Glenn Kenny

Aslani pulls story threads together with an elegant moving camera that doesn’t immediately give up all the secrets a scene may contain.

Alas, all the world-building filmmakers may contrive doesn’t count for much if they don’t put it across visually. And this heavily rotoscoped vision does not get where it needs to be to achieve genuine trippiness.

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

A Cop Movie, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, is exceptionally challenging to begin with. As the movie unspools, and the layers of its production become clearer, we understand the challenge is the movie’s entire objective—up to a point.

Corsbie has filmmaking energy to spare but also makes many undergrad errors.

While Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven throbbed with purposeful vitality, pictures such as Robin Hood and 1492: Conquest of Paradise seemed to lack much of a reason for being. Scott’s The Last Duel may not be perfect but it never exhibits such inertia.

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.

The movie’s flabbiness, its unfocused flopping from scene to scene, its disinclination to provide any individual scene with any dimension beyond its immediate impact, practically vitiates the entire theme of Dickie’s ostensible mentorship of Tony Soprano.

Eventually—about the time it demonstrates Henry’s expertise as a killer of men, in several well-done action mini-sequences—we learn the details of Henry’s past, and your overall enjoyment of the movie may hinge on whether or not you’re willing to, as they say, go with it.

[A] friendly and entirely uncritical documentary.

While the whole thing is ruthlessly well done, it also sometimes seems to lean into a kind of moral relativism.

An excellent documentary directed by Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz.

Morrison, who is the producer, director and editor of this strangely intoxicating film, is a cinematic investigator of the first stripe.

Andresen’s determination to rise above misfortune, and his hopes for himself, make this movie less than a total tragedy. But it’s an often shudder-inducing cautionary tale.

The shoot-'em-ups are consistently “whoa!”-eliciting, and while you couldn’t call any of the plot twists genuinely unpredictable, they do not lack for intrigue.

Wife of a Spy is something like linear narrative perfection, with every scene perfectly calibrated.

These small events transpire in beautifully shot, unhurried scenes. This is Eastwood’s version of pastoral. Mike pieces his ruined life back together in a sense. He finds pleasure in being of service to a community. The professed agnostic takes Marta’s hand when she prays to begin a meal, and likes it. The simple sincerity about what’s worthwhile in life is the movie’s reason for being. Nothing more and nothing less.

This concise but cogent documentary directed by Tom Surgal is crammed with exhilarating sounds, moving reminiscences and stimulating arguments that it is not just music, but vital music.

There’s some fascinating and provocative material in The Capote Tapes that is diluted by the director Ebs Burnough’s insistence on teasing a question that, arguably, has a self-evident answer.

I’ll always love Lynch’s “Dune,” a severely compromised dream-work that (not surprising given Lynch’s own inclination) had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie IS “Dune.”

The Year of the Everlasting Storm is definitely a noteworthy achievement in anti-escapism, which the current cinema could certainly always use more of.

With The Card Counter, Schrader has a sub-theme he can toss off like a light cloak, and when he does, the movie swerves into a semi-surreal realm not entirely like that of the climax of First Reformed. But then it swerves back into a variation on Bresson that constitutes one of the most brilliant shots of his career.

The cynical pro forma luridness Yakuza Princess grinds out suggests that sensationalist cinema, or at least its most ostensibly mainstream iteration, is currently depleted of resources.

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.

Clay Tarver, a veteran of the TV series “Silicon Valley” (and a founder of the postpunk band Chavez) directs with an eye and ear that’s a cut above what one usually gets with this sort of fare.

What ensues when Edward and the town’s reactionaries clash cannot be properly called hilarity, and the end product of this dismal film is mostly befuddlement.

I can’t say how many liberties Penn, working from a script by Jez Butterworth and his own brother John-Henry Butterworth, took with their source material, but the way much of it plays out here feels movie-familiar rather than real-life familiar.

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.

Yes, the computer-generated colors, overseen by the director Cal Brunker, are bright, the pups have soulful eyes . . . and the story line . . . is, um, a story line.

It’s a dizzying tale. And whether or not you believe “Salvator Mundi” to be a real Leonardo, it’s ultimately a disgusting one.

