Manohla Dargis

Jones has turned a life into a hackneyed survivor’s story with cartoon villains, cardboard saints, pretty scenery, mewling piano notes and expedient, drama-goosing epiphanies.

The downer here is that Lowery doesn’t seem to know what to do with his stars, performers who are never better than when they’re just doing what they do best — you know, acting.

Exit 8 is a pip and as fun to watch as it is to mull over.

Alas, Tereza, whose interior life remains largely obscured from start to finish, isn’t a compelling vessel for whatever Mascaro is trying to do in this movie. And, as it drifts from one place to another, one encounter to another, one sketchy idea to another, so may your attention.

Zendaya and Pattinson are both enjoyable to watch, but she’s given too little to do and he’s given too much.

Yes is an unsparing movie and can be hard to watch partly because Lapid’s raw fury and maximalist approach can border on off-putting excess. There are times in “Yes” when he seems to be veering out of control. At other times, he almost seems to bait you to look away, to turn off and tune out just like his revelers, even as he inexorably pulls you in, forcing you to bear witness alongside him.

It’s a sneak attack of a movie, one that invites your laughter, even as it jabs you in the ribs.

These cinematic allusions are catnip to film lovers, and while they’re pleasurable to consider they’re so delicately woven into the story that they never distract from the characters or the emotion, or edge into directorial cleverness.

Lord and Miller, almost by default, accentuate the positive to the detriment of the very movie that they’ve painstakingly created. Like a lot of Earthlings, they seem more at home in a far-out fantasy than on our ordinary, terrifying planet, which is why this particular message of hope ends up being a bummer.

Written by Masato Kato, Bushido holds you with its performances and a story that circles around questions of honor, loyalty, masculinity and the ties that bind and sometimes throttle.

It doesn’t always make sense tonally and intellectually, but the whole thing is energetic, handsome and stocked with enough expert, appealing performers to hold your interest through the rougher, less coherent passages.

The results are, by turns, amusing and lightly scary, though never truly surprising.

The story and the actors make How to Make a Killing easy to drift along with, even if it never coheres tonally, logically or, really, any which way.

Robbie and Elordi hold your attention well enough, though they’re more persuasive apart than when they’re together.

A B-movie throwback with plentiful winks, it has few thrills, but it has a touch of science, a plausible-enough threat, suitably disgusting splatter, appealing actors and a fleet running time.

It’s a sincere, mesmerizing and admirably unorthodox film that, by turns, invites your love and tests your patience. It demands attention and generosity from you, including toward characters who can be tough to tolerate, much less care about. They and the movie can be maddening, even when it’s impossible to look away.

Much like the dress that Mr. Pierre designed for her — a white number whose bold black zigzag obscures all of its seams — Mrs. Trump seems exceptionally good at keeping hidden how everything, her marriage and family included, fits together.

The Moment lights on substantive subjects throughout, yet partly because it’s about one individual’s ostensible struggles rather than the larger system, its bite is toothless.

A witless, thrill-free hodgepodge of shinily packaged action-thriller clichés.

The intrigue is far-fetched and surprising — this is one movie you can’t write in your head — and delivered with increasing winks and charm.

The most arresting way that Diaz telegraphs, though, is through the sheer beauty of his images. The movie is often visually intoxicating, at moments gasp-out-loud ravishing, especially in its presentation of the natural world, which can have a soft visual quality that deepens the sense of otherworldliness.

No Other Choice is easy to admire from one perfectly balanced shot to the next; it is a pleasure to see how Park plays with visual space and deploys some of the more slapstick comedy with sharply timed, Rube Goldberg-style finesse. If only the movie’s tones and moods were as modulated as its two vibrant, often touching lead performances.

A hyper-charged take on a bildungsroman, Marty Supreme is one of the most thoroughly pleasurable American movies of the year and one of the most exciting. Part of what makes it electric is how organically its numerous parts — its themes, characters, camera movements and accelerated pacing — fit together in a whirring whole.

Cover-Up is a model of efficient, engaging documentary filmmaking; it looks good, for starters, and it moves energetically.

The fight sequences are models of spatial coherency and escalating tension, and they grab you wholly, turning a movie into a full-body workout. That feeling dissipates whenever the fighting stops, the story cranks back up and somebody calls someone else “bro,” which happens too often.

At times, it can seem that Fuller is about to lose himself in the movie’s filigreed details, its curlicue lines, lush flowers and confectionary rest. In truth, I think he’s is sharing his delight in the imaginative possibilities of storytelling and in the plasticity of the medium itself, which is as infectious as it is welcome.

Strange describes the world of “Resurrection,” as does entrancing, tender, surprising, mournful and, at times, mystifying; it too is a labyrinth of a kind, one that Bi has filled with abrupt turns, elusive figures and shattering moments.

Djukic has a fine eye and is a talent to look out for, even if here, like Ana-Maria, she chose the wrong girl.