Nicolas Rapold

The movie (directed by Janeen Damian and written by Kirsten Hansen) skips over Maddie savoring the outcome of her wish, and shifts right into charming comedy around her confusion, including having no memory about how she got engaged.

Mr. Meyer adheres to a cinema of broad experience by casting rugged but uninspiring nonprofessionals and focusing on the rebels’ long, lonely struggle rather than on triumph and tactics.

The newer film’s picture of neglect and denial, with flashes of connection and empathy, is promising, if tough to inhabit.

The many red herrings and the dark-secret finale recall the reliable, compulsive appeal of a page-turner, although the tensions don’t always feel fully translated to the rhythms and demands of a film.

Any deviations from the film’s obligatory timeline tour are very welcome, like a mortifying studio recording of Murry holding forth, and it’s a treat to hear the esteem for Brian among the Wrecking Crew, the storied group of session musicians.

Butter on the Latch thrives on its casually true snapshots of confusion and connection.

Cronin thrills as ever to luscious gross-out scenes.

Though not terribly nuanced, a bit muddled and lacking certain perspectives, “Zipper” drives home the fragile identity of even the city’s signature locales and the alarming cultural myopia of much redevelopment.

The filmmakers behind Elemental might have done better to commit to a single portrait and been more fearless about avoiding familiar oratory, but small steps are progress too.

The film, which could definitely focus more on the multiple-Grammy-Award-winner’s music, peters out around 2024, a year before Ye released a song called “Heil Hitler.” But Ballesteros, who started the project when he was 18 years old, does his best to portray a reflexive iconoclast without excusing the inexcusable.

The film’s often frenetic editing tends to weaken this strong story. But this hopeless history does have the flair to deploy Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” capturing the tragic absurdity to Goudreau’s ambition.

The story assembles before our eyes like an illustration in a manual for superspies.

Mr. Gordon is likable, though it would be naïve to think he is unaware of cultivating his own image here.

It’s all mellowly funny rather than creepy, something like a stand-up conceit elaborated into scenes.

The severely beautiful film is painted in a dauntingly austere manner, as if lost in a war against itself, with confrontations underplayed and the rural landscapes making more of an impression than the detoured drama.

It’s a chronically underachieving movie, but relatively amusing in its quaint wish fulfillment.

Seriously, if not always elegantly, the film portrays the great Ip Man as someone trying to survive, which is to say just as often a victim as a victor.

The filmmaker strikes gold in her varied selection of defectors, especially the military man fed up with the myopic chain of command.

Many little touches in the film reflect the offbeat hand of Ms. Delpy. But she sells herself short by not giving the mother-son conflict a bit of a sharper edge beyond Lolo’s awfulness.

There’s a lot to learn from How to Make Money Selling Drugs, but sometimes there’s just a lot.

While these ninnies' antics and banter are remarkably entertaining, the quality of the satire depends on when the movie is sending up ludicrous extremist logic and when it's just engaging in repetitive buffoonery.

While the movie creates an intriguing emotional space in which characters at the end of their ropes can open up, there’s the distinct sense of a missed opportunity.

Mr. Sembène was an inspiration; as a film, Sembène! is something less than that, petering out as it goes on, but at least offering a fair-minded tribute to a master.

There’s a loose, bohemian quality to Mr. Cohen’s sketch of a film.

Whatever the facts, Mr. Gracia’s messily structured film works best as a document of fear in today’s Ukraine and as a kind of ghost story about the Soviet Union.

The lustrously shot movie breaks Sam out of the gallery grind through Hollywood-grade somersaults in storytelling (one of them so breezily violent as to feel a little tasteless)

The tell-all promise of the film’s title dwindles away into predictable perspectives from members of his family. But this introduction to Chaplin shines whenever he performs, displaying his comic genius for doing everything wrong to absolute perfection.

As it dives into this infrequently depicted culture, Mr. Fraser’s film is caught shuttling uneasily between speeches and action.