Teo Bugbee

The metaphors are so obvious that the film becomes trapped in its own cage of archetypes and clichés, and unlike the tiger, there is no champion to open the gates to a more original cinematic world.

The repetition of verbal and visual storytelling points to the limited scope of this film. A Cops and Robbers Story explores Pegues’s split loyalties, but the talking head interviews tend to isolate characters whose very intimacy is the subject of the film.

Warner’s story is inspirational but intricate, and this wan film struggles to balance simple storytelling with the complexities of the sport.

Fuhrman’s performance matches the filmmaking for its intensity. The movie achieves a surreal allure — at times, it’s hard to pay attention to the dialogue because the images and the sound design are already communicating so much.

The supporting cast compensates with piquancy in the side dishes, but the main course is a flavorless misfire.

The film succeeds in presenting an on-the-ground view of what it felt like to be inside a hospital in the spring of 2020. It was harrowing, death was everywhere and there was no end in sight.

The cumulative effect of so much enlightened sitting around is that the movie doesn’t move. There is a lack of action, both visually and emotionally.

This is the first fictional film directed by the documentarian Tracey Deer, and she brings a good eye for which characters might make a compelling story.

What this admirably hands-off film shows is how the feelings of anxiety that have surrounded school shootings have been monetized and translated into demand for consumer products. It is a nightmarish vision — the military industrial complex deployed in the halls where children ought to roam.

The film allows its societies to speak through gestures, whether it is the passing of personal possessions after a death or the brush of bodies behind a bar, and its portrait of both Jewishness and queerness is richer for it.

The greatest asset of the film is its ability to simulate the intimacy of disclosure, and Blair’s comfort with the camera — her actress-y will to entertain — makes her a uniquely endearing subject.

It’s a test of patience to watch these glass figurines discuss their romantic entanglements, the doll house on the Riviera that they will maybe rent, the bourgeois marriages they will maybe leave. Even the camera seems bored, as if it might wander off.

The movie lacks the gut punch of live theater, the thrill or discomfort of watching people show their feelings in real time. But as cinema, it demonstrates the effectiveness of simplicity. A well-written script and an exemplary cast can still produce a movie worth watching.

For a film about misandrist revolutionaries, Mayday lacks the courage of its convictions — it sets up boogeymen as targets only to shoot them point blank, in broad daylight.

This is a dry comedy that elicits amused recognition rather than belly laughs, and Ulman, as a first-time feature director, makes canny decisions to set a wry tone.

There is a beautiful act of translation that this documentary observes, as Balanchine’s former students — now wizened teachers themselves — attempt to render his movements into speech.

For the most part, LaBruce tries to maintain fidelity to the idea that camp is best performed straight. If keeping up the pretense of unwinking entertainment causes the pace to drag at times, at least this movie never fails to follow through on its scandalous promise.

The movie presents an eye-catching fantasy of a candy-colored Japanese underworld. But the exoticism feels as cheap as a whiff of a green tea and musk cologne called Tokyo wafting over a department store counter. Even Winstead, stoic in her fashionably boyish haircut, looks bored.

Despite the modern technology, the setting and the sound draws attention to what is retro about this young star’s style, the influences from bossa nova, jazz, and traditional choral music that pop up in her chart-topping records.

For this action film, the director Brian Andrew Mendoza favors a utilitarian style. His color palette leans toward grays, blues and browns. His fight scenes are not flashy, or even particularly memorable, but they are clear, effectively conveying the necessary information about whose fist has connected with whose face.

Like a diploma, it’s easy to imagine how the rewards of this carefully observed documentary could accrue with a little time.

It is a warm and generous portrait, but the film lacks its central organizer’s propulsive shrewdness.

The film is invested in accurately depicting the details of its character’s lives, but its collection of studied impressions doesn’t coalesce into a coherent final portrait.

The movie treats illness as a series of contrivances, an engine that keeps the plot pistoning forward, and the result of this approach is a film that feels lifeless, or worse, reductive.

The film plays as a series of perfectly enjoyable sketches strung together, an excuse for veteran actors to chew on playful dialogue.

This is a respectful tribute that is a shade too morally and cinematically safe in its execution.

If the team was derided by their prejudiced (and defeated) foes in the moment of their success, this documentary elegantly restores the glow of legend, saving the champions the trouble of having to explain their heroism in words.

The most successful sequences are the ones that find new ways of illustrating the meaning of a poem besides lingering on the face of the performer uttering purposefully syncopated and painstakingly intonated lines.