Tsai’s motives for stretching his shots become clear after a while, and the film builds an uncanny mood.

The movie looks like a 40-year-old mix of talking-head and archival footage. What makes it extraordinary is the story it tells of an uncanny musician and his beautiful playing and songs.

The premise here is not unpromising but the execution—indeed the whole aesthetic—is something like The Grifters-Lite.

Kier is unfailingly captivating in the film, which makes it all the more bothersome that the film itself doesn’t match him.

The narrative conceits of Nine Days, while exquisitely constructed, are intricate to the point of laborious. At times the movie almost sinks under their weight.

"Where do these people get their money,” I wrote in my notes as Leif and his dog set out for a long drive at the film’s fade-out. Doesn’t matter. Nor do the multiple clichés. In Ride the Eagle, the laid-back vibe is all.

While the themes here are, of course, redolent of neorealism, the filmmakers don’t make ostentatious nods to cinema past. Their voice is their own; the camera is mobile when it needs to be, but stands still much of the time, letting the excellent cast build their characters as the events of the film test their endurance.

Shyamalan’s fluid filmmaking style, outstanding features of which are an almost ever-mobile camera and a bag of focus tricks, serves him especially well here.

For an ostensible action hero, Henry Golding in the title role does an awful lot of standing around and looking tense. The mayhem is frantic yet forgettable.

While Salomé isn’t anything but a mainstream director, he’s a good one, keeping the movie percolating up to its crowd-pleasing finale and coda.

The intercutting between vintage footage of the Jones/Zane company and the student production, as well as footage from another contemporary production of the piece — shot with an onstage intimacy that recalls the in-the-ring segments of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” — make for an unusually lively documentary experience.

There’s a nearly astute satire of the app-driven life bubbling under the meta high jinks. And the movie throws so many gags at the screen that several jokes actually stick. But the purposeful sensory overload mostly yields head-spinning stupefaction, leaving a viewer feeling like Wile E. Coyote after hitting a mesa wall.

The music itself is exciting enough that it washes out some of the unpleasant taste of the film’s early “white people discovering stuff” tone. And Chanda himself is incredibly winning, especially when he takes the stage.

Phantasm, gnarly as it could get, always had an impish side, just as the monumental power of AC/DC is leavened by the sight of its elfin lead guitarist in a schoolboy uniform. Meander has no such sense of fun. But it offers some newish sights and shocks.

Her Socialist Smile, written, directed and shot by John Gianvito, is a fascinating and challenging exploration of Keller’s political thought.

What chafes is not so much the vulgarity (although it is as relentless as it is unfunny) but the movie’s intractable infatuation with it.

No equine beasts adorn this queasy comedy. Too bad.

The revelation of Andersson’s method, his painstaking use of trompe l’oeil both painterly and cinematic, is fascinating enough. But the chronicle takes an unexpected turn.

Lunch’s entire aesthetic is centered around trauma: how abusers dispense it, how it is — and how she thinks it ought to be — received, and turned back on the world.

Never as giddily awful as Gotti, this movie suffers more from a case of what film critic Andrew Sarris called “Strained Seriousness.” Except the ostensible seriousness here never runs particularly deep. Lansky is for Keitel completists only.

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

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.

The Sparks Brothers, an energetic documentary directed by Edgar Wright, explains their appeal in part by emphasizing how it cannot be explained.

Klein weaves all these moments into a story one could call spectacularly earthbound.

This is one of those movies that never quite sinks to the risible depths you kind of wish it would.

Each of these stalwarts bring more than charisma to their roles, and when the writing itself displays some snap (which admittedly isn’t that often) the performers bite right into it.

And it mostly doesn’t quite work, because Fred, as written by MacBride and played by Dylan O’Brien, just isn’t a compelling character.

In spite of its tidy running time, Chasing Wonders is diffuse and often limp.

Undine is ultimately more enigmatic than most of Petzold’s work. It is also, like its title character, eerily beautiful. While it could well serve as a high-end date movie, it’s also something more.

If you’re not too conversant with the regions or works under consideration, the viewer has a choice of laboring to connect the dots unassisted, or just kicking back and letting the people and their recollections and philosophical reflections wash over you, like the sea of the movie’s title.

