Overall, State Like Sleep is a satisfying movie about grief and an unsatisfying mystery.

Although the majority of Beirut proves to be quite the task to watch, it’s still rather refreshing to witness Hamm continue to come into his own as a genuine A-list talent.

By refusing to illuminate the detainees’ stories or the humanitarian crisis—not widely reported enough for Brady to take the audience’s familiarity as a given—they are trapped inside, The Island of Hungry Ghosts relegates itself to being little more than a pretty but wispy curiosity that fails its beleaguered subjects.

One of the most undersung and most potent pleasures of genre cinema is the excuse it has given us, time and again, to watch attractive people fall in love with each other, and if you’re in a romantic frame of mind, Racer and the Jailbird delivers so wholly on that front that it goes a fair way toward compensating for the film’s deficiencies elsewhere.

While Vitali is frank about the nature of his demanding and subservient relationship to the man, his warmhearted, dazzled, Everest-high respect for Kubrick’s talent remains undimmed even now. It is truly inspiring and touching just how little bitterness Vitali has in him, and it stems from his having no regrets over a life dedicated to something he believes in with utterly selfless purity.

Fascinating, atmospheric, and utterly strange in ways both good and bad, Ghostbox Cowboy pulls back the curtain on those trying to export the American dream and reaping the whirlwind.

Jones makes both narrative and formalistic leaps, which won’t be spoiled here, that initially are jarring in comparison to the lo-fi aesthetic that precedes it, but truly open the film up to broader implications about how we hold onto the past events and how they constantly resurface.

Though the film attempts to introduce a future laden with fascinating social implications, it maddeningly ignores them in favor of an overwrought, plodding, and inherently sexist romance.

Brownson’s misguided and desperate attempts to humanize Dolezal only expose how deeply selfish and self-absorbed this woman is. There is something sick, twisted and insulting about America’s fixation with Rachel Dolezal and the way her lies have given her a platform, albeit a negative one, that most Black people don’t have.

This debut marks a bright future for Vives and is an excellent entry in the romantic comedy format that doesn’t lose sight of who its heroine is the moment she falls for someone.

The film is a trifle, albeit one spiked with mirth and malice.

Beast takes a storytelling gamble, presenting itself as a psychological whodunit, before pivoting toward a more genre oriented plot. The risk doesn’t quite pay off, undercutting its thematic potential for thrills that aren’t quite that effective.

Ultimately, the latest Marvel event is ‘Civil War’ on steroids and as enormous a spectacle as you’ll ever see on the screen that’ll leave you shook. For a movie plot this thin and basic, ‘Infinity War,’ is remarkably gripping, supersized entertainment that should exhilarate audiences, electrify the box office and continue the Marvel hegemony for years to come.

It’s the kind of smoothly rounded, edgeless historical drama that’s built for maximum appeal, with a broad perspective and an easy to digest tone. Well-crafted and ably told, this is a film that’s wholly respectable though not particularly memorable, but still manages to connect with its earnest good intentions and desire to please.

Like its characters, Duck Butter is imperfect, but unlike human objects of our affection, it’s attractive despite its flaws rather than because of them.

The Devil and Father Amorth will polarize audiences, and while a good portion of Friedkin’s documentary will fail to change anyone’s minds, it will keep viewers gravitated to its sales pitch—the exorcism itself.

For Driver’s movie, Basquiat is a ghostly presence, popping up in snapshots or scraps of footage.

Marked with a conveyer belt quality, Kodachrome is every indie dramedy you’ve seen before, just like more of you’ll see after, and unlikely to create a cherished memory that you’ll want to revisit.

For all its faults – both in its construction and the execution of its themes – I Feel Pretty still manages to be fun in the moment. It’s sweet and silly with a scene-stealing performance from Williams, but it ultimately could learn from its own lessons. It’s not confident enough in its central premise, leaving the audience wanting something more.

The ugly truth here would be to tell you to just skip the film, and the dare is to actually pay money to see it.

Handsomely shot, evocatively designed, solidly cast and terribly daft, it also presents your friendly neighborhood reviewer with something of a challenge. With what seems like almost premeditated skill, it saves its worst instincts for the backend of its convoluted and barely credible narrative, a good arm-and-a-half’s-length beyond the impassible “spoiler wall.”

Dumont’s uncompromising approach to the material makes for a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and it should be clear where this particular viewer fell on that spectrum.

By allowing Ejiofor the time and narrative space, even allowing many of the sermons to play out in full, to express Pearson’s confliction, Marston has created one of the more restrained explorations of faith in quite some time.

