It feels as if there’s a better movie in here somewhere, lost beneath the wild-eyed freneticism and the unsatisfying exposition.

Like the hundred pounds of latex cast over Fraser’s body, the film itself requires its performers to act through an overbearing pall. But for the most part, it has room for only one voice.

As straightforward in its conception as its unfussy title, Mitre’s latest can be described as an effectively utilitarian piece of cinema that exists to preserve the historical memory of his homeland and to pay tribute to some of the people who ensured that for once, the arc of history, as insufficient and belated as it usually is, did bend towards justice.

Empire of Light feels more like a sweet experiment on nostalgia and memory than an articulate film with something to say.

Often draped over each other like a pair of gorgeous statues, O’Donnell and Corrin strike palpable chemistry throughout, selling both their desire for one another and the consequent love born out of it believably.

Pearl isn’t just great; it retroactively makes its predecessor great, too. It’s a handsome and sad horror drama, with scenes and shots and performances that will make you wonder if you’re supposed to laugh, cry or shriek. Until you realize that the best part of this film is that you are absolutely supposed to do all three. And you probably will.

Polley strikes a hypnotizing rhythm amongst the women, who attack despair with cheeky humor (Women Talking is unexpectedly funny in parts) and uncertainty with astute deliberation, respectfully challenging each other on a course of action as much as lovingly braiding one another’s hair.

In the end, Lelio earns the powerful close of The Wonder with every temperate turn. His film, a career-best, departs like a birdsong, with an optimistic finale as perfect and revelatory as they come.

Within the first few minutes of Athena, it’s clear this is propulsive filmmaking with thematic substance.

Genuinely frightening in stretches and with the creep-o-meter jacked up to 1,000 all the way through, “Bones and All” is somehow more and less than a simple horror flick, and not quite a rambling romance.

If Ozon’s Peter von Kant has its minor pleasures, they come from the performers.

In a sense, Dos Estaciones creates its own gripping shot-chaser cycle of moods, the accumulative effect of landscape beauty, grim news, observed process (the machinery of making tequila), and abiding solemnity from Sánchez’s commanding turn, giving us plenty to digest when the incident-heavy final stretch occurs.

Well, it sounds a bit obvious to praise another Cate Blanchett performance – when is she not on fire? – but in this case circumstances force our hand. More otherworldly than Galadriel, more regal than Elisabeth, and more devilishly unrepressed than Carol Aird, Tár might just be the actor’s signature role.

We learn in the documentary Loving Highsmith that the author herself knew plenty about the duality that defined so many of her characters.

Throughout the film’s warranted nearly-three-hour runtime, Iñárritu writes the cinematic verses of an oneiric love poem to an ever-incongruous homeland while simultaneously investigating his own perceived hubris, insecurities and fractured identity.

Baumbach’s textural/visual/sonic approach is stylish enough that even when White Noise is just churning along, there’s always a keen detail to absorb or killer observation to take in, if not an emotion to latch onto.

Though The Invitation doesn’t land in the “worst of the year” territory given its lead performance and notable flares of style, it’s neither particularly scary, nor sexy enough or as intellectually progressive as it wants to be.

Owen Kline’s darkly hilarious directorial debut Funny Pages is a coming-of-age tale that finds the sublime in the grotesque, and the profound in an absurd search for meaning in the basement apartments and comic book shops of Trenton, New Jersey.

The whole film feels like filler, an empty space waiting to be padded with plot points, characters and jokes that are so generic it was incredibly easy to transform them into product placement.

Avery’s film is a solid piece of genre entertainment, grounded by excellent performances, and clever enough to find a new way to present the same old tropes. Like an old hunk of junk fixed and cleaned up, and made into something new again, and worth paying full price for.

Maybe if you hate movies, LaBute’s attempt to bore us to death with classic noir material is a nifty prank. For anyone else, you’re better off revisiting Garfield and Turner, or Stanwyck and MacMurray, or Hurt and Turner — or even “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.”

It is indeed harrowing to watch — to bear witness — and while the film is inevitably heavy with existential dread, Pritz delivers an emotionally engaging story filled with heart, heroes, and a bit of hope to hold onto. There is no more urgent film that demands your attention this year.

Beast is a toothsome survival thriller, competently crafted and engagingly realized. There are far worse ways to spend 93 minutes in a movie theater, but audiences hankering for something with some actual substance may be left feeling hungry on mane.

The truth is that even at 71 minutes much of this film feels padded, as though Stigter couldn’t let go of the subject but also wasn’t sure how to expand it further. Because Kurtz’s concept is so moving, however, the film retains much of the power he brought to his book.

