Matt Zoller Seitz

It’s a disturbing, sometimes beautiful film that, by the end, is disquieting for all the wrong reasons.

It has a lot of the flaws that are common to super-low-budget movies produced outside of the system, such as it is, including hit-and-miss performances and a look that falls somewhere between a “Saturday Night Live” short and a student film.

This is a solid, intelligent, occasionally inspired comic book movie that delivers most of what a popular audience demands from the genre (including interstellar voyages and massively scaled action sequences) plus a little bit more.

Life After is a powerful movie that examines the political and social structures that surround and control people with disabilities, and comes to a conclusion that will spark many arguments.

Admittedly, the logistics of filming a Tyler Perry film with Perry performing multiple roles is not what most viewers will be thinking about. But there’s little else to recommend it except for the performances.

All in all, it’s stupid fun, done with enough panache that its thin story and sometimes too-glib attitude doesn’t hurt it too much.

All in all, it’s heartening to hear a major figure in American political history talking about the future as if it might actually happen.

The premise is innately powerful and offers a lot of room to bring the world beyond the arena into the arena, expanding the horizon of the sports picture. There isn’t anyone anywhere who can’t relate to “Tatami” on some level, even if they’ve never competed in sports.

The mission statement is right there in the title. Whether it succeeds will be up to the viewer. As is so often the case with these types of non-fiction films, the people who stand to benefit the most from watching it are likely to avoid it after hearing what it’s trying to do.

This is a musical movie, not just because it features musical numbers. It weaves its spell not merely by what it does, but how it moves, and what it chooses to say or not say, and when it decides to proceed to the next scene.

The movie is so relentless in its desire to pull everything together and not leave any threads dangling that it sprints through scenes where you might’ve wanted it to linger, rushes through the final tournament, and rarely gives any character or subplot its full attention.

When future generations of media scholars need an example of a work that gathered up and displayed with peerless skill all of the techniques yet devised for a new medium—in this case, second-screen entertainment, which superficially resembles cinema or television, but is meant not to make any demands on anybody—”Fountain of Youth” might be the work that they they name-check.

Roger Ebert famously described cinema as a machine that generates empathy. This movie is that machine: a relentless engine field by idealism and craft.

It’s a tour-de-force of voluptuously bloody slapstick that knows that we know how these movies work.

This is a quiet classic. Every choice is just right.

I’m not convinced that “Friendship” is the corrosive comic masterpiece that early festival raves primed us for. But it’s impressive, not just for the leaps it makes but the assurance it displays.

The film’s cinematography is the best thing about it. There are solid performances, some believably purplish dime-novel dialogue, and other compensatory pleasures, but “Rust” is a saddlebag full of scenes and moments borrowed from great Westerns and embellished.

The entire movie feels like something out of a dream, probably one that struggles to work through something real that keeps getting hijacked and twisted by the mischievous unconscious.

The Shrouds, about a widower who deals with his grief by creating a new kind of cemetery where the living can observe the decay of their loved ones’ bodies, is a Cronenbergian body horror of integrity and force.

Without Arrows is an ironic title for a film that pierces the heart. It’s a loving portrait of a damaged but unbowed way of life, that of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and that makes it important for archival reasons. But what makes it art is the way it uses the language of cinema to capture the experiences of life as it is lived, decade after decade, and also as it is recalled in present tense.

Warfare is a viscerally impressive work. Your body feels it. But you might come away from it wondering what the point is, other than the fact that it happened to someone. And you wouldn’t be wrong to ask that question.

Distributed by the Christianity-centered Angel Studios, and written and directed by first-timer Jang Seong-ho (a visual effects master from Korean cinema), it is less of a fully satisfying animated feature that works on its own terms than a teaching tool that is clearly intended as such.

The Luckiest Man in America is good follow-up viewing for “Quiz Show,” a drama about the 1950s quiz show scandals that prompted congressional investigations and led to reforms in the television industry. It’s also an example of how to make a low-budget movie that immerses you in a long-gone world and the minds of people who lived in it, while maintaining a tight geographical focus on a small number of characters.

For the most part, “William Tell” is stuck in multiple in-between phases, and filmmaking modes. It’s far too violent and disturbing for little kids, but feels a bit too popcorny to pass muster as a serious epic drama.

This is a thoroughly fascinating documentary about a family discovering the depth and complexity of their patriarch while coming to terms with his flaws, as well as the capitalist system of art exhibition and sale that has different tiers and gatekeepers, depending on who you are and your version of life.

Based on a 2016 memoir by Tom Mitchell, “The Penguin Lessons” wants to be a thoughtful light entertainment about ideals and courage, but ends up seeming grotesquely misguided.

The homages and borrowings—not just from Scorsese’s oeuvre but other widely-seen films, including a brazen lift from “Boogie Nights”—constrict the movie and prevent it from breathing on its own.

This is a delightful, thought-provoking movie that’s about a lot of things at the same time. It’ll make you see the world with fresh eyes, and probably wonder why there isn’t more art in it.