Devika Girish

The twists come rapidly in the movie’s first half; in the second, the narrative dissolves into a zigzag of flying bodies and explosions that bend the laws of space-time. But the implausibility of it all is a perk: There’s never a moment in this rollicking film when you can tell what’s coming next.

Richard Dewey’s staid, by-the-book documentary can hardly match the flair with which Wolfe lived and wrote.

The message — that science cannot succeed without a politics of solidarity — is important, but the film ends on a note of uncertainty that feels defeatist rather than urgent.

Winter Boy shines when it allows its actors to quietly play out family dynamics, with Lacoste, Binoche and especially Kircher wearing the many shades of grief with effortless, endearing naturalism.

Goulet’s sleek, lo-fi world-building — decrepit gray cityscapes; fields covered with smoke-spewing factories — is more compelling than her storytelling, which grows increasingly predictable as Niska and the vigilantes plan a raid on Waseese’s academy. Yet the film’s use of clichés can also be thrillingly subversive at times.

The critical edge of the film feels blunted by platitudes (“Opportunities are born from crises,” says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization), not to mention the exhaustion viewers will likely feel in reliving early memories of the still-ongoing pandemic for nearly two hours.

This is a maudlin and predictable film, with oversimplified, kid-friendly takes on complex political issues. It’s also a surprisingly joyless production, lacking the stylistic and emotional flair to deliver even on the cheesy, feel-good promise of the setup.

Although each chapter is built around an event — a tryst or a revelation — the film comes to life in quiet, conversational details that capture the textures of people’s lives across different generations and classes.

It’s all very resonant stuff, performed by an earnest and committed cast. But Sea Fever speeds through these turns of plot as if to check them off a list, with characters dropping dead before they’ve had a chance to earn our sympathy.

Twists of fate lose their magic when they’re obvious as clumsy script contrivances.

Contrivances are par for the course in this genre, but Nocturne lacks the stylistic flair to make them fun.

King is magnetic onscreen, nailing Chisholm’s accent and her steely persona. But there is little for her to do other than trade quips with the other characters, in a drama that is too content with telling rather than showing.

A South African thriller haunted by the ghosts of many Hollywood blockbusters past, Indemnity trades plausibility and originality for a worthy substitute: a great deal of fun.

Less a mob thriller than a ruminative drama about a life built around orders and betrayals, the movie takes an unusual perspective on a familiar genre but is weighed down by its dull, uneven pace.

Although the camera’s attention to faces and gazes, coupled with an eerie soundtrack, conjures a vague mood of suspense and seduction, the plot fizzles out quickly without any real provocations.

Star power is a logic unto itself, and Lou has ensured a limitless supply by casting Gong as an actress-spy. She conveys depths of pain and longing even when the script offers none, seducing us as effortlessly as Jean seduces her enemies.

In jazzing up the tale for the screen, Rogers sands down the somberness — Baltese is all fuzzy blues and pinks, with nary a trace of postwar grit — while turning up the silliness for gimmicky thrills.

It’s all a bit uneventful, but it works as an endearing portrait of average life: sometimes up, sometimes down, but moving steadily along.

The film is so enamored with Ghafari’s status as an exceptional symbol — a powerful woman in a man’s world — that her actual work as a politician gets short shrift.

Rather than offer insight into the difficult choices facing disabled people, Gigi & Nate opts for mawkish wish fulfillment, undercutting the film’s powerful emotional core.

The topic is, of course, timely. (When is racism not?) Yet The Walk feels dated.

Hot people pretending to be homely is par for the course in makeover movies; the real thrill lies in watching opposites attract. But the catfights, confessions, and dance-offs in He’s All That lack the sting of real romantic conflict, and there’s nary a spark between Rae and Buchanan.

Infinite muddles around with some wishy-washy Eastern philosophy, and has mostly charmless actors (with the exception of Ejiofor, magnetic against the odds) duel and drive while mouthing exposition that lacks even a wisp of subtext.

The documentary maintains an uncritical and even hagiographic view of the program’s stated premise, barely interrogating its ethics or on-the-ground efficacy.

Zaree makes an eloquent and arresting protagonist, though her documentary is a bit too tidy for its own good.

Deftly, the film shifts focus from Raducan’s disqualification to the entrenched injustices of Olympic sports, with their outsized pressures and brittle illusions of meritocracy.

Not much happens in Bird Island, but the center’s cycles of regeneration and care leave their mark, invigorating both the characters and us.

Racial injustice, economic inequities, police corruption, media ethics and foreign-policy scandals are all crammed — a bit too cursorily — into Stanley Nelson’s brisk primer on the 1980s crack epidemic.