Michael O'Sullivan

Too frequently and too loudly, the sci-fi bells and whistles of Chaos Walking overwhelm its quieter, more engrossing elements, making it hard to hear what the film really seems to be saying.

Disney’s gorgeously animated, entertainingly told fantasia Raya and the Last Dragon is a visual feast.

My Zoe is well acted and well filmed, yes, but the storytelling, in which Delpy stitches together mismatched parts like a Dr. Frankenstein, is its weak suit.

This cinematic triple-decker sandwich is so overstuffed with baloney and cheese it ought to come with a pickle on the side.

It’s rare that a documentary has the ability to take the kind of long view of events that establishes context and consequence.

There are early warning signs that “World” isn’t going to end well. But Fastvold, a Brooklyn-based Norwegian actress and filmmaker making only her second effort behind the camera, never gins up the sentiment, the melodrama or even the sensuality.

There are corners of this quiet little film — less a plot-driven narrative than a two-person character study — that feel powerfully true, in ways that surprise.

Despite a powerful performance by Tahar Rahim in the title role, and despite such marquee names as Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch in the supporting roles of Slahi’s attorney, Nancy Hollander, and Stu Couch, the Marine lawyer assigned to prosecute him — despite scenes of grotesque abuse that inflame the conscience — the movie lands, through no fault of its own other than timing, with a whiff of been-there, done-that.

Bliss isn’t really all that interested in trafficking in the stuff of mass-market science fiction: the bells and whistles, in the form of nifty hardware, special effects and the like. Rather, Cahill’s latest film is an exercise in existential inquiry.

Tucci and Firth have never been better than they are here, and they earn every superlative that has been laid on them in early reviews.

It boasts a sterling main cast — Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto — as well as open-endedness that is simultaneously pleasurable and a bit unsettling, in both the good and bad senses of that word.

No Man’s Land doesn’t quite cover uncharted territory in the way its creators seem to want it to. Nor does it arrive at a destination you can’t see coming from miles away. Still, the destination makes the tedium of the trip worthwhile.

The film deepens and grows more thoughtful — and, yes, sad — as its spotlight on the need for human connection — at any age — comes into focus. The stories of the four people at its center show Villagers to be more than statistics.

The Marksman proves itself to be the cinematic version of comfort food: satisfyingly familiar but full of starch and empty calories.

Gradually, and with the methodical patience of someone unearthing buried treasure with a tiny brush, The Dig reveals itself to be a story of love and estrangement, of things lost and longed for, of life and death — of what lasts and what doesn’t.

As he demonstrated with the recession-themed “99 Homes,” Bahrani is a cynical observer of the forces underling cultural upheaval; the story of “Tiger,” at times, feels more schematic and archetypal than wholly lived by real people. But its ominous message — watch out for the person whose back you’re stepping on — has never been more timely.

Fairy tales have always held the threat of darkness as punishment for misbehavior, and this Pinocchio is no exception.

Jamal Khashoggi was a complex, even contradictory human being, and his death an affront to freedom and decency. Does the world need two documentaries about him, coming in rapid succession? Maybe not. But you wouldn’t go wrong by watching either one.

"News” is like almost every other western. Still, it works.

Much of Greenland features chaotic crowd scenes. The real disaster is how quickly mankind descends into dismaying depravity.

The Midnight Sky only looks like a disaster film. Slyly, and by misdirection that cleverly conceals its true intent until the poignant end, it reveals itself to be a story of regret over a lost opportunity for connection.

I’m Your Woman isn’t so much off-kilter as it is ballasted by a different, perhaps lower center of gravity. The title sounds exploitative — perhaps even silly — but the tale it spins is one of power and, ultimately, of coming unexpectedly, satisfyingly, into one’s own.

I’ll say one other nice thing: The film isn’t terribly long. You’ll keep waiting for the suspense to kick in. Spoiler alert: It never really does, except feebly, after about an hour and 15 minutes. And then, unceremoniously, it’s over.

It takes us someplace, yes, but the trip is just this side of transporting.