“First Kill” takes the best part of its predecessor — its camp value — and dials things up to 11, delivering a movie that demands to be seen at rowdy theaters and sleepovers worldwide.

There is an intimacy in the doc — as NTA’s drama continues to unfold, there is no indication that the activists will be triumphant, only that they will fight until the very end. The fact that Shaw and his team never turn off the cameras show their commitment to the people, rather than the outcome.

In the documentary Free Chol Soo Lee, first-time doc directors Julie Ha and Eugene Yi use archival materials in an attempt to present their tragic hero in all three dimensions. Despite their efforts, Soo Lee feels just out of reach, but the story of his life remains as important as it is horrifying.

Rogue Agent is plenty fascinated by the abridged version of this saga — bad men are out there — but you’ll wish for that darker, less cleanly shaped telling the more you think about its scarier contours.

For all its telling — and showing — of sex, Bloom Up never really gets going until its final few minutes. And that late-stage twist occurs during the rare scene in which everyone is fully clothed.

In 95 minutes, Ford unfurls a gritty and suspenseful L.A. noir that also serves to examine the structural issues that uphold wealth inequality in this country. But Emily the Criminal isn’t trying to be preachy or political, it’s just authentic, and urgent, and Plaza’s performance keeps the emotional and physical honesty at the forefront.

James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”) keeps his film permanently trapped in a liminal space between childhood and adolescence, where magic is real but intangible and largely metaphoric.

Girl Picture is a thoughtful, funny, and empathetic look at lives in flux.

Day Shift doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises, but audiences whose taste runs to horror comedies that are heavy on action and light on plot may enjoy sinking their teeth into this one.

While this new “Dragon Ball” spinoff may not be all things to all viewers, it’s also a thrilling showcase for Toriyama’s beloved characters.

Mack & Rita is silly, but it’s a strong, necessary kind of silly, a warm and embracing kind of silly. Keaton has rarely been so bubbling and bright, reminding us that regardless of age, being true to yourself is all that really counts in a person. The love will come no matter what.

This may be the first movie to apply the Chekhov’s gun rule to vultures, a portent sure to satisfy the more horror-minded ticket buyers, not to mention anyone else eager for the kind of back-to-basics survival excitement “Fall” refreshingly serves up in this dreary age of apocalyptic popcorn emptiness.

Aside from how unnecessary remakes tend to be, what’s imperative is to consider whether a story with such a simplistically offensive depiction of disability as an enchanting characteristic can have a place in today’s world, as we collectively try to move away from unchallenged amusement that thinks it’s uplifting even as it punches down.

Whether you laugh with I Love My Dad or never shake the queasy feeling in your stomach, Morosini’s film is remarkably sensitive and eerily confessional.

Through copious clips of studio work and bittersweet interviews with Vinton, his former colleagues, and his family members, we get a sense of both his strengths and weaknesses.

Hints of Koy’s stage charm burst through occasionally in Easter Sunday — mostly because he’s also playing a comedian trying to hit the big time, so stand-up-like bits are built in (or crammed in) — but as directed by Jay Chandrasekhar (“Super Troopers”), who also has a small role as an agent, this feature opportunity is a woefully run-of-the-mill, laugh-challenged attempt to translate Koy’s comedy to the big screen.

There’s an inherent push and pull to Bodies Bodies Bodies, a movie that wants to be a send-up for a certain type of young person but also doesn’t want to be “about” much of anything. The horror genre has fallen victim to Big Important Theme–ism of late, and it’s a relief that “Bodies Bodies Bodies” doesn’t descend into a lecture (in fact, it descends into many funny, insincere ones instead). But it all doesn’t amount to very much at all.

The film’s best scenes are, in a way, the flip side to its weaker ones: the closeness between Castro and her subjects lessens their objectivity but strengthens their intimacy.

Prey is a glorious monster flick, a sly revisionist Western and a really cool “Predator” sequel for viewers who don’t mind a little fan service here and there.

Despite having an emotional arc that becomes evident within its first few minutes, Luck registers as original enough conceptually to maintain one’s interest as we follow the formulaic structure of its screenplay. The resulting fable feels like a typical case of “you’ve definitely seen this before, but not precisely in this manner.”

Logan is more interested in psychological horror than in the typical slice-and-dice of slasher movies, and in several scenes here he achieves a remarkable intensity.

All Bullet Train had to be was high-gloss, all-star, late-summer nonsense, but instead it gives high-gloss, all-star, late-summer nonsense a bad name.

Though the religious component is written broadly, the impact is hardly more surreal than many elements of 21st-century reality.