In the right moments, Brad Peyton can stage a ceremoniously ludicrous set piece with grace and ease. It’s easy to follow the nonsense found in the last act thanks to his assured hand, and you can tell that he is having an absolute ball with its silliness. If only we could share in that enthusiasm for its tedious first two acts.

The cinematic equivalent of a bath bomb, this fizzy feature is sure to delight — at least until the charm fades. So unfurl your towel, dust off your bathing suit, and soak up that warmth.

Blockers is the kind of movie that Hollywood typically gets wrong. They make it too crude or too wild or too inconsiderate. Thankfully, Blockers is an unexpected triumph, even if it’s not quite as great as it could’ve been.

Revenge is a hugely satisfying horror movie, a real achievement on the parts of all involved.

Sweet Country is unmistakably a western in iconography and spare, taciturn tone, but it is also an incendiary slave narrative, in which the poetry of the filmmaking can barely contain a simmering fury and disgust at this most shameful of human institutions.

First Match is a culturally significant, capably-crafted film, but it leans on safe familiarities when it should seek risky rewards.

Desplechin lashes storylines and filmmaking gimmickry in to the one ginormous stewpot with gusto, slams the lid down on it and promptly forgets to turn on the heat. [Cannes Version]

All I Wish is inoffensive, mostly painless, and only occasionally grating. It is also, however, derivative, confusing, and largely pointless.

At its best, Pacific Rim Uprising is tedious and mildly diverting, but at its worst it feels like an out-and-out betrayal.

Beneath the film’s grunge and characteristically dingy aura, the daring Potrykus proves once again why he is one of the most promising young filmmakers and provocateurs around, as he wields weighty commentary, an extremely limited setting and a darkly comedic turn of events to his advantage. Relaxer is Potrykus’ most discomforting and unforgettable experience to date.

The filmmakers brilliantly set-up an atmosphere that feels uniquely cinematic and wholly original. But when impressive world-building is established and story takes over, Prospect quickly devolves into a mess of contrivances and overstuffed characters in its more problematic second half.

It’s a well-made, gutsy film. So, if you can withstand the whole soul-crushing feature, you’ll probably be glad you stuck it out. If “glad” is an emotion you can still feel afterward.

For a production founded on a tried and true indie formula – start with your characters, add in existential malaise, substitute plot with antics and awkward conversation – Pet Names is made with remarkable urgency

Tthe best elements of Don’t Leave Home – its foreboding tone, its photography, and Roddy Sr.’s soulful, remorseful performance as Burke – override its head-scratching missteps.

As striking as some of these performances are, 6 Balloons is not without its problems. At a barebones 74 minute running time that doesn’t dive into the emotional texture as much as it could, 6 Balloons at times, feels slight.

There’s still a lot of pleasure to be had here, whether from digging your fingernails into the armrest early on, to Freeman’s sly comic performance later.

There’s a lot wrong with Josie, but the thing that sinks it beyond the possibility of recommendation in any circumstance is its aforementioned third-act twist and ending.

Unexceptionally directed by Roar Uthaug (Norwegian hit “The Wave“), Tomb Raider is superficial even for a mainstream tentpole, clumsily and unpersuasively put together and tests and breaks suspension of disbelief at every turn.

Dazzling in form and a chase film at its heart, Ready Player One is exhilarating, but it also can’t sit still. Fitting to the content perhaps, the movie still arguably suffers from troublesome A.D.D. with its hyper fast cutting and its tendency to wander narratively.

A thrilling, near-silent film that brilliantly toys with the audience’s nerves while deftly avoiding familiar cliches, Krasinski shows a surprisingly assured and suspenseful touch within the horror genre.

They are tough and necessary questions that make Take Your Pills, for all its dizzying energy, a grounded and rigorous film. Though at times, it feels too squeamish to lean all the way into an idea or too hard on a particular truth, which makes it feel too deliberate and maybe not quite the earnest dissection it could be.

Journey’s End is about as good an adaptation as you can imagine of the material, and a film with compassion and humanity that goes far beyond its perhaps uncompromisingly prestige-y exterior.

Featuring a fittingly shallow funk-lite score by Christophe Beck, Gringo, is ultimately like a Taco Bell version of the ‘90s crime genre; tasteless, cheaply made and just as inauthentic.

Earnestly aiming to land with the weight of an Important Film married with Big Ideas, the more Submergence tries and strains to find connections to contemporary issues, the more those beats ring hollow. “Submergence” not only leaves the talent involved underwater, but the audience also longs for anything of significance to cling to.