It’s a small film made larger by Ahmed’s ability to take something so interior — hearing loss — and make it so visible, so palpable.

The anarchic spirit of the film suggests the screenwriters (brothers Kevin and Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher and Bob Logan) may also have been a little high on bee venom when they wrote this thing.

It’s the film’s exploration of the ethical bartering conducted by van Meegeren — not his expertise as a copyist or his skill as a swindler — that linger after the closing credits.

Don’t think about it too hard. Freaky isn’t AP Bio. It’s a shop class project: a couple of mismatched planks cobbled together well enough to get a passing grade.

The movie leaves us, like J.D.’s family, with only a mounting pile of baloney excuses for bad behavior.

Surprisingly gripping and moving modern western.

Despite the subtext of screen addiction, it is still essentially a by-the-book monster movie, despite some better-than-average jump scares and clever rendering of Larry, who for the most part can be seen only through the camera lens of a cellphone or tablet device.

It’s a comedy of outrage and horror that elicits laughter not as a cure for what ails us, or even a temporary balm, but a close cousin of the feeling you get — sharp pain followed by relief — when a Band-Aid has been ripped off an open wound.

A little bit itchy, maybe, and smelling of mothballs, but deeply, inexplicably comforting, in these uncertain times.

It’s wholesome but starchy fare: a story of sacrifice and good fortune that feels less like a movie than a marketing vehicle for the power of divine providence.

In lieu of genuine high jinks, a series of escalating slapstick pranks ensues between Peter and Ed, including mishaps with a drone, a snake and a human corpse. None of them is especially amusing.

The ensemble cast, reunited from the 2018 production, is never less than mesmerizing, even in the context of what is essentially a museum piece.

There’s some very, very funny stuff here. But the laughs gradually give way to a feeling of not just sadness and loss for a quality we no longer seem to see very much of in political life and public discourse, but a sense of creeping despair that we may never see it again.

The route of the film, like Lucy’s drive home, is preordained — a Google Maps version of a plot, with absolutely no surprises.

This makes for an entertaining, if familiar ride.

When Words on Bathroom Walls is at its sunniest and most blithe, the moral of the story feels a little more like a punchline than is appropriate.

A serviceable, drug-themed crime thriller, made just a skosh more interesting by a handful of ingredients that give it a boost. Chief among them is its unusual premise. Instead of centering on the real-world scourge of heroin, meth, opioids or cocaine, it’s about a new drug — Power.

Boys State is a portrait of the country in microcosm: divided, but not yet irredeemably lost.

At nearly three hours long, and told with the book’s peripatetic structure, moving from nightmare to nightmare, The Painted Bird is not for the faint of heart.

A political farce that ultimately feels like a letdown, coming from one of the sharpest yet most compassionate satirical minds of today.

At heart, “Eurovison” seems content to be more dumb rom-com than sharp music satire.

Written by Rita Kalnejais, based on her own 2012 play, Babyteeth works precisely because it refuses to accommodate expectation.

7500 is, at heart, a chamber piece. The setting, the number of characters and the setup are all constrained in an elegant yet dramatically effective way that belies the film’s low budget. There’s a taut, piano wire-like quality to its simplicity: None of the drama comes from action-movie cliches, but rather from the actors, along with the disembodied voices of an air traffic controller, a police officer and others.

As goofy as it is good-natured, “Good Trip” aims to entertain, not educate, as it presents a star-studded parade of celebrity reminiscences about taking hallucinogenic drugs. Mostly, it succeeds.

For many, the story will pose an insurmountable challenge to even enjoy. But enjoyment it seems, is not Potter’s point. Yes, it is an unvarnished portrait of a mind breaking into fragments. Yet it is more than that, too.

The movie is presented as the story of a man who hasn’t figured out who he is yet. But that’s not quite right. Instead, it’s a movie that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up.

The comedian’s wryly clownish antics as the preening, not-especially bright owner of several fast-fashion stores are in service of a story that feels sloppy and overly broad.

