Lisa Kennedy

Fauci is at its best when it draws parallels between the pandemics that define Dr. Fauci’s career. It vexes when it leans on straightforward biography

Ventimiglia becomes the sequel’s saving grace.

Although Safety takes its cues from a true story, its beats are comfortingly familiar — or annoyingly so, depending on your fondness for the rhythms of the genre.

With access to behind-the-scenes processes, the documentary can be instructive about the work of changing legacy institutions, but also wincingly cautionary as Wolfs, his administrators and curators get tangled up in numbers and nomenclature.

The writer-director Stelana Kliris is undaunted by, though not entirely in control of, balancing her material’s at times somber, at other times blithe, notes.

Briskly directed by John Whitesell, written by Tiffany Paulsen, Holidate won’t change your mind about the tread-worn challenges of romantic comedies, but its leads leverage their charms nicely.

Britney vs Spears underscores how tricky it is to make a credible documentary about a celebrity under duress without repeating many of the gestures that treat fame as the sine qua non of American culture.

Directed with some unexpected beats by Katie Aselton, the comedy captures a bit of the esprit de girlfriends of HBO’s “Insecure,” but borrows too giddily from the Nancy Meyers rom-com catalog of upscale homes.

As inspiring as his chosen subject is, the director missed an opportunity to use the story to deepen our understanding of our own memories, trauma and forgiveness.

Denzel Washington directs this adaptation (the screenplay is by Virgil Williams) with care, respect and a deep-seated knowledge of the Black love stories that don’t make it to the big screen nearly enough.

For those viewers aged out of the movie’s intended demographic, that quandary isn’t as compelling as the evidence of its lead actors’ talents, as well as that of the nimble actors who play their besties, Stella (Ayo Edebiri) and Scotty (Nico Hiraga).

“Civil” yields fewer insights than hoped. At times, the neat documentary feels nearly as tailored as Crump’s suits.

One gets the sense that the director, in not wanting to rob the adult Edgardo (Leonardo Maltese) of his agency, even if it was woefully compromised, resorts to a horror-inflected score and overdramatic scenes of parental anguish to make clear the devastating consequences of a child separated from his family. The heightened drama seems hardly necessary.

It would all be pretty boilerplate, but Mann’s anchoring appeal — his lean into Griffin’s modesty and decency — saves the movie from a sorrier fate.

Which Brings Me to You is cleverly structured but often feels too crowded with the ghosts of lovers past.

While there’s much to admire here, there are stylistic choices that vex. The First Step stumbles as it tries to balance its interest in Jones with the significance of the bill.

Learn to Swim is lovely to behold, but the sullen artist at the center feels too often like he’s drowning in melancholia and might take us down with him.

Finally Dawn is at its most intriguing as Costanzo entrusts his curly haired, wide-eyed naïf to maneuver the looking glass of Italian versus Hollywood cinema. Hint: Italy comes off more soulful.

It’s not groundbreaking but, written by Bass, the movie serves as a fine reminder of the pleasures of a female-focused story with the stuff of adulthood at its core.

Apart from some deadpan exchanges between the Mother and Zoe, Lopez plays the role fierce. Even so, it isn’t always clear which gestures in the film should be taken seriously, and which make sport of the genre’s masculine posturing while offering an allegory about a birth mother’s sacrifice.

So many details in this comedy-drama (a characterization worth quibbling with) are meant to provoke. And Our Hero, Balthazar teases with the promise of a darkly intelligent film. Not unlike its protagonist’s tears, the effect is dismayingly performative.

With playful visual flourishes, a willfully garish palette and winks galore (including one to the French feminist writer Monique Wittig), Langlois’s debut has stylistic ambition for days. But it’s not as genre-fluent as “Love Lies Bleeding” and “I Saw the TV Glow,” or as swoon inducing as its volatile couple deserves.

As eloquent as it is, This Much We Know may also be exploitative.

The Drop is smarter than it is funny. As sympathetic as Konkle and Fowler are as the beset couple, had the film leaned into its intelligence more, trusting its bleak comedy and affording its other characters a little emotional wiggle room, it may have achieved a more perfect coupling of each.

Another Body is most persuasive when experts weigh in on the reality-upending aspects of deepfake technology and image-based sex abuse.

An amiable ensemble effort, with two sturdy lead performances, Suncoast is reminiscent of the minor-key, quirky-charming ’90s dramedies so often discovered by the Sundance Film Festival. This is a fine thing; there are deserved laughs and tears. It is also a slightly awkward thing.

Parker the writer has tended to overload his screenplays with messages. He does some of that here, as well. Parker the director, however, is gifted with crews and capable actors and that shows, too. The members of his ensemble — especially Oyelowo — find ways to keep us guessing, and caring, to the end.

To say that Resort to Love is slight would be akin to snatching a romance novel out of your closest friend’s hands while she sits reading and sipping a margarita on a beach. Why would you do that? It’s summer. Leave the girl her pleasures.