Glenn Kenny

Stardust is an eye-poppingly elaborate fantasy that's shot through with action-movie adrenaline and attitude.

What it all adds up to is a bleak “in space no one can hear your silent scream of existential despair” project. It’s bracing to be sure, but those looking for more positively aspirational fare will have a hard time.

Most of all it shows how DeJoria’s passion for doing good extends into a head-spinning variety of walks of life.

It’s in the climbing sequences that the movie’s animation is at its most imaginative, creating effects both exhilarating and harrowing.

The movie also show’s Perrier’s humor, and his talents as a mentor.

My Son finds its cinematic footing in a committed, steady, realism, and that creates a high-wire act of tension and suspense that’s refreshingly clean and consistently effective.

Meerpool’s movie is scary without being alarmist.

Soderberg provides a cornucopia of fizzy, post–New Wave imagery, fitting for a picture that’s pretty much all about surfaces.

Deeply nuts and exhaustingly hilarious.

Stronger takes more artistic risks than any other American-made “inspired by true events” picture I can recall.

The film moves from detective story to courtroom drama with nicely sketched character studies as a bonus.

Even if you don’t care for Warren’s tunes, this movie is likely to make you a fan.

This affectionate portrait is also well grounded. Finley is remembered as a hard worker among other hard workers.

Are We Not Cats is a well-put-together film with a lot of striking imagery, but, as you may have already inferred, something of a specialty item.

The director remains near-merciless in his approach, never shying away from showing his vulnerable characters (and the tormentor played with twisted relish by Lithgow is, ultimately, as unprotected as any of the others) in states of utter abjection.

The tale is a jolting one, and the superb players do justice to the emotional distress of its characters. But a surer directorial hand might have yielded a more resonant experience.

The performers don’t seem like they’re acting at all, which contributes to the film’s unsettling power. The elliptical narrative structure articulates a sad truth of the addict’s life concerning both the challenge and the tedium of making it through to the next fix.

Anchored by a startling performance by Michalina Olszanska, the Czech film “I, Olga Hepnarova” is an austere, hypnotic story of sadness, madness and murder.

Barnett muses on the contradiction of how, in one performance, she might be “vivid and alive” and in the next “distant,” even though she’s going through the same motions with each show.

Sokolov’s debut feature is a clever, bloody as hell, often hilarious virtuoso exercise in excruciating harm-doing among mendacious people.

Lightfoot is frank about sizing up that work — the movie opens with him expressing disdain for the sexism of his early hit “For Lovin’ Me” — and he’s refreshingly up-to-date in his perspectives about today’s music.

Their moment of resolution at the end is very moving, but the movie also testifies that while love and forgiveness can ameliorate suffering, it can’t really wipe it all away.

Job tensions hammer at the fault lines of the couple’s marriage, but the movie maintains an understated “I love ya, tomorrow” tone. A pleasant sit — the kind of picture that’s moving, but not too moving.

Wang — using a direct, unadorned shooting style — along with his cast (Justin Chon, who’s been around for some time, makes a strong impression as Chang-rae) put them across with unusual integrity.

Burgess carries this succinct (and arguably slight, narratively disjointed) comedy without making you want to strangle his often willfully naïve character.

Ms. Ferguson’s film does not seem to have a particular organizing principle at first. These survivors do not necessarily know one another. But their stories, intercut with archival footage over a brisk and frequently harrowing 81 minutes, build to a pitch of horror and sadness that eventually allows for a note or two of hope to sound.

Though two hours long, the movie moves as swiftly as a greased ferret through a Habitrail and delivers hallucinatory action highs for its extended climax.

All Up in the Biz, a new documentary directed by Sacha Jenkins, is a cogent, affectionate and largely apt tribute to Markie, the D.J. and rapper who was known as a gifted beatboxer.

It’s a charming, breezy father-son story but also a diverting account of Chinese film and video culture in the 1990s.

Lawrence is a consistently incandescent screen presence, and her role lets her run through her greatest performative hits, so to speak. She’s goofily sexy, poignantly wide-eyed and retains a beaming, you-can-deny-her-nothing smile.

Mr. Davis, speaking to Faith Morris of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, poses a knotty question about how far his cause of eliminating race hate has yet to go. Her reply: “How long is this documentary going to be?”

The director, Masaaki Yuasa, is adept at stories and visuals where water is a major character.

The details of this engaging and sometimes heart-tugging picture are entirely contemporary.

The character Ms. Émond and Ms. Mackay create is not likable, but is puzzling in an engrossing way. I am not sufficiently familiar with Ms. Fortier’s work to weigh in on how accurately this film represents it, but as an act of complex homage, “Nelly” gets to a few interesting places.

The spectacle — its eardrum-shattering, eye-popping pyrotechnics, with the violence framed against all manner of phantasmagoric computer-generated backdrops — is its own reward.