That’s the real, and somewhat obvious, lesson here, in a lovely yet flawed confection that might be summed up by two words: beautiful nonsense.

It’s just a giant missed opportunity to be something more.

It’s a more than serviceable pleasure, for fans of Austen’s 19th-century comedy of manners and romantic misunderstanding.

The Lodge isn’t a perfect treat. But for those who like their movies dark and disturbing, it does the trick.

The point being: Even when questions of life and death loom large, someone still has to make dinner. That observation doesn’t make Ordinary Love a major motion picture event. But it does, in its own quiet, wise way, nudge it just a little bit closer to the extraordinary.

It isn’t great. It’s a watered-down version of the original, but it’s still pretty good: neither wise nor profound, yet sometimes smart and with sharp elbows — especially if you have nothing with which to compare it.

The first story “Giraffes” tells is one of endangered animals. The second — and equally powerful one — is a narrative of not just one woman’s struggle to be taken seriously, but the struggle of all women to do so.

Set over the course of a single, very long day, The Assistant derives almost all its quiet power from Garner, on whose face we see confusion congealing into concern.

The Rhythm Section was directed by Reed Morano, who did a nice job with the first few episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but who seems a bit self-indulgent here.

"Created Equal” doesn’t offer many insights, at least not in a deeply satisfying way, as to how and why he has changed.

Heroism, however real, doesn’t, by definition, make The Last Full Measure a great movie. Juicing up a fine story, and then hammering away at its point makes it one that doesn’t appear to trust either its source material or its audience.

A funny, violent, rambunctious shaggy-dog story of a crime caper featuring an ensemble cast studded with colorful characters played by name actors. In other words, it’s more “Snatch” than “Aladdin,” which was only the latest of Ritchie’s misbegotten attempts to achieve mainstream respect by retelling someone else’s stories.

The good-natured tension and ribbing between the two old “boys” is still there — and still a bit old hat — but there is a new dynamic that juices the entertainment factor.

Like a Boss is the perfect airplane movie: something that won’t distract you terribly much while you work the New York Times crossword puzzle during a long flight, periodically looking up at the screen when the 2-year-old in the seat behind you kicks the back of your chair. Oh well. At least that way you won’t fall asleep.

Clemency, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, isn’t really a death row drama in the same way that “Just Mercy” is. Rather, it’s a character study of a witness who, vicariously, is a stand-in for each of us.

The progression of the story is steadily downward, and at times the style flirts with melodrama, the mood with moroseness. But in the film’s third act, masterfully staged by filmmaker Karim Aïnouz (who co-wrote the screen adaptation with Inez Bortagaray and Murilo Hauser), it takes a giant leap, both temporally and emotionally.

In the end this “Song” — whose payoff may leave you thinking, “Are you kidding me?” — doesn’t so much crescendo as collapse in on itself, an orchestral work that peters out in a trickle of silly, sour notes.

Sandler is so good, so committed and so watchable that, despite everything — Howard’s irrationality, a rogue’s gallery of unpleasant characters, the foreboding of a bad, bad end — you can’t take your eyes off the screen, which Sandler seldom vacates.

None of this is by way of saying that Cats is bad, per se. In fact, some of the songs are pretty toe-tapping at times.

Everybody wants a happy ending. But that doesn’t mean that we should always get the one we want. It’s fine, if also cliche, to be reminded that good will triumph over evil. But it would make for a deeper and more powerful lesson — one that, after nine movies, might leave a lasting dent in the heart — if the hero actually had to give up something, or someone, that didn’t feel like a tiniest bit of a cop-out.

Binge-watching the first eight installments before you settle into this one isn’t strictly necessary, but I wouldn’t discourage it, either. They’re that good.

Hauser, as Richard, is absolutely superb: nebbishy, so solicitous of authority that he barely bothers to defend himself and seeming, at times, slightly dimwitted. As Watson, Rockwell often steals the spotlight, playing his client’s most ardent defender and, when called for, his most dismayed life coach, as Richard naively finds himself playing into the hands of his enemies again and again.

