After five incredible seasons of “Key & Peele” skewering black masculinity in its various forms, the duo here settle for an uninspired riff on Los Angeles gang culture, stringing together fish-out-of-water vignettes by using a stray kitten as thread.

An honest and sharply drawn account of the eternal questions of ego, friendship, and sacrifice in the comedy world.

It really is charm that drives the feature, with Walken pleasingly zipping around on screen while the rest of the cast gamely rally around him, particularly Heard and Garner, who would likely still be plenty of fun in even a Walken-less feature.

The strength of Linklater’s films have always been their ability to capture the textures of lived experience, and Everyone Wants Some!! is no different in that regard: it is a confident, hugely enjoyable return to a universe that treats the connection to “Dazed and Confused” not as an obligation or cash grab, but as inspiration to match that film’s level of energy and cast chemistry.

Cohen’s willingness to do, or say, anything in order to elicit a chuckle at least somewhat salvages The Brothers Grimsby — right up to a riotously nasty climactic gag shoved down the throat of Donald Trump.

For all the elements that don’t mesh naturally, Admiral still manages to be intermittently engaging and fitfully exciting.

Creative Control has a lot to say, and style to spare, but stronger performances and better-drawn characters could have made its message even more effective and enjoyable.

It’s [Trachtenberg's] measured hand with tone that's really noteworthy, never over-reaching with each twist of the plot, keeping the tension on a simmer, and even when things boil over, “10 Cloverfield Lane” gets feverishly exciting but not hysterical.

At 127 minutes, Giannoli’s script feels overlong and a bit repetitive in its heroine’s disastrous performances. Lucien, the critic who helps propel Marguerite and her story forward, disappears for a large chunk of the film, only to randomly appear toward the end. Other than these missteps, Marguerite is worth watching with a well-earned grimace, largely for Frot’s pitch-perfect performance.

A low-budget, slow-burning film, Thelin and cinematographer Luca Del Puppo develop a relatable universe that never really gets too frightening, but it certainly digs into your conscience, and will make you think twice before letting a stranger into your house.

While slight, the film’s genuine feeling and overall comedic consistency has enough breezy charm to make it go down easy and pleasurably.

Hong’s two-part structure in Right Now, Wrong Then, instead of just being a cute formal trick, reveals a character’s troubled inner life in fiendishly clever ways.

Fey's work is strong, yet it's difficult to squash the impression that this could be a more powerful movie, and an even more significant showcase for Tina Fey.

Brash, brutal, and simplistic in equal measure, it’s a retrograde work that, for better and worse, delivers its old-school mayhem with punishing precision and unrepentant glee.

Beautifully shot and edited, with incredible archival footage throughout, and compellingly scored, The Last Man On The Moon is, more than anything else, an engaging look back at one of the most exciting times in American history.

A story that’s specific, but universal in many ways, of family complication and connection, A Country Called Home, bolstered by the excellent score by Bingham, and Poots’ delicate performance, is worth the time.

It’s a spectacular mess that’s shameless in its desire to entertain through sheer, misbegotten excess.

Unfortunately, it proves to be as disposable as the snack it revolves around.

With Only Yesterday, Takahata not only succeeds in transmitting how years can flash by, but also the way that passage of time makes clearer the moments that define our character, and go on to influence how we choose to live later.

It's an overwrought, stagey muddle that suggests that Davies, ever a-quiver on the extreme high end of the sensitivity meter anyway, has quivered right off it and plunged into the depths of bathos.

Old-school western fans won’t find a lot of originality here, but if you’re looking for a well-executed, straight genre exercise, give it a shot.

It’s exciting as a raw, provocative, and vividly realized cinema of sensation. Wood doesn’t invite us to observe White Girl so much as she invites us to involve ourselves in its drama.

The documentary struggles to remain relevant throughout its short run time, and wobbles between glorification and reflection until it completely tilts over.

