'You Should Have Left': Film Review

The timing couldn't be more fortuitous for the release of Mary Mazzio's uplifting documentary about the nation's first African American high school rowing team, which feels almost like a tonic for these troubled times. Narrated by Common and including NBA greats Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade among its executive producers, A Most Beautiful Thing, scheduled to open in theaters, powerfully demonstrates the healing potential of sports and the ways it can help bridge societal divides.

Where did the universe, humanity, our planet and chocolate ice cream come from? They were all created by a giant, all-powerful being made of spaghetti, with two googly-eyes on raised stalks and a pair of meatballs where cheeks would bulge. This is the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), and if there were any justice in the world, His story would stand as good a chance of being taught as fact in American schools as the anti-evolution narrative called Intelligent Design.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticTom Hanks shows what a commanding actor he can be from the first taut combat sequence of “Greyhound,” when the title warship, leading a convoy through the North Atlantic in the early months of World War II, spies a U-boat speeding toward it from a dozen miles away. As the German sub approaches, we hear a lot of rapid-fire military and navigational jargon shooting back and forth between the sailors (“Hydrophone effects slow rev, sounds like 60 RPM, sir!”).

Maggie Lee Chief Asia Film CriticEye-popping action steals the show in “Lupin III: The First,” the first computer-animated feature entry in the classic franchise about the French gentleman thief and master of disguise.

Richard Kuipers There’s a bit of everything and most of it works in “Chasing Dream,” the first feature directed by Hong Kong ace Johnnie To since “Three” in 2016.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn “17 Blocks,” Cheryl Sanford, matriarch of a low-income African American household in southeast Washington, D.C., talks wistfully of a “parallel universe” where she and her family enjoy cookouts, vacations and gift-filled Christmas mornings. This melancholy confession comes moments after a closeup of her casually snorting cocaine.

A persuasive argument, not that one should still be required, for handing women directors the reins more often on big-canvas action movies, The Old Guard represents a boldly assured step for Gina Prince-Bythewood away from the intimate romantic drama of strong previous work like Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights.

“You Should Have Left”: instant obviousness.Generally speaking, there needs to be an unraveling in scary movies to give us somewhere to go.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn a good haunted-house thriller, architecture is destiny.

Also Read: '7500' Film Review: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Gets Tough in Nerve-Wracking Cockpit ThrillerInstead of the Overlook Hotel, we have an imposing modern house in the Welsh countryside, where Theo Conroy (Bacon), a rich banker who retired under a cloud of suspicion after being acquitted of murdering his first wife, has gone to spend some relaxing time with his actress wife, Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), and their young daughter, Ella (Avery Essex).There are clearly tensions in the relationship,

not OK in Vollrath’s films – not in the short film, in which a divorced father tries to leave the country with his young daughter, and not in the feature, a hijacking thriller that takes place over 92 nerve-wracking minutes.Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a tour de force performance that finds the actor exploring various shades of desperation for pretty much the entire movie, “7500” is brutally simple and brutally efficient.

Also Read: 'The Trip to Greece' Film Review: Fourth Time's Still a Charm for Steve Coogan-Rob Brydon TalkfestIn “Sometimes Always Never” — which is not to be confused with Eliza Hittman’s recent “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” — two-letter terms, mainly from the Greek alphabet, have secured many a Scrabble victory for Alan. It’s a brainy pastime he dominates with aggressive competitiveness.

Early in “Judy & Punch,” a wife who’s just helped her husband perform a vigorously slap-happy puppet show in a desultory corner of 17th century England poses the question, “Do you think the show really needs to be that punchy?”

More than a PSA or cinematic call to arms, this indie documentary is a compassionate, sincere manifesto on suicide prevention.

A hijacked drug deal's messy aftermath ensnares an entire family in Christian Sparkes' effective if overloaded crime drama.

Pushed over a metaphorical cliff, the two nonconformists in Josephine Decker’s “Shirley” — her follow-up to the mind-bending “Madeline’s Madeline” — bond over the maddening submissiveness expected of them, which they both come to furiously abhor. Their strange alliance makes for a psychologically layered portrait of unapologetic womanhood that’s dangerously sensual and sumptuously rebellious.

[Note: In the wake ofthe Hot Docs festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select entries that elected to premiere digitally.] In 1970 New York City, a series of ground-shifting, life-saving events took place in relatively quick succession. It's astounding that they aren't more widely known.

A film about a L.A. black lesbian strip club is smart, intimate and eye-popping — a documentary that both PornHub and the Criterion Channel could get behind.

The latest film from iconoclastic Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald proves at least one thing: The only thing better than Stephen McHattie in a movie is two Stephen McHatties. Playing both a heroin-addicted jazz trumpet player and a hitman who develops a conscience, the veteran character actor — you'll immediately recognize his face even if his name doesn't ring any bells — grounds Dreamland in emotional depths it otherwise strains to achieve.

A riotous, rule-ignoring Ugandan romp in which giddy exuberance obliterates amateurish filmmaking and a threadbare child-kidnapping plot.