John Anderson

It will prove a literally breathtaking adventure, depending on one’s phobias about heights, water and psychopaths. But it is an ordeal saga, a predator thriller with horror-film accents—and a considerable amount of violence and pain for the character played by the ageless Ms. Theron, who may be giving the most athletically demanding performance of her action-movie career.

The tale doesn’t need any artificial twists. They occur naturally. There’s character development. Foreshadowing.

“The Logo” is directed by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, who is too much of a presence in his own movie. It’s his first documentary. It may be the first one he’s seen. Documentarians usually hide themselves unless they have something to add, which he doesn’t.

While Ms. Gillespie can’t solve the mystery of why exactly her subject did what he did, she has created a novel kind of crime film, one aided in no small way by what seems to be the complete flight recording from Russell’s mad act. And a group of loved ones willing to listen to it.

Ms. Zenovich possesses the interviewer’s most valuable skill, knowing when to shut up.

“1000 Women” is briskly entertaining and wildly informative as a clip show, insightful in its academic analysis, and the structure of the film enables a tidy organization of an often messy bunch of films.

Straightforward storytelling was never the strong suit of the show, which relied very much on Mr. Murphy’s charisma and that of his co-stars, notably Sophie Rundle, who plays sister Ada Shelby. The future always looked grim in Peaky Blinders, but the fate of the show, which apparently has two Murphy-less years to go in a planned sequel, is beyond uncertain.

While essentially a disaster film, the visually alarming and nerve-racking “Fukushima” is also a cross-cultural psychodrama, about an industry, and perhaps a society, having a meltdown all its own.

In a deliberately raggedy film, we find a raggedy man.

Like Sun Ra’s music, the motion picture is deliberately fractured, the virtues to be found in the departures from the expected, the familiar, the comfortable.

Director Rory Kennedy strives to make Ms. Polgár’s story—that of the greatest female player in the game—a validation of women in chess, without paying much attention to their continued under-representation, post-Polgár, in international competition. What she does come close to validating, however hesitantly, are the unorthodox educational theories of Judit’s father, László.

Beast of War is a rare animal—a hybrid shark movie and a war film—and it takes care to deliver some tweaks.

The Rip is a sturdily entertaining, hyper-kinetic avalanche of action propelled by equal parts bullets and f-bombs.

Mr. Chase still tries to be funny here, sometimes desperately, and isn’t. Which along with a career’s worth of ill will puts the sting in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not.

I love a good film-clip movie as much as the next cinemaniac, and “Breakdown” provides plenty of great moments snatched out of what has been called the New American Cinema of the ’70s—the Scorsese-Coppola-Polanski-Malick heyday. But Mr. Neville is going for something deeper. Deeper even than what is usually attributed to the zeitgeist. Or its cousin, coincidence.

Influencers both dwells in and demolishes an online, text-happy, selfie-saturated world, one that thrives on misinformation and FOMO-mongering and drives CW more than a little crazy. Watching poseurs brought down is fun, though. So is Ms. Naud.

While it isn’t the intention of the film to generate sympathy for Mr. Út, one can’t quite help it.

As naturally and insistently buoyant as Mr. Strassner is, Ms. Larsen is a marvel.

There is an implicit story within—about the ancients building with marble for eternity and us moderns building with concrete for a virtual moment. But it isn’t just beauty Mr. Kossakovsky is concerned with here. It is how humans view their world and, more importantly, themselves. And their place in the universe. And their disposable landscape.

“Reflection” is a highly playful exercise in its kaleidoscopic approach, though “kaleidoscopic” is about as useful as “surreal” in describing the film’s effect or philosophy.

The film acknowledges the bones of Johnson’s story—a very thin narrative in terms of things actually happening, though the things that happen are enormous. The execution is nevertheless lush, sometimes startlingly beautiful, and painterly and evocative of Johnson’s elegiac theme about a bygone America. The Old World is never old until it’s gone, but in Train Dreams one feels it passing.

Minka Kelly has a face that could launch a thousand cable movies and is the freshest thing about “Champagne Problems,” a holiday-season romance that takes the welcome tack of embracing its own clichés.

Musically, the film is best viewed and heard as an artifact.

Is this movie better seen in a theater than at home on Netflix? Yes, no and what can one say? Watch it anyway.

