Sisu communicates the basics without glossing over the record, and best of all without taking up time better spent liquifying bad guys.

It’s playful but serious at the right moments and wistful, without being on the nose, about how growing up is the greatest adventure. Just like a bedtime story, Peter Pan & Wendy is poignant and fanciful, and it soars through its 103 minutes as if it can make time stand still.

Sentimentality, earnestness, and the ability to tap into naked vulnerability—normally [Gunn's] great qualities—get the best of him, turning ‘Vol 3’ into a largely maudlin, overwrought, overstuffed, and melodramatic mess that only works in fits and starts.

As it is, the enormity of these feelings is trapped, lingering unexplored with nowhere to go, and the frustration felt as a viewer eventually gives way to disengagement.

Twilight suggests the futility of trying to solve some labyrinthian plot and that, instead, one should train their lens away from the facts and onto the people affected.

It’s incredibly soulless, disposable, and as generic as they come.

Are You There? God It’s, Margaret does an admirable job of honoring a beloved touchstone in the lives of so many young women. Frank yet warm, charming yet brutally honest, Craig’s film pays its due diligence to Blume and her cherished novel.

The Covenant is so self-assured in its noble filmmaking values and beliefs. It makes a knowing nod between two men— and the heroically punishing sacrifices they risked for one another— one of the most moving moments on screen this year.

If giving the public more of what they want is the real game here, that could certainly be accomplished without all the puffed-up verbiage. Peedom’s greatest asset is her treasure trove of eye-popping nature photography — true reverence for the sacred rivers means allowing them to speak for themselves.

Legislation has passed to fix Japan’s “aging problem,” and temper hate crimes against the elderly: anyone over the age of seventy-five can apply for government-funded assisted suicide. From this bleak premise, Chie Hayakawa’s beautifully humanist Plan 75 takes flight.

Ultimately, Aster just unleashes his inner freak and vomits it all on the screen, with anxious flop sweat, jittery bodily fluids, squishy terror, paranoia, and some gut-busting laughs that prove this writer is deeply troubled in the best and most complicated odd way possible.

Paint is a truly strange film that is never the full-on comedy that one might expect, but it also never commits to the despair that seems to be lingering right under the surface. Despite a truly unhinged final twist that almost makes the entire film worth it, “Paint” is more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny.

The film is in fact so busy introducing characters and churning through plot points that there’s not really even time to let animation powerhouse Illumination give it a spin of inspired silliness that made the “Despicable Me” franchise such an unexpected hit.

It really is a celebration of Judy Blume. There are tough subjects they cover, but you ultimately leave the movie feeling really touched by her work and the compassion she has for her readers and fans, even if you’ve never read her novels.

You can see the conflicts and dramatic beats coming from a mile away, and the corniness of the ending is absolutely immeasurable. It’s an inoffensive and even likable picture, but not a particularly compelling one.

With its uncompromising and full-frontal depiction of the elements that give us life, “De Humani Corporis Fabrica” tests our levels of comfort in accepting we are essentially all decaying entities made of organic material. It also makes us reconsider our relationship with medicine.

Even if we don’t overly connect with the personal growth stories of either Renfield or Rebecca, thanks to Cage, “Renfield” is the rare horror-comedy to find the balance between respect and playful irreverence.

Like its lazy title, Murder Mystery 2 settles for the lowest version of itself.

Taking tropes and toying with them, carefully and creatively hitting social and cultural beats and concepts, there is a refinement at play that contemporizes and enriches the classic presentation of middle America and those who live there. The creative refresh of Americana adds much-needed light and shade to a familiar narrative making it feel unique.

While Kim’s encyclopedic dive may not offer much revelatory information, it nevertheless acts as an insightful and streamlined primer into Paik and his work, allowing fellow artists and critics the time and space to speak about Paik and the radical shift towards video art.

Great actors and inspired performances can only help a film so much. And in the case of “A Good Person,” Zach Braff presents another competent movie that checks all of the dramatic boxes but does so in a way that feels like ChatGPT has already invaded Hollywood.

As a sports movie, “Air” is competent in all the right ways — good performances, strong dialogue, and a nice focus on 1980s production design and world-building — landing in the upper echelons of the Dad Movie lexicon.

Sometimes, you have to be really smart to be really stupid, and “Joy Ride” threads that needle with aplomb.

