Peter Keough

Unlike “Belle,” however, in this case Asante does not allow her story to be overwhelmed by period decor and costumes.

As often happens in films about putting on plays, life imitates art, but in this instance obliquely.

When the effusive Pedro Almodóvar adapts the minimalist Alice Munro, he reveals the passions seething under the bleakness of the latter’s monotone mid-Canada. By setting his version of the Nobel Prize-winner’s interlinked stories “Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence” in the vibrant settings of Madrid and other Spanish locales, he adds a Sirkian twist to Munro’s Chekhovian sensibility.

The concept is derivative of about a dozen other movies and their sequels.

It’s only the first week of January, but it will be hard to beat Hong Kong director Ding Sheng’s Railroad Tigers for the best opening credit sequence of the year.

More spectacular special effects might have helped, or at least something more creative than a spaceship that resembles a giant Christmas tree ornament shaped like a corkscrew. Perhaps as a well-written play for a cast of three, Passengers might have been first class. Instead, it’s just another mediocre thrill ride.

Starting with a premise that a smart-aleck high school sophomore might take pride in, the film rallies late to make some points about patriarchy and female empowerment, but not before a barrage of clichés, tweeness, and inanity.

Cinematic rarity — a genuinely philosophical film.

It answers most questions by the end, except the most important one: Is the devil in Miss Sloane, or is Miss Sloane the devil?

The voice-over narrator (Perrin) recites environmentally pious platitudes that offer little enlightenment about what’s on the screen. This is annoying when something strange and unfamiliar is being shown.

Visually, it has the intense intimacy of a dream.

An opportunity to capture on film a unique cultural enclave is reduced to a Hollywood pastiche.

The coming of age is not just that of character but of a whole nation, and despite the mild-seeming moniker, the Jasmine Revolution earned its victories the hard way.

It is epic in scope, intimate in detail, and otherworldly in its dimensions, like the Bayeux Tapestry with special effects and a stentorian soundtrack.

Ironically, the phoniness that iconic teen romantic Holden Caulfield despised pervades Jim Sadwith’s Coming through the Rye, a semi-autobiographical tale of hero worship and literary integrity.

The performances are meticulous and passionate, the narrative low-key and obliquely sensitive enough to conceal, until the traumatic incidents keep piling up, the film’s contrivance.

Campos really doesn’t need to tack on such heavy-handed irony as the scene near the end of a disconsolate woman eating ice cream and singing along with the theme song of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Lassgård won’t let you off easy: A scene in which Ove weeps hopelessly before the magnitude of his loneliness will bring tears to the eyes of anyone who has suffered a loss. His Ove is a man indeed.

Contrived, inane, absurd, and occasionally brilliant, it’s all a blur.

The film works adequately as a historical drama.

Kenner and Schlosser not only remind us of a danger that never went away, but honor the men whose bravery was never recognized.

What they don’t quite make clear, and perhaps it is impossible to do so, is what really happened in this odd episode of international espionage epitomizing movie-mogul tyranny.

John Landis’s “Animal House” (1978) this is not.

Because of the film’s earnest awkwardness, these excursions into the demimonde come off as campy.

The sardonic laughs include title cards with the name of each character who has joined the ranks of the disappeared.

Their non-specific excursion unfolds like a blithe Woody Allen movie without all the name-dropping.

Vitkova brings a distinct gender sensibility to her story, especially with her recurring imagery of milk and blood.

The result is nonstop, epistemological slapstick.