This documentary portrait of the formidable sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard is, by dint of its brevity, more tantalizing than satiating. But it’s still a welcome cinematic account of her work.

[Roth] knows his stuff and he’s very adept at serving up both gross-outs and real leap-from-your-seat moments.

It contains amusing jokes and has an old-fashioned impulse to tug at heart strings.

Little Joe manages to exert a peculiar pull in spite of being constructed with material you’ve likely seen elsewhere.

“Blues,” playing now in a 40th anniversary restoration, is a constant charmer. Watching it is a buoyant experience even when the humor is a bit tasteless, including a bit involving mistaken sex partners during a blackout.

True-crime doc watchers who are in committed relationships may see Lover, Stalker, Killer, a bracing account of a lurid series of misdeeds directed by Sam Hobkinson, and breathe a sigh of relief over being out of the dating pool.

There’s sharp dialogue throughout.

Mr. Baena (who, with David O. Russell, wrote the tricky 2004 “I ♥ Huckabees”) is more accomplished than many microbudget filmmakers, and the looseness with which he imbues the middle section of Joshy is deceptive, creating a sense that the necessary emotional crash might not actually occur.

By framing the movie as a multipronged narrative that eventually culminates in the big event of the fair itself, it risks prosaicness. But the subjects are winning and heartening, and their mission is one you just can’t take issue with.

Even if you don’t need Beuys justified or explained to you, the movie is an exhilarating portrait of a unique truth-teller.

The ending, in which the reunited Sirens play before an enthusiastic crowd, is heart-tugging and rousing, even for non-metal heads.

The movie chronicles music industry tales of glory and failure. These are dishy, but more interesting is Ms. Jett’s rock ‘n’ roll heart. The stories of how she mentored younger bands are moving.

The filmmakers are clearly trying to bring an uncommon maturity to the fantasy film, and in many respects they succeed. While not everything here works, what does is impressive.

Sean Penn’s work in Haiti after its devastating 2011 earthquake continues to this day. And this new documentary Citizen Penn is a revealing, engaging chronicle of the actor’s activism.

Mr. Schreiber has almost no physical resemblance to Wepner, in his heyday a burly, mustachioed redhead. Mr. Schreiber is a terrific actor, however, and he pulls it off. His portrayal works partly because of its understatement.

Since this is a rare feature film to treat the Irish famine, it’s a little odd that it tilts so heavily toward a genre exercise. But as a genre exercise, it’s pretty potent.

An unusually compelling domestic drama with sharp ears, a sharp eye, and up to a point, sharp teeth.

A concise and informative documentary.

Paul Rudd plays Berg with the droll, boyish charm he’s brought to dozens of other roles, but he adds a protective coating. This movie, directed by Ben Lewin from a Robert Rodat script (one adapted from Nicholas Dawidoff’s fascinating 1994 biography of Berg), relishes Berg’s compulsion to remain an enigma even to those closest to him

Brian Kirk, the director, has a good feel for this formidable, intimidating setting; the viewer appreciates its beauty while maintaining a keen sense of how awful it would be to get stranded there.

The documentary is able to record only small, not sweeping, changes of heart. Nevertheless, the film, like the singers, maintains a compassionate optimism.

This first feature from Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden demonstrates that these documentary filmmakers might do well to think more like journalists sometimes.

While Monday is not quite as bracing as Papadimitropoulos’s prior feature, “Suntan,” it’s a sharply observed, well-acted picture with a lot of tart detail and a few real stings in its tail.

Being Eddie is a great time. Murphy is good company, and he’s hilarious as ever.

It all moves along so amiably, and offers such consistently delightful visuals, that the conventional plot points, up to and including an inevitable “but I can explain” bit, are entirely digestible.

Directed with a genial breeziness by Jeremy Sims, the movie negotiates emotional downshift and uplift with confidence.

The documentary doesn’t quite cover everything — their collaborations with Joni Mitchell and Martin Scorsese go unmentioned, for example. This is still a rollicking account that will make even non-herbally-inclined viewers root for the fellows.

A road movie that’s as mesmerizing as it is tense.

An eccentric and lively animated fantasy.

Scharf’s stories of meeting up with Haring (they were roommates for some time) are evocative and moving.

The movie was directed by Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”) and Jeff Malmberg (“Marwencol”), and is a tad more fanciful than their prior work. But fancy is a good fit for the Veecks, it turns out.

Alex Strangelove is witty, compassionate and enjoyable throughout; a charming movie and in many respects an enlightened one.

It’s undeniable that Manhunt delivers first-rate cinematic technique while skimping on substantial emotional investment. It’s still a great deal of fun.

There are revealing glimpses into the early work of artists who would morph into entities that were slicker and ostensibly cooler.

To its credit, this consistently interesting and at times engrossing picture declines to strike any of its notes with a hammer. Trading on the great British art of understatement, it’s scrupulous, sober, and tasteful throughout.

