It takes a personal rather than a political perspective, exploring the ambiguities of truth and individual identity rather than the complexities of an ongoing historical calamity. And though the human drama is hypnotically gripping, it comes at the expense of the bigger picture.

As tiresome as the relentless, indulgent inscrutability and lack of story momentum can be, it says something for the movie’s visceral power that there isn’t an urge to quit on it.

It’s entertaining enough if you turn your brain off.

It’s been a while since there’s been this much dead air onscreen; over and over, Smith sets up a sequence, lets his actors shpritz, and stands by as the energy fades into giggly catatonia.

It’s like a Parisian variation on Nicole Holofcener’s “Please Give,” or the premise of another PBS Masterpiece Theater series with Smith.

At once riveting and heartbreaking. This youngest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy has the good sense — far rarer among documentarians than you’d like to think — not to get in the way of her material.

Despite the artful, passionate performances by the cast, his experiment comes across more as contrivance than a work of thoughtful, aesthetic detachment.

The problem with this adaptation of Lawrence Block’s detective yarn isn’t that it casts Neeson in a role we’re seeing him play again and again. It’s that no one else in the movie makes a character feel nearly as broken-in and fully inhabited as he does.

Using a refreshingly gentle FX touch, Ball has successfully transposed the decaying, vine-covered concrete jungle look of his short onto this gorgeously-designed feature. The neophyte knows how to direct heart-pumping chase scenes and has coaxed surprisingly solid performances from his young ensemble cast, especially O’Brien and Poulter.

Stunningly insipid and pretentious.

The performances ratchet up to giddy near-hysteria, as Hilde toys with Solness’s randiness and repressed memory.

Some angst away from the dolphin tank feels like padding, but there’s enough bona fide narrative to please tomorrow’s marine biologists and their parents.

Hardy once again shows what quiet force and phenomenal range he has.

It’s an idea that could make for decent genre viewing, if only its cast had some range, and its indie reach didn’t exceed its mainstream-polished grasp.

The Last of Robin Hood plays like a laboratory control experiment gone wrong: What would happen if you made a movie with a great cast and terrible everything else?

The idea that documentarian Jeffrey Radice would make the episode both the hook and the opener for his film is to be expected — it’s an attention-grabbing story. But a hook is all it is.

Lem’s story is merely a springboard for Folman’s wildly sprawling meditations on what the advent of virtual performance means — for artistic integrity, creative spirit, celebrity culture, human identity, even our hold on reality.

Thunder falls into the common mistake of many children’s films — it underestimates its audience.

One of those lovely little movies that starts out being about a handful of people and ends up being about all of us. That’s a tricky act to pull off and the talented writer-director Ira Sachs stumbles occasionally over moments of self-conscious lyricism. But then the film recovers its balance, looks at its characters with fondness and with faith, and quietly soars.

Maybe not entirely depersonalized, however. Hogg has a point of view and a point to make, cryptic though they may be.

Though it touches on the usual themes of youthful innocence and imagination challenged by misfortune, and on occasion achieves moments of supremely subtle, sublimely exquisite detail, “Momo” strains when it comes to evoking whimsy and magic.

Like other offbeat and original efforts such as Spike Jonze’s “Her,” Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” and Richard Ayaode’s dour “The Double,” it juggles genres, reverses expectations, and resorts to fantasy in order to explore the enigmas of gender, identity, and love.

Some might find the dual conclusions too blunt in their irony, but “Norte” does not try to be consoling. Crazy as Fabian’s ideas seem, they might be the ones that prevail.

If The Trip to Italy begins shakily, it ends with expansive bliss, a father and son reconnecting off the shores of Capri as Gustav Mahler’s art song “Ich Bin Der Welt Abhanden Gekommen (I Am Lost to the World)” sends everyone heart-stoppingly home.

The cast does capable work, but you’ll wish the movie concentrated more on the comedy, which has some zing, rather than the straighter elements, which quickly start to drag.

Sadly, the film rapidly devolves into an AARP version of a Jason Bourne-like vendetta, only bloodier and less meaningful.

The government, even under the new, more moderate leadership of President Hassan Rouhani, has reason for concern. Unlike Rasoulof and Panahi’s previous, more metaphorical films, this one confronts its subject head-on with unflinching candor.

Huppert’s amazing performance not only masters the physical rigors and deformations of her character, but more importantly captures her cold capriciousness and the enigmatic innocence that one of Maud’s friend’s labels “perverse.”