While it’s unspooling, The Souvenir feels like the only film in the world—the only one that matters.

There are occasional visual flourishes — a nightmarish PowerPoint presentation ending with a slide about mock burials — that hint at the better-balanced film The Report might have been. But mainly we’re pinned down by a firehose-stream of didactic outrage.

Like Barry Jenkins similarly set Medicine for Melancholy, The Last Black Man in San Francisco supplies positivity to the struggle.

Subtly, the film draws you into the science. You’ll be nervously eyeballing ticking velocity numbers in the corner of the screen. But always, Apollo 11 is about people working together in a single-minded spirit of peaceful ambition.

After the Wedding contains enough domestic revelations for several seasons of something delicious, but Freundlish’s showdowns all seem to dissipate or get curtailed abruptly.

It’s the visuals, though, that really soar. With master cinematographer Roger Deakins again lending his eye as consultant, the camera weaves in and out among photo-real flora and fire-breathing fauna.

Whether you like motorcycle racing or not, Richard de Aragues’s debut is a must-see evocation of the event’s inherent dangers and the ‘balls to the wall’ bravery (or stupidity) of its adrenaline-seeking, carefree contenders. In the realm of the rousing sports doc, this truly excels.

More troubling is Neeson’s baffling disappearance for long stretches of time, when screenwriter Frank Baldwin gets too enamored with the supporting clan while failing to expand upon them.

Merchant never loses our interest: He’s made a sparkly, strutting film that doesn’t apologize for or look down upon its heroes. A “soap opera in spandex” is what Hutch calls pro wrestling to his trainees, and the movie follows suit. Who doesn’t love a melodrama in tights once in a while?

It's diminishing returns for a horror sequel that grinds the original premise into the ground while shirking on scares.

Taking on tricky subject matter with gravity and depth, Honey Boy can’t be dismissed as yet another LaBeouf caper. It’s a reminder of a talent that, despite its own worst instincts, refuses to be snuffed out.

Delightfully embracing the specificity of Eastern culture, The Farewell reflects on collective considerations versus individualism, not unlike Crazy Rich Asians. It unearths the universality of complex familial love that defies borders and language barriers.

The most radical observation Late Night makes concerns the extreme maleness of showbiz that turns women into rivals. But the film brushes over this insight and ultimately falls short of even its more modest intentions.

Colaizzo successfully walks a fine line between inspiration and caution, never presenting Brittany as a patronizing role model for weight loss, nor a clichéd case of inner beauty. The film grasps the complex nature of Brittany’s self-image without ignoring its dark side.

This visually epic, but monotonous collaboration between James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez is less than the sum of its slick parts.

It falls short of enchanting but it's never less than fun and likable. Watch it through the eyes of your inner teenager and you’ll have a blast.

A sumptuous romantic epic that's too polished for its own good.

There’s a way to make this kind of trashy noir work beautifully—was Wild Things director John McNaughton somehow not available?—but Serenity is too blandly generic to stick its snout in the muck and luxuriate, barring the occasional jail-baity line of dialogue from Hathaway (“You said I was finally old enough,” Karen whispers, reminiscing).

This really is an incredibly cheesy remake—the original was already pretty cheesy—starring Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart, doing their best with a script that cranks out all the odd-couple movie clichés.

It’s both stupefying and a little sad to realize that this is the movie Shyamalan wanted to make.

Ben Is Back has seriousness in mind, but too much showmanship in the making.

A completely charmless, laughs-free experience.

An uneven but fascinating spectacle.

Destroyer is a movie that confuses Kidman’s unmodulated funk for actual depth. In fairness, a brooding depression may be the reality of much police work, but onscreen it plays like a two-hour murder of our patience.

Well-paced and directed with gusto, On the Basis of Sex finds an accessible, near-perfect tone, balancing serious courtroom drama and frequent legal jargon with tastefully Hollywood-ized emotional embellishments.

There are also juicy supporting roles for Shirley Henderson and Midnight in Paris’s Nina Arianda as the comedians’ long-suffering wives, Lucille and Ida. The film may be called Stan & Ollie, but it’s never more alive than when the four of them are onscreen.

Second Act is an aspirational Pinterest board of a film, too bland to make an impression. If only the world saw street smarts as equal to book smarts, Maya wishes on her birthday. It’s a nice idea, but Second Act doesn’t possess smarts in either category.

There are memorable cameos from collaborators (Josh Homme take a bow) and a triumphant coda, but most of all, the rather melancholy sense of a visionary struggling to stay relevant.