It may surprise people who’ve experienced the Gallaghers only in tabloid-fodder mode that “Supersonic” teems with stirring and even moving moments.

Sibling rivalry is a consistent subtext but only that — Mr. Adrià’s main concern is to create. As it happens, in this generally likable film he is at his most endearing when fixing himself a simple (but indeed delicious looking) grilled ham and cheese sandwich.

While the picture doesn’t break any new genre ground, it has several jaw-dropping set pieces, including an incredibly physical fight inside a speeding car. Collet-Serra’s staging is excellent throughout.

The movie is impeccably crafted and consistently engaging.

Ultimately the results are eye-popping, sometimes almost confoundingly so.

Choudhury is excellent here as a fraught matriarch — as good as she was as a young rebel three decades back. And Maskati’s performance is a slippery mix of suave and menacing, which helps sell the farthest-fetched elements of this story.

The movie interweaves the contemporary sessions with a very selective — and, while not wholly sanitized, certainly discreet — account of her tumultuous past. Overall it’s a better-than-competent piece of fan service and a not unpersuasive bid for an auxiliary youth audience.

The movie steers into a “beat the system” narrative that packs some stirring “Erin Brockovich” energy.

The director Celia Aniskovich, using Owen Long’s 2022 New York Magazine article “Secrets of the Christmas Tree Trade” as a starting point, has at her subject with commendable verve.

The picture abounds with amazing landscapes and trenchant but quietly articulated commentaries on tourism and Jamaica’s other economies, or lack thereof, in this era.

The movie, directed by Jon Weinbach, offers several eye-opening mini-narratives on the way to a rematch with Argentina.

The finale is as compassionate as it is sad and unnerving.

Here the now-elders seem delighted to make a joyful noise with the generations they influenced.

The bare facts of Carter Cash’s story are such that the filmmakers would have had to really mess up to not produce a movie that entertains and moves a viewer to tears. “June,” rest assured, does the job well.

The movie is at its most entertaining when detailing the making of “Midnight Express” and the contentious personalities involved.

The movie’s straddling of the dramatic and the documentary forms is unsettling. Unless you unquestioningly accept its method, this chronicle can look like a glaring invasion of privacy. But the film’s people are moving, and the payoff is compassionate, humane and worth heeding.

The film’s success is directly dependent on the personalities — and achievements — of the young women highlighted. Despite the narrative gaps, Ms. Lipitz excels at putting across those personalities.

The movie chronicles eventual triumphs that are invariably tinged with sadness. Through it all, Osbourne’s devotion to his family, his fans, his bandmates and, yes, his art is palpable.

On the whole, Becoming Bond is sufficiently winning that you might even forgive its chapter titles, each one a worse-than-the-previous play on a James Bond-associated phrase

It’s a satisfying cast all the way down.

Tedesco is the son of the West Coast guitar great Tommy Tedesco, and he clearly has a knack for getting musicians to open up. The band members.

This film is informative and often fascinating.

My reservations about such pictures in general were not put to rest by Patriots Day, but this film’s real merits are not easily dismissed either.

Mr. Rodrigues ultimately delivers an intriguing, daring film that is likely to surprise both his fans and moviegoers unfamiliar with his work.

It’s refreshing to see children’s animation makers use surrealism, instead of winking pop-culture references, to charm adults.

While it’s inevitable that some, maybe many, viewers will find the dual role a distraction, those who hunger for De Niro in mobster mode will get more than their fill.

What makes the movie compelling, then, are not so much the stories that ebb and rise from despair to hope, like the tides, but the portraits of the people living them.

Last Days manages to be thoroughly disquieting without overtly judging its subject.

The Out-Laws, directed by Tyler Spindel, is a slight comedy, but it’s also raucous and kickily violent, with several laugh-in-spite-of-your-better-judgment bits.

As a straight, sentimental melodrama, Youth works well. While there are a lot of conventional tropes, the cast enacts them with such fresh, tenderhearted sincerity that they regain some power.

This is not a spectacular picture, but it’s an informative and heartening one that might make a good double feature with “First Man,” the forthcoming fictionalized blockbuster about Apollo 11.

Coogan brings his usual comic reliability to his characterization, as does Isla Fisher as the rich man’s predictably estranged wife, and they wring laughs from the material.

For all the elaborate weaponry, production design and (eventually) frantic action offered here, this movie crackles most as a lively pas de deux between Taylor-Joy and Teller, who commendably take their material seriously no matter how seriously ridiculous it gets.

The verbal analysis here isn’t always profound — one interviewee trots out the banal phrase “the conversation we should be having” — but the narrative as presented in archival footage (Kaepernick did not sit for an interview for this film) is exemplary.

As the movie heads for its quietly ghastly denouement, its plot mechanism gets a little wobbly, which is ultimately forgivable. It’s a genuinely tough picture, but it also has a real undercurrent of compassion.

As a statement about the economic insecurity inherent in American capitalism, Where Is Kyra? has grim power.

