The film is an emotional rollercoaster bursting full of dynamic tensions, mind-bending twists and shattering truths. It’s the perfect combination of high marital drama and science fiction thinkpiece, and with the lengths the film goes to, Foe is a worthy addition to the emotional sci-fi canon.

This isn’t a glorious rebirth, it’s a functional facsimile, and it’s a wholly satisfying piece of slasher entertainment regardless.

At last, an Aronofsky film where it doesn’t feel like he hates us. O brave new world, that has such movies in it.

Hathaway makes Gloria feel familiar and unique all at once. The same can be said of Colossal itself, which lives up to its title without losing sight of small-scale human drama.

Unfriended commits to its idea and continually finds new ways to creatively exploit it, building the tension as each character reveals his or her own dark deeds, thus justifying the brutal vendettas visited upon them.

The movie ultimately serves as an coiled and heartfelt tribute to Jesse’s powerful trajectory, and Paul’s own chemically active, emotionally reactive brilliance in one of our peak TV era’s defining series.

It’s a snack of a movie, not so much a full meal, and that’s OK. There’s a lot of energy in this film; more than enough to get you through your afternoon.

Ruben Brandt, Collector is a wonderful heist film, a thrilling action-adventure, a gorgeous visual feast, and an intriguing look at an artist whose greatest talent is recognizing the value of the art inside others.

In truth, the movie can be pretty ridiculous, too, with its wild ambition sometimes coming across as a little foolhardy. But overreaching might be the whole point of The End, which offers an end-times prescription for living: Hold the fantasy together as long as you can. And when in doubt, sing.

This is the kind of screenplay that offers juicy opportunities for actors, and Zendaya and Washington leave nothing on the floor.

Queens of the Dead may not be a timeless classic and it might not be a game changer for the genre, but more than any other recent zombie flick, it’s likely to play the midnight circuit for years. Not because of the camp. Not because of the unlimited cosplay opportunities. But because it fosters genuine good will from the audience. We love these characters, and we want them to stick around. Zomb-ay, you stay.

It’s messy at times and melodramatic at others, and its treatment of mental health issues is not the most nuanced, but those feel like quibbles given the joy you can find in its best moments.

Brian Netto and Adam Schindler’s gimmicky nail-biter is intense and creative enough to quicken your heartbeat and make you wonder if you’d be clever enough to survive in the same situation.

Yes, it’s a wrestling movie, but Fighting With My Family is also a delightful entry into a genre that has too few inspiring stories for young girls. It’s a warm-hearted underdog saga with a feminist undertone and a celebration of everyone’s inner misfit.

Logic, be damned! And begone! Everything about the new 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' strains credulity until credulity breaks open and spills fake blood and candy everywhere. And that’s for the best.

Black Is King doesn’t exactly stand with the best of her previous work — it’s a pleasure but not a landmark — but the Queen Bey goes through it with her head up and her crown intact.

It’s in little danger of becoming a classic but it’s gratifying to know that Barry Jenkins made this film his own, telling a fine story with genuine emotion and visual aplomb.

At times, The Infiltrator feels like a movie we’ve seen before, but deft performances and Furman’s sharp sense of the era transform it into an engrossing drama.

It’s a very entertaining trip, but it doesn’t really go anywhere: If you go in loving Kenny G you’ll come out that way, and if you go in hating him you won’t change your mind.

Even with the film’s mild flaws and arms-wide-open approach, it tells a powerful, engaging and compelling story of how America challenged and changed five young black men, and how they in turn challenged and changed America.

A glorified pitch reel, submitting for our approval a few nifty movie ideas and wrapping it all up in a tidy bow. All action, no filler.

The live-action “Little Mermaid” is a fresh take on a beloved classic that isn’t afraid to take a fairy tale and make it as real as it can, inviting its audience to dive into uncharted waters alongside its engaging and charming central characters.

Make no mistake: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions may be fun, it’s also incredibly stupid. The premise makes no sense. The mechanics make no sense. The plot makes no sense. Look elsewhere for storytelling sanity. Look here if you want to see confident, creepy absurdity, with a ghoulish imagination and showmanship to spare.