As well-handled as the set pieces are, the connective tissue doesn’t pull you along, and then collapses completely in a messy, unsatisfying final act.

Structured as a low-key chase movie, unfolding with the dark urgency of a conspiracy thriller, living mostly not in your heart or even your mind but in the hairs on the back of your neck, "Midnight Special" actually emerges most resonantly as an almost mournful ode, or maybe a psalm, to the primal instincts of fatherhood.

Crafted as a kaleidoscope of color and nightclub sparkle, The Lure's glitter does not distract from the fact that this is a technically confident and often quite accomplished piece of filmmaking, with a rare ability to dance intuitively between linear plotting and phantasmagoric fantasy.

Unlike its protagonists, Touched with Fire never reaches either impressive highs or awful lows. It’s a film that is capably made in most respects, particularly in its acting and visuals, but it’s not truly successful.

Though How to Be Single marks progress from the standard genre narrative and gives Alice in particular a chance to be herself, it’s not a clean win. But I certainly had fun getting dirty with it.

Collette delivers one of the best performances of her already impressive career in Glassland.

Zoolander 2 is no disaster, but it’s almost worse; a tedious jag that barely works as a disposable and mild, if-its-on-cable-TV, diversion.

Diamond Tongues is refreshing because it isn't an indictment of a demographic, or even of Edith, but is a portrait of a young woman whose ambition has curdled into something more nasty along the way.

It’s a film that desperately wants to upend the tropes of the comic book movie, but perhaps more shocking than anything that comes out of the mouth of its often obnoxious titular hero, is how blandly the picture sticks to the origin story playbook.

It is shriekingly loud but never surprising; goofy, but rarely funny.

Identifying the method behind the Coens’ madness takes some work, as the film moves at such a rat-a-tat-tat screwball speed that following along often feels like clinging for dear life to the side of a speeding train.

Swiss Army Man is a big swing — there's no denying the risk in putting two well-known actors in a film where one plays a barely-mobile corpse — but also a big whiff that rarely connects its characters and situations to humor or empathy.

Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers is a flabby, goofy, comically inert cartoon.

What saves the movie is Solondz’s sensibility, which is still one-of-a-kind.

Heder's direction shines, shaping the film around the cast as each woman plays out their own specific nuances of loss and insecurity, and, occasionally, optimism. Tallulah is an impressive feature debut, and a welcome showcase for the talents of Page, Janney, and Blanchard.

The movie holds to a steady but too-straight rhythm, hitting all the expected romantic-drama beats, right down to the occasional argument that threatens to stop the date cold. But Southside With You is also winningly sweet and earnest, and refreshingly frank about the problems that minorities face when they try to get ahead in a culture dominated by white males.

What makes Sing Street such a joyously entertaining film (besides the songs) is that it thinks the best of its characters, and it presents them the way they’d like to think of themselves.

The end result is awfully sketchy, more a collection of ideas and memories than a proper film.

This film is an important historical record, and an important reminder of an event in American history that could have changed everything, that should have changed everything. There’s no reason why it still can’t. Newtown is a crucial reminder of that.

Focused on fetishizing rather than intimately depicting, director Chad Hartigan has produced a warm-hearted yarn that treats its two African-American leading men like props in his white-washed game of chess.

The tale of Choi and Shin is a true stranger-than-fiction one, as good a piece of material as a filmmaker could help for. It’s just a shame that, for the most part, The Lovers And The Despot feels like it’s giving you the Cliff Notes version of the story.

Beckinsale’s performance is so funny in fact that it sucks a lot of the air out the room for her co-stars. Whenever she’s in a scene, she delivers so many pithy putdowns per second that it’s hard to pay attention to anyone else. And whenever she’s not around, the movie dims.

The beauty of Little Men — and of the director’s work in general — is that it displays a rare understanding of how the world works.

There's a tangible sensitivity to Kate Plays Christine that is constantly present as the project explores two personas and a gamut of topics (gender politics, gun control, and depression among them).

