Michael O'Sullivan

Vita & Virginia may be about two fascinating characters, but it’s also case of words, paradoxically, obscuring the real people who wrote them.

Before You Know It isn’t a deep movie, or a hilarious one, and Utt and Tullock probably don’t expect it to be. But it is, in its undemanding, almost effortless way, warm and wise and watchable enough to be just this side of wonderful.

Don’t Let Go manages, at times, to generate a nicely weird “Twilight Zone” vibe, but fails to sustain it, as it also runs into some of the same problems that plague movies of this ilk: If you tear the fabric of time by altering what has already happened, it can be difficult to sew it back up straight.

Does not live up to the extravagantly wounded ferocity with which Travolta attacks his part.

The dialogue is less than sparkling, and what passes for witty repartee is mainly a barrage of sarcastically delivered f-bombs and such insults as “gold-digging whore.” The style of acting would, at a sporting event, merely be called shouting.

As startling as the crisp and, yes, dramatic images may be, a sense of slight monotony sometimes creeps in after so many shots of ice, calving glaciers, heaving waves, sea foam, rain, snow, fog, mist, etc. Despite these occasional moments of tedium, however, the film is at once chilling and likely to make your blood boil.

Hits all the expected marks for raunch and vulgarity, with the bonus that it is actually also kind of sweet.

This sets up a mesmerizing double master class in acting — by Moore, to be sure, but also by Williams.

Piranhas is no documentary, but it plays out with a deadpan style that is deeply unsettling.

A funny thing happened while watching Luce. With only a half-hour or so of the movie left to go, it suddenly occurred to me: I wasn’t sure what the movie was actually about. Or, more accurately, it was about so much that, at the point where most films are starting to wrap things up, this one felt like it was still just setting the stage.

The film by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov is a strange and curious thing: part fly-on-the-wall anthropology, part ecological fable.

The film is far from prestige fare, yet more often than not, it hits that summer sweet spot between the silly and the satisfying.

It’s also a telling personal moment, because it opens the door to a discussion of Wallace’s struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts.

Three Peaks is not a devastating film like “Force Majeure” — another mountain-set foreign film about the exposure of fissures in a family dynamic — but it is a satisfying one. There’s just enough closure to its inconclusive climax to allow you to relax, even if it doesn’t give you much to terribly ponder during the drive home.

The Mountain is what it is, and any attempt to recapitulate its meaning in some other form (like — ahem — a movie review) is a fool’s errand. With that in mind, it is probably best to set this thought down, and leave it with you: The Mountain is not for everyone, but it is, most emphatically, something else.

At times, the movie struggles to maintain the critical balance between detachment from and engagement with the thing it’s making fun of.

There’s something about this Lion King, which, like the original, has its narrative roots in “Hamlet,” that feels so much more Shakespearean and — there’s no other word for it — so much more tragic than the 1994 feature-length animation, in which the story’s darker themes were subliminal, not center stage.

It’s all very eventful, to be sure, but there is little insight offered up into any kind of larger meaning, whether psychological, musical or sociological.

To its great credit, the movie turns left when you expect it to turn right, taking a route that is less well traveled, yet more plausible.

If it’s not quite as good as the doll’s origin story, “Creation,” it’s still way more fun than any sequel — especially one this deep into a franchise — has any right to be.

Who should have access to an artist’s legacy? That’s only one of many good questions that are raised in this mesmerizing exercise in artistic interrogation.

Many reviewers have compared the mood of In the Aisles to the stories of Raymond Carver, and it’s not a bad analogy. Stuber, who wrote the screenplay with Clemens Meyer (based on Meyer’s short story), is adept at evoking both the ache of unanswered longing and the tiny promise of redemption that flickers still within the human spirit, even when crushed under the weight of soulless drudgery.

Kumail Nanjiani is the best thing about Men in Black: International. That’s saying something, considering that the actor never appears on camera and that the character he lends his expressively plaintive voice to is a CGI alien the size of a gerbil.

