Alan Zilberman

Nothing about this film feels remotely safe. Unlike the “Fifty Shades” series, Double Lover has little interest in romance, instead considering the psychological impulses that inform it.

“Corner” is a deeply sympathetic tale, using the possibilities of animation not just to pique curiosity, but to devastate.

The idea is unabashedly silly, yet Monster Trucks is more involving than it sounds. Characters and conflicts are sharply defined, and director Chris Wedge handles the action with clarity.

Although “As I AM” sometimes gets lost in the weeds of the club scene and Goldstein’s personal entanglements, it approaches the central irony of his life with both clarity and sadness, honoring its subject with a frankness he would have appreciated.

Defiantly inscrutable, Woodshock can test a viewer’s patience, yet the filmmakers’ consistent self-confidence creates an alluring, oddly hypnotic effect.

"Farewell to Europe” is a little like Zweig himself: smart, overly fastidious and remote to a fault. By avoiding Zweig’s inner life, his eventual collapse seems all the more perfunctory.

What makes Miss Sharon Jones most captivating is how its subject, in spite of hardship, remains a magnetic stage presence.

All of the actors are pitch-perfect.

The film is handsomely mounted and provides a window into the tough choices Owens faced, yet its dramatic licenses oversell its message.

What elevates the film is not just its beautiful setting in the French Pyrenees but also how the beautiful mountain exteriors serve as a metaphor for characters’ inner lives. Téchiné keeps his distance from his subjects, allowing their emotions to reveal themselves and delivering a payoff that is ultimately a delicate one.

A slight, yet inoffensive tale, inspiring little more than a shrug, thereby making it hard to either wholeheartedly endorse or strongly criticize.

Without a clear narrative, the story recedes in the face of the movie’s stylized violence — which is, admittedly, glorious, even brazen.

While the details of Nureyev’s 1961 defection in Paris are thrilling, the film falls into the trap of many historical dramas, rendering the story as surprisingly clunky, especially considering the nimbleness of its subjects.

Pelé: Birth of a Legend is too earnest and single-minded to be hagiographic, and the final moments are moving in spite of their predictable trajectories.

The cumulative effect is closer to a didactic after-school special for troubled parents.

If the film is aspirational, showing Andy what it means to be a dependable ally, then MacLane sacrifices pure entertainment for a loftier purpose. A more straightforward clash between good and evil might have touched on the same themes, without sacrificing the action kids could mimic with toys.

Marie Noelle fills the story with passion, debate and human contradiction. If the material ultimately eludes the director’s grasp, wandering off on unfocused tangents, it’s because of its ambition.

There’s nothing wrong with tackling romantic miscommunication, but Birbiglia’s script leaves little room for surprise or depth. Paradoxically, Don’t Think Twice feels both dramatically thin and overstuffed.

The story by screenwriter William Nicholson (“Everest”) jumps from one major episode in Robin’s life to another, but with none of those episodes delving into his interior life, Breathe remains a superficial tear-jerker.

O’Reilly’s ambitions notwithstanding, “Moscow” is uneven because of the inescapable nature of such interlocking narratives: some land better than others.

The Pearl Button may not answer all the questions it raises, yet it is an absorbing experience — at least for anyone with a taste for beauty over insight.

Despite flashes of brilliance, strong performances and innovative camera techniques, the film never rises above the schmaltz of an after-school special.

It’s a tentative, half-realized tale that ultimately suffers from a significant identity crisis.

Mottola and LeSieur seem to have actively avoided the pursuit of wisdom, settling for broad gags — and the occasional explosion — instead.

Biography, at its most useful, disabuses us from myth, but Churchill has no such ambitions. As both history and entertainment, it’s a drag.

The movie is like a game of musical chairs that runs too long. And since Muschietti has few scare tactics at his disposal, the film loses its capacity to frighten.

Kicks is gritty to the core, and its commitment to verisimilitude is its undoing. All of the characters are selfish, and their sense of loyalty is purely circumstantial.

Marshall and screenwriter Andrew Cosby went overboard with their R-rating, introducing so much gore and profanity that it, quite frankly, gets dull. The flat performances and incoherent story do not help matters.