Given the subject matter, it’s difficult not to stray into mawkishness of some kind. But even with mistakes, the power of the main narrative is hard to erode.

Taika Waititi’s self-proclaimed “anti-hate satire” “Jojo Rabbit” exists in service of a single idea, a notion so desperately idealistic that it lands somewhere between naïveté and disingenuousness.

The problem, unfortunately, is that Hope Gap is based on Nicholson’s play “The Retreat from Moscow” and the proceedings never really leaves the theater. Despite the director’s attempts to throw in [a few] drone shots to break up the drama and make the affairs inherently more cinematic, there are few scenes that don’t seem as though they would be more intriguing played out in front of a live audience.

Perhaps the pieces could have held together with the right leading man as glue. Elgort is, assuredly, not that.

In playing a man who was so clearly among his comic ancestors and influences, we see, for the first time in a long time, Murphy’s sheer joy of performance, the thing that made his early work in films like “48 HRS.” and “Beverly Hills Cop” so electrifying.

It’s just uninspired, a by-the-books courtroom drama, full of big speeches about justice and equality and Doing What’s Right, moved along by montages and fake-outs.

The picture’s biggest flaw is that it’s so mellow it occasionally veers into inertia.

Around the two men, Heller creates a world that blurs the lines between every form of communication to serve the panoramic impact of her sensitive, almost magical design.

The genre maestro has his audience in good hands, “good” in this instance meaning both “skilled, capable, expert” and “decent, ethically sound.” He’s assembled a dazzling contraption that, if twisted in just the right way, pops open to reveal a nugget of wisdom crystallized by the cathartic final shot: we only really own what we earn.

What elevates Hustlers from an entertaining con job flick to something noteworthy is that the racket isn’t inherent to the story Scafaria wants to tell. Many filmmakers will say their film tackles female empowerment, but few do the legwork to make an integral and authentic part of the story.

Chu’s performance is astonishing.

The beauty of Lina Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice is the sound of other voices.

First Cow is faint, deliberately paced filmmaking where you can often hear a pin drop. But in its tiny way, the modest and gentle little film is moving and poetic.

Clinical in nature and matter-of-fact (but still affecting), The Assistant is essentially a procedural about being a personal assistant to a powerful Hollywood man and all that entails.

A hodgepodge of a story that only really works when Glaisher and Wren are in the sky. And when they are it’s absolutely gorgeous.

Somehow the filmmakers found lightheartedness and – gasp – laughs in a story of political intrigue at the top of the notoriously buttoned-up Catholic Church.

In spite of all the reasons that this film should have been another "Outlaw King" – silly and self-important – it manages to cleverly duck and dive around nearly all of them. It’s a feat that speaks to the deftness and intelligence of the approach that Michôd and Edgerton take with their writing and direction, giving us an epic period piece that actually fulfills much of that ambition.

Despite some misplaced comedy, a few questionable creative decisions, and tonal inconsistencies, It: Chapter Two brings it all home with a remarkable third act that provides one of the most relatable, moving, and emotionally satisfying conclusions.

It may be too gentle to leave a deep impression, but its sweetness is also well-earned and nice to savor.

There’s intricate, and then there’s messy. In a story of unspooling complexity and multiple double-crosses, the biggest trouble with Wasp Network is that it can be flat-out confusing.

Comparisons to Adam McKay‘s “The Big Short” and “Vice” are unavoidable. But though The Laundromat is similarly breezy, unsubtle, and disposable—it is not, we’d wager, one of the Soderbergh films that will best stand the test of time—it is still a better movie.

With exquisite costume design, cinematography and a talented supporting cast, there’s plenty to admire in Seberg. However, the film’s sprawling and unwieldy narrative is ultimately what hinders it, leaving a drama that focuses in on a single person somehow feeling shallow and impersonal.

Zellweger’s poise and presence make the entire affair more than worthwhile.

Uncut Gems is an insane ride with no respite that will grind your senses down to their last nerve.

In amongst Joker’s fire and blood and chaos and its blackest of blackhearted laughter, there is the sense of a grotesque, green-haired genie being let out of a bottle, and whether it wreaks havoc or not, we’re not going to be able to put it back in.

