Anthony Lane

Beautiful and damning, Dear Comrades! is also an act of remembrance.

Oppenheim doesn’t waste much space on the upside. He aims straight for the undergrowth, and treats the Villages as one big Carl Hiaasen novel waiting to happen.

For the most part, Pieces of a Woman is a model of concentration and clout, fired up by actors of unstinting ardor.

And is Law the right fit for such a role? Whereas Hugh Grant, another fine young dandy of yore, has been rejuvenated by the creases of middle age, Law, I regret to say, looks glum and soured. The problem, for The Nest, is that the sourness is present from the start; he never gives off the bounce and the thrust that Rory is rumored to possess.

Yet the movie persuades you, and bears you along. It may lack historical grounding—though Mary and Charlotte were certainly friends, the existence of any further intensity is pure, indeed wild, supposition—but it feels emotionally earthed, and, far from rising above the spartan brutishness of the early scenes, Lee digs deeper still.

A showdown of blood and fire, and the one point, I’d argue, at which Let Him Go takes a seriously false step. It is George who girds himself for the final reckoning, but it ought to be Margaret. Her grief has driven this fable. She should be the one to end it.

There is more to ponder, in this uncommon movie, than there is to plumb. Broad rather than deep, and layering the vintage with the modern, it’s a collage of shifting surfaces — an appropriate form for a pilgrim soul like Martin, whose gifts, though plentiful, do not include a talent for staying still.

Do not be fooled by the sci-fi trimmings of this film. Despite its light and amiable manner, it’s a sort of “Deliverance” for the digital age, deriding the ability of tame souls, at a supposedly advanced stage of civilization, to cope with the unknown.

The result is that what should be most uplifting, in The Glorias, is most at risk of clunkiness.

If only the style of The Artist’s Wife could scald with equal intent. Alas, it opts for plangency, with a musical score applied like a gentle balm, and a plot that hungers for healing—absurdly so, given the incurable nature of Richard’s plight.

What’s unusual about Kajillionaire, and what makes it July’s most absorbing film to date, is that you can feel her testing and challenging her own aptitude for whimsy.

To a remarkable extent, the new movie is full of cheer. It feels boisterous, bustling, and, at times, perilously close to a romp.

Red Penguins, is here to serve your bedlam-loving needs. Communism, capitalism, corruption: the gang’s all here.

Boys State will leave you alternately cheered and alarmed at the shape of things to come.

It’s a hell of a performance by Robyn Nevin, who’s had a long and commanding career on the Australian stage.

What does make this movie stand out is the presence of Cristin Milioti, a paragon of goofiness and grace.

As for Ferrell, a noted Eurovision nut, there’s no mistaking his affection for the brave hogwash of the genre, but even he is felled by the movie’s swerve into P.R.: a sing-along, say, in which genuine victors from Eurovisions past team up in a rolling medley.

To be fair, Irresistible picks up in the final quarter, with the aid of a clever twist that whistles in from nowhere. We get an assortment of different endings, each undercutting the last. It’s as if this dozy film has woken up, belatedly, to its comic responsibilities and opportunities.

The story can’t keep still, shifting from year to year and place to place, and, whereas "Mr. Jones" appalls you into wanting to know more, Wasp Network is so temperate in its political approach that you start to forget what’s at stake.

Is it conceivable that Holland’s bleak, murky, and instructive film could prompt a change of heart in the current Russian establishment, or even a confession of crimes past? Not a chance.

By the end, in truth, I found myself swamped by Scott, and wondered if he might have made more impact as a secondary character — maybe as a foil to his widowed mother, Margie, who is played to perfection by Marisa Tomei.

In short, Lee’s new movie — like the great “BlacKkKlansman” (2018) — is a history lesson wrapped in an adventure, the caveat being that history is never done with us, and that we struggle to shrug it off our backs.

The Vast of Night is the most absorbing piece of small-scale science fiction — the best since “Monsters” (2010), for sure — into which it’s been my privilege to be sucked. As Everett says, “If there’s something in the sky, I wanna know.” Same here.

Shirley, by contrast, coats her in gothic excess as if glazing a ham, and of her humor scarcely a shred remains. As a sworn devotee of “Airplane!,” I found myself praying that once — just once — she would utter the words “And don’t call me Shirley,” thus rending the veil of gloom from top to bottom. Sadly, it was not to be.

To see Coogan and Brydon being waited upon by unmasked servers, who carry the plates with bare hands, is to yearn for the touchstones of a mythical past. As one kindly waitress inquires, in a lull between courses, “Do you want to continue?” Yes, if we can. Forever.

If The Painter and the Thief is occasionally annoying, it’s because Ree gives away so little. He tracks to and fro in time, springing items of evidence upon us without warning, and withholding others.

Do not be misled by the comic charm of this film. It’s a ghost story, brooded over by the rustling wraiths of bookstores dead and gone.

Despite these shortfalls, there’s much to relish here. To play a guy like Hank, who must resign himself to being second or fourth fiddle, is a tricky task, but Hawke pulls it off in the quiet style that he has made his own.