The Intervention may not offer many new experiences, but its combination of tart and sweet is satisfying.

Deeply over-reliant on flashbacks, and ones that don’t particularly transition well, Jane Got A Gun is nearly a holding pattern movie.

While there are some missteps in the story, there’s a lot to admire in The Free World, particularly in what is sure to be a breakout role for Holbrook.

As uneven as the psychodrama can be at times, one thing is clear, Ross is a major talent worth watching. He’s got an eye, a strong p.o.v., and the movie has many perceptive observations about the self-destructive perils of possessiveness, ownership, and holding on too tight.

There's vision here, clearly, and through the use of eye-catching frames and a standout score, "The Fits" works like magic as an experimental performance piece. As an engaging work of well-rounded cinema, however, there are more than a few missteps.

This gentle comedy is more interested in doing justice to the spirit of his achievement and the style of late-'80s comedy than the details of his life, but the resulting confection is sweet and simple.

It’s an incredibly moving film that encompasses a wide scope of global issues through the intimate remembrance of one life.

By extension of the film's unending niceness, Waititi has made a movie mired in the middle-ground, a terrain marred by the absence of innovation.

The differences between Goat and a Very Special Episode of some Disney Channel sitcom are, at times, limited to the amount of on-screen puking. That said, Neel, Roberts, and Green do have a good feel for the vagaries of bro culture’s macho codes.

Immersive and committed to its austere form, the solemn, often-dialogue free Dark Night never spoon feeds and always allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

Marston and Sheppard have come up with a terrific premise, and have worked it into an often highly entertaining movie. But after a while, all the narrative ellipses and question marks start to feel like an affectation — beguiling on the surface, but un-genuine.

The powerful performances by the three leads really help create the brothers’ distinct vision.

In script and performance, the film is an articulate howl of anguish and rage given depth by a discerning comprehension of the ways various communities can rely on faith for very different means.

Is Christine voyeuristic, or even exploitative? Very possibly. But it’s also vivid, intense, and artful.

Captain Fantastic uses bleak but gentle comedy to pinpoint the variety of ways we wrestle with grief, but the film undermines Mortensen's performance and its own thematic ambitions by presenting the character as little more than an idealized fantasy figure.

Though Certain Women is difficult, it’s hardly obtuse. And for those willing to trust that Reichardt is in full command of this material, “Certain Women” is utterly enthralling.

An old-fashioned tale of heroism in the face of insurmountable odds, The Finest Hours is never less than aggressively hokey and manipulatively sentimental — and, in the end, better off for it.

Manchester by the Sea is the kind of movie that doesn’t seem to be headed anywhere in particular for long stretches. And then, almost unexpectedly, it arrives.

Belgica is just like its characters, unwilling to shake a fascination with superficial pleasures to dive into any significant interactions.

Tedious and painfully miscalculated, Dirty Grandpa is never as filthy or funny as it thinks it is.

Moretz strikes a convincing empowered-badass pose but has no amount of charismatic fearsomeness can energize the illogical latter portions of The 5th Wave, which are driven by revelations about the aliens that, to put it bluntly, make no sense.

Martyrs is only eighty minutes long, sans credits, yet still it manages to cram four bad horror films into its meager runtime.

A refreshing and relevant cinematic representation, Naz & Maalik is an impressive debut for the filmmaker and actors.

Working at cross-purposes, Colonia tries to have it both ways, wanting to be a shocking true story drama and a riveting piece of moviemaking. But it’s not intelligent enough to accumulate any emotional payoff, and it’s too generic and unsophisticated in its execution to work purely as popcorn entertainment.

This isn’t an overly sentimental story; those expecting the emotional swells of other British fare like “Pride” and “Kinky Boots” should adjust their expectations. The Lady in the Van is a more buttoned-up narrative, but it’s no less engaging thanks to Smith, Jennings, and Bennett’s script.

