Parts of the film aren’t pretty because people don’t always act in pretty ways, and the speculation that such an event might create its own hermetically sealed reality, one increasingly distorted to our eyes, is intriguing, if not especially deep. It all plays out like a “Big Brother” reality show with 5,000 participants and no Big Brother.

Think “An Inconvenient Truth” meets “Babe,” or “The Good Earth” meets a biodiverse “Marley & Me,” with a dash of the Food Network’s “Pioneer Woman” tossed in. Among other things, that means furry critters romping to a folksy soundtrack with tubas and banjos employed unironically. It means circle-of-life lessons and sun-dappled everything. It means check your cynicism and snark at the gate, if you dare.

It’s a fond comedy of manners and pretentions, a film for literate audiences that gently bites the hands that buy the tickets.

Compared to a second installment that expanded the established Keanuscape in ways the “Matrix” sequels only wish they had, “Wick 3” fumbles for compelling, organically incorporated territory to explore.

Another tale of timid souls united by a sweet movie gimmick.

Powerful stuff, but unpowerfully told.

A watchable, unnecessary re-do that works hard but lacks the charm to really zing.

Tolkien gives us the passing of a vanished England and the loss of a generation but not quite enough about what was won, by him for us, nor the mystery of how he won it.

Shadow shows a master at the top of his game, and if you have any love at all for the movies and the places they can take you, catch this one on the biggest screen possible.

Without stooping to the uselessness of style, Working Woman makes its points simply by staying with Orna as she proceeds through stages of shock, humiliation, self-loathing, self-censorship, all emotions her husband finds difficult to understand and which the Bennys of the world rely on.

Long Shot is awfully funny when it’s not being completely preposterous — and sometimes even when it is.

The movie convinces us that the hero sees and understands Simone’s evil even as he continues to enable it — even as he allows his own life to be ruined. Dogman ends with a paroxysm of cathartic violence and an eerie echo of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (also with Mastroianni).

[A] peripatetic and ultimately poignant documentary.

Goofy is easy. Earnest is easy in a different way. Disturbing is both easy and hard. They’re all dissimilar, and Hail Satan? has lots of all three.

The movie is ludicrously long, clocking in at three hours and one minute, but surprisingly satisfying.

Very like a gummy bear, Teen Spirit gives you a nice little sugar rush until the lights come up and you realize you’re still hungry. Part of the problem is the script, which includes lines of dialogue so generic it’s as if Minghella is daring himself to squeeze a drop more juice out of them.

Under DaCosta’s sure, steady direction, Little Woods belongs with movies like “Frozen River” (2008), “Winter’s Bone” (2010), “Wind River” (2017), and last year’s “Leave No Trace” — dramas about overlooked communities that ache with empathetic detail. The movie steers clear of polemics, though, and puts its faith in its characters, specifically the exhausted, unbreakable bond of sisterhood that unites these siblings.

Beneath the japery and rough-edged filmmaking is an abiding love for the work — its passion and resilience — and respect for the women whose hidden lifelong language that work may have been.

In the end, the movie leaves us stuck with unmoving drama and increasingly numbing carnage.

The best thing about the movie is its look. The great Dick Pope, Leigh’s go-to cinematographer, returns to the 19th century he so masterfully re-created in “Mr. Turner,” earning an Oscar nomination. The colors in Peterloo are rich but not at all sumptuous. They look lived in. The moviemaking line between beauty that’s absorbing and beauty that’s distracting is thread-thin. Pope, who also served as chief camera operator, makes sure that the thread never breaks.

Never has space travel looked so sordid, debased, mean-spirited, or crummy, qualities intensified by the (intentionally) ugliest cinematography ever — except for the close-ups of faces — from the great Agnès Godard, Denis’s longtime collaborator. But seldom has space travel served as such an eloquent and tragic representation of the human condition.

It’s silly-sweet rather than silly-stupid, the script has enough snap to count, and – really, now – it allows us to spend time with Issa Rae.

The echoes of Chekhov are earned, the strains of Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor don’t feel at all out of place. The final sequence leaves Sinan and the audience at a crossroads between giving up and carrying on, as absurd as the latter is and always will be. That choice haunts everyone: The hero, his creator, and all of us watching in the dark.

One quibble: For such a legendarily elusive spot, the snowmen’s Himalayan hideaway seems awfully well trodden these days. If you thought the similarity between, say, “Coco” and “The Book of Life” was a case of animators not looking resourcefully enough for inspiration, how about the trifecta of “Smallfoot,” “Missing Link,” and DreamWorks’s upcoming “Abominable”?

Both in spite of and because of the dichotomy, Amazing Grace demands to be seen, preferably in a crowded, testifying theater. The movie allows us the great, rare privilege of seeing (and hearing) the Queen of Soul reclaiming her soul, by herself, for herself, for her God.

Oblique, often beguiling, and portentously cryptic.

Shazam! is pretty entertaining. It’s a lark that aims to distinguish itself from too-familiar DC dourness a bit like “Guardians of the Galaxy” playfully tweaked Marvel’s formula.

The Brink shows a salesman tirelessly peddling poison door to door and knowing it’s only a matter of time before someone lets him in.