Eric Kohn

Those who adore the original, however, will feel like they’ve been revisited by an old friend, or perhaps the dirty uncle, whose jokes are a bit frayed but still pointed enough. Produced at a time when big, brash studio comedies rarely crack the zeitgeist, Coming 2 America works far better than the market standard, in part because it does right by its roots.

As it stands, Ted K amounts to a fragmented set of moments, many of them quite disturbing, and some them quite sad. But the half-baked quality of the big picture leads to the conclusion that it may be impossible to ever fully comprehend the motivating factors that led to Kaczynski’s fate — and perhaps that’s how it belongs.

Tonally, the movie often struggles to sort out whether it’s a disarming romcom or a straight drama, leading to some listless passages.

In the process of merging formulas, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things recycles the same material it seems inclined to rejuvenate, one step at a time. There may be endless ways to make “Groundhog Day” feel fresh, but this one’s little more than another harmless retread.

This kind of hushed, low-key story certainly wouldn’t be the most obvious place to start an epic, but it’s a captivating chunk of mood and personality begging for future chapters. Here’s hoping Bateman finds a way to tell them.

With Dan Deacon’s cosmic synth carrying the strange twists along, “Strawberry Mansion” works its way through an absurdist romance with palpable depth.

Despite its shortcomings, “John and the Hole” shows enough restraint and thematic sophistication to indicate strong potential for Sisto behind the camera.

The appeal of El Planeta lies with a pair of women who prefer to live in the moment rather than considering its consequences.

Wang’s absorbing first-person account of the coronavirus outbreak initially seems like it’s treading familiar ground, tracking the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan and government propaganda efforts to pretend it’s under control. With time, however, Wang turns the tables on her Western audience, illustrating how those same lies emanated from American airwaves months later.

Drawing on interviews with 10 experts and internet theorists with an endearing mashup of film clips and trippy 3-D animation, A Glitch in the Matrix adapts to the internal logic of its echo chamber until starts to sound pretty convincing on its own terms. If you’re not already one of the diehards convinced we’re living in a simulation, this movie might actually get you there.

Flee becomes his cinematic catharsis, as Amin recounts his journey in fits and starts, while the animation turns his memories into a bracing adventure that doubles as modern history.

Brimming with constant new ideas and visual innovation, Shaw’s work captures the flurry of thought and motion at the center of dangerous times, and even dares to make them fun.

The movie shows the mark of a filmmaker in full command of vintage horror’s most disturbing strengths — and well-equipped to resurrect them.

Much of the world views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a fixed problem with no end in sight. Few can explain why, but “The Human Factor” finds those who can. With the white-knuckle intensity of a first-rate political thriller, Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh’s engrossing documentary tracks glacial efforts to broker a peace deal over the past three decades.

Oppenheim relishes in the strange beauty of their lives with Rockwellian precision, and the bigger picture remains elusive throughout. Look closer, however, and the movie makes a sobering point, whether or not Oppenheim intended it — that the biggest threat to American identity isn’t confronting the nature of the society so much as the people who prefer to escape it altogether, ending their lives in solipsistic bliss.

While it struggles through some awkward plot twists and clunky tangents, The Midnight Sky never loses grasp of the chilly atmosphere that inspires every moment; if only it there was something fresh about that.

This minuscule but affecting hourlong story is an extension of the “Small Axe” mission to fill a historical gap deserving of greater scrutiny, and achieves that goal by serving as a kind of education itself.

It’s not episodic, but feels more like the first act of a larger story begging for further exploration. Nevertheless, with a complex, ever-evolving turn by newcomer Sheyi Cole at its center, the story it does offer up turns on McQueen’s usual sophisticated narrative techniques and the same striking penchant to render Black British culture in complex lyrical terms.

Gunda may be a meditational slow-burn, but as it unfurls its immersive audiovisual tapestry it hovers between non-fiction observation and lyrical insight, and to that end feels like an advancement of the nature documentary form.

An actor’s showcase for Viola Davis as the show-stopping singer and the late Chadwick Boseman as the scheming trumpeter angling to steal her spotlight, director George C. Wolfe’s reverential adaptation livens up the material with sizzling color and vivid closeups. Save for a few digressions, however, Wolfe and screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson have put the play into the movie, rather than vice versa.

From its opening moments to the devastating finale, Collective plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of “Spotlight” with the paranoid uncertainty of “The Manchurian Candidate” as it explores the national fallout of a tragedy that won’t let up.

Though forged in a meticulous 1930s backdrop that merges historical detail with the style and tone of that era, “Mank” is hardly a playful throwback. Fincher has made a cerebral psychodrama that rewards the engaged cinephile audience in its crosshairs, but even when cold to the touch, the movie delivers a complex and insightful look at American power structures and the potential for a creative spark to rankle their foundations.

Director Martin Krejcí’s first feature has the fairy-tale surrealism and penchant for oddball outsiders that distinguished Burton’s work, as well as a similar lighthearted quirkiness that balances the undercurrents of gothic dread.

The Life Ahead is compelling enough to make the by-the-numbers narrative worth telling, if only because with such fine-tuned performances at its center, it deserves to be told.

It’s a welcome return to form for a filmmaker whose form is all about the slippery search for truth.

This searing brand of humor has never felt more essential. Blending activism with entertainment, Baron Cohen’s best movie to date gives us new reasons to be afraid of the world, but also permission to laugh at it.

Lombroso has made the scariest documentary of the year without telling us anything new.