Natalia Winkelman

Within this framework, Avishag’s wants and needs are not quite legible enough to trace a satisfying arc, but unspooling under the film’s stylish, judgment-free gaze, her interactions are alluring nonetheless.

If few of the melodramatic plot lines wrap up by the end, at least the members of the ensemble cast commit to their roles with naturalistic gusto.

Acting as the film’s teetering anchor, Seyfried channels a fascinating blend of composure and chaos that, in a less muddled movie, would have sung. Yet here, her portrayal of an assured woman unraveling under pressure merely lends a haunting note to a tale that strikes as simultaneously laborious and opaque.

You can expect the same defecation and drug humor that crud up comedies of this ilk. Of course, its vacuity is intentional, and maybe we could always use more movies of the women-behaving-badly variety. But there’s also a real danger in perpetuating this type of teenage girl; it propagates the idea that, for women, defiance is power, radicalism is freedom, and being really hot is often all you need to survive.

We Bury the Dead is most haunting when it gestures at a world dazed with trauma and explores a path to personal closure through collective efforts.

Magic abounds in A Boy Called Christmas, Netflix’s first prestige holiday movie of the season, but pulsing through this winning adventure tale is something even stronger: the immersive power of storytelling.

Its driving force may seem topical, but the story’s heart is timeless: the harmony between longtime friends, and Veronica and Bailey throw themselves into even the most fraught situations with giddy enthusiasm.

As Solange’s teenage woes bubble up and then cool to a simmer, Ropert reveals a knack for calibrating emotion. It can be agony to accept one’s parents as people with needs and faults all their own, and Ropert observes Solange’s coming-of-age lucidly and without judgment.

Bursts of experimental style feel at odds with the movie’s core: a simplistic parable of pervasive sexism.

Drift, a patient character study set on a craggy Greek island, proves a mesmerizing showcase for the actress Cynthia Erivo’s talents.

Ultimately, Two Women is less a message movie than a featherweight comedy, gesturing at big ideas about sexual politics before settling in as an amusingly mischievous diversion.

As the story’s melodrama grows repetitive, so do the visuals.

The Beautiful Game is a model of a modern “nice” movie.

The saving grace of Midwinter Break is the pair of stellar leads, who would be appealing to watch just fumbling for their reading glasses. That also happens to be the pinnacle of action, however, within this prosaic drama.

Over the Moon deserves credit for launching an unflinching lesson about grief. If only it had taken a different flight path.

Ingeniously simmering under the folly is a health crisis that has afflicted the agricultural area for decades. This is the film’s joke: If the crew could only get their heads out of their rears, they would uncover a gonzo documentary gold mine.

Two creative decision makers more at ease behind the scenes, they are, perhaps, not the most natural chroniclers of their own careers and social lives, and as the film goes on, it strains to arrive at even the most basic personal revelations.

Wish Dragon is a transporting experience, but it’s far from a whole new world.

The movie is unevenly directed, and some scenes struggle to clear even the low bar set by more polished streaming originals. But Young succeeds nonetheless in channeling the freshman thrill of plunging into an alluring adult milieu.

Directed by Mark Monroe, the film wisely does not linger in the lurid details of the Titan’s catastrophic end, and instead uses an investigative framing that sketches the company’s origins and use of carbon fiber while chronicling a series of problematic dives leading up to its final plunge.

Work It is no “Step Up,” but its best sequences involve Jake and Quinn, who share a chemistry in motion that, for a beat or two, conjures the genre’s magic.

Squint your eyes against the specifics, and the odyssey tends to deliver a mood that fluctuates along a scale of benign to bright.

However generic this movie is in premise, there is wit to be found in its details, and warmth in its message.

What keeps the story sweet is the chemistry between Cannavale and Fitzgerald, who build a bond worth cherishing.

Where this rich, metaphysical text might have come alive in dreamlike abstraction, Prieto and his screenwriter, Mateo Gil, instead content themselves with a prestige Western on terra firma — grave, good-looking and uninspiring.

Despite the movie’s sympathy for the high stakes of Henry’s adolescence, the myopia of his point of view settles over “Chemical Hearts” like a layer of grime.

Snow, as the daughter who always played second fiddle, brings real feeling to her role — suggesting that she may in fact be the good half of this insipid drama.

There is little story beyond the snatches of conversation we receive, but Human Flowers of Flesh brims with visual and aural detail from the rocky coasts and gurgling reefs.