Michael Ordona

The filmmaking lacks the style to pull off its willful blending of fact and fantasy. At least there are the songs to enjoy.

The movie isn’t unusual-looking or surprising, but my daughter assures me fans of the show will not want to miss it. The rest of us will be immersed in warm confusion as things we just don’t understand unspool before us.

There are fun characters and dazzling action sequences. The filmmakers’ approach to rethinking legendary figures and placing them in a kind of timeless, weirdly teched-out reality is intriguing.

Ultimately, it’s about the bonds of sisterhood and how those who know you best and love you most can help you heal, or at least start you on that path. Its vagueness serves almost as a Rorschach test. How effective it is as a drama may depend on your perspective.

The cast is game. Unfortunately, what should be gut punches feel like glancing blows.

No moment on this anything-but-love boat has the impact of, say, the seasickness sequence of “Triangle of Sadness,” but slaughter stans will get their butchery bellyfuls.

In the hands of director and co-writer Santiago Mitre, co-writer Mariano Llinás and lead actor Ricardo Darín (“The Secret in Their Eyes”), Strassera is the slow-but-steady one in the story of “The Tortoise and The Junta: The Little Prosecutor Who Maybe Couldn’t, But Wouldn’t Quit.” He’s what one might call “endearingly competent.” The characterization they achieve is something rare and commendable: a lead who is interestingly uninteresting.

Brown-Easley’s story is interesting and the film’s acting is committed. Unfortunately, as a cinematic experience, Breaking fails to compel.

The performances are uniformly solid, especially by the two leads, and the generally low-key cinematic style keeps us in the pocket of the story.

Day Shift is a damned delight. One would be tempted to call it the best horror comedy of 2022 so far, but it mixes so many genres it’s more like 2022’s best horror-buddy-cop-cartel-drama-bounty-hunter-martial-arts-action comedy (so far).

While the film’s dialogue and characters aren’t exactly unique, its visuals are remarkable and it’s actually about something. It’s a ripping yarn, a gorgeously rendered kaiju adventure on the high seas that uses fantasy to ask pertinent questions about the stories we believe, and who benefits from that belief.

The Princess is an unabashedly feminist action-adventure in which the central character rises from her dormancy to slash the patriarchy. It couldn’t be more timely, and it’s a good time too.

An intelligent, sometimes moving, sometimes funny sci-fi examination of emotional autonomy amid futuristic pharmaceuticals, until an awkward shift into thriller territory dilutes its purity.

Jerry & Marge Go Large is a charmer. It’s a low-key, fact-based caper movie that overcomes some broad comedy leanings to settle into the sweet stuff in the soft center. It’s bolstered by a funny script and dependably sharp performances by Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening.

Thanks to the synthesis of adaptation, direction and ensemble — especially its leads — The Valet rewardingly finds its own way.

It means to be about a struggling family saved by a brave dog. What most viewers will agree on is that it needed more dog.

While it does put an interesting spin on the phrase from which it takes its title, the family drama with crime elements The Devil You Know stumbles.

The new Cheaper by the Dozen feels less like a feature than a lengthy sitcom pilot. It’s an assembly-line product scrubbed clean of personality.

The environments are impressively painted. The film’s framing, light, shadow and color are expressive. The creatures are creatively designed and occasionally just bizarre enough to be funny.

Despite I Want You Back’s heaping helping of the usual rom-com balderdash, both Slate and Day provide enough underdog charisma to make us root for their characters, if not their wrongheaded quests.

The film is sanitized to the point of sterility.

The picture’s too rosy to feel real. Its elements of posthumous, loving advice and inevitable tragedy make for good bones. But this portrait is too clean, too unquestioning, too accepting, to get to the marrow.

While it gets mileage out of its two fine lead performances and the story has deep emotional roots for the filmmakers, its journey fails to capture the imagination.

In Swan Song, [Ali] lives in both drama and sci-fi worlds as he crafts a man coming to grips simultaneously with his own mortality and the dawn of something new for humanity.

Mosley feels well-intentioned, though its lessons are unclear, especially considering its ending. And more humor and more fully developed characters could have enlivened the familiar hero’s journey template.

You don’t have to be into football to appreciate the high-stakes struggle in National Champions.

Encounter has its moments, but it suffers from multiple storytelling approaches that don’t mesh.

It’s a surprise contender for Best Christmas Movie of the last several years.