John DeFore

It’s a nightmare, and not one a mainstream audience would relish. But aficionados of this nearly extinct form of special effects will relish the chance to see a labor of love whose roots go back to circa 1987.

If it weren’t directed by Coen ... Trouble would merit a debut at a less showy festival than Cannes, where reviews would boil down to “damn, they sure dug up a lotta great clips!”

Though peppered with lots of photos and clips fans haven’t seen, rapid-fire editing ensures we nearly never see enough for a rare clip’s humor to land — instead, the montage persuasively conjures the camaraderie and creative enthusiasm we all wanted to believe in: Yes, these guys were great friends while they were transforming comedy. Then they weren’t. Now they are again.

Though unsatisfying in some respects, the film is enough fun to make one wish for a portal to a variant universe in which Marvel movies spent more time exploiting their own strengths and less time trying to make you want more Marvel movies.

Though not solely for superfans, it plays best for those who appreciate a hard-to-untangle knot of realness, fakeness, vanity, artistry, self-commentary and pure comedy. Laced with truly hilarious moments, it’s less daring than one might hope given its conceit, Eggersian title and Charlie Kaufman-seasoned icon-star.

Though there aren’t many laughs on the way to that Battle of the Bands, Sollett’s unassuming cast and breezy pace ensure we won’t be too bored before we get there.

Viewers who’ve never seen a Dobrik video and have only cursory (if any) knowledge of the allegations that briefly interrupted his career will come away feeling they understand the buoyant, boyish 25 year-old’s appeal — but they may be frustrated by the film’s less-than-probing look at behavior that should have caused him much more trouble than he endured.

Amusing but the most lightweight of the five diverse features he’s made so far, it finds other members of the Baena gang (Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon) fleshing out an eccentric ensemble, many playing characters as unpredictable as Brie’s is straight-laced.

Much is left unsaid in the beautifully shot doc, which will leave inquisitive viewers wanting many more specifics on both the family front and the artistic one. But sacrificing such detail allows Boesten to develop a more intimate emotional portrait of Morton, a subject whose thoughtful self-invention is affecting practically from the first scene.

Gently funny and much more forgiving than viewers might expect, the picture plays to Oswalt’s strengths and may resonate uncomfortably for parents worried about protecting their digital-native children without suffocating them or, worse, creating entirely new problems.

While the dialogue rarely crackles the way the original screwball films did, the Nees and their two co-writers find some pleasing little bits of action to demonstrate how the heroes’ increasing reliance on each other is destined to grow into love.

While it may resonate for some young viewers, anyone whose reality really resembles that of the film’s protagonist should probably look elsewhere.

Viewed on its own, it communicates much less than its maker seems to intend, hovering in a not-very-satisfying zone between advocacy doc, first-person impressionism, and (very) tentative essay film about the world’s tendency to view difference as freakishness.

Though a mixed bag as a piece of storytelling, the film’s greatest value for American viewers in 2022 is the truth it conveys to those hoping to preserve (or, let’s dare to dream, improve) a democracy facing immediate and very grave threats.

A cool, confident debut whose steady build mirrors the increasing stakes faced by its namesake, John Patton Ford’s Emily the Criminal is a nail-biter that makes the most of the tough side Aubrey Plaza has shown in even her most comic performances.

The queasy mix of realism and wish-fulfillment will set many viewers’ heads spinning, or at least shaking with disappointment, in this well-intentioned but unpromising debut.

Stearns’ third feature (following Faults and The Art of Self-Defense) is his least satisfying so far; as visually drab as its predecessors, it has more difficulty mining its off-kilter aesthetic for nervous laughter and conceptual provocation.

Building on the strengths of his justly celebrated debut, maintaining its distinctive point-of-view while broadening the scope of its sympathy, Cooper Raiff‘s Cha Cha Real Smooth is a more mainstream film than 2020’s Shithouse without feeling the least bit generic.

[A] bitterly funny, clear-eyed debut.

Transformania remains sufficiently goofy-sweet to please its target demo; those who find the humor toothless should at least appreciate the distinctive animation, which can be as energetically wacky as classic Looney Tunes.

If you loved The Matrix and hated the sequels (or simply found them unsatisfying), go see this one. Have a blast. (But wear a mask.)

This is the least fun of the Watts/Holland pictures by a wide margin (intentionally so, to some extent), but it’s a hell of a lot better than the last Spidey threequel, Sam Raimi’s overstuffed and ill-conceived Spider-Man 3.

Cummings works the same muscles that attracted attention in the festival darling Thunder Road and its follow-up, The Wolf of Snow Hollow: Exploring the varieties of volatile awkwardness and desperation, he plays a well-known type (the showbiz ladder-climber who’s nothing but a smile) while making the character unlike any we’ve seen.

Thoroughly successful both as icky art house horror and as an allegory of generational trauma, Scott Cooper’s Antlers continues the director’s hot streak while bearing the unmistakable mark of one of its producers, Guillermo del Toro.

Wherever one draws the line between supporting a group and co-opting it, X captures a night of solid performances and top-notch stagecraft. Just don’t show up if you’re looking to hear the old stuff.

The story’s final third works even better than the buildup would suggest, shrugging off some of the atmospherics and, with a clever nod to a classic in the serial-killer genre, focusing all the movie’s energies on a sequence that delivers

The film does develop the chemistry between the titular alien and the human he’s forced to inhabit while inside Earth’s atmosphere. But the distinctiveness of this buddy-movie bond is often drowned out by giant set pieces of CG mayhem that feel exactly like those found in the good guys’ movies.

Justin Bull’s screenplay comes up short, failing to adequately capture the depth of its teen’s encounter with the abyss — her anorexia is the aftermath of an apocalyptic revelation — and to integrate it into the more comprehensible domestic tensions that serve as the plotless film’s only framework.