It’s a scattered film, making too many vital points at once. By neglecting to bring them together into one single story, Clooney undercuts them all.

The Disaster Artist — a new film about the making of The Room — is not only the rare example of a genuinely funny biopic, but a subtle meta-commentary on the state of cult filmmaking.

It is undeniably effective in setting mood and tone, and it’s the kind of film that will leave audiences talking no matter what they think of it. If the sole purpose of art is to create an emotional response, Mother! is a masterpiece.

It’s frustratingly good at first, and then just frustrating, because it veers away from the things that make it unique, intelligent, and exciting.

For those capable of falling into the spell del Toro is casting, The Shape of Water is a breathless film, anchored by Hawkins’ visible, ardent longing for connection, and her fierce defiance when the things she loves are threatened.

The convincing child cast carries the film when the scares start to feel redundant.

Scott and Everett are terrific in handling material that demands seriousness and silliness by turns, and the movie does enough well that its flaws are tolerable, if not necessarily overlookable. It’s a charming way of ringing in the Halloween season.

The Dark Tower, helmed by Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, is so simplified in places that it seems outright generic.

Any pretense of storytelling gets thrown out the window as our emoji crew stops to play some quick nonessential games of Candy Crush and Dance Now, which basically act as elaborate commercials for apps desperately trying to hold onto their waning relevance.

Valerian isn’t a movie about plot, characters, or action; it’s a movie about places. True to its comic book roots, the larger arc exists to draw viewers into the beautiful, far-flung corners of Alpha. This makes it strangely episodic for a film, but also refreshingly light on complicated lore.

Some will say it’s pretentious, obtuse, and masturbatory, and they’d be able to find plenty of evidence. But there’s so much to love here, largely because the film is something of an inkblot. Concealed and mute, Affleck the ghost acts as a cypher on which to place one’s hopes, fears, and closely held suspicions about the meaning of life.

“It’s the first movie / song / book about life in the Trump era” has become trite, so I’ll say this instead: the movie is often quite literally a load of shit. But that can be comfortingly frank when it feels like the world is on fire, but we’re all just going to smile anyway.

Spider-Man: Homecoming brings the character back to his basics. In the process, it shows why he’s always been such a popular draw, and it makes a strong argument for a branch of the MCU / Sony heroverse that operates on a smaller scale than the rest of the world.

It’s beautiful, bombastic, and nearly indistinguishable from those that came before it.

It’s a meticulous piece of filmmaking, so honed and refined in execution that it becomes nearly unbearable at times.

Given that The Mummy only barely works as a movie on its own account, the question becomes whether it works as a franchise-starter. And the answer is that while its franchise elements are foregrounded, they still aren’t terribly compelling.

Wonder Woman represents a number of delicate balancing acts: between humor and gravitas; angst and adventure; full-blown, unvarnished superhero fantasy and the DCEU’s usual unpacking of what those fantasies mean.

From a technical and filmmaking standpoint, nothing about Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower stands out.... It’s as dry and straightforward as a reputable news report. But from a content standpoint, the film is riveting.

King Arthur has a vulnerable heart beating somewhere under all the grimy, sweaty muscles lovingly displayed for the camera. It’s just buried too often under narrative chaos, and the inexplicable ideal that if a story runs at double speed and triple energy, the gaping holes in the story will outpace anyone’s notice.

The scares are some of the best the entire series has to offer, and on that criteria alone it can probably be considered a success. But there’s no escaping the fact that as a standalone film, Covenant is wanting, neither truly making its own thematic points nor carving out its own unique place in the legacy of the franchise.

Virtually none of The Circle has any emotional or narrative impact.

Thankfully, Vol. 2 does come together in the end with a powerful emotional payoff, but that’s only after it becomes a computer-generated action-fest with the fate of the universe hanging in the balance again.

Gray’s prosaic style robs Fate of the Furious of any real sense of self-awareness or humor, which could never be said about Lin or Wan’s installments.

An exceptional cast does their damnedest with what they have, but the lines hang dully in the air. It’s like watching a high-school play starring a gaggle of anxious teens.

Maybe it’s instructive that Ghost in the Shell is a solid film made on a broken foundation. Maybe this is the movie that needed to be made so the backlash would help Hollywood question the kinds of cross-cultural adaptations it can make.

It’s a sleek and effective thriller, often scary and usually visually impressive. But too often, its reasons for doing absolutely anything amount to “because this is the way Alien did it.”

There’s a lot of fantasy in the usual end-of-the-world scenarios, but there’s a lot of horror there as well. Bokeh asks which of those reactions is more appropriate, and how they both play out. It’s a gentle story, as apocalypses go, but even without monsters, it becomes a painful, emotional question of strength and survival.

It’s largely a frustrating clone of the original movie — same songs, same script, often even the exact same shot choices — but it replaces every moment of authentic or moving emotion with bombast and hyperbolic overemphasis.