If Little Joe’s message is never less than apparent, it avoids hitting you over the head with it. It’s a movie that grows on you, planting a seed that only comes to flower long after the closing credits.

Dark Waters is an effective outrage machine: If you like “Erin Brockovich,” you’ll probably like this too.

Most gratifying — if also gruesome — are the many examples of Battaglia’s powerful photographs of Mafia victims. Although black-and-white, they are deeply disturbing, and it is easy to imagine that Battaglia found the work difficult. Imagination is necessary, because Battaglia herself doesn’t provide the deep introspection you might expect.

21 Bridges will win no prizes for originality or twists. (It won’t win any prizes for anything, to be honest.) But it’s made well enough. Brothers Joe and Anthony Russo (“Avengers: Endgame”) are the producers, and Irish director Brian Kirk (“Games of Thrones”) knows how to keep an old jalopy like this well-oiled to get us across the finish line.

All of these make for engrossing, if hardly untold, tales. But what gives the lurid, titillating — and even, at times, fun — aspects of “Scandalous” a more sober edge are the journalistic implications, best articulated by former Washington Post reporter Bernstein, who calls the Enquirer’s frontal assault on truth and integrity “as corrupt as you can be.”

This may be the world’s first movie micro-targeted to several thousand of the people who live and/or work in Washington, and no one else.

It is also very much a Mike Flanagan film, for better and for worse. Part homage to Kubrick’s moody atmospherics, and part hyper-literal superhero story, Doctor Sleep is stylish, engrossing, at times frustratingly illogical and, ultimately less than profoundly unsettling.

In ways both large and small, Midway may be the most realistic war movie you’ve ever seen, as those involved in the production of this World War II action film, including Naval historians, have touted it to be. That’s not to say it’s as real as “Saving Private Ryan.”

Sarah Connor may have averted one dark version of the future, but another even darker destiny may be inevitable. Even so, the film suggests, hope — just like the hearts of people who buy tickets to sequels — springs eternal. In this case, it is not misplaced.

Gift doesn’t really get into such unpleasant details as financing, and that’s okay. The idea that culture has a value beyond cash — that both sides of the equation, both the getters and the givers, are enriched by something that doesn’t have a price tag, or at least not an obvious one — is a beautiful thought.

The action is sufficiently gripping, even if the drama plays out along predictably violent lines.

The main problem, despite committed and at times vivid performances by the three main actors — and a mostly perfunctory supporting appearance by Tom Holland as Edison’s loyal assistant Samuel Insull — is the sheer amount of information that the movie tries to convey.

There’s a repetitive — but not necessarily redundant — quality to Zombieland: Double Tap, a violent, funny and satisfying sequel to the 2009 cult hit zombie comedy.

Think twice about taking very young children — or even some susceptible adults — to this at-times shocking, if less than graphic, gloom-and-doom fest. But the worse sin is: It’s boring.

As a portrait, Pain and Glory is less a mirror than an impressionistic painting. It’s an emotional rendering of a person, not a literal one.

It is the story itself that never achieves liftoff.

First Love isn’t art, by any means, but it’s way more entertaining than it should be. One brief sequence, involving an airborne car, was probably too crazy — not to mention too expensive — to actually film, so Miike renders it as animation.

Newcomb is especially good and poignant, but Abbott also brings a pitiful emotional honesty to a repugnant character.

“Moonlight” is actually not about one thing, but many, and Brodsky threads her themes together nicely. The film also charts Paul Taylor’s incipient dementia, a development that “Moonlight” weaves into its other story lines by noting, poetically, that our mistakes — the metaphorical, and inevitable, false notes we play in life — can become, as Brodsky puts it, “our music.”

The empowerment trajectory of Ms. Purple, whose title may refer both to the color of two dresses worn by its protagonist and to the hue of hard-won bruises she sports by the end of the film, will surprise no one.