The Drowning...distinguishes itself by applying a depth of psychological observation that yields a genuinely unsettling vision.

The animation is handsome, the graphic settings understated but intelligently detailed.

There’s a lot more here for tennis fans than you get in average sports documentaries.

Nothing Compares is a worthwhile appreciation of the artist.

Abominable is an exceptionally watchable and amiable animated tale.

Reminders of Him deserves credit for serving it all up unabashedly and without a single wink. This is largely thanks to the stupendous Monroe, and also Withers.

The movie is both heady (there are real thrills in the stories of exploration) and sobering (Mr. Lorius’s findings are convincing). This is a cogent, accessible cinematic delineation of an increasingly crucial problem.

Jonathan Penner’s sharp script (from a story by Robert Damon Schneck) and Stacy Title’s assured direction keep the heat on, and there’s some resourceful misdirection that deepens the story and intensifies the scares.

The result is an unusually compelling character study, one that, commendably, opts to end on a humane note rather than a dark judgment.

The movie gains momentum as it indulges in hallucinogenic phantasmagoria. Whatever you make of its intentions, it’s certainly exceptional in its visual distinction.

The ensemble is superb, and each member has at least one standout moment, but the movie rides on the shoulders of Parsons, as Michael, the host of the party.

There’s a consistent inventiveness — and grim humor — to this treatment of a seemingly well-worn theme.

The movie also provides a smart primer on the “New German Cinema” Herzog helped bring into being during the 1960s.

Ultimately, Ascent is a genuinely poetic portrait of a place, and various people’s relation to it.

Upgrade is an energetic, superficially slick, latter-day B-movie of the “but dumb” category. That is, it’s kind of like “RoboCop,” but dumb, and also like “Ex Machina,” but dumb.

Rather than extend the epic sweep of this picture into the cosmic ineffable, he just wants the viewer bouncing along and rooting for its female hero. And the film succeeds admirably in this respect.

Díaz’s approach is plain and solid, like a well-built wooden chair before varnishing.

“I want to make abstract art that’s funny, happy, energetic, joyful,” he exclaims at one point. That he did. This movie is a good introduction to it.

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. Homeland: Iraq Year Zero is both an irrefutable proof of that statement and a nagging reminder that the statement is insufficient to address the ultimate tragedy of war.

Plane” sinks (or rises, depending on your perspective) to “hell yeah” ridiculousness only at the end, delivering a punchline that lands at the right time.

While the picture, directed by Rick Gomez, has an often jaunty tone, it’s really at its best when it leans into the sadness that shadows the father-daughter relationship. Those scenes are where the two Zahns do their best, most affecting acting work.

Even if you are unmoved by Mr. Szegedi’s personal story (I found him somewhat sympathetic), what Keep Quiet tells us about its larger themes is upsettingly pertinent.

The movie’s lived-in acting and unhurried pace make it a better-than-palatable viewing experience.

One need not admire Zweig’s writing to recognize the worth of this thoughtful treatment of one of the countless real-life tragedies of 20th-century history.

If you love the music Berns made, you’ll love this movie; if you don’t, I feel for you, but “Bang!” might nevertheless entertain with its dish.

Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain, named for one of its signature songs, is an often engaging chronicle of the group (which has sold more than 20 million albums), one that is probably best appreciated by fans.

Fire Will Come practically becomes a documentary, and a devastating one at that.

Chef Flynn is an engaging documentary about McGarry’s boy-to-man journey.

The movie, shot mostly in crisp, sometimes smoky black and white, is far better, a quirky but purposeful grafting of Mack Sennett to the French New Wave. Yet it’s the soundtrack that has the staying power.

Mr. Newell directs with sensitivity and the occasional invention; the movie has an almost tactile appreciation of period detail, as when Juliet sets to writing, the camera lingers on her onionskin typing paper. The cast is impeccable.

The director Julien Temple — who has excellent documentaries on the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer and other galvanic musicians under his belt — is very good at this sort of thing.

Ritchie reveals crucial story points with clever time-juggling editing, and keeps up the tension well into the movie’s climax, which delivers exactly what the viewer will have come to hope for.

Because Sánchez followed his subjects for so long, he was able to pack some surprises up the movie’s sleeve. As a couple of its figures undergo drastic life changes, a narrative both tragic and inspiring emerges.

Hyams directs Timothy Brady’s script appropriately if not brilliantly (Hyams is also credited as a co-editor), but the movie’s main attraction, finally, is its cast.

The quirks of Beaton’s personality — his cultivation of enemies and frustrated romanticism, among them — are finally not as interesting as his work.

The collision of her good-faith lack of inhibition with institutionalized misogyny makes this Canadian’s biography a very disquieting American story.

Santoalla ends with the mystery solved. The threads that remain hanging imbue this peculiar story of paradise lost with a tragic resonance.