It’s about as well-acted and enjoyable a version of this particular thing as you’re likely to find.

A portrait of an eccentric town that almost feels like a social experiment, just as much as it’s a murder mystery, Last Stop Larrimah is a shaggy, fascinating tale that marries Duplass Brothers-style absurdity (they act as producers here) with the ever-popular true-crime genre to pretty enthralling results.

Johnson and Kendrick are just terrific together — ample chemistry, excellent comic byplay — and the sense of play, the feeling of one-upmanship in their scenes together, immediately cranks the picture up a notch.

Torres peels back layers of the immigrant story in something packaged as entertainment. It may appear whimsical, but you don’t need to dig too deep beneath the surface to find universal emotions underneath.

Mustache does its job. It gives Ilyas catalysts for growth other than the cookie duster hanging out under his nose, and the writing invites us to laugh with him, not at him because it’s one thing to laugh and another thing to sneer.

You Can Call Me Bill isn’t a travesty; hearing Shatner discuss his life is always fascinating. But instead, the film’s a missed opportunity to unpack one of the more enigmatic figures in our public consciousness.

Geoghegan’s Brooklyn 45 is largely able to rise above its shortcomings and deliver a unique, chilling story about the horrors of war and unsettling depths of humanity.

Every franchise has its blips, but the magic has fizzled here. Lightning hasn’t struck twice, and it’s a real shame.

There’s a lot of potential in a legal thriller set in the days before German reunification and the end of the Cold War, just as there’s potential in a colorful heist movie that upends the formula and makes the illegal legal. But Tetris fails to thread a particularly tricky needle, resulting in a movie that feels more like a failed ‘90s blockbuster than anything else.

Boston Strangler steps right up to the line of the hokiest girlboss tropes and narrowly avoids crossing into a cringeworthy injection of contemporary feminism into a historical narrative. Rather than blaring its priorities throughout, Ruskin’s film gradually reveals the biases suppressing the idea that women’s stories matter. It’s just enough of a twist on an otherwise imitative, iterative story to hold interest.

The movie’s practical and special effects are a rogues’ gallery of gougings, stabbings, shavings, and scalpings; those who like to have their stomachs turned will find much to cheer about. But is it actually scary – suspenseful, tense, trafficking in more than the cheap shock of a jump scare or vivid effect? Not really, no.

Throughout its trials and tribulations, Wild Life softly asks the question: what kind of life do you want to live? What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? And these kinds of inspired actions certainly move the heart and soul and prove that the best of humanity has their heart in the right place at the very least.

Pure power, John Wick: Chapter 4 is as exhilarating as it is exhausting. With this wildly satisfying world tour de force, Reeves’ Wick transcends icon status delivering the perfect bone-crunching crescendo to one of the great action franchises in cinema history. It’s pure gold.

Once you get on this one’s wavelength, it’s wildly funny and delightfully subversive.

What Longoria has created is less a history lesson and more a fairy tale that reframes an American success story within California’s Hispanic community. You may doubt its accuracy, but the message will resonate, and that is a far more interesting conversation than how closely Flamin’ Hot matches the Montañez Wikipedia.

No matter how silly or severe the movie may get, Daley and Goldstein always approach the material on its merits. This is a fantasy adventure from people who seem to enjoy fantasy adventures without equivocation.

Gods Of Mexico is a film less interested in breaking down its conceptual framework — or even pushing forward a fully realized thesis — than it is about creating a structured cinematic experience.

While the first two-thirds of the film gets the job done, it’s the third act where 65 goes all out, and it sticks the landing perfectly.

It both ticks genre boxes and throws up some touches that elevate it, such as a car karaoke scene. While not groundbreaking, the audience will root for everyone here, both in front of and behind the camera.

Scream VI builds to a powerful third act of grisly mayhem that is one of the best in the series.

Sadly, good intentions aren’t enough, and as good as the organization’s work is, the film feels like a letdown to the very women whose stories kickstarted the whole thing in the first place.

If a filmmaker can’t be bothered to try, then audiences shouldn’t be asked to care.

Garrel here delivers a witty and elegantly constructed film that joyfully draws parallels between acting and lying, being and pretending, while remaining breezy, fun, eminently accessible and even welcoming.

There’s a way to find the humor in life with mental illness. The Year Between, with exceptions, isn’t it.

