The numbers just aren’t as dynamic as we might have hoped for from director Trish Sie, whose credits include alt-rock act OK Go’s “treadmill video” and other addictively innovative shorts.

One of the year’s surprises, a defiant, funny, and multi-layered saga of talent and class resentment, marred only by some technical oddities and a certain smug awareness of everything the moviemakers are daring themselves to do right.

There is nothing especially wrong with it other than that for some of us it represents 105 minutes in hell.

The group’s thematically, comedically broad inversion of the source material is consistently entertaining, and squeezes in some nicely played character growth to boot.

The good news is that while the movie is susceptible to some pandering, it also takes the story’s charming core elements and gives them a contemporary luster.

In a subtle but wily performance, Strang never loses sight of his character’s innate sense of resistance. By drawing his way out of the closet, Tom of Finland drew a door for others to come out as well.

It’s not a perfect movie, but it may be a great one.

More than an hour passes before Khaled and Wikström’s stories intersect, and though it would be an exaggeration to say each redeems the other, in this film the other side of hope is not despair, but decency.

Wonder Wheel, Allen’s new film, is one of the Very Bad Ones. Set in a post-WWII Coney Island that glows with the hues of popsicles at sunset, it’s a strained adultery melodrama that appears to have been written poorly on purpose, as a sour parody of 1950s theatrical clichés.

Fairy tales hew to time-honored story lines, and some may fault The Shape of Water for the traditionalism that underlies its phantasmagoric surface. It’s the getting there that bewitches, though, and a performance by Hawkins that’s smart, scared, furious, profoundly erotic, and regal — all without saying a word. Love doesn’t speak in this movie. Instead, it swims with unparalleled style.

Sharif is a paragon of decency and endurance, but his camera skills are limited and often constrained by circumstances. For the most part this roughness reflects the raw immediacy of the experience.

Channeling Nye’s own gift for making complex ideas simple and clear, the filmmakers edit together these various aspects of Nye’s life with deceptive ease, drawing on interviews and archival material and following him throughout his hectic schedule. This is not hagiography, however; they don’t back off from examining some of his more controversial endeavors and characteristics. That includes his fondness for the spotlight and his ambition, which in a couple of instances has backfired on him.

The chief weakness in the movement, and in the film as well, is Nora herself. Played sweetly by Leuenberger, Nora is endearing but hardly embodies the spirit of her Ibsen namesake.

How’s the movie? Extremely entertaining and fairly pointless, and it will probably be taken for a classic by a generation that has likewise never heard of Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood” (1994), a movie that plumbed the wayward soul of its misbegotten moviemaker to depths The Disaster Artist never manages to touch.

A decent biopic, rousing and well-made and unruffled by depth, with an expertly judged performance at its center.

Consistently intriguing as all the lit-process tidbits are, the film struggles to mesh footnotes and somber notes.

The film’s episodic nature, which serves to underscore the moments of grim drama, adds to the problem. One can only salute the filmmakers’ ambition and seriousness of purpose, but it’s hard to see who The Breadwinner audience is.

You’re left with another Denzel Washington performance that gets under your skin and stays there, rankling away. That’s a lot more than most movies offer — even the better ones.

Coco is a day-glo firecracker celebrating a country and a culture that has been (and continues to be) much maligned, and it’s at its most vibrant when it journeys into and beyond the shadow of death. That’s a paradox I can live with.

Mudbound is four-square and unshowy, and you might mistake it for old-fashioned. But the presence of an African-American director behind the camera affects everything in front of it.

As the story arcs toward its touching denouement, it’s those quiet moments — imbued with the windswept soul of the landscape — that harbor the most lyrical beauty.

Justice League may play well to hardcore DC cognoscenti, but if you’re not a fan, the movie’s failings are easy to enumerate. First off, the villain’s a dud.

The script is pungent and profanely funny while remaining rooted in strong and serious emotions.

Much as there is right with Wonder, there’s just as much that isn’t. Emotionally, the movie rarely feels false.

A touching but fairly clumsy effort that only acquires the depths of sadness and resilience it needs if you have the memory of the earlier film shoring it up. It proves that second-hand grace is, after all, still grace.

Though he might be uncertain about sex, or even kissing and cuddling, Scott is an incurable romantic. And steadfastly loyal and kind. The value of that is made clear when the filmmakers disclose the full tragedy and horror of what Dina has gone through, and when he sings to her “Before the Next Teardrop Falls.”

Returning director Sean Anders strings together mayhem-filled moments that just aren’t the howlers that they’re clearly scripted to be, never mind the fatherly foursome’s chemistry, or the tobacco-stained guffaws Gibson keeps busting out to sell these bits.

As debuts go, Lady Bird is as strong as they get: funny, ferocious, and wise. It does, however, drape its restless energy and witty observations atop an overfamiliar framework of coming-of-age movies.