Glenn Kenny

The plot is twisty in a perfunctory way, the action predictably explosive, the sought-after exhilaration nonexistent.

The movie is not interested in wrapping things up via a “smash the mirror” epiphany. It’s to Oliver’s credit that he’s taken a more tough-minded than easily cathartic approach. And Ansel Elgort’s wonderful performance does appropriate honor to the ambiguity the movie is trucking in.

Relentless, spell-it-all-out dialogue is wedded to a clunky visual approach that’s pretty much the cinema equivalent of a wikiHow entry.

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

Instant Family isn’t a hellish movie, although it is very much a Hollywood one.

One of several reasons River Runs Red is such a resentment-generating movie is that it takes a vitally serious subject and makes such a relentlessly dumb hash of it.

What’s most bewitching throughout “Scruggs” is its sense of detail. Its meshing of formal discipline and screwed-down content sometimes give it the sense of a work that has been carefully and elaborately embroidered rather than photographed.

While the movie has allegorical resonances with the political and human rights disasters of 20th-century Romania, by the end, its surfaces, while remaining superficially unimpressive, open up as the film moves from epistemological speculation onto a plane of mysticism. This relatively short film contains worlds.

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

The filmmakers keep the visuals merry and popping bright. Benedict Cumberbatch, voicing the Grinch, opts not to compete with Karloff at all, which is smart, and speaks in an American accent, sounding rather like Bill Hader, which is confusing.

Genius, this movie believes, is real, whether it’s failed or successful.

If the movie’s looseness lets in an excess of dead air, “Nobody’s Fool” is still dotted with pleasures besides those Haddish brings.

The Other Side of the Wind is a very rich film and a very difficult one. I’ve seen it nearly three times now and what I intuit about the aspects of it that “work,” and those where the seams just show too nakedly shift all the time.

Enthusing over an effect Bergman used in his great 1983 “Fanny and Alexander,” the director Olivier Assayas concludes, “Art defines truth.” Just about every minute of this movie shows how that’s true.

Some striking scenes notwithstanding, this movie doesn’t achieve the delirium it aspires to. It’s often flat and tame, and obvious in the wrong ways.

Wiseman himself is also the last person who’d call his films “objective,” because they’re not. It’s more that their point of view is multi-faceted, sophisticated, connoting a point of view that’s deeply felt but not on-the-nose obvious.

Cory Michael Smith’s performance as Adrian is a quiet marvel in a movie that’s superbly acted all around. The film’s intimate consideration of still-enormous issues is intelligent, surprising and emotionally resonant.

This is a movie that aims to startle in overt and subtextual ways; the less known before viewing, the better.

Making good absurdist cinema is a lot tougher than good absurdist cinema makes it look. This movie, a stab at absurdism that results in a swampy wallow in affectation, testifies to this fact with sad eloquence.

The filmmakers, who made “Leviathan,” the striking 2012 immersion into commercial fishing, seem to be arguing that Sagawa needs to be understood beyond moralistic preconceptions. Caniba did not make the case for me. I consider Sagawa repellent, and the movie an exercise in intellectualized scab-picking.

Wildlife is a domestic drama both sad and terrifying. The entire cast does exceptional work (Oxenbould is an exciting find), but the movie is anchored by Mulligan, who gives the best performance of any I’ve seen in film this year.

While the last third of Butterfield’s life is tragic, spending the better part of 90 minutes with the man and his music is exhilarating. The picture may get at least a few people talking about him again.

As relatively handsomely mounted as this movie is, it’s also kind of a shambles. Had I not read a press release about it prior to attending its New York screening, I would not know who the damn thing was even about until a whole half-hour in.

It’s an unfortunately apt demonstration of what can befall a clever filmmaker who gets too clever.

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.

It’s a film of scenes rather than of one unified narrative, but each scene is a showcase for the magnificent talents of Ms. Balibar, a multifaceted performer of spectacular magnetism and intelligence.

It was said by many after the 2016 election that the Trump administration would yield great satirical art. This is not an example of that.

22 July is at its most engrossing and moving in its depiction of one brave kid, a victim of Breivik who was shot five times and lived, and that kid’s eventual resolve to face the terrorist in court.

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.

Ultimately, the ingratiating eccentricities of Venom aren’t enough to really distinguish the movie from its superhero-movie brethren as it devolves into the usual expensive orgy of sound, fury and wisecracking.

Ms. Jacir is a thrifty filmmaker; there’s nothing frilly in this movie. But she is also a sensitive and imaginative and resourceful one.

The movie is a fast account that is sometimes a tad facile in its analysis of a cultural moment. But as Mr. Schrager’s personal too-much-too-soon story, it’s compelling.

