The message is clear, if not original: stray from the herd and you’re dead. What makes Hirayanagi’s iteration of this familiar theme appealing are the quirky characters, the nuanced performances, and the curious cultural topography of Tokyo.

So how’s the movie already? Not terrible, not great, something of a disappointment after what feels like a geological epoch of hype.

A hard-R espionage thriller heavy on themes of sexual degradation and graphic, sometimes sadistic violence.

The penultimate moments of “Bombshell” are moving, re-creating the lost Vienna of Kiesler’s childhood and overlaying the voice of the aging Lamarr, interviewed by an Austrian news team in 1970, as she speaks of never being understood in America. Adrift in the Land of the Lotus Eaters, she spent a lifetime being looked at and never once being seen.

As a portfolio of visionary images of surreal landscapes and hallucinatory flora and fauna, the movie sometimes dazzles. But as a metaphorical narrative, it often fizzles.

Mirrors loom large in this movie, and Marina reflects back an image that too much of society refuses to see, to the point where she herself starts to doubt her own reflection. Yet the film’s most potent and lasting image involves a hand mirror and a steady gaze, and it serves as a breathtaking poetic metaphor about gender, identity, love, and the human soul. All you have to do, says Lelio, is look and see.

The film can be naggingly vague and patchily written where precision seems called for, but the familiar procession keenly digging into the wistful material does hold interest.

The new film is a lightly poisoned amuse-bouche that’s made with tasty high-end ingredients, but at 71 minutes it leaves you hungry for more.

For all the energy that Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman, and their castmates pour into their gimmicky comedy, there’s too often a feeling that they’re straining to pump up flat material.

The Insult is optimistic enough to leave the door open to hope. But it’s also realistic enough to only leave it ajar.

Honestly, the chilly dog days of February are crying out for a good, smart, silly stop-motion family film, the kind you can fully enjoy under the pretext of spending an afternoon at the movies with your kids.

No, Black Panther isn’t the greatest movie ever made. It’s probably not even the greatest superhero movie ever made. But it’s very, very good — in its best scenes, exhilarating.

Fifty Shades Freed is as boring as . . . well . . . Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. It’s a trilogy climax that should be fun, but it’s monotonous — maybe because we’ve seen it all before.

A movie about ordinary American heroes that stars ordinary American heroes. About 15 minutes of the film concerns the actual heroics. The rest is . . . ordinary.

If the freneticism gets repetitious, the target audience won’t mind, at least not judging by a preview crowd’s delirious reaction to a recurring electrified-doorknob gag.

The movie’s a social history, a love story, and a call to arms. It’s very sad and it’s very good.

Worth seeing as further proof that Annette Bening can do anything and for a touchingly flummoxed performance by Jamie Bell, once the kid of “Billy Elliot” and now a strapping romantic lead. But if it sends audiences back to explore the filmography of Gloria Grahame, the movie will have truly provided a public service.

Where we hoped for a narrative rebound, we get instead another pedestrian, overlong post-apocalyptic entry that fails to capitalize on some decent character dynamics.

A moody, mannered, and lingering coming-of-age story with a Stephen King-like twist.

A by-the-numbers B flick with a preposterous script and a good cast trying their best.

The film’s chief flaw is that it’s in the room but never really in the room — the key figures talk about passionate interoffice policy arguments, but we never actually see them. Still, The Final Year takes in setbacks, breakthroughs, gaffes, and a steady drumbeat of talking-head criticism from televised outsiders, heard on the film’s soundtrack but not seen.

Danish photojournalist-turned-director Nicolai Fuglsig channels his experience into a credibly stark snapshot of war, one that helps audiences further grasp why the region has been so hellishly problematic for American troops.

Absurdly pleasurable to watch and to listen to, an effortless display of poise from its camerawork and costumes to the characters and the things they say.

Neeson’s financially strapped character might vent even more convincingly if he didn’t somehow still have a BMW parked back at the depot, but we’re on board with him all the same.

As a movie, The Post is engrossing and enjoyable, if falling slightly short of “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight.” As a period piece, it couldn’t feel more eerily of the moment.

Despite the film’s length and aspirations, its anthropological correctness and historically accurate gore, Bale’s transformation from stone killer to empathetic ally is unconvincing.

It’s tempting to think of Molly’s Game in poker terms: Sorkin’s holding a queen, a king, and at least a couple of aces, but the tell is that he talks too much, and in the end you realize he’s bluffing.

A better title might have been “All the Movies in the World.” We get a thriller, of sorts, and a crime movie, of sorts (Romain Duris, as a kidnapper, gives the most appealing performance). It’s also a morality tale crossed with family melodrama.