If you’re a fan of broad black comedy — the kind in which someone blasts a hole in someone else’s head, and then the next camera shot is framed by that gaping aperture — Villains may be your cup of strong tea. The dialogue by writer-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen is less than witty, and peppered with a heavy sprinkling of dully numbing f-bombs.

The violent, beautiful and powerfully watchable movie Monos — Spanish for monkeys — takes its title from the code name used by a group of teenage guerrillas.

Downton Abbey is eye and ear candy of the highest order: rich and delicious, but not especially nutritious.

If there’s one drawback to The Sound of My Voice, it’s that Ronstadt herself declined to sit down with the film’s directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.

López elicits solid performances from the young actors, and her vision is clear and uncompromising. It isn’t always obvious, however, what the moral of this story is. There’s an air of wishful thinking to the way things work out, even if a traditional happy ending is elusive.

It is when Ivins herself opens her mouth that the film is at its best.

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.

The film is at its best when evoking the painful labor of adolescent self-discovery, a process — as rendered here — that is not unlike a butterfly struggling to emerge from a chrysalis.

The film is pretty conventional Disney fare: silly, slapsticky, all-too-neatly wrapped up and punctuated by a surfeit of poignant moments.

McQueen makes the case that its subject was an artist whose clay was clothing. It also, despite giving short shrift to psychoanalysis, reminds us that everything you might want to know about the artist can be found in the art.

Vreeland’s film, for the most part, is structured around spoken passages from Beaton’s voluminous diaries, which are read, expressively, by Rupert Everett. The actor ably channels the persona of the self-described “rabid aesthete.”

Meaty interviews with journalist Chris Hedges, for instance, lend the film needed context and a sense of intellectual detachment.

It’s purely unintentional, but the little numeral dangling, like a broken, mangled finger, from the end of the title of The Equalizer 2 signals more than the fact that this is a sequel to the 2014 action thriller about a violent vigilante. It also lets you know that there are two, and only two, pleasures to be had here.

As Ravel puts it, the disproportionate influence of money on elections isn’t a Democratic or Republican problem, but a “gateway issue to every other issue you might care about.” Dark Money makes the case, as well as any film can, that she’s pretty much right on the money.

There are few surprises delivered in Skyscraper, an entertaining if middlebrow thriller whose very name — blandly descriptive, generic — seems to advertise its fungibility.

It’s one that speaks not just to Presley’s (and, arguably, America’s) fall from grace, but to the imperfections — and, yes, the lofty ambitions — of this strange, in some ways beautiful and in some ways overburdened little film.

Leave No Trace is not a sociological treatise. It has nothing grandiose to say about homelessness or PTSD. It does, however, deliver an effective (and deeply affecting) allegory of the inevitable leave-taking that all of us — housed or unhoused, happy or half mad — must undergo with our loved ones.

Despite the hot-button subject matter, there is no sense of currency, or even controversy, here. The drama seems less personal or political than one calculated for shock value. One late, violent plot twist is so preposterous as to defy the level of credulity one normally reserves for a horror film.

Plummer is particularly good, delivering every line of dialogue as if it’s improvised, and with an astringent snort that only partially hides the fact that Jack really does care about people. Farmiga, for her part, never strays into histrionics, although she comes close after allowing herself to be seduced by her caddish ex.

Portman, a vegan, is the main tour guide to this challenging excursion to the world of slaughterhouses and CAFOs, which one commentator likens to petri dishes for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Ironically, the film is conspicuous not for its brio but its blandness.

Its smallness is its strength — as is its silence. That’s the odd and evocative resonance of Hearts Beat Loud. For a movie that is so rock-and-roll, it turns out to be less about making noise than about listening to the message that can only be heard in the stillness that comes after the song.

It’s been a long time coming for Incredibles 2, but the punchline is worth the setup.

American Animals, while an entertaining version of a heist film at times, is no “Ocean’s 8.” Its signature moment occurs not during the reenactment of the inept crime, or its planning and antic aftermath. Rather, it comes in the middle of one of Lipka’s interview scenes.