When Shults soars under this structure, he composes some brilliant moments. When he falters, it seems like the movie doesn’t know where to go or when to end (if it even wants to).

It’s a middling historical drama, finely crafted and ever so slightly stodgy in spite of a compelling last act.

It tells a lot of great stories and illuminates a city-wide tragedy, but given all the heartbreaking and enraging stories within, one wishes Decade Of Fire could emotionally sear and rage just as well as it educates.

Kim’s film is a compassionate piece on interpersonal connection that’ll touch your heart when it’s at its most vulnerable

Ford v Ferrari is the sort of cinematic entertainment that sucks you in and won’t let you go until you cross the finish line.

Before You Know It packs a lot of character development into 98 minutes. By the film’s end, tears are shed (perhaps including yours, the audience member’s), jealousies uncorked, and secrets aired – but while each player has their disparate arc, they defy contrivance.

Melding the anxiety of the unknown and the fear of who we truly are in our core, all that we try and compartmentalize emotionally as human beings, Gray crafts a movie that is deeply personal, thought-provoking, and thrilling.

Baumbach pulls no punches, and exhumes a personal calamity, most people wouldn’t have the stomach to sift through again. It’s wrenching stuff to be sure, but it’s also excruciatingly funny, loaded with empathy, compassion, and understanding too, featuring outstanding performances from its leads, Driver and Scarlett Johansson.

There’s the potential for melodrama, but despite the misleadingly grandiose title, The Truth is not in the business of the grand, tormented revelation. Instead, it’s an accretion of little moments, often very funny, sometimes a little sad, but always embedded in the reality of these sharply drawn, idiosyncratic characters.

The work is emotionally instructive but thematically unfocused. Despite having a fascinating story to tell and some illuminating subjects, American Factory comes off as slightly over-zealous, educationally speaking, and is without a manageable sense of moral edification as an observational documentary.

Aquarela is truly a theatrical experience that benefits from the dark, distraction-free nature of the theater, in which the cycles of water, from frozen lakes to hurricanes, becomes an all-consuming force.

At its heart, the film tells an incredibly touching – and altogether unexpected – human story. Entertaining and educational in equal parts, Simó’s animated film is one you don’t want to skip.

Try as the filmmakers do to conjure a restorative kind of magic in its searching, yearning storyline of renewal, they are not able to come up with much more than a limping comedy about a woman with all-too-easily-explained mental issues.

Angry Birds Movie 2 fills the screen with flashy characters, appealing set pieces and a voice cast filled with lively voices.

Similar to the cringeworthy performance art that wraps itself around the core of the film, This Is Not Berlin is emotionally hollow, more than a bit confused, and regrettably forgettable.

Because we’re living in the worst timeline, these actors and concept are wasted in a movie that lacks spark, flavor, spice, and generally anything that generates or even resembles substantive heat.

Overall, despite a few profound explosions of emotion, the remake is more tonally overbearing than it is dramatically rewarding.

Shadyac’s movie may ask difficult questions about the ills that society grapples with today, but it tackles them in a shallow, facile, sometimes uncomfortably out of touch manner.

Love, Antosha isn’t revelatory in its treatment of Yelchin’s life and career but it profoundly serves as a reminder of just how talented he was, and further reinforces the fact that he was just beginning to burgeon as a creative force.

Tel Aviv on Fire is a summer gem unlike any other you will see this year–an invitation to laugh at a world in decline.

Possibly led by nobler intentions, the Israeli writer-director ends up cashing in on the mettle of those involved in a bold rescue mission, tweaking a terrifying reality until it resembles little more than a banal thriller.

Making the plunge into full-on Saturday Morning cartoon territory with its ludicrous over-the-top-ness, Hobbs & Shaw is a quippy, explosively kick-ass, utterly preposterous buddy romp that injects some much-needed nitrous oxide into an otherwise stale summer movie season.

Similar to RGB, Raise Hell preaches to the small choir that adored Ivins, but this documentary sings a beautiful new psalm that will reach new disciples and renew the follower faith like a tent revival.

With the bar for breakout genre flicks being set so high in recent years, one can’t help but feel that Radio Silence is capable of something more substantial and memorable in its craft. Like most of Grace and Alex’s wedding gifts, Ready or Not is certainly diverting but hardly essential.

