Ben Croll

Viewed under the right conditions — that is to say, late at night, in a certain headspace and surrounded by an audience of fellow travelers ready to take the ride – “Cuckoo” will offer an awful lot of big-screen fun. Only those external factors are nearly necessary to meet an overeager film with only one note to play.

Without much by way of variance, the film spins on and spins out, jumping from austere interiors in Mexico City to San Francisco and back again, putting forward a cogent political read that does little to flatter those looking for anything more.

Dead for a Dollar is a proud heir to a longstanding lineage of low-budget westerns. Consider that a feature and a bug.

Brother and Sister seems more like a retread (and a retreat) than anything that’s come prior, marking a new step forward for the lauded director by taking a disappointing step back.

Like the hundred pounds of latex cast over Fraser’s body, the film itself requires its performers to act through an overbearing pall. But for the most part, it has room for only one voice.

Bracketed by genre on both ends, the middle third of this 140-minute film becomes a gentle tale about a misfit finding in a platonic relationship a kind of second chance in life. In other words, it becomes a certain kind of Tom McCarthy film — and then gets back to the overarching story.

Between Two Worlds is highly self-aware, at some points simply playing up the odd dissonance of seeing as glamorous a figure as Juliette Binoche scrubbing toilets, and at other points making more caustic commentary on the impossible task the book and adaptation set out to accomplish.

[A] sci-fi head trip ... If the film can be somewhat unsubtle in its thematic questions, it matches that with an equally loud color palette – and you know what, that’s perfectly fine.

More than the fervid cartoon violence and Cage’s rococo line readings, the film’s greatest asset lies in its simple, cold-blooded premise.

“Mektoub, My Love” is never about anything more than its own style.

Victoria & Abdul is an otherwise benignly toothless, pleasantly glossy affair, but it does force us to confront one tricky question: When treating a subject as fraught as British imperial rule, when does a film’s benign inoffensiveness become offensive in and of itself?

With story beats and character turns that strain well beyond familiarity, Elemental matches formal adventure with storytelling timidity. Here is a new spin on the old formula, livened up by advances in technology and delivered with real artistry. The film is full of complex and volatile parts, all held together in the most elemental of containers.

We take frequent and foolish pleasure watching the four charismatic leads brush up against one another while bristling against their assigned roles, with the film giving performer time to shine.

At once a darkly comic social satire, a pitch-black moral thriller and an earnest plea to recognize mental illness, The Dinner is a seven-layer dip overflowing with compelling individual ingredients that, when mixed together, make the finished dish awfully difficult to digest.

The director’s comfort with the more placid rhythms of arthouse animation results in some appealing detours whenever the frenetic narrative stops to feel the breeze.

The film studiously avoids melodrama or theatrics of any sort, enfolding instead as a kind of melancholic tone poem.

Take your seat and bask in the presence of the coolest characters actors working today, but don’t ask for more than a few chuckles. Don’t call it fan service – call it coolness oblige.

This material could make for a powerful work, but Viceroy’s House is certainly not it.

You’re grateful for the time spent with a genuine epic of ideas and rueful that such heady themes weren’t more fully explored in a better film.

Ghost in the Shall is a technical knockout, a here-and-now valentine to what design wizardry Hollywood can pull off in 2017. At the same time, it does so in service of a tired tale full of repurposed visual tricks, storytelling clichés and big-studio concessions.

It’s all perfectly well-done, and it all recedes into memory the instant you leave the theater.

Once more, the filmmaker’s level of formal control is exemplary and precise, and his lead actress game for whatever comes her way. Only one can’t shake the feeling that all of it runs against the film’s ostensible message, that is another case of Monroe’s agency taken from her.

The ultimate success of 7 Days in Entebbe varies from scene to scene, and even more from actor to actor.

Ultimately, “Golda” holds three firm beliefs: That Meir is a leader to admire, that Mirren is an actress to adore, and that all interactions must be reverse engineered to fit this limited scope. It makes for a superficial biopic and blinkered bit of history, but does give the venerable performer a new accent to chew on and the chance to blow some smoke.

Dolan shoots in tightly held close-ups, forgoing spatial staging for the immediate pleasures of fabric and light. Whereas similar imagery filled his previous films with energy and life, here it just makes the somber piece feel more claustrophobic and inert.

More frustrating than a misfire, “Jeanne du Barry” suffers instead from near total myopia, roaring to life with wit and ingenuity when the constellations align and the lead’s star can shine, and dwindling before the risk of any possible eclipse. The film burns hot and bright — and quickly flames out.

You can only linger so long with such a parade of oddities making ever stranger choices before your eyes grow weary of gawking at a pageant of hideous beauty, and you start checking the clock.

Those with buy-in might find themselves won over, as, on its own terms, Marcello Mio offers a heartfelt and even occasionally moving show of artistic trust and collaboration, playing as an unambiguous love note from a filmmaker to his favorite star.