It’s not an especially profound story. But it is a movingly rendered one, made watchable by an actress whose elastic performance bookends the film with two very different people.

If a movie can be said to suffer from low-grade depression, this one certainly seems to be, shuffling in its socks and bathrobe through a not-quite-two-hour running time with an attitude that is closer to grudging obligation than enthusiastic commitment.

A surprisingly sweet and sassy rom-com about childhood best friends.

Ma is, at heart, an overly familiar story of terrorized teens, albeit one that manages to find a few new twists to that tired trope.

The documentary might make you believe in miracles, considering how tedious — if not impossible — this interactive artwork comes across.

The movie is colorful and pretty, and Smith brings a fresh, more street-wise approach to his character, while still honoring the motor-mouthed spirit of Williams’s scene-stealing performance.

But make no mistake: Hogg’s quirky coming-of-age tale (which teases a forthcoming sequel) is no misty remembrance of bygone days. Rather, it is a clear-eyed reflection on how hindsight — and true art — is always 20/20.

There is just enough story here to give the brutality shape and purpose, and to keep that numbness from turning to boredom. “Parabellum” — the name comes from a Latin phrase meaning “If you want peace, prepare for war” — picks up precisely where “John Wick: Chapter 2” left off: with John on the run.

Photograph goes a little too far in implementing Batra’s favored style of storytelling. Sometimes, less isn’t more, but — as in this case — not quite enough.

The film never wholly or satisfyingly engages with why Elizabeth becomes so convinced of Todd’s innocence.

In the end, Shadow suffers from a kind of shallow narcissism. Yes, it’s beautiful. Sure, it’s hard to take your eyes off it, with all the slow-motion action, enhanced by an ever-present, photogenic drizzle. But in an ironic departure from the theme of the balance, it too often emphasizes style over substance.

The movie is a capable and attractive enough biopic, if also less than riveting cinema.

Yes, UglyDolls is a musical, and the peppy songs, while devoid of any subtlety, help tell the story, and are delivered with sincerity. Such ditties as Clarkson’s “Broken and Beautiful” celebrate body positivity and self-acceptance.

There is a faintly greenish fuzz of bread mold at the edges of every frame of this stale exercise in psychological horror (subgroup: homeowner hell).

If “Infinity War” was about failure, “Endgame” is, ironically, all about acceptance and moving on. After 11 long years, the Infinity Saga is finally, fulfillingly over. There is no post-credit scene. But oh, what a going-away party these old friends have thrown for themselves.

Yet as good as she is, the actress is little more than the framing device for this polished and morally provocative — yet hardly pulse-pounding — tale, loosely based on the life of English spy Melita Norwood.

Don’t expect more of Teen Spirit than the movie can deliver: It’s an unapologetically slight story about a girl with ambitions that many would call shallow. But even as it obeys the rules of the Cinderella story in many ways, it defies them in some others.

Mostly, this is a problem of storytelling, not acting. Moss is riveting, even if the material is not.

This is a small film with some big-ish names in it: Jeffrey Wright plays Stuart’s boss; Taylor Schilling is his love interest; and Gabrielle Union is a TV reporter. But it topples under the weight of its unwieldy themes.

The new story is decidedly, deliciously dark, veined with thin layers of Burton’s trademark macabre sensibility, which adds texture and tartness to the inherent charm of the story (at heart, one about the parent-child bond and the possibility of the impossible).

The callousness with which the terrorists operate is palpable and conveyed with a degree of verisimilitude that borders on sadism. Hotel Mumbai is a clockwork thriller, but man, is it hard to watch.

The way that conflict plays out is also surprisingly plodding.

An excellent and entertainingly old-fashioned police procedural.

Full disclosure: I am so not the target demographic for Five Feet Apart, a mushy, three-hankie weeper that is aimed squarely between the eyes of every 15-year-old girl.

For the first half of this spellbinding — and unexpectedly gut-wrenching — little film, there’s barely any dialogue at all.

