Beatrice Loayza

Despite her minor rebellions, Mona remains a frustratingly opaque character; a stereotypically troubled woman whose eventual awakening merits a shrug at most.

Though attentive to calls for police accountability, and the media’s role in reducing complex issues into simple narratives, Long’s schematic script ramps up theatrics at the expense of more challenging insights.

Adapted by Lafitte from a 2013 play by Sébastien Thiery, Dear Mother is the kind of screwball comedy whose absurd premise and speedy pacing very nearly allow you to overlook the fact that it’s not exceedingly bright or witty.

So many things can and do go wrong, but this production diary’s most intriguing element is the way it considers the value of art at a time when the country seems to be on fire.

The film runs through plot points in appropriately spectacular, if mechanical, fashion. A shoddy script and an overwhelming reliance on clichés, however, make this would-be blockbuster feel incredibly cheap.

The main issue is the film’s trite commentary on America’s political and racial divides (see also: last year’s “The Hunt”), which is neither funny, frightening, nor provocative. Just numbing.

This Is Not a War Story, which Lugacy also directed, is a naturalistic, chat-heavy narrative that captures the difficulties wrought by the unimaginable trauma individuals face as they attempt to forge connections and find peace after war.

The film swings back and forth from scenes of pastoral bliss to brutality, generating a narrative that, while unfocused, is nevertheless anchored by the tender and wounded performances by its adolescent cast.

A portrait of modern girlhood, this documentary ultimately becomes a bleak look at the normalization of sexual abuse among the very victimized young women.

Uninterested in world building or creating any sense of stakes, Red Notice is merely an expensive brandishing of star power — only the stars haven’t got it in them.

“Speer” is an intriguing document, highlighting the ease with which the most reprehensible figures are able to whitewash their legacies. But once you settle into its wavelength, the documentary begins to feel simplistic, like a one-track excuse to roll out rare film clips and testimony.

Symbolism overshadows characterization, or any sense of motive for that matter, nevertheless Roh succeeds as a spine-tingling baffler, hitting at nerves we can’t quite articulate but feel all the same.

With little interest in elucidating the conflict at hand, much less in distinguishing between the various Somali parties in play, “Escape” is a wildly inadequate history lesson — it’s a silly blockbuster after all. More offensive is the film’s eagerness to whittle one nation’s traumatic episode into a setting for confectionary escapades.

As the film builds up to its climax, we realize Young’s understanding of mental illness lacks any real depth or complexity, betraying the artist’s limited worldview. The Blazing World is female trauma in the form of an amusement park funhouse.

Should you be willing to overlook certain intrinsic difficulties, Held for Ransom is a surprisingly thoughtful hostage drama given the blunt meatheadedness of its title.

It would be easier to be less cynical if No Time to Die convincingly delivered on its commitments to Bond’s humanity, rather than nudging it into a handful of scattered scenes, around a lumbering, half-baked drama spiked with explosions and car chases.

This aestheticization of Chinese society doesn’t exactly sit well with this viewer: one wonders if this counts as a kind of tourism.

This is not a happy story. The lucidity with which these subjects speak to their own mistakes and sorrows will leave you haunted.

[A] thoroughly generic and often monotonous romance.

Everton and Call are charming enough, and Everton is a particularly magnetic physical performer, but their high jinks . . . are hit-and-miss. But mostly miss.

However generic (just this year, “Raya and the Last Dragon” depicted a similar treasure hunt geared toward bringing together diverse groups), the film’s messaging about unity and the need for a new generation to band together against misinformation and rabble rousing isn’t the worst thing.

[A] disarmingly sensitive documentary.

Indeed, Murray’s story is a remarkable — and extensive — one that the filmmakers stuff into an hour and a half that feels like a dull and disorganized PowerPoint lecture.

One can imagine how the particularities of the Romanian bush might yield novel dynamics. Instead, Dogs underplays these elements and commits to the beats of the slow burn thriller in mostly generic form.

Trapped in a hopelessly alienating world, Cristovam would rather buck than surrender; a fatal end would seem inevitable, but wisely, Miranda Maria pulls back the reins with a glimpse of empathy that teases a potential way forward.

So committed to maintaining an enigmatically sinister atmosphere, the film fails to build out the many compelling issues it raises about toxic masculinity and familial gaslighting. Nevertheless, some inspired confrontations, and a commanding performance by Sidse Babett Knudsen, who plays the hot-and-cold matriarch, Bodil, makes “Wildland” an absorbing and highly watchable psychodrama.

Cryptozoo stands out as an aesthetically ambitious undertaking, seducing viewers with its hypnotizing hand-drawn animation and John Carroll Kirby’s pulsing electronic score.

As it stands, the glue uniting these women of different ethnicities and backgrounds reads like a failed attempt to carve a more ambitious meaning out of individual stories already brimming with possibility.