The film traces a strong, steady line to a foregone conclusion, and that steadiness is exactly the point.

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.

Make no mistake, Petrov’s Flu is a formidable piece of filmmaking; it is also an exercise in style that uses its own virtuoso technique as a blunt-force tool against the audience.

The result is an always engaging, sometimes enraging, and occasionally revelatory doc, stretching from Civil Rights to Substack, that every so often reveals something more jarringly (and appealingly) adversarial.

If you love Christmas movies for all the reasons that make them Christmas movies, Almost Christmas is a Christmas movie for you.

Dibb’s adaptation will have less of an impact if you aren’t seeing this story play out for the first time, but if you are seeing it for the first time, it’s probably going to break your heart.

Arcel has created a film that is big, bold and over-the-top, but it has the right guy at its center to hold everything together – and, in a touch we didn’t know we needed, that guy has the right person by his side.

Polsky’s film digs into the rot in his characters’ psyches for a time but gradually climbs back out again, perhaps in an attempt to put their madness in a larger context social context. But mostly the final act of the film comes across like clunky, though well-earned, moralizing.

It’s not full of revelations about a young woman who has always been frank and open about her insecurities and mental health issues, but it feels honest and delivers some nuance in the way it celebrates and explores its subject.

It’s intelligently crafted and falls together quite well, despite a narrative that turns complicated quite quickly. You are safe in writer/directors Logan George and Celine Held’s hands. They’ve thought it all through.

The images are vivid, but the storytelling remains elusive and elliptical, exploring the title character from different perspectives without ever pinning him down.

Without the willingness to connect the dots between his very powerful examples, Chandler creates the opportunity to indict America’s culture of violence and then disappointingly misses his shot.

With its passionate contributors and lofty ideas, Memory: The Origins of Alien demonstrates that, if nothing else, the study of a film can be as exciting as the film itself.

Even with a completely unrealistic premise, and a handful of trope problems, Long Shot is still charming enough to bring the laughs, the escapism, and the twitterpation that any great romantic comedy can provide.

That Crime 101 comes close to greatness and never quite gets there is not a crime. Even if it was, it’d be a misdemeanor.

13 Minutes is well-acted, with authentic settings and an involving structure, but it’s undercut somewhat by a rather flat love story.

As a vehicle for Shaye, a veteran character actress getting the most screen time she’s ever been given, it’s a blast to watch her anchor this atmospheric look at the personal costs and triumphs of devoting your life to duking it out with nasty presences from the other side.

Eisenberg emerges as a restrained filmmaker who has a clear idea of what he wants to communicate, and a clear, unfussy way of delivering it.

In some ways, Safdie’s approach seems casual and grounded rather than pumped up, though it’s also raw both physically and emotionally.

It’s a kind and thoughtful drama that respects its characters and has faith in them, letting them live and breathe and find the meaning in their own lives.

This time, the goals and stakes are more direct, and the overall lean storytelling works in the film’s favor, with each step from every character becoming an occasion for viewers to hold their breath in suspense.

Despite the film’s needlessly fractured structure and a relentlessly grim story, Kidman and Kusama seem to be speaking the same language, in quieter moments illuminating not just the faults of the protagonist but also the faults of every tragic hard-boiled detective in cinematic history.

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.

This new Man from U.N.C.L.E. would be an instant masterpiece if it were consistently as good as its best parts, but even as a hit-and-miss affair, it’s a bracing bit of late-summer fun for anyone who has given up the notion of a major studio offering anything truly revelatory until at least October.

Roberts populates convincingly elaborate underwater sets with a suitably appealing cast for a claustrophobic adventure that manages to deliver some real terror before it somewhat inevitably levels up into absurdity.

Wild Diamonds is a character study both of Liane and of the culture that has spawned her, and a film that manages to be both empathetic and unforgiving. It won’t make you think she’s making smart choices, but you’ll understand why she’s making bad ones.

A stellar script and two standout performances from Jillian Bell and the sensational Natalie Morales round out this sweet little flick which, despite its intergalactic ambitions, doesn’t stray far from a rental house in wine country.

This is a filmmaker precise in her composition and in her texture, her comedic beats reminiscent of both David Lynch and Issa Rae.