Anthony Lane

Ennio turns out to be overlong, overblown, and larded with such praises that Morricone, a modest if determined soul, would blush to hear them.

So what kind of movie is this? A conservative one, I would say, not in politics (a topic that never arises at the table) but in its devotion to long-ripened skills and to the sheer hard work that goes into the giving of pleasure.

As a thriller, regrettably, “I.S.S.” fails to fulfill its mission. Any air of plausibility soon leaks out of the plot, and the whole thing drifts into silliness, tricked out with familiar tropes.

The surprising thing about this film, given its potential for devastation, is how funny it can be.

The movie is one of those pointed and prickly farces, like “8 Women” (2002) and “Potiche” (2011), that Ozon tends to scatter among his more solemn projects, as if to keep his comic hand in. The dramatis personae are boldly drawn and, let us say, broadly performed.

The screenplay is by Troy Kennedy Martin, who died in 2009. It features the trusty components of a Mann movie: the smooth mechanics of professional labor, plus—or, more often, versus—the exhaust manifold of men’s emotional lives.

We long-term Kiefer nerds may not learn much, but so what? It’s more important that newcomers thrill to—or recoil from—this self-mythicizing figure who forges sculptures out of fighter planes and U-boats.

Too many dramatizations of the Holocaust have left us flinching and queasy, whereas Glazer, in choosing so precisely what to show and what not to show, gives us no chance (and no excuse) to look away.

Only very rarely is it not fun.

What Kore-eda doles out are not revelatory surprises so much as gradual enlightenments, and our attitude toward the characters is forbidden to settle or to stick.

If the movie falters, it’s because, as a bio-pic, it cannot do otherwise. Even the most expert of storytellers is defeated by the essential plotlessness of the form: one damn thing after another.

Spurning a fruitless bid at comprehensiveness, Cooper has conjured something as restless and as headlong as his subject.

The trouble is that, for all the comedy and the poignancy of this central concept, the movie requires a plot.

To point out that Priscilla is superficial, even more so than Coppola’s other films, is no derogation, because surfaces are her subject. She examines the skin of the observable world without presuming to seek the flesh beneath, and this latest work is an agglomeration of things—purchases, ornaments, and textures.

The fact that characters are provided with statutory secrets, to be disclosed at nicely timed intervals—as happens with Hunham, Angus, and Mary—does not guarantee any intensity in the revelation. The leading players here, however, bring force and grace to the task.

Despite the shafts of black comedy, and a sudden ruckus of violence, The Killer is oddly calculated and cooked up; it’s easier to be excited and amused by the proceedings than to be stirred or convinced.

Although its moral ambition is to honor the tribulations of an Indigenous people, it keeps getting pulled back into the orbit—emotional, social, and eventually legal—of white men.

This is less of a courtroom drama, I reckon, and more of a discordant, highly strung character clash with legal bells and whistles tacked on.

Who needs a movie that is almost all predators, with barely a word from their prey?

Branagh’s film has the charm of ridiculous excess: stylistic flourishes are piled high into a treasury of gothic camp, and the camera is tilted, regardless of provocation, at the most alarming angles—Dutch angles, as they are known in the trade.

The movie, photographed by Laura Valladao, is in black-and-white; add the deadpan dialogue and you may be reminded of, say, early Jim Jarmusch. But there’s not a smack of hipness here, and Jalali is not on a quest for cool. Rather, the story is suffused with an uncommon blend of radiance and resignation, nowhere more rapturously than in the final shot.

This is not a question of a movie selling its soul. The soul is in the selling.

Not every rarity is a revelation, but Lady Killer strikes me as the real deal.

Why put yourself through Passages, then, if it’s so painful a trip? Largely because of Rogowski. Tomas is a beast, and were he played by an actor of less vehemence he’d be a pain in the neck and nothing more. As it is, he pulls us into the jungle.

Barbie is fun, no question, yet the fun is fragmented. You come away with a head full of bits: interruptions that are sprinkled over the plot like glitter.

The irony is that what makes the movie challenging is not the scientific theory—which is delivered with a diplomatically light touch—but a glut of political paranoia.

Let’s be fair. Despite its longueurs and shortcomings, this movie is still a bag of extravagant treats.

Biosphere, though sometimes larky in tone, is also a frowningly intense venture that never stops being about itself.