Buoyed by the performance by Hardy and by newcomer Jason Patel as Aysha, Unicorns pleads for understanding but does it in a way that at its best is contemplative rather than histrionic.

You wouldn’t exactly call it fun or enjoyable, but it’s a thriller that does what it sets out to do, which is to make you uncomfortable and then wring you dry. And if you’re feeling cooped up being stuck at home, well, the proceedings here could make the smallest apartment feel spacious.

These are two middle-aged guys having a good time, by looking forward and backward and, most of all, just by being in the moment. It’s a pleasure to ride along.

The current results don’t necessarily redeem this troubled film, but seeing it again might remind audiences that it’s better than they remember. Certainly, this time out, it’s better than it’s ever been before.

The film is bookended by quiet scenes between a man and a woman, by beautifully understated performances by Bloom and Balfe. Understatement in a boxing movie? If you look past the savagery of the middle hour, that could be the craziest thing about this new take on an old genre.

It isn’t always a pretty picture, but it is a truthful one, proving to be a loving tribute to those lost.

As it traverses the sacred and the factual, the film intently portrays the liminal space anyone who’s ever left home knows well. It’s the threshold between the person you were, who you’ve become, and how the two halves are at odds mutating into a unique color, a new prism-like worldview.

As Jahkor resists his father and then begins to make a tentative connection, Sanders and Wright let us feel the weight of generations — and All Day and a Night, which began in a blast of gunfire, ends as a sad but touching lament.

Avengers: Endgame has almost nothing on its mind but crossing the Ts and dotting the Is of a far-flung superhero saga, but to anyone with even a minor emotional stake in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it has all the fleeting satisfaction of a shot of whipped cream delivered directly from the spray can.

Samuel Maoz’s Israeli drama Foxtrot is willfully confusing, emotionally chaotic, and occasionally anarchic. It makes complete sense from one angle, but no sense at all from another. In other words, it reflects its subject perfectly.

Hawke is terrific as the jazz legend, so soft-spoken that he sometimes appears a little frightened of the people around him.

If The Good Nurse is about anything, it’s about dedication and stoic compassion, rather than a headstrong sense of morality, and the film, like its protagonist, is all the better for that.

Wish is a darling film with fantastic music and amazing voice performances, but the story does feel a bit like a house of cards waiting to be poked.

Though the film occasionally assumes the airs of a slow-burning thriller, the overall product remains a firmly intellectual exercise.

Because the Zero Days subjects who are best positioned to provide new information are also the least likely to talk, much of the movie is devoted to rehashing previously published reports, which Gibney does with both cogency and style.

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.

The result is a wide-ranging dialogue that manages to be both philosophical and playful, a personal portrait that goes exactly as deep as Cornwell wants it to go but never feels as if the author is getting away with obfuscation.

For all of its meticulous construction and often masterful craft, the film remains something to coldly admire rather than easily embrace, often playing more as a collection of accomplished filmmaking moments than as a fully enthralling whole.

There’s hope to be found in There’s Something in the Water, in the good intentions and implacable drive of the protesters.

Aster has always had a knack for confrontation, while Phoenix works best as an open-nerve. That the duo should prove so adept tapping into a vein of neurotic action is one of the many brutal surprises in a social satire as blunt and broad as America itself.

The Darkest Minds is smart. It has a lot to convey to its young audience, and the strong cast does everything in their power to illustrate those themes and to bring their characters to earnest, believable life. But it’s not quite thrilling enough to sneak its mission statements under anyone’s noses, so it plays a bit more like a manifesto than a sci-fi thriller.

Look, do you want to see a man made out of chainsaws or not?

The film doesn’t just highlight Sue’s impressive skills on the court and her determination to hone said skills to perfection. It is a response to a growing trend of talking heads who have made it their mission to underplay professional women athletes and the contributions they’ve made.

The King of Staten Island can test the patience of all but fervid Davidson devotees, but it also manages to be an affecting comedy that moves softly through some dangerous territory.

I guess when you take something that works and make it work slightly less, it still kinda works.

Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle is the Christmas tentpole release that aims to please and succeeds, a funny family entertainment product that subverts more expectations than it was obligated to contractually.

It’s not just the CG that’s visually impressive here; “War” boasts some extraordinary set pieces.

Green seems less interested in rewriting the “Halloween” playbook than in giving audiences what they came for, from ghastly scares to a ghoulish score. It’s a strategy that promises to make the series as immortal as Michael Myers himself.

As much as Bekmambetov is able to maintain a sense of impending doom, the revelations are predictable, even if the means through which we learn them are clever.

Though The Work leaves a lot unanswered about this unusual program (run by the Inside Circle Foundation), and the characters who participate in it, it’s an often tense and exhilarating glimpse into a moment in time that lets men prioritize honesty and tears over superficial displays of strength.

The Contestant wants you to be entertained and it wants you to feel bad about being entertained. It pretty much succeeds on both counts.

The heart of the film is in the connection between a 12-year-old boy and an 86-year-old woman, and Loren and Gueye make that relationship rich and touching enough to give life to the movie that surrounds it.

Colin Minihan knows how to make a gnarly horror film.

The competition in Step isn’t just to hit a stage and win a talent prize, but to beat the odds in life. Start figuring out now how to clap and dab away tears at the same time; it’s that kind of experience.

A film that finds a new way to address a familiar subject.

The beauty of Ai’s epic imagery feels like a perpetual challenge: Are you looking? Are you listening? Are you responding?

The film’s breakneck zaniness sometimes gets into the way of the labyrinthine story, and you’ll be forgiven if you completely lose track of what’s going on (or at least why), but this is a remarkably entertaining and unusual Agatha Christie adaptation, and Randall’s take on the character is, surprisingly, one of the best.

True to its title, Baena’s latest takes us through more than a few tonal twists and plot turns, even if they don’t always land smoothly or humorously, in its exploration of how fooling oneself into believing a fantastical fiction can provide dangerous respite from a bland, ordinary reality.

In the end, The Whole Bloody Affair doesn’t do enough (or perhaps does far too much) to justify its existence to the everyday cinephile. However, Tarantino superfans will undoubtedly lap the film up like cream and, in the end, a director got the opportunity to finally share his true vision with the rest of the world. That’s a net win here.

Rarely do we see a filmmaker start so strong only to end with a whimper. All in all, though, Baby Driver is still worth seeking out, if only for that first hour. Inside those opening 60 minutes is the best action-comedy of the last ten years — full stop — featuring a breathtaking amalgamation of rip-roaring combat, a star-making performance by Ansel Elgort, and a string of clever bits.

What makes Eternals feel special is that, for once, the director genuinely cares as much about the character within that spectacle, as the spectacle itself.

The film is deliberately and at times deliriously scattershot, jumping from one subject to another and rarely slowing down to draw connections or make larger points.

For audiences who want their 2021 return to the multiplex to deliver big, loud, exciting action, F9 makes the cars go fast, jump high, and generally do the impossible. It’s exhilaratingly ridiculous, yes, but it’s also ridiculously exhilarating.

Like Wilson’s cornball “California Girls,” Love & Mercy is by no means a complicated portrait, and yet it’s a curiously satisfying one.

In the end, human decency and resilience are this narrative’s common threads. And you needn’t have lost a loved one to recognize it.

A risky experiment with a striking payoff, Ted K is an impressionistic attempt to personalize the most unrelatable experience imaginable: life as a killer.

The performances are strong across the board — all the scenes between Theron and Davis, in particular, overflow with empathy and understanding — and Cody’s writing has never been better.

Though there are a few clunky or obvious monologues in the script (perhaps the hazard of adapting a memoir), the emotion and intention behind the story, as well as McNairy’s career-best performance, make “Fairyland” an astonishingly moving film and touching remembrance.

The Death of Dick Long may be a made-up story, but inside this crisis management suspense-comedy is a weirdly down-to-earth humanity about the ripple effects of out-of-nowhere recklessness.

The Painter and the Thief is a fascinating, perplexing, occasionally annoying but always involving chronicle of a truly crazy relationship.

