In Pieces of a Woman Kirby never seems to be building up artificial climaxes or big reveals; she works on a quieter, truer level. Too much going on around her ends up working against her.

The film positions Black women at the center of their own stories, and this authentic portrayal of the platonic relationships that hold them together feels rich and true, a celebration of a feminine community that becomes family.

The movie at hand is small, I suppose, and it may not be enough for some audiences. It’s enough for me.

It’s a moderately diverting sequel. That means it’s also a distinct drop down from the 2017 origin story.

If we strip away the comets raining fire on the earth, this film is about how the ways in which how we treat each other can be a matter of life or death. Even in that darkness, it dares to have a little hope.

The music is drippy and constant, the wobble from comedy to drama feels off, and the dialects have been reamed in the Irish press. Charm resists calculation; even if actors get some going, even if a writer creates an approximation in or between the lines, deliberately manufactured charm curdles so easily. The one success story of Wild Mountain Thyme belongs to Blunt, who has yet to give a poor or lazily considered performance.

It places a modern lens on complicated questions of art, love and perspective in storytelling, in an entertaining and intelligent thriller of intimate proportions.

The movie’s a little sketchy and underwritten, and it feels sometimes as if scenes have been pared away or cut altogether to concentrate on Ahmed. But Ahmed really is terrific. Director Marder has a knack for both observing and igniting human behavior, through character. And supervising sound editor Nicolas Baker’s work astounds, period.

While Another Round inspects the varying effects of alcohol on daily life, it’s far from clinical. Waves of ebullience, love, humor and sorrow crash on top of each other, as anyone who’s ever been overserved can attest to. It isn’t prescriptive about drinking, and doesn’t seek to impart any message other than that life is hard, and sometimes dark, and sometimes ecstatically beautiful.

The tweaks are interesting, even if they can’t do anything about larger narrative frustrations.

Hart and Horowitz map this hero’s journey onto her growth as a mother, her empowerment proving to be a source not just of strength, but love — a rare commodity in a crime flick.

The result is a narrow slice of a much, much larger story, somewhat akin to the hands-off, eyes-wide-open documentary approach of Frederick Wiseman — if Wiseman were a war correspondent. Rarely has recent global history seemed so far away, yet so present. It’s one of the year’s essential documents.

Happiest Season” isn’t full-on farce; it’s lower-key, and runs into trouble only when the script contends with confessional monologues right up against hiding-in-a-literal-closet routines or routine slapstick, as it does in the climax. But you know? It works.

Because the movie starts at an 11 and doesn’t let up, the runtime feels overly long. However, the voice performances are excellent, especially Cage, who brings his signature sense of yearning pathos to Grug the Neanderthal.

Cutler’s documentary skip-walks a fine line between a great, unstable talent’s rise and fall, and between the un-tender trap of addiction and the joyous energy of a Chicago-bred giant.

In Zappa, this legendary artist’s uncompromising nature is bracing, bold and utterly refreshing.

Seeing these actors, the late Boseman chief among them, relish the opportunity to try to get a daunting stage-to-screen adaptation right: That’s a privilege to behold.

Gripping, incisive and shockingly powerful, Collective is easily the documentary of the year.

It’s a familiar but enjoyably vindictive PG-13 thriller about mother/daughter trust issues. Plus a little psychopathology.

The film capably, if expectedly, proceeds down this standard procedural path, progressing from investigation to trial, with flourishes of genius every now and again from Pearce, having some campy fun as van Meegeren. But even with a few courtroom theatrics and some profound ethical issues to chew on, The Last Vermeer is ultimately a dreadfully milquetoast outing.

What’s missing is the vital emotional turbulence of Sciamma’s modern classic, or of any three-dimensional story of passion and feeling. The compensations here are smaller, but they’re welcome, too; they’re more about two fine actresses digging for what’s underneath the obvious contours.

The revelation here is Vaughn, who in his 6-foot-5-inch frame, physically channels the body language and gestures of an otherwise petite, cowering teen.

It’s best taken, I think, as a romantic gesture to a writer who loved movies. Well, two, really: Herman J. Mankiewicz, and Jack Fincher.

A 1960s-set Western laden with big skies, steady gazes and slow-roasted narrative corn, Let Him Go gets by on the strength of its female leads, Diane Lane and Lesley Manville. Kevin Costner’s effective, too, and he’s right in his taciturn sweet spot, muttering about this and that.

A pre-teen on the autism spectrum, lonely and isolated, becomes the online prey of an unwanted stranger, a monster from another realm. That’s Come Play in one sentence. The results unfold more like a collection of reference points to previous film than a film unto itself.

I laughed at a good deal of the movie, but a good deal more of it left me with (Cohen’s intention, probably) the taste of ashes in the mouth.

What makes Synchronic sing is the two together, zinging each other with sardonic one-liners, their conversations meandering to the cosmic and the macabre after a few whiskeys.

While Bad Hair is more humorously incisive than truly terrifying, Lorraine, in the leading role, sells it, while Simien creates space to discuss the ways in which women enforce unfair standards of beauty on each other in a white patriarchal society, using the horror genre as a blunt but effective tool to clear the path.