Jake Coyle

On the whole, the Ross brothers’ observational, immersive filmmaking gets close to something bracingly real.

“Balance is key,” one character says of nature in the film. “Evil Does Not Exist,” though, is boldly uneven.

There are surely more interesting and funnier places “The Idea of You” could have gone. But Hathaway and Galitzine are a good enough match that, for a couple hours, it’s easy to forget.

Much is just out of reach in Arnow’s shrewdly perceptive and very funny new film.

Once the film — based on the nonfiction book by Damien Lewis — settles into a seedy, sunny West African setting and the nighttime heist finale, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” proves a spirited, if grossly exaggerated diversion.

Regardless of any incongruities, “Monkey Man” makes for a forceful directorial debut from Patel. More than anything else, he brings a compelling gravity to a film that is quite serious about getting seriously brutal.

It’s a empty chamber for movie spectacle and nothing else, where the only option is to pile elements on top of each other until you have, you know, a giant evil ape swinging a vertebrae like a lasso while riding a kaiju controlled by a crystal.

When we talk about “movie magic,” the first thing that comes to mind is often something like the bikes achieving liftoff in “E.T.” But it applies no less to Alice Rohrwacher’s wondrous “La Chimera,” a grubbily transcendent folk tale of a film that finds its enchantment buried in the ground.

If you accept the low-bar aspirations of “Frozen Empire,” you may get a pleasant-enough experience out of it. It’s a movie that feels almost more like a high production-value TV pilot for an appealing sitcom, with Rudd as the stepfather, than it does a big-screen event on par with the original.

Not all of it works. Heavy doses of melodrama and flashy surrealism sap some of the lurid spell of “Love Lies Bleeding.” But this feels tantalizingly close to the idealized version of a Kristen Stewart film.

There’s a profound, unresolvable melancholy to “About Dry Grasses” that’s hard to shake.

Like its predecessor, “Dune: Part Two” thrums with an intoxicating big-screen expressionism of monoliths and mosquitos, fevered visions and messianic fervor — more dystopian dream, or nightmare, than a straightforward narrative.

Though “One Love” drifts into increasingly conventional biopic scenes, its spirit remains fairly true to Marley — enough, at least, that you overlook some of its faults.

The Wenders’ movie that “Perfect Days” most recalls is “Wings of Desire,” where melancholy angels watched over Cold War-era Berlin and spoke of testifying “day by day for eternity.” “Perfect Days” has no such supernatural element, but its gaze is likewise attuned to what’s beautiful and meaningful in everyday living.

Criss-crossing patterns of ridiculousness and self-satisfaction run through “Argylle,” a tiresome meta movie that puts an awful lot of zest into an awfully empty high-concept story.

For a film about death, Lila Avilés’ “Tótem” is extraordinarily lived in.

It’s an intriguing premise that “I.S.S.” can’t translate into a coherent thriller.

It can be divertingly bonkers, but ends up a rather grim and slipshod “John Wick” ripoff.

The elements never quite cohere in “Freud’s Last Session.” The rhythm of conversation feels choppy and lacks the probing give and take that can electrify a two-hander.

It’s the movie’s own power trio of Barrino, Brooks and Henson that makes “The Color Purple” one of the most moving big-screen musicals in recent years. Each in their own way transforms suffering into exhilarating portraits of survival and strength.

Migration is vividly animated with warm cartoon tones that would do Daffy proud. But it never quite spreads its wings.

This is an eminently pleasant movie, propped up by its indefatigable good cheer and King’s immaculately tidy craftsmanship.

It’s a grand culmination of both Miyazaki’s extraordinary body of work and of a film that gathers, like a flock, or a symphony, so many of his trademark obsessions.

Maestro is a fine portrait of a complicated marriage. But for a man who contained symphonies, that leaves a lot of notes unplayed.

Fallen Leaves is the best big-screen romance of the year even though its prospective lovers exchange only a handful of words and, for most of the film, don’t know each other’s names.

Here is a sweeping historical tapestry — no one does it better today than Scott — with a damning, almost satirical portrait at its center. That mix — Scott’s spectacle and Phoenix’s the-emperor-has-no-clothes performance — makes Napoleon a rivetingly off-kilter experience.

Whether The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is enough to relight those embers remains to be seen, but it is a reminder how good a platform they offered young actors. It’s a ritual worth returning to.

The Killer is a terse, minimalist thriller in the cool, cold-hearted tradition of Jean Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï.” But while its methodical and solitary assassin acts and moves like cunning killers we’ve seen before, he blends into a modern background.