The documentary also reminds viewers of why Friedkin has earned this tribute. For all his career ups and downs, he has remained devoted to making genuinely challenging and exciting work, and has succeeded more often than not. The documentary serves as a strong incitement to dig into it.

More than a few moments here are new, and real grabbers.

If today Presley really needs a sales pitch, this movie is a good one.

It’s a little surprising that these proceedings are led by the director Ron Howard, since this subject matter is more perverse than anything he has set his sights on before. The actors are up to the task, however.

It has a sturdy, vivid construction, and is a convincing demonstration of the venality that’s central to the thinking of hardly squeaky-clean antidrug zealots.

Aiding their investigations is an underappreciated policewoman appealingly played by Naomi Ackie. The proceedings are marshaled with affection by the director Chris Columbus.

This moving film’s sense of hometown pride is subtle but apt.

The movie’s openheartedness eventually wins the day.

While Sputnik doesn’t make its substantial borrowings from other sci-fi pictures entirely new, it does juice them up enough to yield a genuinely scary and satisfying experience.

Clash turns into a full-fledged horror movie, albeit one without the fake comfort of a supernatural or science-fiction pretext. It’s just man’s inhumanity to man, in full sway.

It could be argued that the film needed a little more documentary-style explanation about how the facility works — how long children stay, the goals of the treatment, and so on. But ultimately, Philp can’t be blamed for stressing emotional engagement over exposition.

If this film’s directors, Valérie Müller and the French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, don’t offer much overt material on Polina’s inner life, it’s because they don’t have to: the point of Polina, and this movie, is that her dancing is her being.

As self-promotional ventures go, this is an effort of integrity and good will, and packs in a lot of spirited music that more or less sells itself.

Gottsagen is a disarming performer who creates a sweet and funny character.

Today, Duritz is a reflective figure. The documentary, directed by Amy Scott, will pull you back from any “pity the poor celebrity” eye-rolling with its revelation of his struggles with mental illness, which he endured, undiagnosed, during the ups and downs of early fame.

Directed by Scott Leberecht, Jurassic Punk tells the very juicy story of pioneers, naysayers and professional hierarchies that made Williams both the Necessary Man and an eventual outcast.

Wyman narrates throughout, and his innate common sense can be persuasive.

Julia is an apt tribute to a life well-lived and well-fed.

As it turns out, modes of farce and fantasy enable Mr. Dumont to pull the rug out from under the viewer in a number of new and upsetting ways. Be prepared.

Stewart recounts how he thought that if his films could make people love these animals, he could push popular opinion against their being hunted. He doesn’t quite pull this off here, despite impressive footage of him swimming with sharks. He does, however, convince us that these superpredators are important to oceanic ecosystems and that because they are so indiscriminate in their eating habits, they are full of toxins.

Bloom plays his role with a feral commitment, and while Turturro has portrayed several villains in his career, here his refusal to ingratiate even slightly yields a genuinely frightening characterization.

Mr. Hughes, who for many years cocreated films with his twin brother, Allen, and here makes his solo feature debut, is a sharp and engaged visual storyteller. It’s a pleasure to see him working in expansive wide-screen, a fitting format for his chops.

Despite the hardships endured by the characters, nearly every shot seems dappled with nostalgia. The music score is sentimental, with shimmering pianos and trembling strings. But the writing and its attendant characterizations have an undeniable integrity, the particular historical detail offered by the story is not common in films about this era, and the lead performers are moving.

The family comedy-drama Almost Christmas is an often disarmingly entertaining picture, in spite of its being a not particularly well-thought-out cinematic contrivance.

Almost 40 years later, it’s hilarious to see Stewart Copeland speak of Sting with still-fresh feelings of exasperation, irritation and admiration. Fans of Elton John will find the manic work ethic he applied to the album “Too Low for Zero” fascinating.

Performed with absolute commitment by its cast (Justin Salinger and Ella Smith play the younger versions of the title characters), Ray & Liz is a quietly harrowing movie. Billingham risks tedium, though, in withholding anything like an inner life for any of its characters until the movie’s very end.

The numerous action set pieces would be memorable even if the plot points didn’t eventually fall into place, which they do.

Knock Knock ends on a not entirely satisfactory note, but delivers a pretty mean genre wallop getting there (with almost zero gore).

Out of Pinky’s marginalized life, Restrepo conjures a lush but nevertheless desolate cinematic atmosphere.

The overall integrity of the effort is impressive.

The movie is a good representation of Mr. Hart’s comedy, but not a perfect one.

These days, Ritchie’s films are all about fabulous looking people causing a ruckus and blowing a lot of stuff up and taking out less good-looking bad guys in the bargain. “In the Grey” not only delivers these goods but goes into copious detail about just how Sid and Bronco get their ruckus up to speed.

The movie also shows the volunteers and health care workers who look after the pilgrims during the devotional season. The movie allows these figures moments of frankness — there’s much about their jobs that’s tiring and unappetizing — but the viewer will be mostly impressed by their compassion.