Mr. Davenport, who makes films “about disability” according to his website, also makes them from the perspective of the disabled—he has cerebral palsy and often uses a wheelchair. Like many people who find themselves on the anti- side of the assisted-suicide issue, he takes the concept to what seem very logical conclusions—with an assist from Canada.

There is no reason to adapt an existing work without doing something new, and Ms. DaCosta does plenty, though much of the updating shows how truly groundbreaking Ibsen was. And how little ground is left to break.

This critic is a sucker for Ms. Knightley, so please disregard anything here that sounds remotely positive. Because it really is a ludicrous exercise, the kind one hopes was fun for the actors because the results are so wacky, and the cast so prestigious.

The filmmakers may have refashioned the book to make it a vehicle for Mr. Murphy, and done so successfully. But they were right about the POV: Witnessing the turmoil of these very troubled youths through the frustrations of their teachers makes for more convincing drama than would a delinquent’s-eye view of the same situation.

All horror film is metaphorical. But to qualify for the genre itself—and satisfy the base demands of the base—a movie is required to both accelerate toward lunacy and entertain a certain amount of mayhem. “Bring Her Back” contains enough gore to swamp a blood bank. But it also features a performance by Sally Hawkins that may be the best of the year, or even her career.

The Vietnam echoes are everywhere. The vocabulary is mere embellishment

It’s difficult to describe the astonishing beauty of “Porcelain War” without trivializing everything and everyone involved.

Both the underlying story and the dramatic re-creations possess an urgency that eludes so much televised—and sensationalized—nonfiction.

Hell of a Summer, as written and directed by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, manages to mine some fresh mirth out of the mayhem while lampooning a format’s classic conceits.

It’s easy to smile at The Thursday Murder Club, with its veteran performers chewing the scenery and still having the teeth to do it. Does that sound ageist? It might, if the charms of this lighthearted, star-studded confection weren’t all about its main characters being advanced in years and still as sharp as an insulin injection.

What’s missing from Stans is a sense of humor—not among the stans, who are self-reflecting and self-effacing. Mr. Mathers, outside of his songwriting, seems to believe that amused self-examination is a weakness to be hidden. The stans, ironically, are hiding nothing.

Mr. Hallström, who has made some emotionally satisfying and even delicate movies (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “My Life as a Dog,” “The Cider House Rules”), doesn’t really have the material here that he had in his other films. His cast is pretty; the Sagrada Familia is more eloquent.

There are a few speedbumps of illogic along the gnarled route of Night Always Comes, but they can’t negate the pace of the storytelling, Mr. García’s gymnastic shooting, or the sense of there being no bottom to the well of darkness explored by Mr. Caron.

Ms. Carson is a photogenic commodity to have in your film; so is Oxford, and director Iain Morris (the rebooted “Time Bandits”) balances the visual dimension of his film upon these twin resources.

May end up being the surprise delight of summer ’25.

It may be a historical documentary, but it has blinkers on.

It is a very personal documentary, a designation that can connote the good, the not-so-bad and the distinctly uncomfortable. My Mom Jayne has it all, including a puzzle that Ms. Hargitay pursues throughout.

Director Mark Monroe’s nearly two-hour Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is the most exhaustive exploration thus far.

Mountainhead teeters on a precipice of dramatic irony and intentions.

Nonnas is directed by Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”; the film version of “Dear Evan Hansen”) with undistilled sincerity and dollops of goo. But Mr. Vaughn’s Joe Scaravella, who seems to hew quite closely to the story’s real-life restaurateur, is free of Vaughn-ish smirk. He approaches pathos.

“Disaster Is My Muse” differs from other “American Masters” programs by having a subject who is alive, well, loves his wife, Françoise (who appears frequently and to great effect), and about whom there is a more than generous amount of documentation (as in drawings) and footage.

The compositions and palette are occasionally stunning (the cinematographer is Scott Siracusano), and while the story lacks a certain momentum, the intention, quite successful, is to keep a viewer curious.

There are many more questions in “CHAOS” than hard answers, but one thing is clear, namely the hypnotic quality of Mr. Morris’s filmmaking, enhanced to no small end by the dread in Paul Leonard-Morgan’s score and even in the demo recordings by Manson of his songs (which might have been sung by someone like Johnny Mathis, weirdly enough).