Director Jonathan Sobol has an apt if not avid eye for gritty and colorful locations, and when the movie is at its most loose-limbed it’s a pleasure to watch. But around the time the director resorts to a trunk-point-of-view shot that’s turned into a not-terribly-flattering imitation of “Pulp Fiction,” The Padre begins to take itself more seriously than the wafer-thin back stories of the opposing characters should allow.

The movie does a superb job showing the mental and physical preparation and effort required. And for all that, doubt and a little bit of fear persist, souring Honnold’s first try at a climb.

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.

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 documentary elicits some viewer indignation on her behalf, but overall, it’s not a very inspired piece of work. While it depicts M.I.A.’s bristling at being called a terrorist advocate, it never wholly clarifies her specific political aims.

The attractiveness of the scenery, and a quiet, dignified performance by Ms. Peña in what could now be her last movie appearance, wind up being the main redeeming values here.

Mr. Moore recognizes an affinity he shares with the president — also a showman. So he is in a nearly unique position to shame the viewer with a frank perspective on how Mr. Trump used his extrovert side to make citizens complacent about the less savory aspects of his character.

I would not have minded a bit if the dames were given twice the amount of time this trim film allowed.

The movie alternates between the present, with Mr. Jones on the go, and a retrospective of his life and career, narrated by the man himself. His hardscrabble early years on the South Side of Chicago are scary; his triumphs from the earliest points of his career onward are exhilarating; the racism he is obliged to endure throughout is infuriating.

The movie’s imagery is consistently unearthly; its pacing has a magisterial weight. Call it pulp Tarkovsky, maybe.

The filmmaker’s poetic logic is inextricable from his consciousness of race and community, and of his function and potential as an artist grappling with his own circumstances and those of the people he’s depicting. “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” is not a long film, but it contains whole worlds.

The stridently theatricalized violence is horrific only because it’s so abjectly manipulative. By the end of the movie, my jaw felt unhinged from dropping so often.

Even if you’ve scratched your head over Mr. Lydon’s TV ad work and other efforts to maintain a professional life in recent years, this affectionate and frank movie can elicit newfound admiration for a slightly mellowed iconoclast.

Ms. Johnson directs the picture with an assurance that matches that of her plucky protagonist.

There’s sharp dialogue throughout.

Mr. Lindon, who carries his powerful masculinity with canny reserve, is superb as a man inquiring into a faith he had previously thought had nothing to do with him. But Ms. Bellugi is a real find; she inhabits her character, who, even as she hides her secrets, is so genuinely beatific that you can hear it in her breathing.

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.

Kin is insufferable, self-seriously combining shut-in nerdiness with wannabe macho pyrotechnics. It’s Bro Cinema in all the worst imaginable senses of the term.

The film is relentlessly eye- and ear-filling, sometimes to the point of irritation. It’s a puzzle of strange pleasures, a nerve-racking way of recalibrating how to look at the screen and the world outside the screen. Go if you’re feeling super adventurous.

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.

Engrossing and a little moving. And Isaac is a very winning and effective messenger of Peter Malkin’s heroism and humanity.

The movie is relentlessly fluffy.

As the movie wears on, one suspects that the writer Luke Del Tredici and the director Jonathan Watson aren’t crafting an indictment of toxic masculinity, but an invitation to take some sadistic enjoyment in it, without consequences.

That such a woebegone project attracted such a largely first-rate cast is peculiar but not inexplicable; sometimes the urge to bite the hand that feeds you overwhelms your quality control filter.

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.

There are a lot of dark corridors, and the characters do quite a bit of ducking and crouching. Mr. Young handles it reasonably well, but I was struck by an unavoidable truth: These scenes of suspense and scare excel on a large screen, in a reasonably crowded theater.

Ms. Bohdanowicz’s self-interrogation is clearly important to her art, but I think she worries too much, at least where this subject is concerned. Her hostess, a model of charm, good humor and senior wisdom, is a movie unto herself.

The Happytime Murders isn’t so much interested in immersing you in a comedic world so much as it is in having its puppets do the most outrageous things you’ve never seen or heard puppets do in a movie.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Ms. Thierry plays Marguerite with an understatement that can be enigmatic, seductive, or deliberately confounding. The picture as a whole doesn’t do justice to her committed performance.

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.

This movie is a remarkable feat that requires a strong stomach to sit through. I was unaware, prior to seeing it, that it’s based on a true story, and the movie’s coda was that much more powerful for me as a result.

it’s a surprisingly O.K. addition to the genre.

The most perfunctory horror picture I’ve seen in some time.

The movie’s disinclination to judge doesn’t deprive it of a point of view. Skate Kitchen is unfailingly compassionate to, and genuinely appreciative of, the people it chronicles.

On the whole, this picture, which could just as well be titled “Dog, Actually,” is sweeter-than-average treacle.

While the movie is ultimately more of the same old same old, it is at least not as appallingly sexist and culturally insensitive as “The Ridiculous Six,” Mr. Sandler’s dreaded 2015 Netflix Original western “spoof.”

