Michael Phillips

David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is very plush in the looks department. Enjoying the costumes and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s lighting and some of Russell’s shot designs will get you through it. But only if you don’t have to listen to it, or track it, or believe in the people on screen.

Eichner makes Bros easy company, even when the character isn’t easy, because he knows there is more than one side to even the most rabid pop culture fiend. And more than one way to score a laugh.

There are some laughs, and director Anne Fletcher — like Kenny Ortega, who did the first one, she’s dance-trained and a veteran choreographer — manages a far smoother amalgam of effects, mood swings, mugging, headless-zombie comic relief and heartstring-yanking that miraculously almost kind of partly works. All in all, it’s twice as good as Hocus Pocus. It’s easier to write that if you didn’t like Hocus Pocus.

Director Reginald Hudlin’s Sidney was made with the full and keenly interested cooperation of the Poitier family, following a template of access many documentaries favor or, in some cases, settle for. This is one of the good ones.

Dominik drains the complication and, saddest of all, the screen wiles, from a plainly complicated legend.

Everything not right with Don’t Worry Darling wasn’t right from the beginning. Even a good director — and Wilde is that, though her hand in developing this material clearly wasn’t without some wrong turns — must deal with script problems if they’re there, in the story, lurking and waiting to mess everything up and send audiences out muttering, wait what?

This is a film driven by what makes its characters and conflicts tick. It’s freely fictionalized, and some of it’s overpacked. But “The Woman King” feels human-made, not machine-learned.

The movie’s a little thin; it’s also on the glib side regarding what, in the case of Wallace’s condition, qualifies as something deeper than a crummy anti-social attitude. But Kline, shooting on film in collaboration with the excellent cinematographer Sean Price Williams, explores a wide range of visual expressivity in Funny Pages.

As with so much of this director’s work, I’m in the middle on Beast, though its efficient running time puts it a notch above. Like many of his previous films, this one has the advantage of modest scale and a passing interest in human resourcefulness under extreme duress. It has also the disadvantage of spectacle that is more technical than artistic.

Emily the Criminal delves only so far into character on the page, but working from what writer-director Ford gives her, Plaza creates a woman defined by incremental degrees of economic stress and simmering resolve.

The folks on the screen are the whole show, and this genial showcase for standup comic Jo Koy has the advantage of showing off a wealth of Asian/Pacific American talent, pretty badly undervalued by establishment Hollywood.

The spirit’s almost there to pull it off. But the movie does grind on.

Rebecca Hall makes Maggie’s past and present states scarifyingly real. The film is often good; never for a moment is Hall’s performance anything less.

Porter and his ingratiating actors do all they can to humanize the material. The movie works because a lot of that material is engaging and genuinely humane to begin with.

The best, eeriest parts of director Jordan’s Peele’s third feature, “Nope,” are as good as anything in “Get Out” or “Us,” and they’re very different from either of those earlier triumphs of imagination. This one is a three-fifths triumph, which means whatever you want that to mean. To me, it means go.

If director Fabian’s touch is a little heavy and coy, the actors lighten it every preordained step of the way. A lot of folks will enjoy the wish-fulfillment. We need it: Not a lot in the real world right now is fully cooperating in that regard.

At its fizziest, the camaraderie among the principals buoys the picture. Hemsworth and Thompson in particular toss off their lines with throwaway aplomb. Waititi’s heart plainly belongs to the muttered asides and the eccentric details; the action sequences, meanwhile, squeak by, and barely.

It’s best not to expect a life-changing experience from Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. But its tenderness, along with its best jokes, are most welcome right about now.

Raiff most likely wanted to make a movie about a well-intentioned guy in his early 20s who gradually finds his way to a better life. What undermines his efforts is a creeping smugness and self-regard, positioning every side character as an intern in the Andrew Improvement Program.

Instead of dramatizing this subject’s life, it dramatizes the extravagance of moviemaking. The script shoves the dicey stuff off to the side: race, infidelity, a complicated figure’s inner demons.

Lightyear’s dazzling first half showcases the wittiest comic action from the Pixar folks in many years.

The script for Spiderhead makes a rookie mistake: It lets the audience get too far out ahead of the Teller character’s moral and narrative awakening. Hemsworth has some icy, rascally fun with his scenes; when Teller and Smollett get some time together, on their own, the story flickers to something like life. But even at 100 minutes minus end credits, the film’s stretch marks are undeniable.

The action is perpetual, and perpetually in need of a better director, and editing that heightens and sharpens our pleasurable excitement instead of dulling it. The appeal, I suppose, of the far-flung, constantly roving storyline this time around is its latitude for different sorts of mayhem and different genre shout-outs. But all too soon Jurassic World: Dominion made me long for the best bits of Spielberg’s “Lost World” or J.A. Bayona’s “Fallen Kingdom.” Those folks know how to set up a shot, vary the rhythm and deliver the payoff.

Ideally, with Roe about to be erased from the books, The Janes would land on a more complex note of imminent, controversial change afoot. Small matters. It’s a very fine film

Rhythmically Crimes of the Future maintains a rigorous sense of calm throughout, which can get a little pokey in some scenes. But Mortensen, Seydoux and especially Stewart invest fully, so some of us, anyway, can too.

It’s a pretty good time, and often a pretty good movie for the nervous blur we’re in right now. It’s cozy.

The film is organic, all of a piece and, for Garland, somewhat on the nose and didactic. It’s also haunting in ways you can’t easily categorize.

Operation Mincemeat takes liberties. All historically based movies do. Call Madden’s version a civilized shell game that accomplishes its mission, more or less in the spirit of how things actually got made up and went down.