Andy Webster

You’ll find beatings, shootouts, car crashes, awkward analogies and a measure of buddy badinage in “Bright,” but true enchantment is in short supply.

Crisply directed by Thomas Morgan, the film depicts a succession of challenges facing Ms. Shaar, a smart, understated and tenacious entrepreneur.

Closure may be missing, but at least glimpses of promising Canadian performers are in abundant supply.

Clearly, the architect and the filmmaker are tight, which does not entirely benefit Big Time.

The movie benefits from Austin Schmidt’s neon-infused cinematography and Annie Simeone’s lush production design. But Mr. LaChiusa’s songs largely fail to resonate here. Dramatic traction suffers, probably as a result of the many, and diffuse, vignettes. And yet this is a commendably audacious effort by Mr. Gustafson (“Were the World Mine”).

The Icelandic director Oskar Thor Axelsson is clearly fluent in horror conventions. But he has commendable restraint, and his latest film, I Remember You, transcends genre pyrotechnics even as it incorporates elements of Nordic noir.

As a screenwriter, Ms. Morgan is nimble with glib conversation, and she is fearless at playing an often unlikable character. But this movie might only narrowly pass the Bechdel test, and mustering sympathy for Annette’s affluent, insular circle is difficult. The plot resolutions ultimately feel pat, and the conflicts, in retrospect, thin.

Dark corners of the immigrant experience in New York City, especially for women, are frighteningly dramatized in Ana Asensio’s suspense film Most Beautiful Island, a modest but effective writing-directing debut.

Under its slick, schematic surface, this tale of aspiration and redemption at least offers moments of genuine feeling.

Given the audacity, gusto and hell-for-leather filmmaking on display, the prospect of subsequent installments does not seem unreasonable.

The film offers an enlightening glimpse into how the gay experience informed Mr. Maupin’s art.

The problem here is Mr. Long’s Adam, a twitchy knot of tics and self-pity. He invites our sympathy — especially when contrasted with the smarmy Aaron — but doesn’t really deserve it.

Chris Perkel’s reverent documentary Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives is a valedictory for Mr. Davis.

The lean handsomeness and quiet authority of Mr. Jean is a perfect complement to Ms. Rodríguez’s passionate Yanelly, while the locations — and the presence of actual inmates — underscore the harsh boundaries the lovers struggle against.

For some, its atmosphere and intriguing performances will prove worthy of the outing.

The Queen of Spain, a light ensemble romp from the veteran director Fernando Trueba, has fun with movie lore even as it pillories Hollywood’s deal-making with the Francisco Franco regime in the 1950s.

For any believer in humankind’s instinct to transcend boundaries, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes, and the NASA team that produced them, inspire awe. The Farthest, a dazzling documentary written and directed by Emer Reynolds, illustrates why.

The film climaxes with a breathless escape from Gwangju, as Kim and Hinzpeter elude government vehicles with the aid of other cabdrivers. But most impressive is Mr. Song, who persuasively conveys a working stiff’s political awakening.

The possibilities are intriguing, but the characters are underdrawn, and the pacing lags.

Though Mr. Ryoo’s taste for heightened theatricality threatens his story’s credibility at times, there is no denying his skill with a large-scale action set piece.

An investigation among the attendees grants Mr. Andò the opportunity to pursue pithy, discursive exchanges about power, austerity and capitalism amid high-end accommodations and a tasteful classical soundtrack.

It’s Fang’s transformation, embodied by Ms. Zhou’s lean, cool authority, that carries the most weight, lending the proceedings an unforced feminist dimension, and reaffirming Ms. Hui’s status as one of China’s cinematic treasures.

The latest animated Despicable Me outing shows signs of wear even as its energy level escalates.

What “Can’t Stop” mostly leaves you with is a sense of Mr. Combs’s success.

Though the script tilts to the didactic, the performances are absolutely delicious, with Mr. Meaney droll and understated and Mr. Spall fiery and derisive, yet not above a joke.

In 1993, the documentary “Visions of Light” won critical love for its overview of Hollywood’s classic cinematographers. Matt Schrader’s tidy and informative “Score” lavishes similar adoration on moviedom’s great composers.

Fortunately, Camera Obscura has decent actors to flesh out its dubious premise.... But their diligent efforts cannot raise the whole enterprise above a mere exercise.

Pushy, judgmental, tart-tongued and self-obsessed, the photographer at the heart of Otis Mass’s penetrating documentary, The Incomparable Rose Hartman, is, like her snapshots, a piece of work.

