While Francine distinguishes itself with atmospheric strangeness, Cassidy and Shatzky never create a satisfying whole.

Prior and Zagorodnii are both so watchable, and their chemistry so electric, that it’s easy to get swept away in their romance. Historical accuracy be damned.

Triple Frontier lands a handful of thrilling sequences in a sea of familiar riffs on greed, masculinity, and the lingering traumas of war.

The Phoenician Scheme is the busiest of Anderson’s films, and also — at least on first viewing — the least rewarding.

The film shows a refreshing interest in his current existence, rather than becoming a by-the-book retread of his pre-pope life.

More than anything, however, this compellingly sketched slice of life offers rare and abiding insight as to how interwoven the Israeli and Palestine communities are in Lod and the other “mixed” cities around the country, how unequally justice is shared between them, and why such imbalanced conditions for survival will always make the world less safe for people on both sides of such bifurcated societies.

“How does he do it?,” someone asks. Music by John Williams doesn’t have the slightest idea. This long and indulgent doc is content to let us bask in the mystery of it all, if only because it understands that people will be asking that same question for centuries to come.

Biosphere is tons of fun as a character study, but its ideas will leave you gazing out of its geodesic windows, wishing there was something more out there.

Stone's uneven direction veers from near-amateurish genre antics to an enjoyable awareness of those same standards.

The Day the Earth Blew Up isn’t arguing for the past at the expense of the future, it’s simply trying to put a modern spin on a classic formula in a way that makes you wonder why we ever left it behind.

The film deserves credit for its nuanced exploration of sexual trauma, showing us characters who are both burdened by it yet seem to adjust their coping mechanisms by the minute.

It takes far too long for Galveston to emerge from the novocaine of its various clichés and allow us to feel the tender flesh that bleeds across every scene of this seedy road noir, but — in fairness to director Mélanie Laurent — some filmmakers are never able to break the leathered skin of a Nic Pizzolatto story.

Bolstered by a creative storytelling set-up, Ruben and his very game co-star Aya Cash skewr horror tropes as well as cultural obsessions ranging from TV talent shows to the Bechdel Test. The result is a winking horror comedy with a lot on its mind — perhaps too much.

At times, the movie excels at portraying the dread of children forced to confront a world indifferent to their concerns. But no matter how many times Pennywise leaps out from unexpected places, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that we’ve been here many times before.

Death rarely fades from view in Borgli’s increasingly bleak comedy, which does somewhat of a disservice to the narrative trajectory — not because it flirts with oblivion but because its path is so stratospheric and dogged in the direction it’s going that it can be pretty hard to hold on for your life and not get left behind.

Waterloo makes for a clear and terrific setpiece that’s almost on par with the digital spectacle that Scott creates from the cold death of Austerlitz, but by that point Napoleon’s outsized ambitions have been long subsumed by a film so lost in its epic sweep that it’s become the butt of its own, frequently scathing joke.

While Amanda Lipitz’s film doesn’t quite reinvent the narrative, Step tells a story that highlights the intertwining values of hope and education, and never loses sight of the idea that much more lies ahead.

Despite a hectic list of characters and their grievances, the plot is not tightly constructed and scans, for stretches, like a hang-out movie.

Some movies try to entertain you; this one holds your attention like a bite that you can’t stop yourself from scratching even though you know it’s only going to make things worse. It’s hostile and off-putting to the extreme, but also too aggravating to ignore or stop watching.

Robin Bissell’s The Best of Enemies may not be some kind of game-changing corrective to all the retrograde films about race in America (we’re talking about an uplifting historical biopic directed by the executive producer of “Seabiscuit”), but this sturdy drama has the good sense to recognize that allyship is only valuable when it’s hard. When it’s a sacrifice. When it forces white people to put some of their own skin in the game.

A strained but strangely affecting turducken of a movie.

Valuable for its access yet limited by its lack of perspective, Desert One puts a human face on one of the late 20th century’s worst debacles while framing the whole thing in the passive voice, resulting in a film that boasts the immediacy of a testament but the resonance of a textbook.

Viewers are spared by the tender mercies of biodoc tropes, as “Fauci” puts a pin in the action to wind back the clock and walk us through how its subject came to develop such an adamantium shell.

Satisfying as this documentary might be in the greater story of Lopez’s personal growth, it barely hangs together on its own.

And, yes, it is also often quite funny. Most of that humor comes care of Sandler, who slips back into Happy with something like grizzled ease, and seems to have not lost a trick on what makes the character both so funny (his rage, his imagination, his fashion sense) and so easy to care about (his rage, his imagination, his fashion sense).

Marielle Heller’s version of the story — Yoder is listed as a co-writer — could have taken the magical realist element out entirely, and the film would have played exactly the same. The body horror is downplayed to the point of being functionally nonexistent.

By the time Boys from County Hell works its way to its final face-offs, the film’s good humor and care for its characters is just as appealing as the gore. Vampire hounds might balk, but Boys from County Hell has it right: This is a story about people, not monsters.

It is very silly and often strange, but it’s also sweet and funny, and damn it all if you don’t start to really care about this odd little family.