It’s a film that requires you to indulge its patience-testing pace, monotonous dialogue delivery and frustrating anti-characterization for a very long time before you earn the right to unwrap the borderline transcendent gift of its absolutely beautiful ending.

As an embodiment of existential anxiety, it’s often effective, but other than stunning composition work and a few blips of vibrant harmony, it’s largely empty as a romance.

It’s when Johnson strays from strict adherence to the concept that the most profound insights come.

Blank knows exactly what narrative territory she’s in and uses the dramatic conflicts at bay to make a number of decidedly funny and oh, so painful points.

A heavy film about the indignities victims of domestic violence have to experience to be safe, Herself still possesses much grace and doesn’t dare to wallow in its misery. It’s also a poignant film about what it takes to be at peace and how it is everyone’s duty to make sure their voices don’t go unheard.

By the time that the sun is up and Peggy Lee is singing “Is That All There Is?”, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets has proven to be an impressively affecting and even slightly tragic piece about the homes away from home that provide comfort, as well as just how fleeting that comfort can feel in the bright light of day.

The film is more of a curiosity, preaching to the already converted.

What an extraordinary film this is.

Empowering, saddening, amusing and aggravating in roughly equal measure, with a very small side order of social critique, Bravo’s film marks a huge step up for her and a definitive answer to the question that @_zolarmoon posed to Twitter in October of 2015: yes, y’all do wanna hear the story about why she and this bitch here fell out!!!!!!!!

Simien’s strengths come to the forefront once again and that’s what makes it so difficult to pinpoint why the final product doesn’t exactly gel together as it should.

Like a Boss is screamingly funny at times, thanks largely to the talented cast.

While The Sonata has no shortage of gripping moments, it’s still missing the weirdness and stylishness that made the similarly themed “Rosemary’s Baby” or “The Frantic” classics.

With a lackluster script, shaky supporting characters, and weightless dialogue, Disturbing the Peace is the rare film that feels void of purpose or direction.

One of the strongest emotions that come through in the documentary is that the singer wants to be in control of who she is, her narrative, and her choices. So, it’s only fair that she is in control of her documentary because it will be watched by millions.

Characters this lovely only come once in a blue moon.

Zombi Child is the rare film that’s both rich in ideas and fun, a reckoning with forces colonial powers would like buried, but that won’t stay dead.

It’s a dull, plodding retread with new souped-up VFX that’s deeply uninvolving.

What the newbies can’t recreate is the coked-up, jet-fueled delirium of Bay’s efforts, particularly the second “Bad Boys,” which may be as pure a peek into a narcissist’s id as has ever been captured in a summer studio picture. It’s a loathsome, ugly movie, but fess up, it’s one you’re still thinking about. Bad Boys For Life is, by most standards, a “better” movie. And you’ll forget it by next week.

Schechter’s ideas remain strong through all of the confusion, and Long’s performance stands out due to its subtlety.

You’ve gotta give Underwater this much, though: it’s not boring. It’s brief (95 minutes), knows exactly what it is, and Stewart and Cassell seem to be having a good time.

Nicolas Pesce is a tremendous talent with a sick imagination that is distinctively his own, but “The Grudge” feels like payday one-for-them compromise. One that unfortunately sullies and derails the reputation of an otherwise on-the-rise filmmaker who should be above this kind of second-rate material.

The problem is not that Cats makes no sense . . . nor that the performances are mediocre (most of them are quite good). The murder weapon is the galling CGI intended to cover the actors in head-to-toe feline fur. Instead, the animation detracts from the film’s capable performers and inventive surroundings, drawing the eye reluctantly in like the sight of a person vomiting in the middle of an amusement park. It makes for a slow death, so overwhelmingly grotesque that it ceases to be interesting at all.

The Rise of Skywalker; is as much metafiction as Johnson’s film was. Rather than asking questions about what we really want from a series like “Star Wars,” and whether we’re ready to allow our childhood fictions to grow with us, J.J. Abrams and crew decide to lean on the emotional warmth of reunions, friendships, redemptions, and goodbyes. There is some heartfelt value here, or at least, some of it does admittedly produce some anthemic feels, but it doesn’t hold much weight.

The film is a pure expression of the id for a filmmaker who thrives on moving at 100 cuts per second; for everyone else, as the expression goes, your mileage may vary.

While Bombshell cumulatively paints an accurate portrait of the culture of silence that enables male entitlement against women they see as expandable, it seems unsure of the right way to handle conservative hypocrisies perpetuating that very toxicity.

Knives and Skin presents an unsettling mix of girlishness, macabre, sweetness, and despondency best encapsulated in a nail polish color sported by one of the characters: Rotting Corpse. Its humans are alien, its script is bizarre, its visuals are gauche. But this so-wrong-it’s-right feminine dirge puts the “fun” in “funereal.”

Authentically pensive and distressingly honest, Colewell remains true to its convictions by prominently exhibiting the uncomfortable truths of growing old. Remarkably, the film’s subject matter is treated with an impressively respectful restraint, opting to stay grounded and not venture down melodramatic sideroads.

If Radioactive spent more significant time with Curie’s eccentricities . . . we might have arrived at a real character study. Instead, the biopic’s strained narrative bonds dissolve, awash in a series of disconnected events.