Mark Feeney

Manages to be both compelling and unsatisfying. But what limits it isn't lack of execution. The movie is many things, but a mess isn't one of them. Estes knows exactly what he wants. Whether it's worth wanting is another matter.

Normal, as you’ve no doubt gathered by now, is pretty abnormal, and the extended reveal of the abnormality wastes much of what was good about the first half of the movie.

The editing of the action sequences — and let’s face it, they’re the heart of the movie — is terrifically effective. Speed is one thing. Clarity is another. Top Gun: Maverick has both.

Last year’s biggest animated feature was Pixar’s Soul. The best thing about it was a rare feeling for music, an ability to express jazz visually and rhythmically. At times, Vivo does the same even better for Latin music.

Petite Maman feels more like an extended short story. That’s only in part owing to its having a runtime of just 72 minutes. It also has a deceptive uneventfulness and a sense of everything being casually . . . just so.

There are moments watching it when you can’t help but think of “Don’t Look Up” (comet, moon, whatever). Honestly, though, “Moonfall” is more fun, even if far less substantial and nowhere near as much talent went into making it.

It’s not that any of the actors are bad. Zendaya has a screen authority that goes way beyond that imperious look. It’s just that none of them is especially compelling.

The film shifts back and forth in time. It works like memory that way, but the memories are Johnson’s, not the viewer’s, which makes the absence of some discernible organizing principle a real drawback.

So Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, and Mark Becker, the directors of Art and Craft, have themselves an enticing subject in Landis’s activities. They do not have an enticing subject in Landis himself.

This extremely dry film mixes humor and melancholy to distinctive, if muffled, effect. Take away the muffled part, and that’s very Nighy, too. In being winningly understated and sometimes maddeningly stylized, Sometimes Always Never is a bit like Alan.

A very middling movie, it does have a nifty premise.

This is a movie that’s definitely got game. But what’s richest and best about Hustle is how, yes, it’s a character study. It’s not in the same league as “Hoop Dreams” or “High Flying Bird” or even “Hoosiers” (1986) — what is it about basketball-movie titles and the letter “h”? — but it’s smart and agreeable and, emotionally, it gives a true bounce.

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.

Nightmare Alley doesn’t lack for action. It’s just that the action feels mechanical, a going through the motions. It’s a sincere going through the motions. It’s a committed going through the motions. But it’s still a going through the motions. Worse than a dream that’s a nightmare is a dream that’s a form of sleepwalking.

The unhurried pace Denis maintains insures that the subplots feel less like distractions than a nod to the contradictoriness of daily life.

The movie’s heart is completely in the right place, which, frankly, can make it a bit of a chore to watch. Moral righteousness makes the world a better place, but filmic it’s not.

The turbulence of the life and the wondrousness of the talent are an irresistible combination. Striking a balance between the two isn’t easy, but at its conclusion Respect finds a way to bring together woman and artist in a way that does justice to both.

All the animals are computer-generated, not that you’d know it by looking at them. Their interactions with the human characters are seamless — and, it must be said, at times the animal characters come across as less cartoony than the human ones.

A subplot involving Sarah Bernhardt (Rebecca Dayan) seems to have wandered in from another, less watchable movie. It might have been for the best if Eve Hewson, as J.P. Morgan’s daughter and Tesla’s sort-of love interest, had wandered out.

It’s not hard to see the script’s appeal for the actors, John David Washington and Zendaya. Playing the only characters in the movie, they get a very serious workout and give seriously good performances.

A predictable, semi-shameless, yet not-unsatisfying action drama.

Rodney Ascher directed Glitch. He’s best known for Room 237 (2012), an inspired look at several bizarre theories about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). Glitch ups the ante on that documentary and then some. It looks at a bizarre theory about everything. The result is lively, playful, and busy — in a very good way.

The film has two big things going for it: Stanfield and Asomugha. Their characters could easily become capital-letter caricatures — Victim, Loyal Friend — but the actors give Warner and King a sense of personality, and deeply felt hurt, that stays with you.

Haggis and Krauss’s desire to use the ward as a vehicle to tell a much larger and more complex story makes sense. Yet it ultimately takes away from the truly remarkable story they have to tell, a story that may actually be more complex than matters of government policy and public opinion.

The title is an imagined word to describe a hard-to-imagine (but very real) place. Combine "Detroit" and "dystopia" (the opposite of utopia) and Detropia is what you get.

Fortunately, both Souvenir films have two signal virtues: Hogg’s style and their star.

The first two-thirds is lively in pace, all of it is amiable in tone and sun-splashed in appearance. The final half hour gets a bit gushy. It’s mostly devoted to Alpert’s blissful second marriage, to singer Lani Hall — they’ve been married nearly 50 years — and his philanthropic largess. But since there’s a lot to gush about, that’s okay.

Hill’s braying-bro performance is indelible. Unfortunately. Go ahead, try to forget his more-more-more grin as he fires away, testing those Chinese bullets. He’s so grotesque you can’t take your eyes off of him. He’s also so grotesque you really want to.