Leto, with his whispery dialogue and complete lack of emotional range, fails to register on any level. While the film itself feels straight out of a Robert McKee seminar, as each twist and turn is telegraphed so blatantly, that it’s hard to see what Leto, who can be a good actor when he’s not too busy going all “method,” saw in it.

Despite its strong performances, notably from Reid, Pine, and Witherspoon, its wide collection of marvels and it’s joyful sense of self, A Wrinkle in Time crumbles under expectations. But it’s not so much a failure as it’s a flawed do-gooder that could make our world better. It doesn’t dazzle like the stars and it doesn’t transport us away, but it still offers hope.

With its politically charged themes of oppression and the genocide of Native Americans, and the play on how history has been presented in the past, Mohawk is a fascinating and engaging tale of bloody revenge.

Chappaquiddick hardly lands with the power of an exposé, and doesn’t bite hard enough to spur a reconsideration of the Kennedys. The film revives a chapter in Kennedy history, but what it means nearly forty years later is never quite clear.

The film’s best stability through all of these shifts is Willis who, while he could do a role like this in his sleep (and has), commands the screen and reminds us why he became an above-the-marquee star in the first place.

Love, Simon is filled with details and specificity, making Simon’s story feel real and authentic in each moment, from the music he listens to to the costumes seen at a Halloween party, elevating it above what could have been the after school special version of the same story.

The primary characteristic of Nostalgia is that it’s deathly boring, and difficult to sit through in its entirety.

While there are a few intriguing themes and ideas at play in The Vanishing of Sidney Hall, once the viewer perseveres through the over-editing the final product is disappointing.

There is a more polemic, thought-provoking work somewhere in 7 Days in Entebbe, held hostage by its commercial appeal.

Mute is in desperate need of a firmer hand. Once upon a time, that hand might have been Jones’. Now he’s invisible in his own pastiche.

Game Night is a winner, plain and simple. Brisk and engaging (and surprisingly powered by a score from Cliff Martinez that’s expectedly great), this is a comedy that’s worth rolling the dice on.

Ergüven’s sophomore film is a tonal disaster, jerking from shrill melodrama to screwball comedy and always at the most inappropriate of moments.

Freyne obviously intends all this as a grand allegory for refugee crises/immigration politics, but the logic applied to anti-immigration politics simply does not apply to anti-Cured politics. The allegory doesn’t track, and neither does the movie’s internal logic.

The problem with Dosunmu’s follow-up to the more compelling “Mother Of George” is that there is so little story — and what story there is moves at such a snail’s pace — that all you have to look at are Young’s impressive compositions and then you wait…and then wait some more.

Topicality is not mandatory, and it’s clear the agenda here is for salacious genre thrills rather than anything deeper or more profound, but when the film’s form is such an embrace of modernity, it feels like cognitive dissonance to have the story skew so old-fashioned.

Annihilation is mesmerizing and its awe-inspiring conclusion will leave your mind blown and splattered against the wall. In its final, surreal biopsychological moments the movie goes to an astonishing interstellar gear.

Vacillating between a playful comedy and a brooding melodrama, it’s a wonderful example of how one can work within the confines of homage yet emerge with a unique work in its own right.

While it’s Lawrence’s most mature and relatively subtle effort to date, it’s also, unfortunately, a slog. The director’s well-intentioned patience ultimately means nothing when its interminable pacing makes the movie feel twice as protracted as its longwinded, two-hour-plus running time.

It would serve its audience better if it paid more attention to a stronger structure and a believable plot, but its flaws don’t keep it from being affecting for those who like their love stories on the lachrymose side.

As beautiful as the picture is, the pleasures of Early Man are fleeting. Aardman’s own high bar isn’t quite reached this time around, and it might be best to temper your expectations.

As far as representation goes, the stunning, brimful, extraordinary Isle of Dogs can’t really be said to do anyone’s culture a disservice. Except cat lovers, who should probably mount a boycott.

Looking Glass is a hybrid Coen-pastiche and wacky Nic Cage B-movie.

While The Ritual is an incredibly shot and confident horror picture that does manage to crank up the tension for the first hour, an unfulfilling finale and subpar execution of commonplace motifs add up to a forgettable experience.

It’s an unexpectedly winning film, and even when you’re ready to write it off, it offers surprises that keeps you engaged. “Quirky,” “cute,” and “weird” may be overused adjectives, but sometimes those words fit, and sometimes those tropes do work well.