Yoshinari Nishikori’s period action film Tatara Samurai does not skimp with its swordplay, but its narrative arc takes you to a resolution uncommon for its genre.

[A] modest, proficient thriller.

Fact and fiction blend nicely in Tracktown.

A kaleidoscopic travelogue depicting demonstrations of faith worldwide.

The graphic evidence here, in testimony on camera and in period photographs, is absolutely harrowing.

Throughout, the solitary Mr. Tower maintains an unflappable refinement, dedicated, a college friend says, to “looking for some utopian possibility of living, because that’s what kept the darkness away.”

Mr. Ruffin must carry the film, projecting interior activity and suggesting information where the script (by Mr. O’Shea) does not. That he imbues the film with a weight greater than its words is a testament to his skill as an actor.

This well-made, low-key drama, written by Mr. Gay and Tomàs Aragay, offers some insights into terminal illness.

We are largely left with the images, which take us far, if not far enough.

This documentary, coupled with Ms. Aviv’s article, addresses unresolved issues of personal autonomy versus a patient’s inability to protect herself. It will haunt you.

Mr. Lal, making his feature directorial debut, clearly understands the camera and special effects. But working from a script by Anvita Dutt that reaches too far in too many directions, he is undone by his own ambition.

Hunter Adams’s Dig Two Graves is that rare chiller conjuring eeriness and dread without defaulting to abundant gore or flagrant nudity.

When the Rangers engage in “Transformers”-lite mayhem, an intriguing group portrait collapses into generic pyrotechnics.

While its premise and some of its effects may be B-movie grade, Atomica — like the best B movies — delivers an unexpectedly rewarding kick.

Nathan Morlando’s Mean Dreams may use a time-honored premise — young lovers on the lam (see: “Badlands”) — but it does so with such quiet, gently appealing assurance that it makes the template seem fresh again.

Some movies about making movies (Truffaut’s “Day for Night,” for one) are charming. The self-references here, while intriguing, approach a comic navel-gaze. Actor Martinez has a saving grace, however: Ms. Burdge.

Mr. Klein is well served by his actors, who exude conviction, charisma and palpable ardor.

A lively closing dance sequence, after an earnest, underwhelming climax, pays affectionate tribute to Bollywood production numbers. But you won’t find Mr. Chan’s customary bloopers over the closing credits.

[A] fascinating documentary.

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy traffics in exploitation movie flourishes.

It’s an eco-fable devoid of didactic overkill, delivered with energy, winking mischief, unobtrusive effects and a skilled cast.

If you’re a boy between, say, 8 and 12 and wired to the hilt on Coca-Cola, the shrill, exhausting “Gold” might be for you. But only if.

This is a movie that drops quotations from Faulkner and Einstein, but it rarely feels pedantic or platitudinous, thanks to the breezy, assured delivery of Mr. Khan.

A savvy exercise in inspirational feel-good cinema lightly seasoned with grit.

Iron Moon has a slowly mounting, but lingering, impact.

Their stories are compelling — and persuasive.

[A] fascinating and assured documentary.

Exuberant, busy and sometimes funny, DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls is determined to amuse.

Its willful determination to be outré proves its undoing.

Zhou Shen and Liu Lu’s bleak farce Mr. Donkey, adapted from their play, has a sentimental streak, and, as farce can, a tendency to overheat. But beneath its mild staginess and intermittent mania lies a cynical, piercing parable about China’s past and perhaps its present.

The script, by Mr. Dekker, spirals into a muddle of ambiguity, leaving only the imagery and the performances to save the movie. And try as they might, they cannot.

As Salinger, the formidable Chris Cooper has a brief but masterly turn, sympathetically rendering the writer as a curmudgeon defending his literary offspring.

The find here is Alexa Nisenson as Georgia, Rafe’s know-it-all little sister, who takes cars out for a spin. She is blessed with the best lines, comic and dramatic, and appears delightfully cognizant of the fact. If only the movie had more of her.

It is a competent if sometimes heavy-handed affair, a mosaic of fictitious and underexplored characters who hear the assault but are too self-preoccupied to act.

In Antonio Banderas, Mr. Hudson has a winning de Sautuola of personal modesty, scientific integrity and paternal warmth.

“He can move the mountains.” “I was blind but now I see.” Those lines are but drops in the torrent of clichés saturating Michael John Warren’s narcotizing documentary Hillsong — Let Hope Rise.

