Alonso Duralde

It’s no easy thing to mine humor out of historical tragedy, but El Conde finds a zone that allows for rueful chuckles over humanity’s cruelty without ever being glib about Chile’s dark past.

The action climaxes with a truly impressive finale, one that employs time going in multiple directions that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen in a movie before. The effects shots here aren’t just visually impressive; they actually let the narrative go to places it couldn’t without this level of, you’ll pardon the expression, wizardry.

The Suicide Squad is by no means perfect, but like the “Deadpool” movies, it’s a showcase for what can happen when a superhero movie is allowed to be sprightly, self-aware, and sardonic while also indulging in hard-R violence, gore, and language. Gunn’ latest creation is not without moments that drag, but when it pops, it pops brilliantly.

It’s not the predictability that’s disappointing as much as the pat resolutions and emotional fixes provided to Anna. If you’re going to set up a young character who’s this complicated and in this much pain, you owe her a similarly complex catharsis.

As a 20-minute short or even a 50-minute TV program, London Road might maintain its sharpness and its potency, but as a feature film, its cleverness wears a bit thin and its messaging gets too overblown.

So what does Guadagnino’s version convey? Boredom, mostly, with confusion and a dollop of disappointment and irritation.

Luca is sweet and affecting, capturing the bond that strangers can build over a summer, and how that friendship can endure. And like its shape-shifting protagonists, it’s got plenty going on beneath the surface.

The most superheroic feat on display might be the film’s ability to keep human-sized emotions and relationships front and center even as the very fabric of time and space twists itself into knots.

There are, to be sure, some worthwhile upgrades this time around — including one sequence that’s an instant classic — but it’s hard not to feel like you’ve already played this game once before.

For a film about repetition, Edge of Tomorrow never feels tired or familiar.

While Hacksaw Ridge is undeniably made with great care and skill, for all of its good intentions it can never refute that famous Truffaut observation that making an anti-war film is essentially impossible, since to portray something is to ennoble it. In celebrating this legendary pacifist, Gibson and company ennoble the hell out of violence.

Even if the film lags narratively, there’s enough flash and dazzle to keep viewers engaged, with Holland and Pratt providing a genuine balance of sibling love and aspiration for each other.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday never completely works as a drama, but it does ultimately succeed in two important ways: The film provides a launchpad for Andra Day’s exceptional acting talents as well as her gifts as a singer, and enriches the public understanding of Holiday’s persecution, funded by taxpayer dollars, for daring to speak truth to power through her art.

This time, the goals and stakes are more direct, and the overall lean storytelling works in the film’s favor, with each step from every character becoming an occasion for viewers to hold their breath in suspense.

Sometimes silly but always propulsive, this franchise entry dares to give us an empathy-generating Predator, even if Elle Fanning’s robot steals the show.

There’s a history of great directors going out on a lesser film, and unfortunately, Friedkin joins their ranks. He leaves behind an extraordinary filmography of groundbreaking work that will inspire generations to come, but The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial will exist, at best, as a footnote to this legendary career.

Far From the Madding Crowd will no doubt captivate future generations of tenth-graders who couldn’t be bothered to read the book, but it flattens the complex characters and grand scope of Hardy’s novel into an airless and overly truncated CliffsNotes version.

The Perfect Candidate feels like a film that both represents a new era for women in the Muslim world and also one that will help push that movement forward.

For a comedy set around one epic catastrophe of a rotten day, this wisp of a farce feels strangely chaos-deficient.

Get on Up belongs, as it must, to Boseman, who delivers the kind of charisma, showmanship, sex appeal, and tireless energy that allows us to believe him as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

This new DC entry has a lovely lightness, both in the visuals and in its tone.

Ultimately, Ordinary Love is a celebration not just of this functional, delightfully average relationship, but also of life itself, risking and wrestling with loss not in spite of the fact it’s shared with others, but precisely because of that fact.

Even if the only way to endow 1960s biker gangs with a sense of majesty and glory is to compare them to what would come later, Nichols captures those moments of fleeting greatness, allowing his lost men room to inhabit their own private inventions, to build their subculture and its mythologies, if only for a short time.

It’s got grit and power, not to mention great fake-band songs by Alicia Bognanno and Anika Pyle. And as a movie about learning to balance youthful creativity and adult responsibilities, it’s leagues better than what Disney did to Perry’s “Christopher Robin” script. Put this one on your playlist.

There’s a tipping point at which comedy goes from black to bilious, and that’s a balancing act that The Nice Guys doesn’t always nail. The laughs from this frequently entertaining action comedy get stuck in the throat, keeping this altogether good movie from being a great one.

The first movie, for all its fluff, gave Miranda that eminently quotable “cerulean sweater” monologue, but this follow-up has nothing as interesting to say about fashion, or journalism, or life as anyone leads it. It’s sending nostalgia down the runway and expecting us to wear it, when the perfectly comfortable original already fits just right.

What Patel has crafted delivers both kinetic action and real-world relevance, an exceedingly rare combination.

For audiences who like Marvel movies at their tongue-in-cheekiest, this sequel provides some breezy fun while we wait to find out just how permanent Thanos’ genocidal schemes really are.