Lisa Kennedy

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.

With filial care but a flawed script, the filmmaker delves into what drove Bogart, the man, more than Bogart, the artis.

Consider Beauty an elegy with an edge, one that touches on faith and financials, love and condemnation.

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.

It’s Charlie’s wife, Ann (Safiya Fredericks), who provides the movie’s voice-over. Her account has a mythmaking undercurrent but is also the film’s deft way of celebrating Black love and family.

A body isn’t the only thing that goes overboard here.

Instead of character and chemistry, the film employs a series of running gags meant to support the star’s likability and not compete with his wisecracks.

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.

For every inventive or simply satisfying rom-com, there are dozens of clumsy, rote ones — French Girl falls among the latter.

If likability is a trait you value, Love, Guaranteed delivers the undemanding pleasure of watching two fundamentally decent people tumble into fondness and then love.

The director Simon Cellan Jones and the writer David Coggeshall return for this better executed, equally goofball follow-up.

Rowland commits to the thankless task of playing a smart woman gone stupid. Rhodes can’t do much with Zyair, whose affect is more flat than seductive.

No genre gesture goes untapped in the deliberately hagiographic “Mary,” a coming-of-age saga about the mother of Jesus. Directed by D.J. Caruso and written by Timothy Michael Hayes, the film aims to draw multitudes.

The documentary makes a strong case for just how remarkable a team they are. While LFG doesn’t divulge the elusive recipe, it ladles what one teammate called the group’s “special sauce.”

Beyond Giraud’s calculations about wind and cliff-edge-to-floor ratios, his thoughts about fear reflect a generous nature and should speak to decidedly earthbound yet unnerved folks. He wants people to dream big.

[An] insightful, chilling, often elegant documentary.

This romp about three brothers trying to make their mother’s holiday wish a reality is festive and illuminating.

The promising first-time feature filmmaker Ximan Li embraces the twists of immigrant experiences in the drama In a New York Minute.

“We’ve caused pain,” that inmate says, “primarily ’cause we were in pain.” Far from seeming like an excuse, in Since I Been Down, this observation sounds like a way toward reckoning and change.

In “On the Line,” Williams has his say. Unsurprisingly, he’s frank, occasionally funny, but also vulnerable, not least because he’s growing frail, having suffered from health issues.

Canfield’s debut feature is infused with its own measure of that gentling spirit. It is also blessedly low on piousness.

Short on homers but not humility, The Royal won’t vie with any sports flicks for flash, but it doesn’t steep its worthwhile lessons in sanctimony either.

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.

A gay man of a younger generation, de Oliveira mourns the vulnerability of these characters’ bodies while paying tribute to their flourishes and fears.

The film is not merely playback or payback on behalf of one Black artist by another. Rewind & Play dazzles because it is and will remain a wonder to witness Monk seemingly discovering his compositions again and again, his fingers conjuring, his right foot etching rhythms.

Pakula’s work with actors or the resurgent meaning of his trilogy could have been documentaries unto themselves. But the viewer might not have gotten an adjacent set of insights from his family, particularly Hannah Pakula, his second wife. Her tender, incisive regard creates an ache even as it offers solace.

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.