Much of “Over 30 Years Later,” without the surprise factor, seems very soft.

To its credit, Unstoppable features a first-rate performance by Jharrel Jerome (“Moonlight”), who is never less than convincing as Anthony and sometimes seems to be in a different movie from his co-stars.

Yes, there’s a sermon of sorts at the center of “A Different Man.” But the message arrives post-movie, thanks to a narrative that is consistently compelling in its novelty, and twin performances—by Messrs. Stan and Pearson—that really do get under the skin.

Ms. Wilson may put a viewer off balance with a lack of concrete detail, but it is a seduction technique that works, to satisfying effect.

Cheerfully horrifying.

Where one suspects Mr. Sires wants to go in his ultimately righteous film is into the squalid margins of America whence a Babudar might spring. That he hits a stone wall, in the form of the subject’s mother, is too bad, but no surprise.

Vandross regularly produces sounds that seem superhuman, and does so with no visible strain. It is also no work at all enjoying a movie so full of affection for its subject and his music.

Despite the “improvements” to the animation technique, there remains a purity to Wallace & Gromit. In fact, the most endearing aspects of the series are its links to silent comedy. And dogs, naturally. And penguins.

There are few moments in the film—one that is wearyingly indignant and emotionally inert—that feel genuine.

With Taron Egerton as its hero and Jason Bateman as its villain, it is a perfectly serviceable two hours of action and angst

Screenwriter Steven Knight has much to answer for in Callas being quite so shrill, but Ms. Jolie is unable to turn her storied character—one of opera’s most important and influential performers, a woman of polarizing voice, scandalous history and tempestuous personality—into something recognizably human.

If you happen to need a good cry, you can’t go wrong with Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, a documentary about decent people, bewildering misfortune and how bad luck can have a ripple effect—especially if you are lucky enough to have people who love you. If you don’t want to cry, you probably will.

“Yacht Rock” is the yacht rock of documentaries.

What Mr. Farrow does in his very concise, urgent documentary is track how governments and worse are using, abusing and will continue to employ technology by which they can pickpocket your personal data.

Ms. McKenzie is terrific and carries much of the film, and director Taylor (“Sex Education”) seizes every opportunity to adorn it with period flavor, portraying Manchester and a Manchester hospital as they were 50 years ago.

By making Emilia Pérez a quasi-musical, Mr. Audiard cranks up the campiness; by making it a parable about one’s own past being inescapable, he makes it profound.

The storytelling is first-rate, snowballing along from one outrage to the next.

Woman of the Hour may be sensational, in the tabloid sense, but it is angry, too, and full of questions.

The Last of the Sea Women is, like its subjects, beautiful and charming.

Mr. Dauberman, abetted by cinematographer Michael Burgess (“Malignant”), finds ways to make the Lot both anxious and dour, though the moods don’t always match up with the wobbly storytelling, or help set it on a purposeful path.

There are reasons to watch, principally Dianne Wiest’s outrageous Ruth Gordon impersonation and the presence of the gifted Julia Garner.

This is a kid’s movie for kids and may find a fervent audience among them, thanks to the way it conforms to the idea that virtue, hope and integrity are the exclusive purviews of youth.

For the mangy, flea-bitten TV reviewer, there would be no quicker route to ignominy than trashing a show about dogs. Fortunately, even cat ladies will like Inside the Mind of a Dog, which has an abundance of furry charm and retrieves a kennel’s worth of information from those sniffing around the cutting edge of canine science.

Documentarian Nanette Burstein has a wealth of photographic material at her disposal, much of it breathtakingly lovely, and she uses it gracefully and in the noble cause of forward motion.

Mr. Kauffman is interested in pure storytelling, the rise and fall of his various characters, which covers at least the last 10 years; he has created a beautiful film in terms of its aesthetics and affection for the machinery and people. But he is also telling a cautionary tale about the cluttering of space, and the pursuit not just of profit but power.

Hardcore horror fans will get their dose of mayhem from Humane, though in its modest, tidily organized fashion the film might also get under the skin.

We are set up to dislike her, but we do not. We like her very much, despite, or thanks to, the potent sense of diva that lingers in the air.