Like the gender-flipped “Ghostbusters” before it, this new movie neither reinvents not dishonors its inspiration, instead adding a modicum of zip — if less than turbocharged horsepower — to a vehicle that runs you through the staging of a crime by, ironically, obeying all the traffic laws.

Litte Pink House feels like it’s only ever checking off the requisite moments of civic outrage, while failing to connect with viewers on a level that’s deeper than the average made-for-TV issue-of-the-week movie.

Setting the film in the punk heyday underscores the film’s themes of personal freedom and defying authority. And there are heartwarming touches, despite a plot that is muddied by sci-fi mumbo-jumbo about cannibalism.

On Chesil Beach can feel like observing a deli worker slice a small piece of rancid cured meat, in increasingly transparent slivers of prosciutto-like thinness, and then holding them up to the light for inspection.

It transfixes, not with artifice or cheap sentiment, but with a strange alchemy of gloom and light.

Beast sounds like a straightforward erotic mystery thriller, but that atmosphere is at times overshadowed by Pearce’s exploration of British classism, bullying and bigotry.

There is also something over-intellectualized and bloodless about this version.

Far from lazy, it is a fairly brilliant sendup of comic-book action movies, as well as also being an excellent example of one.

A largely laugh-free exercise in cliche.

Although Measure of a Man is less gut-wrenching than director Jim Loach’s only previous theatrical film, “Oranges and Sunshine” — about the cruel fate of unwanted children shipped from England to Australia during the United Kingdom’s mid-20th-century “child migrant” program — the British filmmaker shows himself to have an affinity for tales of the abuse of power.

Things are never exactly what they seem here — but there’s a deeper, more authentic story Reitman and Cody are interested in telling, even when — maybe especially when — the film veers toward fantasy. If Tully is a movie that cheats, even lies to us a little bit, it’s to get at a more real and recognizable truth.

Despite her biting legal writing, she comes across, on camera, as unfailingly mild-mannered, decorous and polite, especially when the film explores her rather unlikely friendship, based on a shared love of opera, with her late conservative colleague Antonin Scalia.

After Auschwitz also addresses more mundane subjects as well: making a wedding dress from leftover parachute silk, emigrating to America, finding jobs, buying cars, registering to vote. The smallest things become imbued with an importance out of proportion to their significance to the rest of us.

Infinity War is big, blustery and brave, taking viewers to places that they may not be used to going.

These ghost stories, if that’s what they are, aren’t terribly original, or even especially scary — at least, not by the standards of the genre.

I Feel Pretty suffers from a fatal flaw: its premise.

The new movie — a sci-fi freakout that, like “Spring,” includes an “it,” but one that’s far less easy to define — is spooky, funny, touching and very, very well made.

At the center of this oddly riveting little picaresque is a performance of such quiet power by Plummer — as an antihero both rash and precociously resourceful — that it’s easy to overlook the film’s flaws.

It becomes clear that the situation is exactly as we imagine it to be, and that the sense of mystery that Shoaf has spent so much energy weaving is a red herring.

The real problem isn’t an overabundance of potential killers. Rather, it’s the fact that the film, from writer-director Aaron Katz (“Land Ho!”), does so little to make you care about the crime, or its victim, that the whole thing feels like an academic exercise.

There’s an air of “High Noon” to Török’s drama, which features an intrusive sound design, including Tibor Szemzö’s jarringly contemporary score and sound effects that include the ringing of a clock tower, buzzing flies, rumbling thunder and noisy birds — which transition from pleasant tweets to ominous caws of crows by the climax.

It’s a mildly engrossing if wonky exercise in what could be called a kind of selfish activism.

If Ready Player One is tedious at times, it’s also oodles of fun at others.

Uprising is loud, packed with impressive effects and propulsive — or as propulsive as a car with no brakes going downhill — but it lacks the heart of del Toro’s original.

A straightforward, B-movie horror flick — “The Snake Pit” without the prestige — complete with intentional overdosing, electroshock torture and patients threatening each other with a sharpened spoons, when they’re not either screaming or catatonic. It also is very, very bad.