This is often an insightful film, but it’s full of delights for journalism, history, and political junkies alike. It doesn’t fully answer the challenging problem of where the line between the two needs to be, but at least it’s asking the right question.

The problem is Estes’ script. There are some real clunkers twisting around in the dialogue, and this viewer was way ahead of its big twists (and I never figure out big twists).

The film’s title isn’t just referring to the past, but what everyone involved witnesses in their communities everyday. By letting this fester and not confronting it dead on are we not saying we’re fine with being “barbarians’? It’s a credible question the filmmaker leaves you to ponder in private.

It’s a sign of how quickly it feels like the world is being torn apart around us that even a ripped-from-the-headlines documentary, such as Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim’s The Great Hack, can feel almost dated.

Tiny is a sobering contemplation on flaws, forgiveness, and redemption that deserves to be recognized.

Into the Ashes could have been a better film if only Harvey was less interested in making a by-the-numbers revenge exercise.

Berman ultimately turns his incredible meta-story into an ode to documentary filmmaking. And its exhilarating stuff because you have absolutely no clue where this movie is going to take you next. Berman’s doc keeps pulling the rug from under you, and it’s a high-wire act of reinvention that rewards the viewer at every step.

Some movies aim for lofty vulgarities; this one aims low and hits all the marks. ... The result is tone deaf, dated, never sexy nor funny enough to grab our interest. What could have been good fun becomes a perpetual drag of jaw-dropping crudities and cringe-inducing antics that were seemingly written and directed by a horny teenage boy with no sense of taste.

It’s a compelling watch to be sure, this nearly unhinged desire to democratize the access to art, and ultimately an offer that’s too hard to resist.

Without a marriage of inspired storytelling, straight up regurgitation doesn’t elevate new tech. Also, thinking about could and should, one needs to consider good taste, but that’s clearly not driving any of the decisions here.

A comedy that’s really quite hyper-violent, a little nasty in tone, and never as funny as it should be. [SXSW work-in-progress review]

It takes a huge leap of faith to go along for the ride, but Boyle’s impassioned, viscerally paced, and well-directed movie is so heartfelt, even the biggest pessimist will likely begrudgingly warm to it, flaws, and off-key notes and all.

Ultimately, Spider-Man Far From Home turns all its intelligent themes into a triumphant story of self-belief for Peter Parker.

McCarthy’s film manages to balance an audacious reinterpretation inside a loving ode to the original.

The film succeeds as a fun, late-night moviegoing experience, though those looking for something more substantial or memorable, may want to just wait for the next ‘Conjuring’ film and hope it overcomes the hex of the series’ increasingly conventional routine.

Maiden simultaneously functions as a timeless ode to passion and a reflective account of a fascinating highpoint in the history of women’s involvement in the sports industry.

For a film that literally isolates its characters from the rest of the world to confront each other head-on, the drama plays more conventional than challenging.

In keeping with the movie’s mission of being many things at once – a rom-com, a thriller, a low-budget actioner – Murder Mystery also makes an honest if flat attempt at sentimentality that, admirably, is never meant to be taken as an emotional core so much as a springboard for an action-packed finale.

While the reboot possesses a campy charm that advanced ironists are bound to find entertaining, an eerily effective score from Bear McCreary and a scene-stealing performance by Brian Tyree Henry, none of this is remotely enough to make up for a sheer lack of imagination.

Once the flood of heavily redacted documents starts flowing in, Boundaoui’s measured but righteous indignation bends toward what she calls the gray “dangerous place” between paranoia and the truth.

Admirable, ambitious and impressive, but ultimately aloof, Midsommar has its delights for sure, but it lacks the emotional depth to match the sharp insights it has into the evils of the ambivalent, wishy-washy relationship (run as fast as you can).

Containing some of his most open reflections and most electric performances, Rolling Thunder Revue is a terrific addition to the Dylan film canon and an absolute must for Dylanophiles.

Although Miller invests heart and soul into the performance, maybe even career-best work from the actress, and the rest of the cast, especially Hendricks, are excellent, Ingelsby’s screenplay foolishly decides to lay its interests on Deb’s terrible taste in men rather than her daughter’s disappearance.