It’s all kiss-kiss, bang-bang and backstabbing, with a twist that, while effective, leads to a denouement of questionable — and not entirely satisfying — moral reckoning. In some ways, Yardie plays out like a film noir, but with a strangely sweet ending, and without that genre’s deliciously bitter aftertaste.

It’s a while before we learn anything, even a name, about the title character in The Wedding Guest. Played by Dev Patel, who delivers an unexpectedly stoic — yet predictably appealing — lead performance, he is a man of deep professionalism and equally deep mystery.

All this can make Transit a bit confusing at times, in addition to lending it the patina of metafiction. It’s almost as if the tale is being acted out by people who know they are players in a drama, and not real human beings.

It’s a watchable tale, yet it’s also hard to know just how much truth there is in the presentation of the Wayuu, whose presence in the film at times seems more picturesque than plausible.

If the metaphor of xenophobia and nationalism is obvious — and it is, to the point of eye-rolling — the telling of the tale has a certain poetry.

Immensely watchable and thematically complex tale, which in some ways plays out like a deceptively conventional Agatha Christie-style whodunit.

There’s something in the relationship between these two partnerless men — their yearning for connection — that feels, beneath the jokes, very real and very recognizable.

While cute, enormously entertaining and stuffed with more jokes than you can count, is only a half-step up. Partly, that’s a problem that’s built into its very premise.

A major technical accomplishment. But it’s also a major feat of storytelling, one that mentions no dates, place names or famous battles, yet nevertheless manages to evoke a profound sense of connection with its nameless subjects.

The twist is, yes, audacious, even daring. It’s full of risk and defiance of expectation. So half a star for that. Steven Knight, you’ve got some nerve. But none of those things mean that the movie works.

Warning: If you have seen neither “Unbreakable” nor “Split,” you may be utterly and irredeemably lost. Shyamalan cares not a whit about — and is probably incapable of making — a stand-alone film that will appeal to a general audience. This one is for the die-hards.

The film is smart, literary, nuanced, slightly stagy — and pedigreed to within an inch of its life. It practically reeks of dusty, yellowed pages and engraved-leather bookbinding.

On the plus side is the eye-popping production design, although that is also, like the plot, too, too much, dazzling the eye with more fantastical Atlantean technology and — inexplicably — underwater fire than a Las Vegas edition of Cirque du Soleil. Like the frequently shirtless Momoa, it’s pretty at first, then it just hurts.

Hogancamp was a talented illustrator before the attack rendered him unable to draw. In retreating to a world of his imagination as a way to exorcise the demons that tormented him, he ended up creating real art. I’m not sure Zemeckis’s achievement rises to the same level, but this cinematic excursion to Marwen is almost certainly a trip to someplace you haven’t been before.

There are certain pleasures here, mostly in the cast of characters. Malkovich’s misanthropic egoist is chief among them. And Bullock makes for a fierce and relatable Mama Bear. But as for tension, there’s precious little.

I mean, homage is one thing, but this reeks less of nostalgia than sweat. There is so little tolerance for spontaneity, in a film that feels calibrated to the millimeter to be magical, that reactions like delight and surprise — when they occur at all — feel manufactured.

The story is bloated and, despite flashes of imagination, overly familiar. And the dialogue, peppered with well-worn catchphrases.

Ultimately, Divide and Conquer offers useful lessons — and maybe even a little hope — for people on both sides of the national divide, about just how we came to this terrible, but not irreversible, place.

An ambitious but ultimately ungraceful meditation on pop superstardom that spans decades, awkwardly weaving themes of school shootings, terrorism, obsessive fandom and post-traumatic stress into the psychological portrait of a singer whose career was born of tragedy.

In some ways, Mowgli feels like an origin story. There’s a slight but unmistakable suggestion of a potential sequel to its open-ended climax.

This familiar-sounding melodrama works because of the extraordinary performance, in the title role, by Alba August, a young actress whose every emotion is made manifest, like passing clouds or a burst of sunshine, on her uncannily expressive face.

As Eleanor, Bonham Carter delivers a sweetly oddball performance playing a high-maintenance but fiercely determined grouch who is mostly impossible to like. Swank, for her part, is no picnic either: A former psychiatric nurse who discovered law later in life, her Colette is a largely charmless workaholic.