I admit, I laughed. I was also charmed by Bridgit Mendler as Meredith, Ben’s feisty hometown love interest.

Directed by Lauren Miller Rogen, it’s a predictable comedy of reconciliation. But it boasts substantial pleasures, largely on account of the performers.

Never Goin’ Back would make a good drive-in movie, if drive-ins were still a thing. It’s breezy, benignly outrageous, equal parts grotty and sweet.

Directed by Steve Mitchell, it’s as conventional as Mr. Cohen’s movies are not. Which is O.K. While the filmmaker himself is more interested in telling colorful anecdotes than dredging up the portions of his psyche that inspire him, the anecdotes are colorful indeed.

This is a straightforward story that Mr. de Los Santos Arias, making his fictional feature debut, tells in an ever-changing style, shooting in color and black and white. He also alternates the shape of the frame, mostly toggling between a boxy frame and the wider one most mainstream movies are shown in. Whatever effect was hoped for, this viewer just saw affectation.

This is a high-minded and carefully composed film about, among other things, the inability of words in any language to satisfactorily communicate states of being. There are pleasures and intellectual provocations to be had here. But its attempted effects fall flat a little too often.

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

One wonders why “Whitetail Deer Hunter” chose such a relatively toothless route, but one doesn’t wonder too long, as it’s the kind of movie you forget about 20 minutes after seeing it.

Outlandish as its action often is, The Captain is based on a true story. Schwentke’s film, though, has an allegorical/satirical axe to grind, and it more often than not frames the narrative in dark archetypal terms.

Perhaps this picture’s higher function is to be a calling card. But I don’t know what a calling-card project that demonstrates that its maker can semi-successfully mimic artistically vital but uncommercial directors is supposed to prove. For me, it mostly proved a waste of time.

The character dynamics are recognizable in the way they hew to genre conventions. But the details provided in the writing, and by the two leads’ performances, add distinctive details and dimension here. This makes the film’s harrowing action all the more believable.

People can find ways to be happy now because they have more choices, more resources. In a world that seems in many respects to be headed to hell in a handbasket, that’s a fact worth celebrating, and this movie does so in an appropriately humane manner.

Greenfield wraps up this compulsively watchable movie with observations of family love and some of its characters striving for redemption and/or an honest living. But she doesn’t quite dissolve the bitterness of the pill. Because it really can’t be.

What’s striking in this movie, apart from an ostentatiously glitchy screen distortion that occurs whenever a denizen of the “dark web” appears on one of the screens within screens, is how credibly its extreme trolling plays.

This movie, which was written by Mr. Diggs and Mr. Casal, has an energetic-to-the-point-of-boisterous style. Its lively frequency is embedded in the writing, bolstered by Carlos López Estrada’s direction, and kept buoyant by the performers. This particular aspect of the film makes it exciting to watch, but can also be confounding.

In Zoe, the characters, all in their 30s at least (except for the robots, I know, but bear with me), still believe that 100-percent glitch-free everlasting love is a reasonable life goal. It’s this component, even more than the poorly realized sci-fi trappings, that finally make the movie a little insufferable.

The movie insists on a breezy optimism that skirts glibness, then doubles down on it with a having-it-all finale that’s as ridiculous as it is nervy.

The often-tense mother-daughter dance of recrimination and forgiveness is spectacularly acted.

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.

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.

You can get a lot of facts about Mr. Graves and his discography on the internet (and I recommend you do). This movie gives you, well, the man’s heart, and it’s a beautiful one.

The scenes of Dracula befuddled by a mobile phone were familiar; those in which the vampire’s garlic “intolerance” preludes a flatulence joke predictable. Returning a third time as director, Genndy Tartakovsky lends his usual graphic savvy, providing a not-quite-saving grace.

What makes it a better-than-average satire on the unthinking hostilities that human beings are prone to is its steady intelligence, combined with a humor sometimes so dry as to be undetectable.

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.

The film, directed by Roland Vranik from a script by Mr. Vranik and Ivan Szabo, is a careful, compassionate and beautifully acted character drama with a social conscience.

This consistently ridiculous movie, written and directed by Leo Zhang, does offer Jackie Chan mixing it up at a magician’s rehearsal (he pulls a rabbit from a hat) and Jackie Chan kickboxing at the top of the Sydney Opera House.

Once the mercenaries start tooling around wearing actual Ku Klux Klan outfits, the pretenses to allegory have gone out the window. And yes, it is salutary to see guys with pointy hoods getting blown away by righteous African-American avengers. But the cinematic cost of getting there was not, for this viewer, worth it.

All of these nuances, as well as whatever satirical social commentary the movie wanted to make, are lost in the climax, a press conference staged with a threadbare quality that’s sadly typical of too much original Syfy fare.