While not as anarchic or outrageously hilarious as “Teen Titans GO! to the Movies,” this latest all-ages animated adventure from DC Comics and Warner Bros. nonetheless has — and offers — lots of fun with the four-legged counterparts of a Justice League that’s more “Super Friends” than Snyder Cut.

Although it’s extremely competent, it fails to add a new perspective to the story, or a distinctive approach to its telling.

Director Jono McLeod’s filmmaking itself is inventive and odd, and that’s almost enough – emphasis on the word almost – to make up for the fact that the story itself is something of a letdown.

Without a commitment to its tone, How To Please A Woman might help its titular woman, but it leaves its audience quite dissatisfied.

Big swings can make for big misses, and that’s the situation writer-director Quinn Shephard’s internet satire-screed “Not Okay” finds itself in, lining up all kinds of juicy targets regarding fame and shame in our social media age, but proving not so discerning about character, humor, and story when it comes to following-through.

This ultimately feels like four very promising movies mashed together, with spectacular highlights bumping into each other in a way that’s ultimately lacking, even as they all demonstrate the prowess and bravado of the filmmaker.

That the filmmakers manage to address so much of such a complicated life in just over 90 minutes speaks highly to their effectiveness, vision and economy.

If only Anything’s Possible had been content to depict this relationship in all its newness onscreen without burdening these two appealing characters with a pile-on of issues more suited to a newspaper editorial than a narrative feature.

Unfortunately, the movie’s unexpected plot twist violently re-directs its treacly uplift narrative for the sake of a Hail Mary conclusion that’s almost ridiculous enough to be campy fun. It’s not though, since the twist in question feels like a last-ditch effort to convince viewers that the movie’s otherwise plain story, credited to Vera Herbert (series writer on “This Is Us”), has more depth than it does.

Mounia Akl’s debut feature film Costa Brava, Lebanon is valiant filmmaking. Using the beauty of cinema to show the destruction of man’s cruelty to the environment is not just effective — it’s heartbreaking.

We can, thanks to movies like this one, continue to bear witness. But we will never truly know the reality he tries so hard to unearth, and that remains our burden to hold.

Kusijanovic isn’t interested in tipping her hand as this coming-of-age story turns into one more cinematic journey by a young woman through an inhospitable world.

Marx Can Wait is a crucial and profound addition to the filmography of one of the greatest living filmmakers, and it ends with a loving reconciliation with the past that is so moving and so convincing because it is so hard-won; this is a movie that has a rare kind of final cathartic authority.

Unfortunately, The Deer King fatally (and repeatedly) stalls as its plot starts winding down and its creators lunge for a character-driven moral to a symbolically freighted parable.

Each gun- or fist-fight features a few cool individual images, but these standalone elements never exceed the Russos’ blurry presentation. That’s especially deadly in an action movie that’s constantly trying to give viewers the impression of speed and scope.

The indisputable star here is Johnson. She balances Anne’s dissonant scorn and sweetness with aplomb, her usual soft-spoken, sarcastic shtick perfectly suiting the character. Even when forced to do truly regrettable things, like wink directly at the camera, she exudes charm.

It’s a breezy, funny, highly self-referential flick steeped in movie history.

Luckily, and perhaps where it counts the most, the action in The Killer is, well, pretty killer. Jang is a confident, competent leading man, slick and entertaining to watch, as gruff as he may come off to his peers and adversaries.

Following her well-received debut “First Match,” Newman hits a sophomore slump with this literary reinterpretation, where the performances in general renounce nuance for theatricality and most storytelling decisions unfurl like a subpar pastiche of vague components we’ve seen and heard plenty of times before.

It is an uncommon thrill to watch a charming film that comes by its charms organically. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris knows that fluff is much more satisfying when it has depth, so you can truly sink into it and feel the overwhelming comfort.

In remaining present, with the past and future swirling feverishly, the film is a deeply poignant and moving love letter to those that remain, who “rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” as Dylan Thomas once wrote. Someone’s got to make a stand for the last vestiges of the soul of New York City, and “Dreaming Walls” beautifully captures their fight and their dreams.

A slow burn that never quite bursts into flame, Both Sides of the Blade is likely to appeal most to those who are already fans of director Claire Denis. That said, would anyone turn down the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with her luminous leading lady, Juliette Binoche?

Fire of Love is a wholly satisfying, overwhelming documentary, as disarming as it is explosive.

If this latest one was aiming to mix it up by giving equal weight to the masks of comedy and tragedy, it’s an effort that falls short.

The Princess somehow manages to be both under-written and insultingly obvious.

