Ann Hornaday

Candid, pitiless and deeply humanistic, Fleifel’s portrait feels simultaneously timeless and urgently new.

For a movie drenched in foreboding in menace, there’s very little narrative tension in “Eddington,” a problem Aster solves with an intrusive sound design and dissonant, clanging piano chords.

Tough, tender and observational, “Sorry, Baby” suggests that Victor’s promising career has been suitably launched.

To his credit, Gunn pushes a much-needed reset button on “Superman,” banishing shadows and pretentious self-seriousness in favor of a bright palette, brisk storytelling and occasional jolts of bracing humor.

As a blithely likable blunt instrument, Heads of State gets the job done, justifying its anesthetized mayhem with a sweet-natured message about the importance of friendship, international alliances and institutional continuity.

There’s no better time for a throwback than summer, and “F1 the Movie” is here to send audiences to a blissful era before constant cape slop, when the movies were loud, their stars were hot and the male main-character energy was flowing with exhilarating abandon.

Maybe “Materialists” marks the emergence of a new genre: the rom-con, not in the sense that it’s against the vicarious pleasures of flirting, seduction and finally finding true love, but that it’s painfully aware of the coldhearted calculation that so often lies beneath.

At its fleeting best — in its meditation on the transactional and the transcendent — this one feels like it’s reaching for something more than surface charm.

Once Perry brings his magnum opus to its many climactic conclusions, the bait-and-switchy gamesmanship and sheer swing of his conceit have become irresistibly contagious, and viewers can’t help but be moved.

The Last Rodeo may not be bodacious, but it’s a satisfying ride.