With its frequent dramatizations, zippy editing, and song-driven soundtrack, Three Identical Strangers may be said to indulge in the most potentially egregious of mainstreaming devices used in contemporary documentaries. Yet because the story itself is so, well, juicy, and the subjects one-time pop culture phenoms, the approach feels acceptable if not entirely “right.”

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

It’s not every day that you can say, “Shaquille O’Neal was the best actor in that movie.” And yet that may well be true in the case of Uncle Drew, a genuinely unusual exercise in screen comedy.

Bobbito Garcia, the author, basketball maven, sneaker obsessive, D.J. and all-around culture entrepreneur, is one of the most personable documentary subjects I’ve encountered in quite some time.

There are traces of early Ken Loach in Hepburn’s approach, but ultimately the filmmaker’s voice, with all its frankness and plain-spokenness, is her own.

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.

Thanks to Mr. de Sousa’s superb performance, the movie often convincingly portrays not just the exploited condition of laborers such as Cristiano, but the nagging sadness of life itself.

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

This is a movie that’s annoying in part because it doesn’t care if you’re annoyed by it. It doesn’t need you, the individual viewer, to like it. It just needs a crowd to see it. Whether you’ve been entertained or enlightened is immaterial. It’s Barnum time. You don’t like it? This way to the egress.

That the long-gestating crime drama Gotti is a dismal mess comes as no surprise. What does shock is just how multifaceted a dismal mess it is.

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

As it happens, this movie is an expansion of Ms. Pourriat’s 2010 short film, “Oppressed Majority,” which was a punchier, and not particularly comedic, allegory of sexual assault. That picture can be found on YouTube; I don’t think it’s good either, but it’s more genuinely thought-provoking than its expansion.

The expectation that a female-written, female-directed effort would yield something refreshingly different is scotched within the first few minutes.

What fascinated me most about the movie was its likely inadvertent depiction of the comfortable bubble the band and its fandom seem to have created for each other.

It’s a lazy, vulgar celebration of White Male American Dumbness—one that only put an African American in the cast to camouflage just how much of a celebration of White Male American Dumbness it is.

The roomier scenario of this remake has the potential to yield a decent thriller, but Superfly too often prioritizes showy sequences for dubious reasons.

I guess the “Black Hawk Down” comparison derives from the many gaping wounds the characters and the extras suffer. I don’t know where the rest comes from; because all told this effort is a cavalcade of crap. Loud crap.

Nancy exhibits a seriousness of purpose that’s rare in American movies today.

The movie depicts Mr. Ducasse’s sweeping streak — he prepares food for the homeless in Brazil and concocts a deluxe restaurant at Versailles — competently if not brilliantly. A screening of the film accompanied by a tasting menu afterward, though — that would be something.

Devoted Feifferites, not to mention fans of Mr. Rash and Mr. Koechner, who get to flex their muscles nicely here, will be well sated.

Mr. Pearce is also well-versed in staging and shooting decent action scenes, and building suspense enough to keep Hotel Artemis diverting in its overstuffed ambition. Add to that Ms. Foster’s welcome return to big-screen acting after a five-year layoff and you’ve got a movie almost worth seeing.

As cinema either theatrical or televisual is concerned, The Kissing Booth is negligible. It is fascinating, though, as a study in the semiotics of the high school movie, especially in the ways it’s been recodified since “young adult” became a real genre.

The movie becomes more involving as it finds its focus.... Ms. Hale does an excellent job portraying a popular overachiever understandably resisting the inevitable.

The most interesting thing about Ibiza, not to get too highfalutin, is its positive treatment of female desire.

The movie the directors have made doesn’t have the passion that its subjects do.

Directed by Silas Howard from a screenplay by Daniel Pearle, who adapted his own stage play, A Kid Like Jake is humane, compassionate and strangely detached, almost to the point of inconsequentiality.

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.

Future World is a miserable, idiotic sci-fi trifle, threadbare in both the imaginative and production value categories.

Director Young shoots his unimaginative opus with an eye of getting all the value of the gore makeup department’s work on screen. In this respect, he does a bang-up job. As for everything else, well, this movie does answer the question “What if Eli Roth’s ‘Cabin Fever’ had zero sense of humor?” very satisfactorily.

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

This plot sounds like “The Beguiled,” right? Trust me, this movie is NOTHING like “The Beguiled,” For one thing, it’s not nearly as plot-driven.

Superbly acted and confidently shot, Who We Are Now delivers substantial dramatic pleasures while posing pertinent questions.

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

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

The interview sections are fascinating, and scenes of the pope’s travels, during which he frequently washes the feet of those who come to him, are moving.... Less welcome are Mr. Wenders’s brief attempts at depicting the life of St. Francis himself.

Mr. Porterfield’s evenhanded direction doesn’t try to pull the viewer’s sympathies one way or another. Within his realistic mode he crafts some startling effects — a strip-club brawl that spills out into broad, embarrassing daylight is eye-opening.