As lackluster as this scattered-brained saga is, the animation team of “The Rise of Gru” does excel at constantly reminding us that we are in the 70s via its production design.

The movie’s points about immigration are made early; much of the rest amounts to good things eventually happening to talented and hard-working people. That might be a story, but it’s not much of a drama.

While Sniper: The White Raven sometimes delivers solid meat-and-potatoes action movie violence, the rest of the film only confirms the hellish nature of war, which we’ve all seen before.

It’s never easy for anyone to offer themselves for public inspection, even when personal expression is the key. So what unfolds in Beba is wrought with contradictions, as well as portraits that Huntt probably did not intend to paint.

It is by turns scatological, hilarious, art-referential and, ultimately, moving.

While Grappe ultimately finds an ending that’s a bit pat, the power of the Ukrainian spirit comes through beautifully, underscoring the stakes of what is, and always will be, at hand for the country, now more than ever: identity, safety, and freedom.

Derrickson and Cargill successfully tailor their focused and mostly compelling narrative to a Steven Spielberg/Amblin Entertainment–esque bit of Stephen King–sploitation.

Jones’ debut is stuffed to the brim with the sharp dialogue and rich costumes that bring us back to the period romance genre again and again. Her direction is serviceable, and the pacing never lingers too long, keeping the laughs and romance coming.

Lest you think this is all a bit much for one family to endure, Rasoulof’s storytelling acumen is firmly in the realm of propulsive, detail-driven ethical thriller built on its character’s actions, rather than mere punching-bag melodrama. And it goes somewhere, most importantly, with its ideas, leaving you after its final, devastating image with something to think about instead of simply abandoned with your rage or pity.

Though the ending leaves most narrative loose ends untied, there’s a nurturing wisdom Link acquires from those he meets over the course of the ever-spontaneous journey. Plenty remains unsolved, but he knows himself as a person more than ever before.

Alone Together frequently hints at Holmes’ gifts as a storyteller, so it’s disappointing that she has a proclivity for romance-novel fodder. If she could have workshopped the script somewhere and honed in on authentic feelings outside conventional narratives, she has the potential to be taken more seriously as a filmmaker.

The Lost Girls gets stuck somewhere in the middle of magical realism and a gritty psychological exploration of what it means to believe in Peter and still live in the real world.

Earl and Hayward developed these characters first as a live stand-up show and then in a short film, and natural chemistry and cheeky rapport make “Brian and Charles” a laugh-out-loud comedy.

A listless thriller that can’t find its footing, Abandoned does occasionally rouse itself enough to suggest a better movie that never comes to pass.

For their reinvention of Father of the Bride, Alazraki and Lopez manage to make it feel so rooted in the Latino background of their characters that comparison to the older films doesn’t seem all that relevant. This one stands on its own.

The scattershot new media satire Vengeance might have been merely a toothless provocation replete with both-sides false equivalences were it not so well-scripted and well-directed on a scene-to-scene basis.

Rather than play like a significant departure from the “Toy Story” films that spawned it, Lightyear instead emerges as a disappointing runner-up, capturing but a fraction of the comedy, thrills and poignancy of its predecessors.

It feels derivative and only superficially invested in its big ideas about second chances and the conundrum of appropriating the bodies of individuals whom society has deemed irredeemable.

Leave No Trace tackles an urgent topic and relays essential truths.

The ultimate meaning of Lopez’s life and career is still up in the air, a status suggested by the title Halftime. At one point here Lopez frankly discusses the various personas she has tried on, one of which she refers to as “Don’t write me off.” And we shouldn’t.

If the children feel like symbols — sweet and touching, but not quite real — the adults provide a profusion of reality.

It’s so talky and un-visual that despite it taking place in multiple locations, including the California coastline, it feels like a play barely opened up for the cameras.

Gianolli’s grand adaptation isn’t just a wicked send-up and a sensual period piece; it’s a poignant reminder that everyone who thinks they’ve cleverly sussed out the wickedness of mass media is hundreds of years behind the rest of the history class. Like the best stories told about earlier times, “Lost Illusions” feels remarkably contemporary.

The other generous read, although it’s damning with faint praise, is to call this the best “Jurassic” movie since the original in 1993, but that doesn’t mean this one’s not, much like its predecessors, a hot mess. It’s just a hot mess with some effectively scary bits, a cool car chase and Laura Dern.

Block Party is a lightweight comedy that frustrates because there’s the potential for it to be great, to resonate beyond its blandly formulaic charms.

Malmberg’s documentary is quick to gloss over rough patches in both Mickey and Disney’s shared histories.