A sturdy, watchable character drama.

While its mode of argumentation gets weaker as the standard-issue boy-meets-girl-meets-carpe-diem plot progresses, the appealing cast and brisk running time help “Jexi” not wear out its welcome.

This film is sensitively wrought. It’s credible in its evocation of mid-’70s suburbia. The acting is excellent throughout, and Ross Lynch in the role of Dahmer elicits genuine sympathy for an increasingly lost but not yet monstrous soul. But in abandoning the subjective perspective of the graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer feels a little lacking in purpose.

Shot largely in hospital waiting areas, offices and conference rooms, The Human Trial is not a visually dynamic movie. But it builds a good head of steam in the narrative intrigue department before resolving on a low-key note of hope.

The directors Pierre Perifel and JP Sans put the narrative across with a blithe bounciness, and the all-star voice actors play along nicely.

Replete with sometimes startling imagery...Suntan captures a set of very specific feelings: the exhilaration and embarrassment of falling, followed by the desperate denial that one has landed in a very bad place.

Ne Me Quitte Pas...is soberingly adept at portraying the tedium of drunken life. Whether it actually avoids emulating said tedium depends on how engaging you find its two stooges. I was sympathetic without being wholly charmed.

In depicting the horrific specifics of this particular man’s awful military experience, Hermanus delivers in abundance.

The cultural transformation and re-transformation of Miami Beach (specifically its southern tip, South Beach) is a story that’s fascinating, poignant, garish and, in some ways, befuddling.

Cairo Conspiracy is a measured but unsparing portrait of corruption perpetrated by people who, across the board, are utterly confident of their own rectitude. Its denouement offers some mercy, but zero hope that the rot depicted can be corrected.

It’s a fun journey.

The movie wants the viewer to believe that James didn’t have it easy — and he didn’t. But it can’t skate over the aberrant actions that led to his imprisonment. “Bitchin’” is fascinating and troubling viewing.

The material about Kubrick’s process is finally more interesting than the discussions about his temperament.

The lens through which the movie views these kids is objective and balanced, but there’s an empathy at work that makes the viewer understand what each of the subjects is going through.

Whether they’re comfortable owning up to it or not, the Russos are better moviemakers than their Marvel movies (the most recent of which was the gargantuan hit “Avengers: Endgame”) allow them to be. They demonstrate that here. Holland, also a veteran of the superhero mode of cinema (he’s Spider-Man these days) shows performing chops that web-slinging doesn’t often let him flex.

Dweck divides his efforts between elegiac tone poem and shaggy-dog ensemble piece.

This is an engaging movie depicting some sympathetic people, and is ultimately worthwhile. But there’s a one-dimensional quality to Ghostland; Mr. Stadler’s team obviously felt it was more important to record events than to explore conditions.

The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger is a challenging, sometimes poignant engagement with the man and his work.

There are a lot of laughs in his Hollywood redemption story, which also reveals Trejo’s hard-won gentleness.

“Recorder” doesn’t explore the extent to which Marion’s original project of analysis was subsumed by the compulsion to tape everything. But her taping of everything created an irreproducible archive that is enlightening and the stuff of madness.

This sports underdog story, which is based on true events, has several features endemic to the genre. But Dream Horse, an unabashed crowd-pleaser directed by Euros Lyn, earns its smiles and cheers.

Fascinating and exasperating.

This film is, in many respects, a plain picture, but also a cleareyed, direct, fat-free one that has something to say and says it affectingly.

It is notable both for its considerable comedic flair and its detailed depiction of Johannesburg.

The emotional resonance may be surprising given the movie’s relentless gloss, but it’s real. The spectacularly charming cast, led by the young Nick Robinson in the title role (who brings a knowing touch of 1980s Matthew Broderick to some of his line readings), puts it all across, including a genuinely crowd-pleasing ending.

Porter’s inquisitive camera gives the viewer enticing detail on how everything comes together — for instance, unbeknown to the audience, the pool is constantly monitored by rescue divers in scuba gear who also serve as prop people — while holding in suitable awe the actual magic all this work eventually yields.

The Outpost evolves from what initially feels like a collection of war-movie commonplaces, highlighting crude-talking soldiers in a bad situation, into something more complex and illuminating.

The movie resolves into a relatively deft combination of message picture and suspense thriller.

While the making of the song was partially detailed in its long-form video, there’s plenty of new, engaging, and sometimes eyebrow-raising anecdotal material here.

The movie’s convincing accretion of detail and its affectionate fictionalization of an actual subculture are disarming.

This portrait of already wounded people who can’t stop inflicting pain on themselves and each other has a great deal of integrity. But if you’re seeking ennobling sentiment, you’ll do well to look elsewhere.

While it’s possible that the director and cinematographer Chris Moukarbel is good at withholding unflattering material, Gaga comes off well, and credibly so: intelligent, an accomplished craftswoman, a well-mannered collaborator and boss.