At its best moments, Pride makes the chest flutter and the neck hairs stand up with the revolutionary adrenaline that comes from a potent protest song.

While it might not be as revolutionary as its subject, Julia celebrates not only the woman but also her joy and passion for the creation and consumption of delicious food. Just be warned: It’s not a film to watch on an empty stomach.

The film bustles along through a series of reveals – a storytelling technique that can lose an audience’s sympathy or suspension of disbelief pretty fast, but which works flawlessly here because the filmmakers and the performers know exactly who their characters are and what kind of world they live in.

It’s an utterly fascinating, mysterious, and often experimental character study of someone who is hard to understand because they fundamentally don’t understand themselves.

Crisply written by TV producer Ethan Sandler (“New Girl”) and directed by theater veteran Lee Wilkof with an eye for small details and a lifetime of experience, the film is a loving, if slight, excursion into the world of New York theater, actors’ division.

Border is dark and unsettling and proudly deranged.

The condensing of consequential shifts in fortune into relateably tense, humanly funny scenes is admirable, and the tech aspects are never too confusing that they pull away from the story’s stakes.

Even with its faults, though, “Magical Negroes” is sure to spark meaningful and needed conversations around race among the audiences reflected in the film. At the very least, Libii shows that he is witty and adept enough as a director to continue working in his craft.

It may be odd and insular, but it’s very much intentional. Even the heavy-handedness feels genuine.

Indeed, this year’s Antiquarian Book Fair is celebrating its 60th anniversary at the Armory right now. And after seeing “The Booksellers,” you’ll be a lot more likely to think about how to get there, and maybe a little less inclined to place that next easy order on Amazon.

Neighbors 2 never lags, and the laughs keep coming, even though they’re coming from a fairly familiar place. If that’s all you want, that’s what you get. But, hey at least you get it, which is more than you can say for most sequels.

[A] fleet, gripping documentary.

It’s a character study, a moody atmospheric piece of contemplation with one character who, through interacting with others, unseen, on the phone comes away with a grander understanding of self. We, as the audience, come away with a grander understanding of our own interactions and how life changes without us ever knowing about it.

Strangely, the most conventional aspect of Firebrand is its central character.

Perhaps a little too slight to be memorable in the long run, this sensitive and charming tale reassures without, somehow, completely ignoring reality.

It’s not just one film, or one election, or one win — it’s a movement, as the energized subjects keep repeating. “Justice is not a destination, it’s a journey,” is one of the many resonant quotes shared by one of Booker’s advisors and friends, and it’s a reminder that the fight is never-ending.

Even when considering how it’s graced with splashes of stylistic bravado and how vigorously head-on it distills its heady themes (all to an extent rehashed from Schrader’s own body of work) — not to mention the decision to keep part of the gruesomeness off-screen and concluding the piece on a semi-hopeful note — The Card Counter still doesn’t come across as urgent or magnetic as other efforts.

Its intensity burns like the sun which makes Neil’s skin blister, peeling off a layer we hope might reveal more. Franco is scratching away at the surface, too, making the sort of movie you come away from with questions, wondering if you’d blinked and missed something.

Fireworks takes you on that little journey. It may affect you deeply, or it may just come and go, a fizzling sentimental aside in an otherwise hectic day. But it’s hard to deny that it approaches its fantastical story with maturity and grace, and a thoughtfulness about what it would truly mean to leap into a “what if” and seriously consider never coming out again.

The film is big, brutal and beautiful — over the top at times and stirring at others.

The performances are impeccable, and the film’s structural elements are deftly handled across the board.

Heslov, making her debut, therefore largely does an impressive job balancing the contestants’ deeply disturbing stories...with the near giddiness they express while getting dolled up. It’s infectious.

It’s disquieting, and even though it’s also riveting, it’s difficult to shake the sense that everyone is getting away with something they shouldn’t.

Curry Barker’s supernatural nightmare Obsession is a better version of Wonder Woman 1984.

An average scene in Confess, Fletch features several different kinds of humor, including callbacks, running jokes, physical comedy, and character-driven wordplay, all of which either flatter the individual actors or show off how well they work with their co-stars.