Mark Feeney

It’s easily the most mannered movie Anderson has made, which is really saying something. It’s so mannered at times as to be almost unmoored — speaking of ships — but the many marvels it contains make that an acceptable price to pay.

Profile is one big gimmick, but the gimmickiness, you might say, is that in a very real sense it’s shot entirely on location. Is it a great movie? No, but it’s something rare in any medium, film or otherwise: a work in which form really is content.

Hurwitz takes a terrific subject and treats it with undisguised, and justified, affection.

It's slambang in pacing, bald in exposition, and offers cast-of-hundreds spectacle.

Lyrical and episodic, Belfast is often affecting, if far too sentimental.

Civil War can, and frequently does, put its characters through an emotional wringer. It puts viewers through one, too. But those characters seem less like people with actual feelings to be wrung than means to Garland’s filmmaking ends.

Rules and regulations, which the military is very good at, are about behavior. Law is about justice. The Invisible War makes all too clear that the military isn't very good at justice.

Even if the number of ideas he has to improve the sport don’t quite live up to the title of Infinite Football, Corneliu Porumboiu’s documentary about Ginghina, there certainly are a lot. The fact that they’re all either unworkable, ridiculous, or both simply adds to the charm of this extremely low-key film.

The chief problem is the documentary’s misapprehension of the artistic personality.

Much of the charm of this highly charming film is the window it affords on the offstage Beatles and their families.

At its best, The Great Flood is hypnotic — at its worst, numbing.

Titane is deeply unpleasant, and its narrative borders on the inexplicable — not just the sex and pregnancy — but Ducournau knows what’s she’s doing, even if the audience doesn’t know why she’s doing it.

It’s McKellen’s and Mirren’s. Their back-and-forth provides a satisfaction akin to watching two masters volley at Wimbledon. Unfortunately, the ball these masters are playing with manages the perplexing trick of being worn and waterlogged while also far too bouncy: stodginess and over-plotting is not a good combination.

Strawberry Mansion is a very strange movie. It’s at times beguiling, at other times so wackadoo inscrutable you want to groan. Either way, it’s always inventive. It’s very much its own thing, and in this movie day and age that is no small accomplishment.

High-seas adventure meets message movie. The adventures are good. So’s the message. The problem is that they’re sailing in different directions.

Ramsey is close to a force of nature, equally skilled at conveying Birdy’s curiosity, humor, orneriness, and not-infrequent bewilderment. In other words, she’s a 14-year-old.

Everything is leaden, solemn, portentous. When the writing’s not wooden, it’s clumsily demotic.

"This was the Rosa Parks moment,'' another participant says, "the time that gay people stood up and said, 'No.' ''

Tom Bean and Luke Poling’s documentary shows that its subject’s true talent may have been for an occupation no less rarefied than the ones he failed at: movie star.

The archival footage in Bill Siegel’s documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali is wondrous. How could it not be, featuring the gentleman in the title.

“Happy” isn’t meant ironically. Herzog, who narrates, clearly loves, and envies, the trappers’ elemental existence and connection to nature.

Maybe the key is how nicely self-aware the move is. On the soundtrack, for example, we hear both “Material Girl” and “Money (That’s What I Want)” sung in Mandarin. Everything’s so over the top it’s a bit weightless, which in this context is a compliment.

It’s a pleasure watching Broadbent and Mirren share the screen. That’s true even when they bicker, which they frequently do.

What’s stimulating and fun about “Raise Hell” is quite stimulating and fun. But the more smitten you become with its subject — and it’s hard not to be — the more you feel there’s something missing or that what isn’t missing is yet too thin.

Everyone in the documentary agrees that the undertaking was truly terrible and misconceived. The extensive footage here does nothing to contradict such a view.

Some of the best scenes show the family gathering after court sessions to discuss strategy, support each other, and vent.

All three actors are excellent. So’s Gil Birmingham, as the victim’s father.

A description of Davis’s post-trial life would have been welcome. Twice Communist Party candidate for vice president, she now teaches at the University of California at Santa Cruz. That raises one more question. Santa Cruz is less than a hundred miles away from San Rafael. How many lifetimes away does it feel like?