The film is an unusually layered look at how the combination of privation, misplaced familial loyalty and just plain rotten luck can make the immigrant experience in America a nightmare.

As exceptional as the acting in the picture is, and it is wonderful — Whitaker and Keitel are as inventive and surprising as they’ve been in years, and the supporting roles played by the likes of Ellen Burstyn and Stan Carp are well-sketched — it can’t entirely lift the movie from the rut it has all but plowed into by the end credits.

I did find myself wishing that all films this narratively misguided were so directorially sure-footed. Makes getting through them a lot less painful.

Pullman is always great to watch, the Montana landscapes are gorgeously captured by cinematographer David McFarland, and there are a couple of action set pieces that spark.

It’s refreshing to see an account of a famous food guy who doesn’t wallow in his own character defects.

The Champagne experience is a particular one, and even if you don’t imbibe this movie can give you an appreciation for what makes it special.

Depends on how you're feeling about Tom Cruise--as opposed to the character he's putatively playing.

Neither character talks all that much, but both actors project complex intelligence and consistent emotional acuity.

Strikes me as more of a thesis piece than anything LaBute has put his name to thus far. Its characters don't seem to be people as much as they are stand-ins for ideas.

Strickland’s film is a daring, atmosphere-soaked piece of kink hypnotherapy that pays explicit homage to the films of Franco, down to the casting of former Franco regular, formidable femme Monica Swinn, in a sinister role.

The movie is, indeed, the tragedy of a ridiculous man. On the other hand, he does manage a maneuver by which his heirs avoid the estate tax. How ridiculous is that?

This ABCs of Death is, either as a result of a surfeit of artistic freedom or just my own narrower-than-the-producers’ strictures of taste, as much of a hit-and-miss affair as the first, which came out in 2012.

Suki Waterhouse does her best with what she’s given. But still. The movie’s commonplaces don’t serve its singular subject—love him or hate him—all that well.

It is well-intentioned, conscientious and competent in its filmmaking craft.

The courtroom scenes are the animated ones…and said animation looks rather cruder than your average PS3 game.

All this is frustrating, as the picture contains a few grace notes that remind one what an acute filmmaker Wong can be.

A low-key and intelligent character study, Miss Stevens doesn’t escape from its indie-film commonplaces often enough to become really distinctive, but it has enough conscientiousness about its people that it doesn’t let the commonplaces fester into movie-sinking clichés.

The Escape of Prisoner 614 is (at first, at least) an amiable comedic shaggy dog story in which inept law enforcement meets corrupt law enforcement.

If you’re a big booster of any of the lead actors (I’m something of a Cannavale partisan myself), this will be worth your time.

Vacancy could have been some sort of satirical masterpiece had this whole scenario been finally revealed as an extreme form of couple's therapy designed to get Beckinsale and Wilson back together.

The point of it all being that history and poetry are not possible without personified antimonies, real or imagined. Neruda does not make this point in any particularly convincing way, despite excellent performances by Luis Gnecco as the title character, a stolid Gael Garcia Bernal as his pursuer, and Mercedes Morán as Delia.

What’s interesting about Rock Dog is just how very unapologetically a kid’s movie it is.

What it falls back on, rather than the troubling truth illuminated in Camus’ story, is the movie-standard gaze of compassion, here proffered by Mortensen, who, it must be admitted, does it well.

The first English-language film from Norwegian director Eric Poppe is a conscientious and beautifully shot movie that ultimately bogs down in its own disinclination to come to any kind of dramatically useful conclusion about its subject.

It's a fascinating portrait, but it's also choppy and rushed and lopsided.

Directed by Pappi Corsicato and executive produced, typically, by the subject himself, the movie is never uninteresting but is often surprisingly low-energy and, even more surprisingly, visually drab.

Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife is less interesting, and less successful, as a remake of a much-bruited '70s art film than it is as a compendium of Rockian observations on the current state of the African-American bourgeoisie.

Singleton’s film is, in fact, pretty enjoyable if you look at it as the B-movie it really ought to be, rather than the E-ticket major studio release it actually is.

On its surface, “Onlookers” is a movie that can be described very simply. For about an hour and twenty minutes, a series of very neatly composed shots depict natives of Laos and tourists observing a variety of sights and sites.

It would be reductive to call it a “girlboss” story, but it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to, either.

When you’ve hired human actors to do nothing but sneer, shout, and shoot guns, their onscreen function can get ever so slightly monotonous. This is not the movie’s only reliance on commonplaces but it’s the most prominent.

Guest Artist feels like a typical one-act, intelligent but not especially distinctive or compelling.

I suppose the fact that I was affected as I was by Wedding Doll is testimony to its emotional effectiveness. But while Hagit is able to crack a smile at the movie’s end, I feel a pall wrapping around me every time I contemplate her predicament, or the predicament of her real-life models.