The Vessel is a modest, but not maudlin, parable of hope about mustering the strength to vigorously plunge again into life’s uncertainties after a devastating loss.

The Uruguayan director Federico Veiroj’s leisurely comedy-drama The Apostate has its charms, though the story (and its hero) could benefit from a tarter approach.

This film nimbly straddles biography and “Trek” valentine (Adam is a longtime television director), but also recounts the fraught if ultimately devoted ties between Adam and Leonard.

Sure, the new action workout Kickboxer: Vengeance — a reboot of a foot-fighting franchise from the 1980s and ’90s — follows a tiresome martial-arts movie formula. But amid the hoary conventions are agreeable inklings of an alternate sensibility.

If not for Mr. Jones, “Resurrection,” while competently edited, would be devoid of humor, an area where Mr. Statham has shown promise in the past.

Complete Unknown is a curious hybrid, teetering between a thriller and a romance only to land in a nebulous spot that is neither.

Despite her script’s omissions...Ms. DuVall juggles the emotional dynamics with fluid editing and light comic touches. The skilled cast members must flesh out their characters, and the unselfconscious Ms. Lynskey, who invites the audience’s mockery and ends up with its sympathy, is the revelation.

[A] crisp if feather-light documentary.

[A] competent but slight thriller.

It takes Sean Ellis’s World War II thriller Anthropoid a while to build steam, but once it does, hang on.

[A] deft and comprehensive documentary.

Ms. Burdge — all quicksilver emotion and exposed nerve endings — is an endlessly watchable focal point. Her character’s vulnerability, uncertainty and growing self-acceptance lend the movie a necessary gravity.

Disappointing plot twists ensue in a climactic brawl starved for snappier choreography and editing.

Despite an implausible ending devoid of consequence, “Don’t Worry Baby” benefits from tidy editing, cinematography and, most of all, the presence of the seasoned Mr. McDonald and Ms. Balsam. Their nuanced authority — and the vibrant Manhattan backdrop — make the trip worthwhile.

Effective topical entertainment, we are reminded, rarely comes without creative conflict.

Fascinating.

You don’t have to be a boxing fan to be awed by Claressa Shields, the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport. But if you are, you’ll still be knocked out.

In marriage and parenthood, one size doesn’t fit all. Marcia’s words at the wedding about surmounting differences speak volumes about love’s adaptability.

Many of the passages in this gentle film may be universal, but the love here is extraordinary.

The longtime friends Mr. Guzmán and Mr. Garcia have an unforced chemistry. But the effective jokes land too rarely. You’ll be ready to leave when the trip is over.

Len and Company...never strains for profundity. Instead, it savors observational subtleties, especially in Mr. Ifans’s assured performance. For a baby-boomer-meets-millennial family drama, that’s plenty.

The Japanese have a term for a certain type of character in manga (comic books) and anime: bishonen — pubescent in appearance, devoid of facial hair, sensitive, unthreatening. That would be Mr. Espinosa.

A re-creation of the night, with an actress playing the screaming victim while Mr. Genovese observes, is harrowing.

“As I AM” rockets through its subject’s life, teeming with testimonials from the superstar producer-D.J.s Mark Ronson and Paul Oakenfold, among many others. And then it ends, leaving you spent. And wistful.

Toward the end, Mr. Farr employs familiar cinematic sleights of hand, but with a finely calibrated touch.

Penélope Cruz is an Oscar-winning actress we don’t see often enough in prominent leading roles. So how disappointing to find her having to carry Julio Medem’s florid Ma Ma, a melodrama only glancing at profundity.

If there’s one rewarding thing about many Hong Kong action directors, it’s that they rarely dawdle in getting to what fight fans have come for: bracing shootouts and high-impact fisticuffs and footwork.

The director, Joey Kuhn, making his feature debut from his own script, has created fairly credible and sympathetic characters, despite the 1-percenter milieu.

The Offering, a muddled horror film, falls over itself incorporating as many genre elements as possible. The result is the cinematic equivalent of combining every paint color on a canvas: a murky mess.

It’s often said that the Irish, blessed with the gift of gab, can be splendid raconteurs. You’ll find generous evidence to that effect here. And a bit of poetry as well.

Mr. Irons handily hits the emotional beats, as does Mr. Patel.

It has little story to tell and few ideas to offer. Just a great deal of product to sell.

There are heroic adults here.... There is also deft editing, artful camerawork and effective music in abundance.

Mr. Gilady, a documentarian making his fiction feature debut as a writer and director, over-stacks the deck with this belabored if artfully shot story.