Ben Kenigsberg

The movie clearly intends to send a serious message about how draconian immigration policies tear families apart. But a hard-hitting drama would be preferable to this strenuously wacky bromance.

A disarming subject, Hadid comes across as a cleareyed, forthright leader. But Mayor also stands out because Osit has thought it through in cinematic terms: He knows when to dwell on a striking image (such as Hadid examining a painting of Jerusalem on his global travels) and when to let a counterintuitive soundtrack selection play through.

Instant death lurks around every corner, and the movie doesn’t shy from killing off major characters. But it does play like an odd match of form and content: a story of single-minded humanitarianism framed as a relentless action spectacular.

In Uncle Frank, the writer-director Alan Ball (“True Blood”) combines several overworked genres — the coming-of-age picture, the road-trip odyssey, the angst-filled family-reunion movie — and mostly steers clear of the obvious pitfalls.

Paradoxically, the movie’s energy ebbs as the proceedings turn more antic.

When it’s showing its sensitive side, the film, scripted by David McKenna (“American History X”) and directed by Nick Sarkisov, unexpectedly shines.

Even as hagiography, Soros is unfocused.

Dr. Lewis is an engaging interview subject whose clarity and upbeat demeanor contrast strikingly with the macabre material. Her writings are read as voice-overs by Laura Dern. Dr. Lewis has also kept an excellent archive.

The ambience doesn’t register with full force, or do the heavy lifting entrusted to it. Monsoon finally tips over the line that separates minimalism from a not-fully-developed movie.

The sound effects are emphatic enough to call attention to themselves, and serve as a tacit, admirable acknowledgment that this material has been shaped. Even so, some of the clatter distracts from the purity of these great images.

Mortal isn’t really a movie proper as it is ponderous scene-setting for a potential sequel.

Melding “Saw” with “The Hunger Games,” Triggered wins no points for originality or distinctiveness, not least of its cookie-cutter characters. But its relentlessness, and the gusto with which it embraces its mandate to make a mess, is tough to resist.

The movie has a surfeit of the sudden reversals and interlocking loyalties that can make for an absorbing time killer.

No one could accuse these adventures of being conventional.

Come Play feels secondhand in its overarching conceit, its scare tactics and even its sentimentality.

Laden with references to race, class and the legacy of slavery, Spell, directed by Mark Tonderai from a script by Kurt Wimmer (a pen on the “Point Break” and “Total Recall” remakes), is stronger on maintaining suspense and a macabre atmosphere than it is at following through on its ideas, which give it a thin veneer of topicality.

A week is too short a time frame. A longer view might have left a deeper impression.

It’s sweet, personal and tedious.

Close observation can illuminate contradictions, and Lombroso, semi-edifyingly, catches his subjects in moments of opportunism or hypocrisy, even if those aren’t much of a trade for spending 90 minutes in this company.

Clearly well-intentioned, The Devil Has a Name means to deliver an inspirational lesson about the depravity of big industry and the power of the little guy. But it’s mostly a muddle.

Raiff deserves credit for an unexpectedly elliptical coda, but much of the chatter between the leads has the emo-tedium of dorm room blather.

It elevates voices who sounded early alarms about the virus and whose warnings were lost in a din of complacency, incompetence and political calculation. Not all of these interviewees or their messages have broken through to the public consciousness.

Occasionally, the nostalgic back-patting makes way for a few good jokes.

Pity, or prayer, couldn’t change the fact that Faith Ba$ed is abysmally unfunny.

However great Gund’s influence on other collectors and philanthropists has been, and however progressive and righteous her advocacy for racial justice, Aggie doesn’t match her originality with an accordingly innovative approach.

It’s hard to argue with Bettis’s frazzled underplaying or Farnworth’s stellar airhead routine, an impressively sustained study in quick-witted dimwittedness.

This is a huge subject, and the film, which favors anecdotes over a macro treatment, doesn’t have much structure to speak of. It consists of one brief profile after another — a strategy that is efficient for delivering information, but that leaves Myth of a Colorblind France dry and disarrayed as filmmaking.

The documentary is conventionally structured and sometimes placid, but it has an alarming message.