Diverting and often funny enough, largely thanks (as is not unusual in cases like this) to its cast.

The plot thickens ... and thickens ... and thickens. Gudegast is clearly an avid student of heist pictures, and he layers this one with a lot of spectacular complications even while he muddles the average viewer’s potential rooting interest.

This is pretty much the opposite of a contemporary American comedy: rather than broad, The Kidnapping of Michel Houllebecq is an exemplary example of narrow.

The intellectual aspirations of this series are just window dressing. Which left this viewer to enjoy the freeway chase sequence (which really is cool), Hugo Weaving’s smirk, and even the PlayStationish stuff.

The filmmakers are themselves too celebrity besotted to comment in a meaningful way on how Benson’s career balanced depictions of the rich and famous with in-the-trenches risk-taking.

Part of what makes these kind of war movies such cinematic comfort food (aside from the moral certainty they strive to convey) is their familiarity. But I wonder if said familiarity is what compels contemporary filmmakers to overstuff the material -- Flyboys is a good two hours and 20 minutes.

So, yes, the movie’s predictable, and writer Ryan Engle makes a lot of unforced dialogue errors.

Director Freundlich clearly likes to dig in deep with this kind of character material, and here it pays off in ways it really hasn’t in some of his previous feature work (which includes “Trust the Man” and “The Rebound”).

It's the stuff of countless advice columns, daytime talk shows, sitcoms, romantic comedies. Quite frankly, it's tired. What makes a difference here -- although really not enough of one -- is the people.

That the perspective this time is from a girl’s point of view rather than a boy’s is significant. At least it is in theory. The scripter is Joe Kelly, who, along with J.M. Ken Nimura, created the comic. It’s not a knock to note that the main creative talents behind the camera are male — the women of the cast are clearly imbuing their characterizations with what they know. But there’s still something about I Kill Giants that feels projected, a work more informed by empathy than experience.

If you’re a maven or even vaguely curious there’s a lot of production value to be derived here. The human story that the filmmakers want to drape over their atmosphere, though, never quite connects.

It hardly adds up to much, but it doesn't mean to, and it'll leave you with a cleaner conscience than an Austin Powers picture.

Within about a half hour, what seemed at first banal is in fact oppressive. With deliberate pacing, minimal dialogue, and solid acting from the leads, the movie makes its point felt about marriage.

The dumbness doesn't kill Death at a Funeral, but it certainly weakens it.

Intermittently compelling but rather unfortunately titled documentary.

Gondry might have been better off keeping his movie on theoretical/slapstick grounds, because, quite frankly, his attempts at sincerity just don't make it.

The anecdotal, multi-narrative approach is useful in personalizing the phenomenon, but the movie still brought me up short. The approach also has liabilities. I wanted more context, more history.

The movie ambles along amiably enough for a while; it’s better if you are a fan of one or more members of the cast.

Please Stand By is a sensitive character study whose story beats are a little bit overly familiar, to be frank. Dakota Fanning is excellent as Wendy.

The movie is most naturally a showcase for Efira, whose work as an unusual 17th-century nun in “Benedetta” demonstrated she could play dazzling and tormented with equal facility and who gets to work a similar range here.

Those who still relish the sight of Anthony Hopkins portraying an evil criminal mastermind will get the most out of Fracture, which is not so much a whodunit -- we see Hopkins' character putting a bullet in his wife's head in the movie's first few minutes -- as a howdunnit.

We Own the Night can't sustain itself; as the stakes of the story get higher, Gray paints it in broader and broader strokes until there's almost nothing you can believe in it anymore.

Pilgrimage is the kind of movie one fears is going out of style forever. A historical action drama, serious in tone and intent but also invested in delivering movie-movie thrills.

The good news is that I found the sequel better than the original — the writing sharper, the jokes fresher and smarter, the comic interaction between the lead characters consistently engaging.

This is a sensitively made film that’s pretty frustrating. In the tradition of some vintage Italian films that got gathered under the rubric of Neo-Realism, it gives you a character to root for and then places her between a rock and a hard place with no cavalry coming to the rescue.

Too many times the characters in this movie sprint across the line separating quirky charm from know-somethingish affectation, and then stay on the wrong side of it.

The movie is certainly colorful — this is a guy who, when he had it made, lived VERY large, even if he continued on what seemed like a quest to break every bone in his body multiple times. And it tells, as it keeps reminding us, a very American story. For all that, though, it doesn’t illuminate the guy’s character beyond what’s obvious.

This is a fascinating and pertinent tale, but one major aspect of its telling gives me serious pause.

What’s good about this movie is funny, and refreshing, enough to make the dry spots feel more tolerable in retrospect.

The hair-raising narrative content notwithstanding, the movie doesn’t create much emotional traction.

This is an informative film that deals up its facts in a sober, linear fashion. This is salutary in that it avoids sensationalism that might lead to accusations of conspiracy-theory mongering. But it also has the effect of making the film feel a little dry.