That Summer, a new documentary directed by Goran Hugo Olsson, sheds further light on the Beales with footage shot before the making of “Grey Gardens.”

Carrey’s commitment is in the service of a movie that is not just muddled in the conventional ways but down to its core; it really never figures out what it’s about, even as it grimly manipulates its volatile content.

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.

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

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

What it conveys is not so much Mr. Mekas’s experience as Mr. Gordon’s will, and his cheap sadistic hostility to the audience. It makes this film a vexed experience.

While, in many respects, it is conventional in form, alternating archival footage from the late 1970s and early ’80s with newly shot interviews, the movie has a momentum (aided by an exemplary soundtrack of songs from the era) and a rare interrogatory spirit.

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.

The work by the two leads is consistently committed, not to mention oozing with old fashioned movie-star charisma.

None of the proceedings are sidesplittingly funny, but they grow increasingly sweet-natured. The most remarkable aspect of this movie is its perhaps unwitting gentleness.

The moral rot and callous corruption depicted in Angels Wear White has a particularly bracing effect in part because, cultural specifics aside, the inhumanity on display is hardly alien.

The Bad Samaritan director, Dean Devlin, handles the proceedings like Adrian Lyne (who directed “Fatal Attraction”) on HGH supplements (and divested of over a third of Mr. Lyne’s visual elegance, such as it is).

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.

This is the touch of a cinematic master. Claire Denis is the writer and director of this film.

Britpop is a musical genre I had neutral feelings toward before sitting through Modern Life Is Rubbish, a uselessly nostalgic movie named after Blur’s 1993 album. After it, I wondered whether I had been too generous.

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.

The screenwriter, Carlos Treviño, crafts frank dialogue and the director, Kyle Henry, films the scenes with an eye for the intimate, dividend-paying gesture. The superb actors, given opportunities to go for broke, make each one count, and make the movie worth watching.

The first English-language film from the Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven (her 2015 movie “Mustang” was a foreign language Oscar nominee) is well-acted across the board, and contains more than a few outstanding, unpredictable scenes. But in tying its story to this particular moment in American history, the movie bites off more than it can coherently chew.

The story of this fight is fascinating, and the repercussions of this case are still being felt today. But the cinematic treatment of the story is confused. The movie often seems to have a hard time making up its mind whether it wants to be “The Insider” or “Mean Girls.”

Persistent sentimentality — manifested most in the music score by A.R. Rahman — undercuts Beyond the Clouds at almost every turn.

The antics never out-and-out surprise, but they almost never fail to amuse.

The drama is well-paced, and all of the actors are wonderful. Mr. Dussollier, a regular presence in the late works of Alain Resnais, is resourceful in communicating Berthier’s disturbing dual nature, and Ms. Dequenne remains appealing even when her character is making the most grievously ill-advised choices.

On the plus side, director Ewing displays a better-than-competent command of cinematic space, so some of the suspense beats produced aren’t entirely ineffective. Here’s hoping she develops better taste in scripts.

The movie itself, overall, feels kind of bloodless. Scenes in which Pearson is called upon to defend his new vision kind of fizzle rather than catch fire.

Ms. Martel’s attention to period detail is impeccable without being show-offish about it. But Zama is not the kind of period piece that aims for suspension of disbelief.

“Jeannette” throws the modern back at the medieval, making no distinction between religious ecstasy and that experienced in certain contemporary contexts of music and ritual. It’s a provocative proposition that yields a film of genuine spiritual dimension.

The movie feints in the direction of confronting horrific geopolitical realities, but there’s a specter of sentimentality hovering above the proceedings, waiting to smother everything in sight.

You know what might make an intriguing, revealing movie? The story of how, over 30 years after its debut, a relatively innocent arcade game starring a giant ape and other oversize beasts underwent a corporate transmogrification and became a turgid, logy sci-fi/action blockbuster.

Problem is, every time the movie gets near an authentic emotion, it barely pauses before making a run to the next Katy Perry song cue. (Seriously, both “Roar” and “Firework” are featured herein.) Given the care that the adult and teen actors invested in trying to honor their real-life counterparts, this feels lazy. If you like Katy Perry songs that much, you may feel differently.

This is a movie of visuals first and foremost; it’s no fluke that director Warwick Thornton shared cinematography duties with Dylan River. In addition to capturing stunning images, Thornton has a sleight-of-hand maestro’s joy in shuffling and fanning them. Lightning-fast cuts to flashbacks and flash-forwards keep the viewer on his or her toes in a bracing fashion.

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

The film is worth seeing because it’s a moving and remarkable story and it represents a great cause. Mr. Carlson often puts a directorial foot wrong.

The Endless rewards patience with mind-bending twists and turns.