Peter Rabbit isn’t without its odd delights, and while it won’t serve as the definitive version of Potter’s adoring, timeless creation, Gluck’s film may find a way to burrow into your heart.

It’s an inspiring story, but Eastwood can’t find the spark to bring it life.

Outside In is not a story filled with events or even big moments, but, instead, accumulates its momentum through the numerous small decisions that eventually bring our leads to a hard won understanding.

Ostensibly aimed at an adult audience that craves equal parts romance and raunch, Fifty Shades Freed appears to have been written by a teenager – and not just because of its groan- and giggle-inducing dialogue, lack of emotional investment and thinly drawn characters. There’s no knowledge of any element of how the world functions, particularly in its approach to relationships.

Neither romantic nor comedic, When We First Met is almost too vapid to be aggravating. After watching it, you might be tempted to hunt down a time-traveling photo booth of your own so that you can undo your mistake. Luckily, this movie is so shallow you probably won’t even remember it after you wake up tomorrow

The murky moral dimension of the Black Panther world is wonderfully rich and complex and it gives great pause for its new king to reconcile. And yet, all this intricacy is resolved in rather simplistic fashion in the end. It’s just a superhero movie, one might say, but if you’re going to set up this fertile ground, you might want to really follow through.

The greatest benefit of the shock release of The Cloverfield Paradox is that going in cold makes the most out of the film’s bonkers turns.

It’s thrilling to have any semblance of Studio Ghibli back in our theaters and Mary and the Witch’s Flower will momentarily satisfy that hunger, but will leave you wanting more.

It’s the pair’s bond that helps to make the film more interesting than just a study of wealthy murderousness (though it’s great at that too). It’s also a portrait of female friendship that, despite the dark places it goes to, proves to be oddly touching.

Reitman is often at his best when he can join forces with an exceptional actor, and Theron once again helps with the heavy lifting.

For fans of the franchise, The Death Cure is a fairly serviceable finale.

Phoenix is almost otherworldly here. It’s his charismatic performance that often carries the film through its repetitive moments as he expertly takes Callahan on an emotional roller coaster filled with the highest highs and the lowest lows.

Gudegast does provide a good amount of grimy atmosphere to his L.A. setting, and the action sequences keep you involved even as the running time starts to get gruelling. But, at 140 minutes, Den of Thieves gets too caught up in its own indulgences, and that’s a crime it can’t escape.

The real-life heroes who bravely risked their lives deserve something better than the forgettable mediocrity that is 12 Strong, and truth be told, audiences deserve more too.

The country-fried romance written and directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf becomes a victim of self sabotage as it nears its (predictable) conclusion, removing any good will it created in its first half.

With the deliberate pacing and spare approach, some audiences may find Vazante and its austerity a taxing experience, particularly in its first half. But just as Virgílio awakens Beatriz, we’re drawn into both their worlds for the remainder of the movie.

As a film, Saturday Church could so much more, and its disheartening shyness keeps it from achieving greatness. A few choir boys short of a hallelujah, Saturday Church feels more like a subdued sermon.

Doueiri wrestles with the complexities of history and morality without ignoring the humanity of the individuals caught in this frightening maelstrom of a story.

With a filmography as curiously inconsistent as Collet-Serra’s, The Commuter is a wild, mostly entertaining combination of the director’s general bag of tricks. It’s over-the-top and fun, even if in its own fleeting way, and by the time you reached your location, you don’t feel swindled.

Simmons is naturally charming, but that only goes so far in a film strung together by half-baked characters and a gimmick.

Unlike traditional Westerns that depict a historical moment. the movement of people and money in Europe remains in flux, and consequently, so does this new breed of cowboy.

Paul King‘s marvellously rousing, deeply satisfying sequel — is not only another warm, friendly, massively good-natured family-friendly film, but it’s deeply caring, here to give everyone a light and entertaining diversion during these taxing times.

It’s an insightful film that delivers an honest portrait of four girls trying to navigate high school, expectations, friendships and their oftentimes heartbreaking need to be desired and loved.

Where In Between does succeed is in showing the relationship between the women and in refusing to judge them for their choices.

What makes Birdboy: The Forgotten Children so effective is the ability to turn the innocent into the macabre.

Bright tries to create a unique and dynamic world with the juxtaposition of harsh police life, crime and modern life contrasted with this imaginary magical realm, but it’s contrived, unconvincing and most of all calamitously preposterous.

This whole endeavor never becomes as bewitching as it should be. It’s never more than adequate, and while P.T. Barnum will go down as one of the most interesting men in history, this film won’t pull off the same feat.