The cast does its best with what they’ve got but only so much can be done. The mission might be complete, but it’s hard to call it a success, and there were undoubtedly casualties.

There is just enough on the film’s surface to keep the journey entertaining.

The plot is mostly irrelevant, aside from how it allows for Reeder’s ideas and imagery to flow. Oozing, gooey blood and messed-up school uniforms, secrets whispered in high school bathrooms, glitter dresses, and uncanny face masks all meld together to create a film rich in atmosphere and artifice.

Had it kept prodding at the political parallels of 1990 Berlin and Maria and Henner’s romance, “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything” would have sat beautifully at the intersection between the coming-of-age of a young woman and that of an old country. Instead, Atef opts to stretch out the story, stubbornly tugging at the corners of the narrative, expanding a tale rich in its metaphors until it becomes see-through.

A luminous and soul-nourishing microcosm built on profound love in the face of impending grief, the film reveals itself in the charged interactions between its multiple characters.

Penn’s admiration for Zelensky, the people of Ukraine, and their unified commitment to democracy is sincere, but Superpower is so stupid a film it’s galling to watch.

Afire is the uncompromising work of a master not only on conceptual and stylistic levels but also in terms of his emotional politics.

We Have a Ghost tries to add too many elements to the mix–the horror, the comedy, the drama, and the message about how we need to leave our dead behind. Without committing to a tone, it all feels a bit mangled. It’s a movie that wants to be a mix of everything but, in the end, winds up being nothing.

Bruiser is an anxious film filled with unmistakable beauty and obsessed with conceptions of family, love, growth, the past, and the future.

Although Smoking Causes Coughing isn’t as substantial or funny as some of his other films, it remains a breath of fresh air and contains enough moments of invention and flawless comedy to amuse and charm, particularly at a festival that has sorely lacked laughs so far.

"In Viaggio” is far from a puff piece disguised as an unbiased account. The power dynamics at play are ever-present, the same interactions that bring the Pope closer to his subjects denouncing the hypocrisy of sanctifying a man who preaches for equality.

This prodigal son’s reappearance ignites a rivalry a little Biblical and a little Shakespearean, though their macho melodrama hews most closely to the flavor of screenwriterly contrivance.

As it goes on, Cocaine Bear becomes far too sober an affair for its subject matter, where no amount of carnage can fully compensate for its lack of comedy.

Subtlety proves a scarce commodity as the debuting duo chops at this cautionary tale until its fragile narrative bones are fully exposed, dialogue stripped of any valuable nuance.

That love and suspicion can coexist is the most profound unspoken truth in “Ingeborg Bachmann,” and Von Trotta’s biggest strength here is drawing out that paradox in the relationships between men and women, whether they are artists or not.

Golda fails as a war movie, impenetrable to those unfamiliar with the Israeli-Arab conflict. It fails as a biopic, too, by refusing to scrutinize how Golda rose to power — and, most importantly, how she kept at it.

From one scene to the next, like paint strokes slowly giving shape to an idea on a canvas, one can draw thematic parallels between the individual stories.

No doubt Rogowski shines brightly in this role—he’s known for his physical acting and portraying tacit protagonists has become his speciality lately (“Luzifer” or “Great Freedom”)—but seeing the way Louvart films him causes ripples of delight, most probably saving the film from a decisive failure on a conceptual level.

Anchored by its competent trio of protagonists, The Adults would have been a lovely time if not for the overused mishmash of twee gimmicks.

The wretched allure of this process makes “Inside” worth the investment even when Katsoupis proves unable to resist the charming hands of cliché, bloating the script to serve the idea of an unconventional heist movie, when in his hands lie a much more interesting proposition.

Ultimately, it’s Sweeney’s show, and she excels in locating small crannies of tacit detail within these offhanded lines.

If the script plunges into the frustrating waters of predictability, Manodrome finds some solace in the asserted cast.

She Came to Me lacks the palpable chemistry of a rom-com and the sobering relatability of a Nicole Holofcener dramedy, but it does find moments of inspiration thanks to its A-lister cast.

It is a loving — and highly entertaining — ode to the outcasts who dream of nothing more than a life filled with fixing whirring gadgets and afternoons spent in “Star Trek” matinees.

This is a sweeping, lived-in romance that is as resonant as it is precise.

As the train goes, so does Terror Train: going around and around in its redundancy that the audience can’t wait to disembark.