Wilde Salomé is most fascinating as a portrait of a superstar actor who, for all his wealth and privilege, encounters unusual frustrations as he pursues genuine artistic ambitions.

The concentration of the performers and the power of Wilde’s unusually baroque, even for him, language (he originally composed the play in French, as it happens) makes for some mesmerizing scenes.

This is a work that looks as if it were evolving even as portions of it were completed. That’s entirely appropriate. For all its rough edges, Personal Problems retains a vitality and an integrity that practically bounds off the screen.

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.

The depictions of artistic struggle and mania, the communication of the artist’s frequently painful bubble, are insightful and rewarding. The warts-and-all depiction of Giacometti, which establishes a credible explanation if not excuse for the many selfish acts he’s seen doing, winds up being an apt tribute to both the artist and art itself.

This almost laugh-free comedy, a Netflix Original directed by Kyle Newacheck, is distinguished by a relentless level of outrageous yet strangely listless vulgarity.

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.

As is customary in Mr. Desplechin’s work, there’s a lot of dialogue in Ismael’s Ghosts, but this movie’s nerve endings vibrate most avidly and tenderly in scenes where not a word is spoken.

The movie balances amiable humor and standard believe-in-yourself bromides with better than average action sequences.

As the movie did its slow fizzle, I couldn’t help but wonder when the #MeToo movement was going to make its way into actual movie content. Because the misogyny inherent in Josie isn’t just objectionable, it’s boring.

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.

Keep the Change is not a seamlessly crafted movie, but it’s awfully tenderhearted and thoroughly disarming. It deserves to be widely seen.

The filmmakers seem less concerned with telling a story than in convincing the audience (and maybe themselves) that they can handle this provocative and potentially exploitive material they’ve contrived with what’s conventionally considered “appropriate” sensitivity.

Yes, The Death of Stalin is a kind of farce, but it’s a mordant one. It never asks us to laugh at cruelty; it does make us laugh at the absurd pettiness and ultimate small-mindedness of the men perpetrating that cruelty. And Iannucci is a superb ringmaster.

A largely fun watch, a corporate crime tale of consistent tartness enacted by a superb cast.

When the movie can stay out of its own way, it delivers some powerful scenes, including one in which Blomfeld faces down a would-be assassin (Nandiphile Mbeshu, superb) in a prison shower room. But beyond that, the movie offers conventional gratifications and no surprises.

Watching it with a demonstrative crowd in a Times Square theater proved to this former grindhouse devotee that sometimes you can go home again, at least momentarily.

Ms. Huppert’s presence — steady, warm, thoughtful but with a casual air — keeps the entire enterprise classically comedic.

Director and co-writer (with Boris Yutsin) Atsuko Hirayanagi has a knack for staging scenes in a way that makes them intriguingly uncomfortable, but that doesn’t succeed in elevating Oh Lucy! from some of its more commonplace features.

On the plus side, the movie’s production values are very nice and its cast is notable. And as it happens, neither of those are pluses, because what they mean ultimately is that good money is put into this kind of worthless woman-hating garbage even now.

Tucci is wonderful, but Timlin comes close to eating him up almost as thoroughly as her character does his.

The story is as predictable as they come, played out at such a low emotional temperature as to be practically ignorable. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it offered something else worth paying attention to. Something else besides the endlessly watchable lead actress, that is.

If the movie doesn’t go more than skin deep in interrogating questions about interventions both military and journalistic into the Middle East, it does succeed in opening up Mr. Hondros’s contradiction-filled world.

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.

The narrative never really builds a good head of steam. That could just be because as a Westerner with extremely limited knowledge of Estonian culture and mythology, the barrage of tropes from there is relatively overwhelming for me. Even so, November never stops being a visual trip. And that may well be enough.

The movie is largely a story of personalities. Karl is fiery, brilliant, disorganized, passionate. Engels is, despite his courage and curiosity, a bit more of a wide-eyed innocent and certainly a more organized person. Their female partners do take secondary roles, but the movie depicts them as committed, innovative, and acute: true fellow travelers and comrades. The actors portraying these figures are all exciting to watch.

The result is a very creepy, suspenseful story that’s also a better-than-average character study.

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 is Michael Sucsy, who is not always up to the challenges of the knotty material — we live in a world of mainstream movies with clumsy edits, but this one has more conspicuously bad cuts than most.

The movie is a pointed reminder that Ms. McAdams is one of cinema’s most accomplished and appealing comic actresses. It’s almost heartbreaking to contemplate how amazing she would be in a new comedy that was more than intermittently O.K.

The plot’s central mystery suffers from “Body Double” syndrome in that the movie has so few characters that the villain’s reveal can only elicit a shrug.

This is a beautifully conceived and executed chamber comedy/drama with tragedy at its core. Potter’s characters are committed to a better world even as they make their own modes of living completely dysfunctional.

For all of its failings, the movie sometimes manages to bring a scary whiff of the street into its sounds and images.

