who makes the movies infinitely better just by being him.

Even with its rough edges, it’s refreshing to see something this big, this zany, and this open-hearted still has a place on the silver screen.

In Everything Everywhere All At Once, a dizzying and aching bit of popcorn entertainment, in fact, Yeoh has never been better.

As a movie, things play out as an obvious parable about the greed that grips men’s hearts once civilization’s fires die out. In terms of a one-man show for Efron, however, it provides too little dramatic flair to show he has a range beyond his pretty-boy charms. The film’s scope and setting are too barren to give Efron that opportunity.

When this time travel story is at its best, it gives Reynolds space to convey the frustration one can have about their past, including when facing their younger self. The movie doesn’t fill out this concept with too much imagination about time travel or villains, but it does wind up with a powerful parable about healing.

One of the most unique and unforgettable movies in Pixar’s grand pantheon.

The film should read like an epic. Instead, it reads like a boilerplate sports doc; the kind kept on constant rotation in ski resort taverns where they might catch diners’ attention for a minute or two while they wait on chili and beers.

Maybe one day folks will come around to “Mother Schmuckers” as something so sincerely and unintentionally terrible that’s it’s worth watching if only as a joke, yet even that is a longshot.

While its minimalism can make for a mixed bag of surprises, “Killing Ground” director Damien Power ensures that No Exit has enough of his own striking signature.

Matt Reeves’ The Batman should tell audiences that other superhero movies are possible, and yet more, they can be had outside the formulaic tentpoles filling theaters today.

With a little more focus, “A Banquet” could be a haunting portrait of a family in crisis, an adolescent adrift, and mothers’ care gone sour. As presented, however, it’s an elaborate yet clumsy slice of domestic horror that bites off more than it can chew.

As good as she is, and as timely as the film can be, it is frustrating that the villain seems to have waltzed in from a 1930s noir.

Even with the notable gaps in Dalla’s story and slight storytelling, For Lucio works as a professional, if not precisely personal, introduction to the renowned musician, showcasing how his songs reflected a country that was grappling with class struggles and an identity crisis during the 1970s.

In its expert blend of vivid cinematography and naturalistic performances, Alcarràs creates a refined study of heritage that understands life’s permanent absence of resolution – with every hard-earned answer comes a new riddle.

Though it lacks the near-spiritual dimension of the recent “In Front of Your Face” (Hong’s best in years), The Novelist’s Film is another focused, charming autofiction, well-structured yet open to the inspirations of serendipity.

No one can top Hooper or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” or even match them. Garcia is smart enough not to put on airs. He just lets Leathersaw rip.

Tatum and Carolin might have been capable of the light, personality-driven fluff the trailer promises, but not, ultimately, whatever the hell Dog is trying to deliver.

Together with the firm confidence of its execution, perhaps it is this sincerity that marks Dark Glasses as a touching late work from a master.

Those who have seen "One More Time With Feeling" will undoubtedly have a deeper appreciation for this follow-up companion piece, but — even for the ones unfamiliar with either Dominik’s or Cave’s work— This Much I Know To Be True still proves powerful even if consumed as a concert film alone.

Gainsbourg is riveting in her portrayal of the intricacy of this pattern, her hands grasping for the tangibility of doorframes when words seem far too futile, her back arching and contracting to respond to ecstasy and sorrow.

In an oversaturated market for pandemic-themed films, Coma is a delirious marvel of a reminder that, in the right hands, there is no such thing as an unfeasible subject.

Marie never seems particularly interested in either man except for how they are interested in her and is revealed to be so self-centered in her pursuit of amours both fou and entirely rational, that she is far less likable than Binoche’s disingenuously bright-eyed and forthright performance can account for.

Fleischer channels the tenor of the influences his film wears on its sleeve: the manipulative music demanding awe, the lighthearted spirit of the action, the smirking star-power needed to sell quippy banter. But his tonal fidelity cannot entirely cover the seams of this sloppily assembled script.

This is Strickland’s grand act of prestidigitation; he coaxes out something like poignancy from the peculiar, just as he conjures the visceral and unknowable from ordinary groceries.

Dupieux, a director who has always been attuned to the absurd humor and casual beauty of the every day, effortlessly aligns us with Alain’s perspective.

Stewing in the film’s carefully crafted atmosphere of hypocrisy is, however, essential; values and attitudes deconstruct when they’re oversoaked. But make no mistake, the ride will be demanding.

Superior falls short of inhabiting the period within which it purports to exist.

Though the film boasts an impressive comedic roster and delivers a surprising number of thoughtful, emotional beats, its aimless storytelling and tonal confusion result in a middling end product that ends up more forgettable than anything else.

No matter how one tries to unpack the curious contents of “Big Gold Brick,” they’ll likely be unable to find much of anything outside of an unintelligible failure.

This movie has Jeunet doing “The Jetsons” while ruminating on what a robot uprising might inevitably look like, but that proves to be less exciting than one could ever imagine.

The story beats are predictable, but Decker forges her own unruly and unforgettable path through them, crafting a teen film with avant-garde flourishes that attempt to find a balance between style and substance.

Even with a handful of toe-tapping songs written by Maluma and JLo specifically for the film Marry Me is an off-tune rom-com that should make most viewers think twice about saying “I do.”

Soderbergh’s direction is, per usual, tight and efficient (as is his editing – it runs a lean, mean 89 minutes).

A bloodless, musty museum piece stuffed with stars but dull as toast.

It may be bloated, but Moonfall always feels like it’s moving at a somewhat brisk pace. And the filmmaker’s greatest talent is collaborating with visual effects teams to craft images that somehow get seared in your brain.

All in all, Summering is a very nice movie – sweet, affectionate, nostalgic, harmless – so it’s tempting to give it a pass. But “nice” and “compelling,” sadly, are not the same thing.

Admittedly, Utama is a simple story, but one that packs an emotional punch without endless exposition or symbolism.

In a film steeped in loss and grief, Leonor Will Never Die, as the title implies, is ultimately a beautiful, life-affirming celebration of the power of film and art to heal. Yes, even ‘80s action films.

If Sen were to better connect Nadeem and Saud’s faith and civic identities with the kites and other animals’ desperate fight for balance in an urbanized nature, All That Breathes would be an excellent documentary.

While its structure is a little lopsided (the beginning portion plays like a doc about Choy) and the tone tends to sway somewhat harshly between justifiably acidic and politically enlightening, “The Exiles” is an essential look at “philosophical homelessness” and an expert example of documentary cinema as a truth-telling device.

Resurrection is emotionally searing, wildly unhinged and maybe even a little batshit crazy. However, as anchored by its two fiercely committed and convincing lead performances (Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth), a menacingly disquieting tone, and a frightening ambiguity about a disintegrating mental state, Resurrection is a deeply distressing and compelling drama that will shock and shake you to your core.

"Nanny" feels less like a misfire than a missed opportunity. Those early scenes are so tightly wound and so beautifully played that by the time Jusu trots out the blood and knives and bathtubs, I wasn’t even sure what movie I was watching anymore.

Depriving “Nothing Compares” of any mention of O’Connor’s more recent life irreparably wounds the film. Had Ferguson bothered to cast aside her rose-tinted gaze, the documentary might have, akin to O’Connor’s rebellious spirit, broken the mold of what’s expected from cinematic works of biographical nonfiction.

You get a sense of Poehler’s energy in the fast pace and comic timing of film, which moves at a good, precise clip. There’s a lot of material to cover here, some of it overly familiar, but Poehler does it with pizzaz.

Fearsome and fearless at the same time, Palm Trees and Power Lines practically dares viewers to watch what’s happening on screen without flinching.