For such a sweet film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles evolves into a complex exploration of the symbiotic relationship between money and art, and questions what the visibility of that conspicuous consumption could portend.

Blackbird is a simple tale, well-told, but it’s also the tale of all tales, of life, death and everything in between.

All four key actors are lovely, none of them playing to the camera — Durkin likes nice, long, slow-zoom set-ups, roomy and generous — and all of them affecting. Coon has the built-in advantage of playing the character undergoing the most evident and playable changes. But she’s extraordinary in her contained emotion.

Souza comes off as a genuine and genuinely humble talent. There is, however, an element of intentional or inadvertent image-packaging that goes with any White House photographer’s beat. One wishes Souza were heard on the subject of the fine, tricky line between reportorial authenticity and visual flattery.

While there’s little or no outright expression of religious faith in Nomadland, Zhao and company have given us a glancing but evocative state-of-the-nation character study. In its own spiritual fashion, Fern’s story becomes one about the character of a nation, and an America desperately searching for the ribbon of highway (to quote Woody Guthrie) to take us all the way home.

Extremely well wrought. Not overwrought. Not underwrought. Just wrought.

For all the film’s minor flaws, it is deeply moving and incredibly important to witness the impact of "I Am Woman” as an enduring, uplifting cry for freedom and empowerment.

The lush production design by Zazu Myers, especially in the Chloe Hotel, and rich cinematography by Alar Kivilo make for a colorfully saturated fantasy of New York City that elevates the film. This is a big, juicy rom-com that has proven to be a rare entity these days on the big screen.

Shooting largely on New Zealand’s South Island, Caro has a beautiful knack for fluid transitions: the witch entering the body of an unsuspecting traveler in silhouetted shadow, for example, or a simple, fixed composition of Mulan riding from one side of the screen to the other, in extreme long shot. The dizzying wuxia martial arts action, with warriors sprinting up, down and sideways, defying gravity, propel the action scenes without overwhelming them.

The documentary infers a good deal about Mulvihill’s underworld connections and political maneuvers without quite nailing them down.

Cheesy, yes, hit-and-miss, maybe, but the bits that work really do work.

It’s frustrating, although I’m grateful Kaufman didn’t simply film the book as written. The actors couldn’t be better attuned to the nervous system of this universe.

I wish Tenet exploited its own ideas more dynamically. Nolan’s a prodigious talent. But no major director, I suppose, can avoid going sideways from time to time.

Tilda Swinton’s a tightly wound riot as Copperfield’s snappish aunt, living seaside and fending off stray donkeys while her serenely mad lodger Mr. Dick resides in his own universe. He is played by Hugh Laurie, beautifully, as if Bertie Wooster had taken a few wrong turns.

Though the film initially feels like a patriotic tale of a daring mission, this isn't a story of U.S. military triumph, it's one of sorrow.

In the sadistic yet middling road-rage thriller Unhinged, Crowe literally steers the vehicle delivering the big box of acting, over- and under-. While there’s barely a movie there, a year from now, when the multiplexes of the world will either largely be back, be gone or be something in between, we’ll have forgotten Unhinged.

While Represent could’ve used another 20 minutes to flesh out its unguarded moments, this is a strong feature-length directorial debut. Regional politics is local politics is national politics. It’s revealing to see how the sausage gets made, and who gets to make it.

The clever and nicely gory Sputnik comes from Russia with love, slime, and an impressive lesson in efficient, low-cost pulp filmmaking.

It is potentially the most culturally relevant film of the fall, masterfully made and one heck of an emotional roller coaster. From moment to moment Boys State veers from exciting to troubling to amusing, and it's never anything less than utterly riveting.

Howard does a fine, loving job tracing who he was as a gay Jewish boy growing up in Baltimore; as an aspiring playwright and theatrical impresario, schooled at Boston University, Goddard College in Vermont, the summer theater program at Tufts University, and a graduate student at Indiana University; and as a hungry young New York City transplant, eager to make his mark.

This one’s more than one kind of comedy, too. It’s a sweet yet nicely vinegary immigration fable; a deadpan fantasy; and a tale of two Brooklyns, one (1920) a repository of rat-infested factories and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, the other (2020) the gentrified land of their progressive, pea milk-drinking great-grandchildren.

It’s frequently gripping and finally very moving. The director’s innate decency and forthright sense of craft does justice to a painful subject — one with unexpected connections to the 2020 pandemic moment.

It's a refreshing spin on this type of film that's usually quite white and heteronormative.

The lightly carbonated fizz of I Used to Go Here has everything to do with Rey’s deftly chosen ensemble.

It starts out good and turns out dumb, ditching a promising, nicely suggestive first half for second-half payoffs (revealed in the trailer) taking director Dave Franco’s feature directorial debut into lame and lamer slasher-film territory.

In several scenes, the camera stays close to Dyer’s dazzling array of expressions at the computer keyboard, while Alice processes the latest rabbit hole or interior dilemma. Maine knows a pitch-perfect performance when she sees one.

Despite the talent involved, and the incredible subject matter, the irritating tendency to over-explain to the audience means there’s very little spark to be found in the enervating Radioactive.

It’s hard to shake the familiarity of the premise and the set-ups in “Lake of Death The story rhythms wander instead of screw-tighten, and while Robsahm has little interest in Raimi-style pulp or dynamism, the placid surface of Lake of Death rarely gets disturbed, or disturbing.