The entire film seems cloaked with a general vibe of “good enough.” Embarrassingly cheap CGI effects, poor ADR, and slipshod, jarring editing are the technical failures that compound with the creative ones to indicate a movie that’s not just miscalculated, but seemingly committed to putting together, at its best, a deliverable product and nothing more.

Bay's overwrought tendencies simultaneously lead to the film's most compelling sequences of tense, bloody battle even as they forestall the more nuanced storytelling that would be crucial to truly unpacking the attacks. Bay may see the film as a cry of truth; muffled by his own predilections it's only a whisper.

Moonwalkers takes a brilliant idea and runs it to the ground thanks to a confused and illogical screenplay, an atonal execution, and a bizarre addiction to Tarantino-level gleeful ultra-violence awkwardly crammed into what was obviously supposed to be a biting satire.

Tumbledown strikes a delicate, moving tone that hits more high notes than lows.

As pitifully generic as its title, The Forest hews to clichés until its final, dying breath.

It's an absorbing, even thrilling head trip. It is a Heart-of-Darkness voyage of discovery. It is a lament for all the lost plants and peoples of the world.

What’s interesting about Lamb is that it doesn’t stand in judgment of its protagonist; it neither condemns him for what are undeniably bad and illegal choices, nor does it celebrate them either. Though not always successful, this is a complicated film that should cause its audience to continue to think about its characters and the actions they take.

With his second feature, Roeck shows that he’s a talented and patient genre storyteller, even though his film’s rather flat cinematography and low budget doesn’t match his obviously more grandiose vision.

This Point Break doesn’t ever connect with anything, even its own desire to celebrate the extreme.

Fitfully entertaining, and even more rarely actually funny, Daddy's Home, tellingly, only really comes alive in the very last portion of the third act.

In the end there's nothing surprising in Sisters, except for the fact that it isn't anything more than a party movie.

Mascaro’s film is an auspicious, original, and absorbing work that thrills with its look into this little-seen world and the dreamers that inhabit it.

It’s arguably Tarantino’s ugliest and most political film, but not his best by some distance.

For all the film’s politics, Arabian Nights can also be whimsical, swooningly romantic, inspiring, fascinating, or deeply sad.

It’s as successful as it is ambitious.

Crafted with exquisite care in the vein of its subject, though it occasionally feels overly precious (criticism that might be leveled at the restaurant itself by its detractors).

It’s dizzying stuff, and virtually everything that Gomes tries his hand to works: it’s a film that’s moving, sad, exciting, fiery, and funny.

Abrams makes big decisions and takes chances that command respect, especially in the very safe current tentpole film industry, but he doesn’t always quite sell them as he could. Still, as this new chapter props the franchise back up on sturdy legs, the Force seems to be in capable hands with a fresh forward direction.

Without an amusing instinct in its cowboy-hatted head, this painfully protracted, puerile effort meanders about the Old West as if it were making up its nonsense on the fly. The result is a torturous genre joke that marks a new low not only for the star, but for the art of cinematic comedy.

Body is very much an exercise, but by a couple of guys who are already showing a confident handle of coaxing solid performances out of their cast, sustaining a mood, and not reaching beyond their means.

Low on ideas and high on atmosphere, Dixieland is a promising debut, but it likely won’t find you overwhelmingly writing back home about it.

This is ninety minutes of comic actors having a genial go at middle-of-the-road material. It doesn’t have any guts, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.

A bold, blunt, yet clinically intelligent film that provokes as much for its dark humor as for its righteous outrage, it's all at once a gripping thriller, an incendiary social critique and a mordant moral fable.

Lovely to look at, charmingly played throughout, and with a sense of fun that is more playful than subversive, The Brand New Testament is a bouncy treat: not so much heresy as whimsy, with a smooth matte finish and a mischievous grin.

This soulful and serio-comedic drama is far less interested in race and much more concerned with examining the state of contemporary male friendship.

The Girl in the Book is an auspicious debut for Cohn, a showcase for VanCamp’s true acting abilities, and a fascinating feminine story.