David Fear

Maron may not go wide in terms of range yet. But damned if he can’t go deep.

What makes this film unmissable, however, is the fact that we get Marianne’s story more or less in full as well. It’s a fleshing out of someone who was more than just a muse, more than just an object of affection for a notorious ladies’ man, a famous singer and an infamous bastard.

Annabelle Comes Home is not out to reinvent the wheel, or to even rotate the franchise tires. It may not leave you petrified to the core, but it won’t you leave angry, and in this, the Summer of Our Perpetual Disastrous Sequel, that’s no small feat.

This kind of Cold War-a-go-go, deadly-honeypot intrigue is harder to do well than you might think — just ask the folks behind "Red Sparrow." So you appreciate it when someone like Besson can make it move like a pro.

To watch The Quiet One at this particular moment in time is to feel that not only is this a highly subjective take, but that you’re being a little jerked around here. Even the most diehard Stones fan is bound to leave feeling a little conflicted. It’s a documentary that lives up to its name in all the wrong ways.

Australian filmmaker Grant Sputore, making his directorial debut, has a knack for keeping things moving, whether its within the claustrophobic walls of the “safe” house or, briefly, in the evocative scorched-earth landscape above ground.

For some, the chance to hear the divine sound of that voice and see that smiling mug once again will be worth it. For others, it will simply feel like song half sung.

Funny, poignant, personal and a rage-filled valentine to a metropolis that’s seen its fair share of gentrification.

The whole thing is a blast, which doesn’t mean you don’t sense that the stakes are high or that the tension between this threesome isn’t threatening to smother a great creative collaboration in the crib.

And while the arrest and trial take up the bulk of the film’s focus, no amount of famous folks mouthing lines can compare to the compelling, grainy black-and-white clips of the real-deal DeLorean getting busted by the feds.

Just when you want to outright dismiss it, a pinprick of sound and vision peeks through the straight-to-DVD dross. And just when you start to think someone’s starting to gin up that old black magic, the whole thing simply topples over with a loud thud.

There’s a certain quality of watchfulness and wiles-using Williams brings to this damaged, possibly deranged protagonist that suggests instability hiding behind her shiny hair and perfect teeth.

There’s such beautiful artisanal touches that Russo-Young adds to what could have been a standard YA-lit flick and so much that the actors do with scenes of people just talking that you can’t write it off. And there are too many dramatic moments that flatline when they should spike, too many plot turns that feel false and too much reliance on “coincidence” as some higher-power string-yanking to say it completely works.

If nothing else, Charlie Says puts Van Houten, and to a lesser extent her sisters in crime, in the center of their own story.

Pikachu Detective does not make it easy to get on board. It’s not here to convert — it’s here to preach to the already converted. You the viewer may choose this movie even if you aren’t a Pokéscholar. That doesn’t mean it’s willing to choose you.

Shadow isn’t a bad epic so much as a banal one.

It’s a love letter — to New York, to the bohemians and musicians who still live there come hell or high water, to the art of crafting a damn fine customized Stratocaster, to taking pride in your work, to shooting the shit and most importantly, to finding a place for fellow freaks and misfits to call home.

While the movie also offers a much-needed context of the “Satanic panic” of the ’80s and ’90s — backwards messages and heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons, oh my! — as well as vintage afternoon-TV handwringing and glimpses of organizational in-fighting, it’s these scenes of folks engaging in real political showdowns by any ridiculous means necessary that give the movie its sense of currency.

The movie nearly killed him (Gilliam). Yet the victory isn’t just that he finished it, but that he’s fashioned something so magnificent in its messiness. He should be proud as well as relieved. The impossible dream is dead. But long live The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

This is where Fonte comes in. An actor who can make Marcello seem like a pitiful beta-male grotesque one second and a noble, sympathetic hero the next, he’s the thrumming motor behind this fairy tale of dogs and monsters. It’s hard to underestimate how his award-winning performance — good call, Cannes Film Festival — shapes the film and sets its humanistic tone.

Hellboy wants to remind you that this Dark Horse Comics brute with a soul still deserves a place in the superhero-movie ecosphere. It ends up simply being a franchise reboot damned to be restaged as its own bloody hell. Some things are better left dead.

What you won’t be bowled over by, however, is the storytelling, which makes Missing Link the weakest link in Laika’s chain of movies to date.

The Wind does indeed blow a hell of a chill through you, though that has less to do with thing that bump in the night than in the psyche.

The Brink, Alison Klayman’s insightful and often unnerving look at one of the most divisive figures in recent memory, isn’t a particularly fun or easy watch.

Somehow, The Beach Bum is even nuttier, less logical, more visually beautiful and down-in-the-gutter uglier than the film you just imagined from that description.

That this retelling has no time for the facts, given the book’s dodgy relationship to the truth, isn’t shocking. That it feels this surprisingly fun-free and generic to a fault, frankly, kind of is. Fans deserve better. If any of them want to collectively sue for defamation of character, let me know where to sign.

If Sunset doesn’t hit with nearly the impact that "Son of Saul" does — and it doesn’t — his look back at the chaos before the storm solidly establishes Nemes as a major world-cinema voice.

Dragged Across Concrete is apt to send crime-film fanatics, especially ones who prefer their pulp nasty, brutish and incredibly long, into frothing fits of glee. For other folks, the title will double as an apt description experience of watching it.