Manohla Dargis

There are many words that you can use to describe Ms. Westwood (born 1941), an early punk rock tastemaker and merchandizer turned global couture brand. Boring certainly is not one of them. And as the movie jumps from past to present, from street to palace, from the Sex Pistols to Queen Elizabeth II, Ms. Westwood’s claim sounds increasingly strange and borderline ridiculous.

Its cast aside, the movie sounds and narratively unwinds like the previous installments, but without the same easy snap or visual allure.

Mr. Baker does nice work with the actors — his open-faced young leads are sincere, appealing, believable — and there’s a lot to like about Breath, including its attention to natural beauty and to how surfing can become a bridge to that splendor.

Tully isn’t really interested in the sustaining joys of female bonding. It has a message to deliver, which is as sincere and decent as it is obvious: Mothers need help, sometimes serious help. Which is why it’s strange that as Marlo very visibly sinks into postpartum depression — you can see Ms. Theron pulling Marlo deeper and deeper inside — the movie pretends that her burden is somehow too hidden for anyone to notice.

[Ms. Shawkat] and Mr. Arteta, a sensitive observer of life’s everyday churn (his credits include “Beatriz at Dinner”), do some lovely work in a movie that reminds you that sometimes all you need in realist fiction is a glimpse into another person’s being — but with heart and intelligence, good craft and technique.

The director Sebastián Lelio should have been a good fit for this story if only because of the sensitivity he’s brought to female-driven movies like “Gloria.” Although Disobedience seems to offer him similar material — female desire up against the patriarchy — it defeats him.

Amy Schumer puts out so much energy in I Feel Pretty that it’s hard not to feel charged up, too. The movie is seriously suboptimal, but she is such a force for good — for comedy, for women — and the laughs land often enough that you can go, if somewhat begrudgingly, with the messy flow.

Ms. Martel is exploring the past, how we got here and why, but she is more interested in relations of power than in individual psychological portraits. The monstrous must be humanized to be understood, which doesn’t mean it deserves our tears.

Mr. Hamm certainly makes it easy to care for Mason and all that he signifies, and it’s a pleasure to watch him just silently nurse another drink, a lifetime of regret weighing on him. Yet as Mason sits alone, the shadows closing around him, you also catch sight of a character whose past — including a cozy association with Henry Kissinger — suggests a tougher, harder and more interesting movie than the one you are watching.

It features a casually diverse cast and is openly, at times dutifully, feminist, with you-go-girl speeches that sound as if everyone involved had tried too hard to be decent. Funny and enlightened would have been better.

There’s almost a cosmic dimension to some of the most beautiful passages, as if the world (call it nature or God or sensitive direction) were holding Charley in its embrace.

What really interests Mr. Katz here are movies — the fingerprints of directors like Robert Altman, David Lynch, Michael Mann and Sean Baker are all on Gemini — and how they have shaped Los Angeles, or at least our ideas about it.

Mr. Soderbergh’s quick-and-dirty approach works here better as a conceptual gambit than as an entertainment. What keeps you watching even as the story becomes more off-putting are the actors and Mr. Soderbergh’s filmmaking.

Time and again, Mr. Anderson pulls you hard into Isle of Dogs. His use of film space, which he playfully flattens and deepens, is one of his stylistic signatures; he likes symmetry and, in contrast to most directors these days, does a lot inside the frame. He’s especially inventive in this movie, and I could watch hours of its noble dogs hanging out, sniffing the air.

There are many ways for a movie to go wrong, and Tomb Raider goes wrong in many of the most obvious: It has a generic story, bad writing, a miscast lead, the wrong director and no fun.

[A] lucid, focused and adamant documentary.

The Death of Stalin is by turns entertaining and unsettling, with laughs that morph into gasps and uneasy gasps that erupt into queasy, choking laughs.

For all the chatter and intrigue, Mr. Finley never settles on a point or theme.

It helps that Ms. Lawrence, like all great stars, can slip into a role as if sliding into another skin, unburdened by hesitation or self-doubt. Craft and charm are part of what she brings to this role, as well as a serviceable accent, but it’s her absolute ease and certainty that carry you through Red Sparrow.

A movie in which the human comedy is by turns tender, plaintive, heartfelt and joyful.

Working with an uneven cast and an undercooked story, Mr. O’Malley hits the horror beats just fine (slam, creak, squeak) without putting a sinister spin on the assorted strange doings. For all the genre exertions, none of this feels the least bit spooky.

Mr. Garland likes to play with tones, mixing deadpan in with the frights, and later “Annihilation” becomes something of a head movie, swirling with cosmic and menacingly lysergic visions. He keeps the tension torqued throughout this phantasmagoric interlude, sustaining the shivery unease that is one of this movie’s deeper satisfactions.

The Party is a brittle, unfunny attempt at comedy that features some very fine actors and a lot of empty chatter.

Mr. Perry is such a good filmmaker that he can make the embarrassing and the unbearable insistently, fascinatingly engrossing (and often funny).

It wouldn’t be a Marvel production without manly skirmishes and digital avatars. Yet in its emphasis on black imagination, creation and liberation, the movie becomes an emblem of a past that was denied and a future that feels very present. And in doing so opens up its world, and yours, beautifully.

24 Frames can’t help but be affecting because it is Kiarostami’s final movie. But it’s intellectually uninvolving, and its technical limitations prove frustrating.

All these attractions are a necessary balm given that Ho turns out to be a deeply uninvolving character (Mr. Shih mostly smiles, grimaces or looks amazed), a wan placeholder for a character in a narratively thin film that runs over three very leisurely hours.

For devotees of cinematic blowouts and dedicated students of screen masculinity (like me), 12 Strong is premium, Grade A catnip. Directed by the newcomer Nicolai Fuglsig, it is generally watchable, if unsurprisingly easier on the eyes than on the ears or brain.