Roger Moore

It's a gritty, almost ugly to look at film, and Cianfrance isn't shy about including a random blast of unwarranted shaky footage.

I like the way Dhont gives viewers room to make up our own minds about what’s happening and come to different conclusions than you’d expect from him, given the subject matter and the tack his first two feature films have taken.

Truman becomes a bittersweet character study in death and friendship, a film that lets the sweet overcome the bitter.

Equal parts funny and forlorn, with a smattering of the violence that always been a sort of Emerald Isle background noise, The Banshees of Inisherin is Martin McDonagh’s most Irish film, because it’s a lot like Ireland itself.

For long stretches, Godzilla Minus One concentrates on relationships and conversations, which despite their intent, do little to advance the plot or illuminate simply-drawn characters.

Rock is more a genial presence here than an actor playing an addict tested by a bad day. He never lets us see the strain that could make him fall off the wagon. He scores laughs, but generously leaves the outrageous stuff to his legion of supporting players.

A two and a half hour Icelandic parable isn’t going to be to every taste. But Pálmason, framing his movie in old still photograph 1.33.1 aspect ratio, immerses us in a place and a time — beautiful, unspoiled and eternal. And he makes us question, as Lucas, Ragnar and others do, the function of faith in such circumstances, and the usefulness of those who insist on proselytizing without listening.

The whole enterprise is amusing, warm and embracing, so much so that English words fall short of perfectly summing up this utterly charming film. Only a Spanish word will do. “Encantada.”

In covering all the bases, the film’s energy can’t help but flag in the later acts. But Cortes has made an impressive music history that restores a “king” to his rightful place in rock royalty, one that acknowledges that everything outrageous about the music and the people who perform it, the stuff “your parents hated” about it, as Waters puts it, started with Little Richard Penniman.

Fey plays this inner-outer conflict well. But at her most wide-eyed and vulnerable, she still has trouble making a romance credible, even with Rudd, edgy comedy’s puppy dog of a leading man.

Long, patient and chilling, it vividly captures a time in America and the feel of divided Berlin in the muted blues and greys that color our memories of that “duck and cover” age.

A dialogue-free romp that is a shear delight, shear perfection, if not quite a master-fleece.

Carell, though, is the real shock to the system here. He is quirky, queer in the old fashioned sense, and pathetically funny.

Nixon scores the film’s one laugh-out-loud moment. Nobody else generates anything more than a weak chuckle.

Mendoza’s pitch, to “get it right” and have “real combat vets” have their story told, might be noble in its intention and the tribute (stay through the credits) to their service the film represents. But he and Garland emphasize authenticity over empathy, accuracy over dramatic connection.

There’s nothing salacious in the new documentary about the Bureau’s investigation of King, MLK/FBI. What this film sets out to document, put into context and explain is something that began life as Bureau File Number 100-106670 and that came to look, with hindsight, like a vendetta against the civil rights leader and Nobel laureate.

Portman lets us feel the way her loss utterly empties life of meaning and purpose. But Chilean director Pablo Larrain (“The Club”) lets little John Jr. (Aiden and Brody Weinberg) provide the heart-wrenching release, just as he did back at that state funeral in 1963.

Beware of any advertising that labels Andersson “wacky” and this a comedy. Even by deadpan Swedish standards, this is pretty dry.

Ford has made a downbeat, realistic treatment of this subject that doesn’t have a built-in call-to-arms as part of its make-up. That’s implied. Nobody, no couples, should have to go through this.

It’s a fascinating and utterly engrossing film, immersing us in this world, fretting over what we can see coming before the principals do, and relating it to the xenophobia and bigotry out in the open in America, just as it is in backward, rural Transylvania.

Anderson loses his way, failing to thin out the novel and its overload of characters, piling scene upon scene that neither amusingly complicates the plot, nor advances it. Phoenix, however, is never less than fun.

There have been better documentaries this year, but none of them are the roller-coaster ride that Three Identical Strangers turns out to be.

Little Trouble Girls is a conventional girls’ coming-of-age tale whose clever twist is equating sexual awakening with spiritual awakening, at least in the eyes and ears of an impressionable teen.

Director Luke Lorentzen (“New York Cuts”) puts us in the front seat of the Med Care van staffed by the men of the Ochoa family, freelance entrepreneurs trying to feed and care for a big family from inside an ambulance. Their story has thrills and compassion, hard luck and grief.

Tina is a summarization and a celebration.

Almost everything about the writing, publishing, fame-fighting and Monk confronting his own prejudices, seems truncated to make more room for family drama. And while the relationship with his sister (Ross) seems beautifully lived-in until it’s chopped off, and every moment Wright and Brown trade jibes, jabs and affectionate brotherly connections is rewarding, nothing else delivers at that level.

Here’s a fascinating piece of history that escaped much of the world’s notice, when it happened back in 1988.

Hollywood treats the road to revenge as straight, narrow and bloody. With Riders of Justice, Jensen considers the myriad other places such a path can lead and finds regret, heart and humor along the way.