More than awe, the film provokes gratitude for what this man did.

The film’s wrap-up, in which Jessica reveals some family secrets of her own, seems too engineered, too pat. Muylaert doesn’t do justice to the potential complexities of her premise. The film ends on a note of forced sunniness, but the outlook actually looks more like cloudy with a chance of showers.

This should all be risible except that Dowdle, who has worked in the horror genre, knows how to amp the action and keep the terror taut.

The ongoing tragedy in Africa is too nefarious, too complicated, for any one film to do it justice, but We Come as Friends opens a wide window into this mansion of horrors.

The cast is uniformly good, although Tomlin overdoes the crusty-crone routine. She scowls a lot, but we all know she’s a secret softy.

As the pushback to Gerwig’s force field, Kirke may at times be too mousy for her own (or the film’s) good, but her stillnesses are often a welcome respite in this whirligig.

Directed by James Ponsoldt from a script by Donald Margulies, the film gets at the wariness and competitiveness inside the journalist-interviewee dynamic and, in Segel’s performance, captures the quandary of an immensely gifted and immensely troubled writer who disdained the celebrity he also, without fully fessing up to it, sought.

It’s not that this material is, or should be, off limits in a movie. But The Diary of a Teenage Girl isn’t exactly “Lolita.” Heller must think that taking a moral stance is tantamount to selling out. Commercially, she may be right. In every other respect, she’s wrong.

Strutting around for most of the film in her leather rocker duds, Streep’s Ricki Rendazzo is almost as much of a concoction as her witch in Into the Woods. She wears her uniform as a taunt and also as a way of defining herself. She’s a woman out of time – a superannuated hippie.

The result is an unprecedented voyage into the tortuous life of our greatest actor, with the actor himself serving as narrator and navigator, as dissembler and penitent.

I also wonder if the film’s central thesis – that the debates kicked off the subjective TV news slant we have today – is a bit oversold. If these debates had never happened, I think we would very likely still have exactly what we have today. Partisan hollering sells.

Once you accept the fact that “Rogue Nation” is not going to be the wingding of the franchise, it becomes a lot easier to enjoy.

I wish the film, which is mostly a standard-issue talking-heads-and-clips affair, had showcased more of her performing, but what we see still justifies her fleeting fame.

Oppenheimer may have thought that by giving these murderers center stage they would expose their bestiality for all to see (except themselves). But what comes across instead is something far more insidious: a showcase for depravity.

Gyllenhaal is one of the most gifted actors of his generation and, along with Joaquin Phoenix, he takes more chances than just about any of them. He deserves a movie that risks as much as he does.

Allen isn’t doing anything terribly deep-dish here, just gussying up the standard crime-movie tropes. To what end? His point, I think, is to demonstrate that human beings, no matter how educated, are capable of justifying the most awful acts.

The script by Jeffrey Hatcher is overburdened with plot complications, but Bill Condon, who worked with McKellan on “Gods and Monsters,” has a real affinity for this actor’s capabilities. He brings out his best.

The overlong Trainwreck would have been better if it had derailed more often.

I wish the film had gone even further into loopiness. Like Ant-Man, the film, directed by Peyton Reed, comes in two sizes – it’s sometimes big on laughs but often small on risk-taking.

Given what this film is about and the dangers hindering its fullest accounting, a dramatic rendition, rather than a documentary, might have been more emotionally satisfying. Still, there’s nothing like seeing some of this stuff up close and for real.

A powerful, and powerfully sad, experience.

What saves it all from being sordid is the open desire of the director, Gregory Jacobs, and his writer, Reid Carolin, to make sure the women in the film, not the male dancers, are ultimately the ones who are celebrated.

I think the film overreaches in casting Simone as a standard-bearer against racism and sexism, but it’s filled with mesmerizing clips from throughout her performing career as well as numerous interviews with Simone, both audio and on film.

Slaboshpytskiy doesn’t attempt to get inside the psychology of these people, or expand the meanings, political or otherwise, of their descent. There’s a stolidity to the filmmaking, with lots of overlong takes, that is meant to be ruminative but often just seems negligent.

The most perplexing thing about this portrait is that, against all odds, the kids mostly seem outlandishly resilient and good-natured. I say “seem” because, again, I don’t entirely trust this portrait. Too much of what Moselle shows us looks tenderized.

Despite some occasional moments of real sadness and terror, the turmoil in this movie is decidedly on the upbeat.

There’s real verve in the animation and wit in the byplay.

A winning movie about losing. I didn’t always warm to its coy quirkiness, but it’s the rare American movie about contemporary teenagers that rings more true than false.