A horror flick is only as good as its ending; It either delivers on its promises, or it disappoints. This one builds up to a climax that is meant to be spectacular, but is actually a bore thanks to its literalism.

As visually hypercaffeinated as the film is—mixing animation styles, cramming the screen with imagery, and cutting rapidly around each donnybrook—it’s a bit sleepy when it comes to the plot, which doesn’t really kick in until the second half of the movie.

Movies about the mini-problems of normal people are vanishingly rare these days, mainly because it’s hard to make normal people seem interesting enough to be worth the price of a ticket. Ms. Holofcener has more than managed that, in a thoroughly engaging conversation-starter of a film.

Though the new Little Mermaid makes excellent use of all that digital wizardry has to offer, its heart is lost at sea.

The entire film feels like an exceedingly stale stand-up comedy routine, which is to say it’s exactly like one of Mr. Maniscalco’s stand-up comedy routines.

Directed by James Adolphus (“Soul of a Nation”), the HBO documentary is almost too balanced.

In addition to the disco rhythms, glitzy fashions and alarming hairstyles, Love to Love You, Donna Summer might strike a nostalgic nerve with how natural, funny and forthcoming its subject is.

Throughout The Hong Konger, Mr. Lai exhibits amazing composure as he tells a story that is both inspiring and enraging, in interviews filmed both before and between his arrests.

Though the metaphor becomes somewhat strained as the film goes on, the religious implications of Narvel’s pursuit give the story considerable heft as Mr. Schrader beautifully balances outer tranquility with inner tumult.

Hiring France’s Louis Leterrier to direct was a bit like managing the pandemonium at a toddler’s birthday party by bringing in a soda machine.

Ms. Kim strives to remain true to her subject’s sensibilities—her imagistic narrative amounts to energetic homage—and this includes not romanticizing his life.

The pace is nonstop, the humor abundant, the devotion of Mr. Fox’s wife, actress Tracy Pollan, is made plain, and there’s no small amount of nostalgia in store for people who know and love the Fox filmography. But the heart and soul of the film are the face-to-face interviews, which are far less delicate than one might expect. And all the deeper for it.

The movie about his life and legend, written and directed by Sean Mullin, has two purposes and succeeds delightfully at both.

BlackBerry is a biography of a once-great business that is fascinating enough on its own terms without being reshaped to fit a narrative formula.

What God’s Time affords us, as few Hollywood movies do anymore, are performances that rely on sustained craft and emotion, an ability to mesmerize the camera and justify why it isn’t cutting away.

Chile ’76 subtly illustrates how difficult it becomes to separate the personal and the political in an authoritarian state. As it goes on, it develops from a character portrait into an unusually realistic thriller, with danger asserting itself everywhere.

GOTG 3 is a blahbuster that, like other recent Marvel disappointments (“Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”), jogs along from one visually extravagant, strenuously jokey set piece to another without offering much in the way of either dramatic engagement or actually funny ideas.

It’s a coming-of-age story about the coming of unlikely, unbidden hope.

Ms. Jacknow, finally, finds herself with little room to move except into a full-blown nightmare hellscape and turns Clock, for all its thoughtful moments, into one movie for two very distinct audiences.

Villains who aren’t good at their jobs are a bit boring, and despite their menacing regalia these Nazis are effectively lambs to the slaughter. “Sisu” is simply the slaughterhouse Mr. Helander has built around them, with all of the narrative and thematic artistry that implies.

Directed and written by Kelly Fremon Craig, it’s a charmer: sensitive, funny and grounded. It’s also a kind of rebuttal to many woeful cinematic trends, foremost among which is dishonesty, or lack of verisimilitude.

If you believe that the much-loved, much-banned Judy Blume has corrupted several decades of impressionable youth, Judy Blume Forever is probably not the film for you—it’s a salute, celebration and round of applause all rolled into one.

I respect a film for being as daring, original and personal as this one is, but by the third act it starts to feel like an extended therapy session about mommy issues. The final sequences are more embarrassing than exhilarating.

Mr. Ritchie has fashioned a simple, meat-and-potatoes action thriller, in the same category as “12 Strong” (2018) and “Lone Survivor” (2013). Yet unlike those films, this one is pure fiction, which both untethers it from reality and imbues it with a certain free-floating meaninglessness.

The action is plentiful, but not particularly well-executed (though lots of extras are), and neither Mr. Evans nor Ms. Armas is really a comedian.

There is injustice here, but Mr. Hallström doesn’t push too hard on the theme; instead of interjecting what’s happening in the script, he simply allows us to experience Af Klint’s dignified frustration.

Mr. McKay’s comedy is at its best when his tone is big, ridiculous and cheerfully subversive.