This is a plodding and ultimately infuriatingly noncommittal movie.

What Moby leaves out of his account is as revealing as the tales of homelessness and addiction he puts in.

The spirit of Claude Lanzmann, whose monumental Shoah remains a nonpareil cinematic text on the Holocaust, lingers over and around Final Account, a film assembled by Luke Holland around interviews he conducted beginning in 2008.

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.

Franco practically dares the viewer to call his conclusion far-fetched. And for better or worse, the director’s dynamic filmmaking makes some of his projections stick.

In Profile, the images mix real documentary footage with fictional social media and news organization posts. And meaning is elemental—a simplistic rush meant to induce viewer panic. While also being incredibly on-the-nose.

This stuff is best appreciated by rock mavens. Many of the other bands telling their stories (including the Boo Radleys and the Charlatans) didn’t have much of an impact in the States, so Anglophilia helps, too.

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

The shooting is picturesque, the acting overbaked.

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.

The keen affinity the actor David Oyelowo has for his fellow performers is the best thing about The Water Man.

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.

The “endlessness” of the film encompasses a lot of absurdity and disappointment, but its notes of grace sound the loudest.

It’s not just the title character who fails to thrive. The filmmaking is on occasion, to put it kindly, fractured.

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

Limbo, written and directed by a ferociously talented filmmaker, Ben Sharrock, takes an insinuating, poetic and often wryly funny approach. And it’s both heartbreaking and heartlifting.

The filmmaker has what seems like a torrent of anecdotes and attendant ideas to impart, but the movie never feels rushed.

This film is informative and often fascinating.

As is customary for many hack films, the writer or producer or whoever it was that nailed down the title Trigger Point for this cinematic bag of pain didn’t/doesn’t care what the phrase actually means, or whether it applies to anything that actually happens in the movie; they just thought it sounded cool.

This documentary, directed by Jeffrey Wolf, is a plain, sincere, nourishing account of the artist.

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.

And while I understand the anger that animates Awbrey’s script, anger doesn’t excuse its overall weak argumentation, not to mention its rampant plot holes.

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

The film initially pretends to have some sensitivity about mental illness, but blatantly trivializes it and uses it as a crutch upon which to hang the villain’s increasingly maniacal actions.

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

Almodóvar’s sense of cinema design — the décor simulates a luxe apartment and lays it bare as a soundstage illusion — is acutely keyed to Swinton’s performance here, which projects mercurial emotion with Swiss watch precision.

This is the kind of movie that is usually defended with one word: “harmless.”

The double-crosses are depicted by the director Andy Goddard with better-than-average craft, but the more the movie leans into old suspense conventions the more interest it loses, alas.

You may believe you know Turner’s tale. And you may be right. It is retold well here, but the most moving portions — and they could bring tears to your eyes — come as Turner, almost 80 at the time of this interview (and as beautiful as she has ever been), wearing a tailored black suit, sits and discusses where she’s at now.

Even for viewers with little grounding in Moroccan history, Essafi’s film offers an inspiring view of a roiling period of artistic exploration.

[An] exemplary documentary.

Grabinski has both wit and energy, and these qualities, along with a game cast, help keep “Happily” afloat for far longer than most made-in-L.A. dark domestic comedies. But the movie wants to do too many things, and grows diffuse.

Food — its preparation, consumption and just what the hell its ingredients are — figures in a minimal plot that the filmmakers inflate in a variety of slick but ultimately unimpressive ways (particularly in the editing).

Lo wants to make a point, obviously, but I came out of this picture with some questions. And I also thought of an observation made by the music critic Robert Christgau, a metaphorical point addressing a type of artistic preciousness: “If I found a cat trapped in a washing machine, I wouldn't set up a recording studio there—I'd just open the door.”

Boss Level compensates for its overstuffed scenario and relentless derivativeness—actually, it makes you stop caring about its relentless derivativeness—with concentrated fast pacing and breakneck action.

The realization that Jayanti is using these things to buttress a fiction — albeit a fiction that could perhaps become true in the blink of an eye — is disquieting in a way the filmmaker might not have intended.

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.

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