Double Lover, which Mr. Ozon “freely adapted” from the Joyce Carol Oates book “Lives of the Twins,” spins its influences into a frenzy that ultimately reveals the story to be very much its own thing. And a crazy, and eventually strangely moving, thing it is. As elaborate as its visuals are, the movie is also intimate.

It’s an amiable misfire. But Brie Larson sure can light up the screen, and she does so here — she’s a pleasant singer, too — and that’s enough to raise this from a one-and-a-half star movie to a two.

Its story line is clean; the live-action actors, particularly Rose Byrne (as Bea, an artist who paints portraits of the bunnies), bring their onscreen-appeal A game; and the computer-generated animals are charming, albeit lacking in the particular gentle winsomeness of Potter’s originals.

The movie is a fascinating portrait that is if anything too brief.

The actual movie is strangely plain, eyesore-overlit and uselessly frantic.

Lead actors Byrne and Deen do grounded, stalwart work, and director Mitu Misra occasionally succeeds in making the characters’ milieu’s register with force. But the storytelling is rickety.

A movie that’s a pleasure to watch.

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.

A Ciambra is not big on plot, instead relying on its main character and his dangerous and frustrating escapades to generate empathy.

The tragedies in this family’s life are nearly constant, but Mr. Matuszynski approaches them with a tone that’s matter-of-fact while also partaking in the particular wry irony that has been a hallmark of Polish cinema since the early 1960s.

The director, Bethany Ashton Wolf, who adapted the screenplay from, yes, a romance novel by Heidi McLaughlin, can concoct some Hallmark-greeting-card-quality shots, but has little flair for piecing them together. The lead actors are very pretty.

Had this been the work of a young novice filmmaker, I would say it showed some promise. But as it happens, Mr. Martin is approaching his mid-fifties. He should look for better writers, to begin with.

I wish it had been a lot more fun, frankly. The movie’s tone never quite gels; it’s too outlandish and cartoony to convince, but not so outlandish and cartoony that it takes off into a realm of over-the-top exhilaration.

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.

Mr. Taylor offers up nothing but glitchy editing and bad vibes.

In the final half-hour, things start picking up, not just because of the impending surprise victory of Donald J. Trump and the way these players react to it.

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

Ms. Henson, ever simmering, takes Mary’s moral conundrum very seriously. Her expressive eyes and nuanced body language work well for the character; she can put across a major change in attitude just by shifting a hip. The script, though, doesn’t give her a whole lot of material with which to credibly enact her character’s crisis.

The languidly-paced picture has a staggering array of beautiful images and vistas.

It is a disarmingly and consistently sensitive movie that remains engaging even when its reach sometimes exceeds its grasp.

Mr. Lawther is sympathetic and appealing as Billy, but Ms. Styler seems to mistake broad strokes for stylistic daring, and her colorful but diffuse movie never jells.

This dopey action thriller harks back to grindhouse pictures of the ’70s and ’80s, although it’s too tasteful, if that’s the word, to consistently exploit the more lurid implications of its sensationalist scenario.

This really is a paint-by-numbers action movie with two good things going for it. Those are brevity — it’s only 93 minutes long — and immediate forgetability.

Django is for the most part everything Reinhardt’s music was not: listless, glum and meandering.

It’s not good, but it could pass muster among midnight-movie enthusiasts or curious stoners.

Blame is earnest but underdeveloped. At the same time, it’s overdetermined and often overplayed.

The superb cast provides mild pleasures, as do some aspects of the elaborate mystery itself. And that’s all, folks.

It has an uncommonly strong ensemble cast...but the movie belongs to Mr. Trintignant.

The movie is, of course, beautifully made. Anderson’s visual style is remarkable. Shooting the picture himself, reportedly, with the collaboration of lighting cameraman Michael Bauman, he frames in a Kubrick-inflected style but cuts with a Hitchcock-influenced one.

The performances by Mr. Johnson, Mr. Hart and Mr. Black seem informed by the conviction that if they amuse themselves, they will also amuse others. They are not entirely wrong, but they are also not sufficiently right.

As the parents, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Arquette seem just about as tired as the characters they’re playing. As Auralie, Ms. McLean is appealing and fresh-faced and could do well in a better coming-of-age movie in a few years.

The movie is grisly and its sense of humor is mordant, but it winds up communicating a heartbreak that’s pretty straightforward, all things considered.

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.

I did admire this movie’s near-lunatic genre-hopping.

All of the personages in this slight movie are relatively one-note. It’s a shame that actors as searching and scrupulous as Strathairn and Keener are so ill-used.

This is part of the movie’s problem. Aside from it being another how-I-made-out-in-an-“exotic”-locale narrative. The film means for us to delight in Jay’s flouting of conventions.

