The thrill arises from the way Seimetz constructs and juggles everything, the balance between what she provides (feelings, memories, sensations) and denies (hard answers, explicit philosophy).

Hopefully the deceptively stern ideological stance of The Secret has been dampened enough by Tennant and his cast’s efforts (the great Celia Weston is also a standout as Miranda’s hovering, lightly nagging mother-in-law) that only the better, more wanly encouraging notes of its decidedly capitalist fantasy will linger in people’s minds.

Its moral identity aside, this is a staggering piece of filmmaking. The Rosses have a keen command of picture and motion; their film is riveting from the jump, swiftly and totally enveloping us in the bonhomie of Michael and his bleary company. Maybe the non-reality of it all isn’t worth fretting about.

Greyhound has texture—it’s carefully, credibly mounted and subtly performed—but doesn’t do much with it. There’s nothing wrong with a fleet little chase movie, but the Battle of the Atlantic had real sprawl, both in terms of its geography and its crucial effect on the outcome of the war. That scope is only gestured toward in Greyhound, undermining any possibility that the film might take on an epic shape.

Thomas Kail’s direction finally has a chance to be seen as an extraordinary enhancement and exposition of Miranda’s book. The movie shows off not just Hamilton’s primary performers but its spirited ensemble, who, through Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography, shape-shift into the American public, a hurricane, and a pistol bullet.

The Old Guard is a naked attempt to kick off a franchise, but I wasn’t bothered by all those obvious table-setting mechanics because what they’re establishing is so tantalizing.

Murphy animates Rita Kalnejais’s script—itself an inventive reimagining of cliché—with insistent artistry, announcing her arrival as an ascendant talent.

Its preference is for plucking the lowest hanging fruit and, more urgently, letting its own audience off the hook. Though Irresistible occasionally lands a point—a soul surfaces briefly, thanks to Cooper—the movie ultimately doesn’t have the guts to be the movie it needs to be.

What comes across is the ease with which a person can disappear in plain sight, for obvious reasons, and a government—committed to its hateful pogrom—can simply shrug it off. And the world lets them get away with it—even despite documentaries like this.

Eurovision has its clunky stretches—Ferrell’s script, written with Andrew Steele, could be a little tighter, a little sharper, and still keep its rambling appeal—but the film is routinely rescued by a deftly staged music number or an invigoratingly off-color joke.

What I didn’t expect—what kept me committed to Da 5 Bloods even as, at times, its looseness risked dulling what proves so fiery and strange about it—was that it would make me so sad. I think I have Lindo, especially, to blame for that. What a face. What anger. Real ones already knew what he was capable of, of course. But Da 5 Bloods gives him more room.

The King of Staten Island is about growing and learning lessons—but not much is learned, and there’s little growth.

The High Note isn’t an ecstatic, tenuously held burst; instead, it’s a mellow pleasure, sleekly directed by Ganatra, who turns Flora Greeson’s occasionally programmatic script into something of smooth, sensual warmth. It is, above all else, an inviting opportunity for two likable actors, Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross, to simply exist on screen together, fluid in their casual appeal and gracefully bringing a sappy, aspirational story to mostly credible life.

You can’t taste all the miraculous food the sorry men of The Trip to Greece are served. But you can, at least, relate to the feeling the film evokes. It’s the wonder of new experience giving even further gravity to all that’s come along and happened before—and will, on some dusty day in some impossible future, hopefully happen again.

With more patience, and a little rigor, Military Wives could have been a massive crowd-pleaser. As is, it’s only fleetingly charming.

Scoob! is a dumb movie, full of creaky topical references and jokes that are above kids’ heads but below adults’. It’s also pretty boring, because it makes no real effort to give the plot any sort of cinematic build.

There is, alas, nothing enriching about Capone. It offers none of the robust competence these dwindling-culture times are running low on. Perhaps more dismayingly, it’s not even entertaining. The film’s arresting oddity is fleeting, and then we’re just made to sit with it for another humid 90 minutes.

As a dancer to Hargrave’s violent tune, Hemsworth acquits himself beautifully—he gets a grim and maybe irresponsible assignment done quite well.

The script has enough sexual pathology humming under the hood to stoke sufficient curiosity about the depths of Kelly‘s strangeness. It doesn’t exploit these ideas nearly enough, though it makes up for that lack with a carnival of likable faces: Hunnam, McKay, Nicholas Hoult, the rising star Thomasin McKenzie.

We can feel a richer idea tingling just beneath Sea Fever’s skin. But Hardiman never roots it out, opting instead for a restraint that is often admirable, but also dampens the film’s potential power.

All of this is not bad, exactly; it just takes no time to be good. World Tour is barely a movie. It’s a jumble of half-length animated music videos stitched together with the thinnest of throughlines.

It’s a solid nature movie, not quite factual enough to be a true work of scientific observation, but engaging and persuasively conservationist in its subtle way.

For all the ways the film appears to be taking a hard look at the lives therein, I walked away with the sense that I was too often given vague shapes where that hard reality ought to have been. Beanpole is effective, regardless, and at times genuinely moving, if frequently beguiling. It often works—even it believes a little too much in the power of its design and intentions to fully live up to them.

The Lodge falls into the more common trap of spinning its wheels in a mudbath of obviousness and red herrings, dredging up anxieties and questions that it doesn’t quite know how to push forward, or inward.

While Michael Fimognari’s film does have some heart-fluttery moments—chiefly the first reappearance of heartthrob Peter (Noah Centineo), framed in a doorway and blessed with a nice winter jacket and a crooked smile—what’s more arresting is its gentle wisdom about all the stuff that happens after the swoon.

It isn’t remotely surprising that a political film can be gut-splitting entertainment; if the legacy of the American Western proves anything, it’s this. But Bacurau doesn’t merely reflect that legacy. It outdoes it.

It handles a tricky topic with so much persuasively unadorned compassion that it has the genuine potential to change hearts and minds about one of the country’s most contentious battles.

There’s something sweetly clumsy about how Stargirl invites us back in time, to twenty years ago, when such a made-up person might have surprised and delighted us. Stargirl is a strange but not unwelcome reminder of that fact. How quaint of us. How quirky, really.