Steve Pond

Like the run-down carnival in which it is set, Pierre Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss is a little clunky, kind of messy and oddly entertaining.

There’s much to admire in its embrace of a thorny character, its judicious use of music and its control of pace and mood, but it rarely prompts the passion on display in its opening image.

There’s a haunted, ravaged beauty to the film, particularly in the homestretch.

It’s a rich experience for those who can settle into its languid rhythms and reams of dialogue.

For anybody who’s read the other interviews John and Yoko did around that time, there’s nothing terribly revelatory about the conversation in “John Lennon: The Last Interview.” But the immediacy that comes from hearing him talk about it can be thrilling, and Soderbergh’s and Nancy Main’s judicious editing fits plenty of the 165-minute interview into a 97-minute film.

Paper Tiger is still a thriller, because the events that play out on screen wouldn’t allow it not to be. But rarely do you find a thriller with this much heart.

For a while, you think this is a test to see how long the film can extend the trick. But by the half hour mark, you realize that it’s not a trick, it’s the whole damn movie, which relies on the fact that action heroes like John should mostly shut up and that viewers know the beats of these films well enough to do without non-visual exposition.

Driver’s Ed is mildly amusing at best. It’s a good-natured and good-hearted film without much of the edge or hilarity the Farrelly brothers brought to Dumb and Dumber or There’s Something About Mary.

John Candy: I Like Me, made with the cooperation of Candy’s children and his wife, feels like a tale told by friends, but friends who are less interested in promoting idolatry than in showing you why they loved the man.

It’s still the story of an anguished man grappling with death, transplanted to a different world and a different time but still exerting a powerful pull on our imaginations. In one way, it’s an abbreviated “Hamlet,” but in another way, it’s a pumped-up one.

The film takes a situation that could be milked for wrenching drama and outrage, an elderly woman whose daughter tries to sell her mother’s longtime home out from under her, and treats it with lightness and charm.

Designed as a horror movie for the entire family, the film has its scares, but it’s just too wacky and too much fun to be disturbing.

EPiC is Elvis through the Baz lens, where big and bold is always preferable to straightforward and where going over-the-top is never considered a bad thing. If it’s not revelatory for people who’ve seen the existing films from the era, it’s the most imaginative, generous and entertaining look at a time in which Elvis’ comeback still had real life to it.

Below the Clouds is a tone poem paying tribute to a region that is suffused with beauty and haunted by loss. It wanders, to be sure, but in a way that’s the point.

The tonal juggling act isn’t always seamless, but in a way, the contradictions are what give Roofman its life. It’s a sad movie, really, but it’s also a lot of fun. And if that doesn’t make sense, maybe it’s the whole point.

The film has its twists, turns and resets, simultaneously giving the audience more information while also keeping it off balance. It can be riveting and at times repetitive, but it does what it sets out to do: It drops you in the middle of a crisis and it keeps you there.

In some ways, Safdie’s approach seems casual and grounded rather than pumped up, though it’s also raw both physically and emotionally.

The Wizard of the Kremlin is a loud, bold film that is held together by the quiet performance at its center.

Any time a logical explanation (or even an illogical one) seems imminent, Lanthimos pulls the rug out from under his audience’s expectations.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a remarkable achievement that in a way hijacks the flagship story of the horror genre and turns it into a tale of forgiveness.

For a film at least partly about music, Deliver Me From Nowhere makes effective use of silence, especially in the moments when Springsteen finds himself adrift rather than inspired.

Buoyed by the performance by Hardy and by newcomer Jason Patel as Aysha, Unicorns pleads for understanding but does it in a way that at its best is contemplative rather than histrionic.

Orwell: 2+2=5 is an artful balancing act, one that dips in and out of Orwell’s life and work, but also uses a broad array of reference points as it swings from history to art to the most current of events.

The action meanders, but there’s always an undercurrent of dread. And while many of the episodes are down to earth, the filmmaking lets things flow from image to image with lines that search for deeper truths but don’t advance the plot.

There’s nothing showy about Amrum, but it can leave an audience shaken. Akin has fashioned a rare film that relies on the power of simplicity to tell a story that is anything but simple.

The bracing thing about It Was Just an Accident is that it has married Panahi’s wit and humanism with real anger; if many of his previous films lulled you into realizing his points about oppression and injustice, this one is downright confrontational.

The movie seems to be trying to be quirky, but it’s never quirky enough, and it’s hard to feel much for the characters or feel that there’s much in the way of healing going on. But it’s breezy enough to be mildly diverting and gently nostalgic.

The film moves slowly but relentlessly, with each new moment showing just how dangerous the lead character’s idealism really is.