Much like the painter, who died without the recognition he deserved, the movie approaches greatness without quite achieving it.

The more invested you are in the old-fashioned Robin Hood of legend — the less likely you are to enjoy what amounts to a chilly and flavorless frappé of historical speculation, revisionist folklore and every lazy action-movie cliche ever written.

“The Mortal Remains” brings all these tales together beautifully, by which I mean in a coda that is somber and hauntingly unsettled, like the last note of a dirge. Its music lingers in the air long after the closing credits.

“Spider’s Web” may have its flaws, including a bit of villainous motivation so oversimplified it makes Dr. Evil’s thought processes look like Einstein’s. And yet despite Lisbeth’s makeover, there’s still something cool, complicated and compelling about this “Girl.” Lisbeth may be stuck in a silly movie, but she’s nobody’s victim.

Takes a turn for the dark side that will satisfy the franchise’s adult fans even more.

This tedious slog through the highland muck should win no Oscars, only groans and raspberries. Even the much-buzzed-about glimpse of a nude Pine, as his character emerges from a lake, doesn’t make this worth watching.

In the end, “Nutcracker” is a delightfully old-school diversion. The plot may not always hum with the clockwork precision of one of Drosselmeyer’s mechanical toys, but like a music box, it nevertheless plays a sweet tune.

It takes every resource available to a recently minted Oscar nominee — but does almost nothing with it.

Mulligan’s eccentric energy is her greatest strength, but it makes for a slightly wobbly — if just this side of wonderful — film.

A balanced and deeply satisfying documentary assessment of his work, which is lavishly on display in hundreds of the artist’s images.

A blistering political satire that may rip the bandage and the scab, as well as a lot of the skin, off a political wound that has barely had time to heal.

Not all of its surprises are pleasant ones, but there is a certain satisfaction in experiencing a yarn that is so obstinately un-anticipatable.

The comedy, while unflinchingly honest and prone to bandying about such terms as “intracytoplasmic sperm injection” and “follitropin,” is never really about technology, though. Rather, and to its great credit, it’s always about the people involved.

Like the infamous “talk” that opens the film — the conversation that many black parents feel forced to have with their children about how to behave when you are stopped by the police — it is a movie that feels both essential and terribly, terribly sad.

Hope may be a commodity that’s in short supply by the time that Fahrenheit 11/9 has finished painting its unsettling portrait of an America in crisis.

The sexual backstory is a new twist, one the filmmakers handle with less finesse than is healthy for the argument that they ultimately make.

It is a remarkable, strange and politically potent first film.

White Boy Rick is permeated by an atmosphere of grimy hopelessness that makes it hard to watch.

Directed by Heather Lenz, the film offers insight and eye candy, despite the fact that it is far more traditional — in style and format — than its subject.

Peculiar yet provocative film, which exerts a slow, mesmeric pull over the course of nearly 2 ½ hours.

Unfortunately, whatever steam has been built up during the more compelling first act slowly dissipates under the overly talky, on-the-nose conclusion, despite some modest suspense ginned up as Argentine authorities get close to discovering the safe house.

Mostly, The Bookshop is a pretext to watch three great actors do their thing: Mortimer, as the film’s mousy but surprisingly formidable heroine; Clarkson, as her smiling adversary, Violet Gamart; and Bill Nighy, as the town’s reclusive loner — and its only voracious reader — Mr. Brundish, who comes to Florence’s aid and advocacy.

The only real crime here is the debasement of a great film’s name.

Described as a “98-minute diversion” by producers at a recent screening, the romantic comedy is just that: a sweet-tart confection that, like lemon sorbet, cleanses a palate gone sour from too many cinematic servings of the heavy stuff.

For the most part, the film balances its outrage with objectivity.

Sweet, strange and at times slightly scary.

Too clever for its own good.

Unlike his action-movie rival Johnson, Statham does not have the charisma to carry this film. He gets the job done all right, but makes it feel more like work than play.