The dance itself makes a much more powerful, and ultimately poetic, point. On the most superficial level, it serves as a blunt metaphor for the elaborate choreography of the rescue operation, which entailed its own intense rehearsals, undertaken in a scale mock-up of the Entebbe airport that had been re-created back in Israel.

It is not a story of justice, but of a kind of standoff between good and evil. Initially, there seems precious little of the former.

Despite such flashes of originality, the whole thing has the air of a cynical, low-quality knockoff of something that wasn’t very good to begin with.

Lamarr had been blessed — or, perhaps more appropriately, cursed — with leading an interesting life, and Dean’s film seems both too conventional and too shallow for its subject, who seems as hard to pigeonhole, at times, as to understand.

Stagnation, collapse, heartlessness — whether on an individual level or a national one — are the true subjects of Zvyagintsev’s film. Its message isn’t subtle, but it is delivered with deadly, haunting finality.

A slow, talky and only faintly moving meditation on mortality and memory.

Happy End, for its part, signals a return to form for the director, who here makes a stark departure from the sweet tone of “Amour” — perhaps his most mainstream work — in favor of the vinegary outlook on life manifested in such films as “Funny Games,” his 2007 horror movie about violently psychopathic home invaders, and “The White Ribbon,” his 2009 pre-World War I period piece about, among other things, child abuse.

Thomas keeps things at a simmer for the longest time, forestalling the story’s ultimate boil-over until the final minute or so of the tale.

While it’s gratifying — and occasionally gripping — to see that story told in 12 Strong, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film contains few genuine surprises, at least from a cinematic standpoint.

The fly-on-the-wall film is fascinating at times, but less than essential.

The story (by Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle) does not exist to serve the needs of logic, but those of Neeson, who, as has become his habit in this sort of thing, delivers, at minimum, a modicum of guilty pleasure as the middle-aged, tender-but-tough Everyman in a tight spot.

All the Money in the World may not have that many surprises up its sleeve, especially if you already know how this story ends. You will, however, get your money’s worth, one way or another: whether it’s from the crime thriller or the thought-provoking sermon on filthy lucre that it throws in, at no extra charge.

Funny when it wants to be, poignant when it needs to be, and surprisingly effective in harnessing these deeper themes to a character who might otherwise be dismissed as a lightweight laughingstock.

Wonder Wheel may be scenic, but it goes nowhere — and slowly.

This sweet, affectionate (and unapologetically slight) comedy is an all-too-rare homage to harmless, hilarious incompetence, at a time when there is plenty of the more hurtful kind to go around. If it isn’t quite up to the standards of “Ed Wood,” Tim Burton’s 1994 tribute to the auteur of such misbegotten fruits of moviemaking as “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” it is nonetheless a much-needed distraction.

Most of the brights spots in Justice League involve Miller’s Flash — literally.

Betts has put together a talented acting ensemble, and the performances are, for the most part, uniformly good and subtle, particularly among the actresses who play the young novices.

It’s a movie that, to put it in terms that the film’s screenwriters might appreciate, is Thor-ly needed.

The secrets that are revealed, to the extent that a viewer is able to make out what they are, remain murky, even to the end of the movie.

In his most bracing and maddening morality tale yet, Lanthimos doesn’t so much paint himself into a corner as he runs into it, headlong, dragging us with him all the way.

Structurally, The Meyerowitz Stories is a shapeless and baggy thing.

Human Flow asks us, implicitly, why we seem to care so much about certain living creatures and not others.

The performances are fine and nuanced, but the stakes seem, for some reason, more theoretical than actual.

Blade Runner 2049, the superb new sequel by Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival”), doesn’t just honor that legacy, but, arguably, surpasses it, with a smart, grimly lyrical script (by Fancher and Michael Green of the top-notch “Logan”); bleakly beautiful cinematography (by Roger Deakins); and an even deeper dive into questions of the soul.

The question that looms large here, lingering long after the closing credits, is whether, despite our human need for forgiveness, absolution is ever truly possible.