Despite Mr. Molloy’s tapping into his inner Michael Mann and turning Wilshire Boulevard into a scene from “Heat,” there are scattered human moments in “Alex F,” thanks largely to Mr. Murphy, who has always been a provocateur capable of tenderness.

As a parody of Hollywood excess and narcissism it is frequently laugh-out-loud; as a wannabe Hallmark Channel holiday movie—a segue that is nothing short of baffling—it is less than amusing, except in the notion that the project got waylaid on its way to Christmas.

Among the ironic lessons of MoviePass, MovieCrash is that the people who used the service the most helped ruin it, though it wasn’t really their fault—it was a great deal. One that seemed too good to be true. And was.

What it does have is wonderfully natural dialogue that allows two talented actresses to spin a convincing friendship out of a gossamer narrative, and an engaging relationship out of pure charm. Is it enough? Probably not. They say you can’t have everything, which is especially true here.

The one selling point of No Way Up is that it makes you scared of being scared, which may be enough for a lazy evening on the couch with a friend, a drink and a meal, though it probably wouldn’t work on sushi night.

You can’t say too many nice things about “Atlas.” You wouldn’t want to encourage people. And yet this cacophonous, big-budget, Jennifer Lopez-powered movie/videogame just might offer up a justification for humanity, while at the same time suggesting we need one.

Living With Leopards is superior nature content, largely because of the evident devotion of its humans.

Unfrosted is a bonbon, a truffle, a trifle and a distraction from dispiriting news and disappointing drama upon which one can gorge as if it were a package of Fig Newtons. No, too healthy: Honey Smacks.

The aesthetics of Mr. Wiseman’s visual storytelling have seldom been so prominent or important as in “Menus-Plaisirs.”

The acting is first-rate, a disquieting pas de deux written by Indianna Bell and directed by her and Josiah Allen, who edited the piece.

The main attraction, so to speak, of “Road House” is ne’er-do-wells getting their comeuppance, to put it as gently as possible. The amount and degree of fighting defy most rules of physics, respiration and orthopedics. But it is a fantasy, mostly, which is a blessing.

Ms. Brown, who first came to our attention in “Stranger Things,” and for good reason, is surrounded by a cast that may have lost a bet.

Ricky Stanicky is, per the Farrelly aesthetic, eager to offend, gleefully vulgar and takes every joke too far.

A moving and even poetic mixed-media meditation on Albert Einstein, his life after Hitler and his sense of “responsibility, not to say guilt” about his theories and how they played into the destruction that, lest one forget, ended World War II.

For a movie with such a nose for nuttiness, its human element is genuine and warm.

The film should have been played for pure farce and is not, hence the head-scratching in which a viewer will engage before very few bodies are cold.

The length of his film is an essential element in Mr. Bayona’s message about desperation and hope and, dare one say it, the resilience of the spirit. The soiled, ailing, sunburned husks of men who emerge from the mountains are heroes, though they look every bit like ghosts.

There’s not a lot of mystery to Bye Bye Barry, unless you count the puzzle posed by a person like William Sanders, who is spoken of by his son in nothing but admiring and affectionate terms and must have inspired something in a child so devoted to being the best at what he did.

Mr. Domingo is a force of nature in this film, delivering a complex, highly sympathetic portrayal, but he also determines what the movie actually is, while preventing it from going awry.

Much of what makes “The Boy Who Lived” special are the inexplicable ways people respond to the unexpected, and the randomly tragic, and whether they stick around when it would be much easier to vanish, as if by wizardry.

The audio recordings left by the first lady were clearly intended for posterity, and as such are discreet and politic but always revelatory, even by omission: LBJ’s legendary philandering, for instance, is never mentioned.

It is the understated, matter-of-fact tone of the story that sucks us in, and the two central performances that help make this effort by Ms. Moss such a singular addition to the monster catalog.

Watching Mr. Brooks’s career roll out in a compressed form is quite a treat, though Mr. Reiner seems to race toward the finish to include everything that he needs to get in.

The seductive visual rhythms of “Mr. Chow” are the result of Ms. Tsien’s editing (with Anita H.M. Yu and Eugene Yi), accessorized to no small degree by the magical animation of Rohan Patrick McDonald.