The movie is at its liveliest when it depicts Mr. Frisell making his distinctive sound with a variety of colleagues. And, fortunately, Ms. Franz includes a lot of such footage.

The movie also falls back on a lot of boogity-boogity docu-clichés. Skittery editing, ironic music cues, that sort of thing.

The acting is good all around but that, too, improves in the quieter moments. Monroe, best known for her work in “It Follows,” is tough and committed, and Jennifer Garner’s portrayal of a mad housewife sprinting to a meltdown is acute, even if its does require her to tamp down pretty much all of her engaging life-positive qualities.

Kaurismäki makes these bigots look ridiculous, but he also takes very seriously the damage they do, and the movie’s finale takes that into account.

This movie, which stars Stéphanie Sokolinski, the French musician known as Soko, in the role of Fuller, only comes alive during the dance sequences.

The script by Nicole Jefferson Asher toggles between sharp observations about wordcraft and some “Dynasty”- or Tyler Perry-level soap operatics. RZA’s direction lacks visual personality, but he keeps the narrative moving and elicits strong performances from his cast.

This intense documentary shows a driven creator walking the walk, so to speak, in the most perverse fashion possible. The story is both repellent and strangely inspiring.

Turgid even in its brightness, overwritten in a way that does nothing to camoflauge its first-draft quality, jaw-droppingly overacted by all but one of its central cast members; it’s a Woody Allen disaster that elicits both a cocked head and a dropped jaw.

As a musical biography, this comes up short; it plays substantially better as a story of recovery and recovered integrity.

In part because of its political blind spots, Cuba and the Cameraman is captivating. (Whatever you think of Mr. Alpert’s perspective, it’s interesting.) But it’s mostly worth watching because of human stories like these.

The mode of this short movie is naturalistic. There are interviews of people in voiceover, but not a lot of talking-head footage. The perspective is of an observer sauntering through the town and then thrust into the middle of a fearsome but exhilarating spectacle.

Ms. Wells is appealing onscreen and is a smart writer. She gives Emily some good zingers.

The most pleasurable part of watching this Nora’s story is seeing how the males in her life have to make room for her, and do some learning themselves.

The movie is well put together, enough so that if you’re not entirely tired of its clichés, it might constitute a tolerable entertainment. I’d rather watch “Double Indemnity” for the 15th time.

In its alternating of Parvana’s day-to-day struggle with the tale she tells herself, the movie doesn’t promote bromides about stories and storytelling transcending reality. Rather, it demonstrates that the way imagination refracts reality can provide not only solace but also real-world strategy.

Wonder is that rare thing, a family picture that moves and amuses while never overtly pandering.

Genre homage or not, trashy, assault-coddling sexism is a turn off — and worse. Perhaps the “roman porno” reboot project should have rebooted its sexual politics before calling “action!”

One salutary feature of this sharply observed film is that it does not feel compelled to make Seyi in any way magical: he cannot transcend the sump of addiction and corruption in which he allows himself to sink.

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.

What Mr. Gibney uncovers is grave and shocking and could make a viewer concerned for the safety of the filmmaker. But its presentation is flawed.

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.

Most radically, this is a Poirot with heart. This interpretation is a dumb idea, but Mr. Branagh, an actor of prodigious skills, can at least pull this one half off. It’s not the only dumb idea in this film, which nevertheless bounces along in a way that’s sometimes almost entertaining.

The insights offered from the almost two-dozen show biz luminaries are not always commonplace, and Gottfried is always an interesting screen presence, even when he’s far removed from his persona.

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.

As moving as Mr. de la Manitou’s testimony sometimes is, this movie too often feels like a credulity-straining attempt at hagiography.

The star of the movie is a compelling figure, and Mr. D’Ambrosio presents quite a few people from Mr. Serpico’s past who have a similar draw. But the director’s filmmaking instincts are not always salutary.

Of course, all films, good or bad, are good or bad in their own way. I don’t know, though. All I See Is You seems extra-uniquely bad somehow.

This is not a terribly plot-driven movie; indeed, at two hours and twenty minutes it’s rather a ramble.

Ms. Didion’s triumph, as a writer and a human being, has been to take the age for what it is, to pinpoint how she saw it, and to stick it out.

Mr. Gomis’s cinematic style is spectacularly multifaceted.

A tricky movie, but not in a way that’s dishonest. Its first feet are in the school of miserablist realism, and while director Lee never abandons his things-as-they-are approach, he tells a love story by letting magic in at unusual angles.

This movie finds Mr. Perry, never the most deft at the technical aspect of filmmaking, drastically off whatever his best game is.

Unfortunately, for this viewer, the formal constraint foisted upon him by writer/director Jeremy Rush in Wheelman went right up his nose and stayed there, resulting in a little less than 90 minutes of annoyance.

The movie makes canny use of non-linear editing, moving backwards and forwards with engaging fluidity, and it keeps this up throughout.