Torres is one of those screen veterans with a surgically precise relationship to the camera, never pushing, always searching for emotions expressed even as they’re being hidden, or held in check, because someone’s watching.

The movie operates with a nicely unpredictable rhythm, both short and longer shots ending abruptly, sometimes comically, popping us into the next one.

What’s missing, even at its trim, tidy run time, is the sort of glancing realism and true nuance of a Paul Greengrass docudrama such as “Bloody Sunday.” What’s there, though, is enough for a consistently absorbing version of what the media did right and what it did wrong.

The results are equal parts marital crisis, sins-of-the-father psychodrama and visceral body horror. They’re also a bit of a plod — especially in the second half, when whatever kind of horror film you’re making should not, you know, plod.

Palmer delivers an on-the-fly masterclass in overlapping comic skills, sometimes heightened (I love her eyeblink-quick, frozen-statue reaction to the good-looking, possibly homicidal hunk named Maniac, played by Patrick Cage), sometimes subtle and heartfelt.

The results in this, Coppola’s third feature, are roughly half-good, half-less. The good comes when the director, working with cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, focuses on evocative silent footage serving as interludes and visual grace notes capturing Shelly, primarily, in moments of reflection. The dialogue and the dramaturgy, in contrast, strain for jokes and over-ladle the pathos.

The Brutalist is many things: some blunt, others loose and dangling, still others richly provocative, most of them remarkable.

Nickel Boys is a subtly radical act of adaptation, with a striking intuitive and meticulous visual strategy, and the result is fully equal to Whitehead’s achievement but in a new direction.

The actors, by and large, are first-rate. And the songs don’t hurt.

Kidman rises to the occasion, and while one-note mediocrities like “The Substance” offer gallons of fake blood where the provocations should be, Reijn’s film — seen the second time, at least – only needs its nerve and its interest in what Kidman can do, which is more than I even realized.

It’s solid craft, but it’s craft wedded to a style of filmmaking that feels wholly impersonal, even with a top-flight director at the helm.

Taylor-Johnson is a solid actor, but on the page and in performance, Kraven’s barely there and too cool to care about what’s happening. Which makes it hard for moviegoers to care.

Gere remains a unique camera object, with a stunning mastery of filling a close-up with an unblinking stillness conveying feelings easier left behind.

At its best, Nightbitch is many things at once: funny, unruly, bizarre, tender.

We know where The Order is going; the actors ensure our interest en route.

Fundamentally the film succeeds because the musicians themselves are good storytellers.

Moana 2 is more of an action movie with a few accidental musical numbers of varying quality.

This is sublime work, with poetry and prose in unerring balance, thanks to writer-director Payal Kapadia.

Truly, this is a movie dependent on managed expectations and a forgiving attitude toward its tendency to overserve.

Too often, though, the magic in Wicked remains stubbornly unmagical. And whenever Erivo isn’t around to make us believe, and take the mechanics of Wicked to heart, Part I reveals what’s behind the curtain, an adequate set-up for next November’s second act.

Red One is the holiday fantasy built on retribution, punishment and crushed hopes we deserve right now.

A Real Pain, shadowed by the Holocaust and the grandmother we never see, may be a modestly scaled second feature, but Eisenberg makes an enormous leap forward, coming off his promising directorial debut, “When You Finish Saving the World.”

Cross-cutting between son and mother, and their constant efforts to reunite among the carnage, flames and rubble before it’s too late, director McQueen keeps the screws tight, blowing past realism for a trickier realm of historically grounded but highly stylized imagination.

It’s one of his good ones. Small, modest, a little stodgy. But good, and even a little brave in its courtroom-drama willingness to dunk the audience in the main character’s soup of anxiety almost immediately.

The book’s melancholy spareness has been replaced by a “Here” existing somewhere in a pristine, remote suburb we’ll call Uncanny Valley Falls, a few miles away from real life.

It’s not perfect, but Anora is a touching comic and dramatic odyssey, driven by a terrific performance by Mikey Madison in the title role.

Sleek, confident and peppered with delicious portraits in pursuit, deceit and evasion, the carnival of papal intrigue known as “Conclave” works like gangbusters.

This “Last Dance” may be shaggy, silly and even a little bit stupid — and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, especially when it’s winking so hard at its own genre play.