The Reason I Jump is a rewarding watch that attempts to give insight into the interior lives of those living with autism.

She is Love feels incomplete; it’s a series of scenes searching for a narrative and a trio of talented actors searching for believable characters.

The First Step engages without patronizing and tries to provide a balanced portrait of Jones and his causes.

Marlowe isn’t the catastrophe that others may make it out to be, but it’s instead just inert, forgettable immediately after the credits roll. Jordan feels like he’s going through the motions, uninterested in bringing any personality to the genre.

Quantumania is not all dud, per se. Even if it’s not as comical or entertaining as usual, there is a good cast involved here, Kathryn Newton is a welcome edition, and Paul Rudd can’t help but elevate sub-par material. But otherwise, Quantumania is shockingly unremarkable.

Molehills to the rich feel like mountains to the working class, and Gravel finds the stylistic tools that can translate such scale into riveting cinema — and confer the kind of importance that the Julies all over the world deserve.

80 for Brady displays how Marvin’s sensibilities about friendship are primed for a mass audience. He knows the audience and, more importantly, that no one will mistake what he’s aiming for here.

However well Sharper is put together, the sum of its parts doesn’t quite add up, and it’s hard to ignore that something that laughs in the face of a linear narrative, and embraces bold complexities, feels too flat and par for the course.

If you go into Little Dixie expecting nothing more than to watch Grillo take out some bad guys, you’ll be more than satisfied with the ride “Dixie” has to offer. Just don’t go in expecting anything more.

This high-concept horror too easily crosses over from charmingly erratic to nonsensical.

Both breezy and deeply emotional, Brosh McKenna’s directorial debut could be a leader in the rom-com renaissance the movies have so desperately needed.

There’s not a single moment in the film that is palpably authentic or genuinely romantic, but the ensemble nonetheless puts their pluckiest foot forward.

What the script thinks is unique about itself is all surface level, resulting in a film that feels like a copy of a copy of something that maybe once had been original but now feels as fake as a wax figurine.

As the title suggests, Swallowed gives you something to chew on, but apart from a few shining and delicious morsels, it’s less of a feast and more of an underwhelming meal.

The two creative engines of the series might seem like strange bedfellows — the brainy Soderbergh and the brawny Tatum — but the duo brings out the best in each other. The director appreciates the earnestness of his leading man and finds ways to deepen that charm through quick-witted humor.

Knock at the Cabin does not disappoint. It’s a movie that reminds us why Shyamalan is one of contemporary cinema’s greatest alchemists and a prime example of a filmmaker at his best and boldest.

When a horror movie goes out of its way to make its viewers feel as terrible as “In My Mother’s Skin” does, then that movie might just as well make feeling terrible worth it. Dagatan’s eye for gnarly practical and CG effects is buttressed by solid visual sensibilities, occasionally hamstrung by stray washed-out nighttime sequences, and wicked morality.

The rom-com is a rich and vital love story that breaks the mold with its visual acumen and bright spirit. “Rye Lane” doesn’t gesture toward an awkward cool; it’s an effortlessly cool picture that finds glee in the sights and sounds of these characters’ lush surroundings.

The subjects of Kokomo City are quote machines, but their strength is that they make you listen to what they are actually saying and digest their opinions. Oh, no, they are not just here to entertain you. Points will be made.

There’s a curious shortage of honest-to-goodness laughs in Finley’s script; the humor is strained, and it doesn’t really land as science-fiction either. ... “Landscape with Invisible Hand” is, at best, an ambitious failure.

Watching Georgie embrace what’s making her vulnerable and realizing that doesn’t make her powerless is moving, and seeing this father and daughter connect is sweet. She, of course, will never let go of her fast-talking, hustling nature, but she now doesn’t have to do it alone.

On the surface, Talk to Me is a blast of demonic horror that will make your skin crawl. Underneath, it offers a new twist on the teen horror film that explores the complexities of grief and the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Park proves to be a director with style and wit to spare, staging revelatory sequences that walk the narrow line between comedy and provocation.

Adroit casting, writing, editing, performing and costuming shade the outline of an affair to a finely sharpened emotional realism, the cycles of fighting and reconciling we’ve all seen before regaining in rawness as if we’re now the ones living through it.

This little miracle of a film features a strong ensemble cast, mordant Southern humor, and sharp insights into the perils and comforts of loving with your whole heart