Movie Reviews

Elle Fanning spends the entirety of the musical drama “Teen Spirit” (Bleecker Street) glowering, as if she understands that life, or at least ambition in show business, is a series of Faustian bargains without sinister or exploitative elements.

Aficionados of the Marvel Comics universe are likely to be thrilled by the sweeping epic “Avengers: Endgame” (Disney).

“The Curse of La Llorona” (Warner Bros.) constitutes an intense but problematic horror story. Director Michael Chaves’ often-effective addition to the universe of the “Conjuring” franchise elicits its fair share of starts.

At once the profile of a plucky 5-year-old Adelie penguin the filmmakers dub “Steve” and an introduction to his species as a whole, “Penguins” (Disneynature) is a winning documentary.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Few people can ever have taken those words of Jesus, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, quite as literally as Joyce Smith, the real-life figure at the heart of the faith-affirming drama “Breakthrough” (Fox 2000).

What might have been an effective film interpretation of a somewhat grounded college romance in Anna Todd’s best-selling “new adult” novel “After” (Aviron) sadly turns into a parade of wooden archetypes.

Near the end of “Hellboy” (Lionsgate), the titular character (David Harbour), who has been churning out mordant wit amid the abundant blood and guts involved in fighting noisily evil monsters and staving off the Apocalypse, remarks, “Doesn’t anyone ever stay buried around here?”

“Ain’t nobody got time for reality,” says Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall), the successful but outrageously rude Atlanta businesswoman at the center of the comic fantasy “Little” (Universal).