But for the performances, and for just about everything Sallitt is up to, the film nonetheless feels full and true.

As corporate directives go, Scoob! has a lighter spirit (until the obligatory protracted action climax) and swifter throwaway gags than either of the live-action “Scooby-Doo” remakes offered. (Thank God for Matthew Lillard and Linda Cardellini, though. I start each day with that prayer.) The animated “Scoob!” aims younger, and mostly is better for it.

An angry, violent and despairing film, without much of a point other than that existence can be angry and despairing and memory is a prison. As a piece of art, entertainment or cultural ephemera, it is indeed bold, but it is significant not for what it says about Capone, but rather what it says about Trank, and the ongoing saga of his career.

It’s dumb to measure the worth of anything by its ability to make you cry, but by the end of Driveways the feelings of the characters spill over into your own experience of watching a small, very quiet, very powerful 83-minute short story of a movie.

This sincerely felt and utterly effervescent coming-of-age tale expresses a universal truth about being alive: that hopefully, you'll have the chance, and the awareness, to make and remake yourself, again and again, dusting off the old bricks you've got and forming them into something familiar but new.

Anything made well in advance of the pandemic feels like a weird period piece these days, of course, yet Jury’s small, affecting picture fits snugly within the pandemic realities of 2020.

There’s no way to experience Becoming apolitically, not now. You don’t have to consider it first-rate documentary filmmaking of any sort to feel something watching it.

Arkansas doesn't break the mold on cheeky, stylish, low-life movies; rather, it worships it.

Despite its unevenness, it's impossible to look away from The Infiltrators, due to the sheer audacity of the activists and their willingness to risk their safe but shadowy existence in the United States for this cause.

A Secret Love doesn't dwell much on queer history or activism, as laser-focused as it is on Terry and Pat, and the bond between them. The film beautifully illustrates each of their spirits: the sweet and bubbly Terry, always ready with a signed baseball card, and the stern and protective Pat, who only lets her guard down under duress, but wrote pages of love poems to Terry, and still asks for a morning kiss from her love.

Geyrhalter made, among others, “Our Daily Bread,” an equally arresting visual essay on industrial food production. We need filmmakers such as this one very badly these days. We need to know what we’re up to as a species, in the name of comfort, convenience, attractive home furnishings and hazardous disregard for the global house we live in.

The screen's most magical tale of the world of theater is this lush, intoxicating period epic: the summit of the collaboration of writer Jacques Prevert and director Carne. [12 Jan 2007, p.C3]

It's arresting to behold, but it almost seems to run out of steam at a certain point. But for any of its story flaws, Selah and the Spades is so tonally and aesthetically indelible, it announces the arrival of an exciting new cinematic voice in Poe, and cements Lovie Simone as a bona fide movie star.

As the film turns toward black comedy, mystery and horror, away from social mocking, it becomes far more compelling.

Sea Fever only momentarily touches the highest registers of operatic bloody horrors and outlandish fantasy sci-fi. Rather, it remains in the realm of the moral, the ethical, the human-scaled losses and decisions, which makes for just as, if not more, torturous personal quandaries. It's an absorbing (if sometimes muted) wrestle with the notions of ethics and infection, in a moment that couldn't be more appropriate.

It’s heartbreakingly good.

It’s an efficient, well-acted thriller from the writing-directing team — relative newcomers to features — of Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole.

Predictably, it descends into a meaningless blur of gravity-defying physics and robotic limbs by the end, where a lot of violence is happening but you’re never sure exactly why or even how.

It’s a lame and weaselly thing, made strangely more frustrating by some excellent performers.

In Reichardt films ranging from “Wendy and Lucy” to “Meek’s Cutoff” to “Certain Women,” the lives of outsiders are defined by the natural world, economic circumstance and by their own dreams of connection. First Cow is one of her very best.

With The Way Back, Ben Affleck didn’t have to deliver his biggest or most attention-getting performance, simply — and simplicity is hard — his truest.

Does it work? It’s one busy movie, though without much variety in its rhythm or much breathing room in its perils.

The film is about bargains made and broken and re-negotiated. You watch it in an anxious, protective state, regarding the fate of these characters, and this fallout.

The latest film version loosely adapting the Wells story exploits it both ways, subtly and crassly. It works, thanks largely to a riveting and fearsomely committed Elisabeth Moss mining writer-director Leigh Whannell’s stalker scenario for all sorts of psychological nuance.

The latest “Emma,” marking the feature directorial debut of Autumn de Wilde, is a little edgier, driven by a more ambiguous and emotionally guarded portrayal of the blithe young matchmaker played by Anya Taylor-Joy.

Not much music finds its way on the soundtrack, but what’s there is crucial. Vivaldi’s “Violin Concerto in G Minor," heard twice and strategically, ends up crystallizing the love story in ways we don’t see coming.

There isn't much nuance or complexity to be found in The Call of the Wild, but it's an old-fashioned animal-friendly adventure flick for kids, a modern-day and high-tech “Benji” based on a classic piece of literature.

Seriously, the running time of Fantasy Island should be listed as “sometime tomorrow."