Leto sadly feels more like the conclusion of summer than the start of the year’s brightest season, and is too devoid of energy to warrant a recommendation to anyone other than diehard fans of Serebrennikov’s prior work.

Despite its sometimes questionable jokes, provocative cultural trolling and a shaky plot, Shaft isn’t either a full-on misfire nor blaxploitation rejuvenation. Instead, Shaft is a decent, if slightly tepid, action comedy anchored by a hilarious performance by Samuel L. Jackson.

For how much Changeland mostly feels like a story grounded in reality, its dream-like conclusion—or lack thereof –kills, with lethal injection, any belief that a journey has actually taken place.

Cooley bursts out of the gate in his directorial debut with high energy, tight storytelling, a rousing adventure, laugh out loud comedy, charming new characters, and most importantly, a tender, and dare I say personal, core.

Whatever the case may be, MIB International is a failure on just about every level, and instead of 3D glasses, movie theaters should be handing out the neuralizers at the end instead to help us all forgot the cringe-worthy memory of what we just watched.

Its atrocious, expository dialogue, cumbersome plot, whiplashing character motivations, unintentionally funny moments, and often corny costumes, ensures, Dark Phoenix will be remembered in the annals of mediocre movies (and for somehow utterly wasting Jessica Chastain, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McAvoy in the same film).

As a primer for deeper dives, including Wadleigh’s film, it’s mainly successful, contextualizing the events and providing some never-before-seen footage. Yet for those already versed in what transpired on Yasgur’s farm, Goodman’s film is really just playing the hits.

Like the kimchi stew it prominently features, this is comfort food at its best. Given its origins, it should feel like something out of a lab, but this is a charming crowd-pleaser in the best sense.

In a film that is so disinterested to conforming to accustomed mainstream movie audiences taste and rhythms, and is committed to its sometimes difficult choices, the bold and exacting Beanpole sometimes feels damn-near radical.

Despite this disappointing effort, Diao continues to impress with the clever use of his camera. Now, one just wishes he could find the substance to pull all this style together in a winning fashion.

Taylor’s film only really works if you turn off the rational part of your brain, which isn’t fully developed until you’re in your 20s anyway. If you can ignore the plot holes and gaps in logic, Ma is a fun, dumb time at the movies.

A flimsy, unremarkable story of obsession.

Sure, Godzilla: King of the Monsters fulfills its promise of Titans and destruction, but at the cost of the plot, characters, and emotional investment. You know, the things that actually make a film good.

The film’s half-hearted politics — which do make a statement, regardless of intent — are perhaps less egregious than a movie that’s simply going through the motions for the bulk of its running time.

His film feels more like a collection of wonderfully envisioned set pieces that don’t fully form a coherent whole.

In Bed with Victoria is buoyed by irresistible performances on the part of the titular lead (Virginie Efira) and inevitable romantic interest Sam (Vincent Lacoste). It is their turns that imbue the film with its energy, even if its generic formula and social milieu is at times too familiar.

As a policier, Oh Mercy! is an affectionate homage to crime cinema but also an engaging variation on the genre’s tropes.

Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo begins to feel like a human rights violation ... It’s almost impossible to stress how unpleasant this moviegoing experience was, to the point where it’s difficult to imagine a human being making this movie and considering it art.

Unfortunately, “Tommaso” is far more navel-gazing and long-winded than intimate, in as much of a creative funk as its protagonist.

There’s something frustrating about Noé’s approach, but also an undefinably admirable quality to the extremity of his showmanship.

A handsome production and ambitious in scale, the impact of The Traitor is muted by the familiarity of its well-worn tropes.

The film’s dialogue is exceptional.

Meandering ... The film somehow lacks the structural cogency necessary to support a compelling narrative, while also encompassing enough discernible plot conventions to reveal a screenwriter’s meddling.

In its refusal to bend to unrealistic notions of escape, Joy is a bravely dark movie.

A demented and often-uproarious class-conscious satire, Parasite falls slightly short of Bong’s greatest work.

While not quite arriving at the delirious cult highs of a classic like “Ichi the Killer,” “First Love” is Miike’s most accessible work in years.