I saw the first 30 minutes of Justin Kurzel’s “The True History of the Kelly Gang” at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival — I was tired, it was a long day, I wasn’t feeling it and thus decided I would eventually give it another shot when it would be in theaters. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic raging on, the film is being released via video-on-demand platforms. Having finally seen the whole thing, I can safely say that Kurzel’s film, recounting the life of Ned Kelly, is a wildly ambitious mess.

Directed by Cory Finley (“Thoroughbreds”) from a screenplay written by Mike Makowsky, who was a student when the Roslyn School District drama occurred in the mid-aughts, “Bad Education” is a darkly hilarious take on the most egregious and lucrative financial crime in the history of the US school system.

Sometimes a well-intentioned film, no matter how much you respect it, can fall flat on its derriere. Case in point, director Greg Barker’s “Sergio,” which deals with real-life figure Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. diplomat from Brazil who’s passionate humanitarian efforts around the world ended with his untimely death during the 2003 terrorist bombing of the Canal Hotel in Iraq.

Filmmaker Drake Doremus has been repeating himself now for the better part of a decade. His love-hate relationship dramas, which seem to be made as a replacement for couples therapy, have now been done to death by the 37-year-old California-born director. Fine his Sundance Grand-Jury prize winner “Like Crazy” was a breath of fresh air, what with its hand-held camera, raw feelings and birds-eye-view of a couple disintegrating before our very eyes, but, ever since then, Doremus has been trying to repeat the formula of his 2011 award-winner; “Breathe In,” “Equals,” and “Newness,” all hamfisted attempts at the “relationship drama,” but with none of the exciting authenticity of “Like Crazy.”

We desperately need comedy in this lockdown world, which is why I had hopes that Netflix original, “Coffee and Kareem,” would tickle my fancy and make me forget, for just a few hours, about the apocalyptic world we’re living in. Turns out, this lame-duck vehicle, starring Ed Helms, Taraji P. Henson, and Betty Gilpin, wasn’t the comfort food I was looking for.

I watched the 6 hours, seven episodes total, of “Tiger King,” a Netflix true-crime series that delves into the absurd fringe world of big cat collecting in bumblefuck rural America. Filmed over the course of 5 years, by passionate and committed filmmakers who know they’ve landed on a goldmine of footage, this compulsively watchable limited series has an abnormal amount of twists and turns, so much so that each episode stands as its own individualized story.

Jemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are a young couple trapped in a rabbit maze of suburbia hell in “Vivarium.”

“The Hunt” tries to tackle America’s zeitgeist by riffing on Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” and pitting liberal elites preying on Trump’s “deplorables” for sport. A 2019 fall release before it was pulled due to its controversial topic, not to mention Donald Trump tweeting about it, “The Hunt” is a 90-minute B-movie that wants to be more relevant than it actually is.

“Crip Camp,” the Obama’s latest jaunt into non-fiction Oscar-bait, has them tackling the prejudicial differences people with disabilities faced back in the ‘70s and ‘80s in their fight to pass the “Disability act.” 

Doc filmmaker Liz Garbus' narrative feature debut “Lost Girls” is based on the famously unsolved Long Island serial murders. Amy Ryan stars as a mother driven by police inaction to investigate her daughter's disappearance in an unsatisfying Netflix movie that punishingly goes through the motions of the procedural genre.

Director Eliza Hittman made good on the promise of her excellent 2018 films “Beach Rats” by delivering the thoroughly gripping “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” the best movie I saw at Sundance 2020.

Writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis wants to make a statement on female isolation in his upsetting and, unusually, disappointing film, “Swallow.”

Will I eventually review Pixar’s 22nd feature-length film? Probably, but I’m here to tell you to lower those expectations down a notch for “Onward.”

An overstuffed, stylish crime story about an unpredictable underground world, impressive visual poetry might be on display again in Yinan Diao’s “The Wild Goose Lake,” his latest action-noir, but narrative cohesion is sorely lacking.

“First Cow” is very much a Kelly Reichardt movie. That will be the deciding factor as to whether or not you want to give this movie a shot.