Love plays out like the fragmented outline for a more engaging movie. But the one found here lacks substance both on the level of story and graphic reveals.

Yes, the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has long been more compelling than any of the stories told in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and — in the process of reconciling those two stories as only Marvel Jesus could — Deadpool makes a very persuasive case that this should be the last superhero movie ever made. It won’t be. It already isn’t. The best we can probably hope for is that “Deadpool 4” is similarly willing to die for all of the sins that its genre will commit between now and then.

Fly is divided between thinking all of this is extremely cool and realizing how morbid it all seems, but it ultimately lands on the side of: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. That’s a disorienting feeling for a viewer.

Late Shift is carried on Benesch’s shoulders, and she impresses. It’s just a shame she isn’t given more of a movie to act in.

While the film attempts to thread a tricky needle between absolute drama and wacky comedy — dramedy! — Harris’ script is actually at its best when leaning more into the story’s tougher stuff.

That problem: Does it feel real? Not yet, and not even movie star turns and rapping birds and the very best of intentions can bridge that divide. For now, “The Little Mermaid” exists outside of the very world it so wants to be a part of, one already so lovingly rendered in its predecessor, “real” or not.

A mouth-watering but utterly flavorless documentary about one of the most acclaimed sushi chefs in the world (and arguably the most famous), Matt Tyrnauer’s “Nobu” is such a fawning portrait of Nobu Matsuhisa that it feels like it should only be available to watch on a DVD sold at the gift shops in the restaurateur’s hotels.

There’s a raw honesty here that could have benefited from a surer hand, and yet it almost doesn’t matter that Hall lacks the tools to mend the rotted bridges that isolate veterans from their home country, because at least he understands the sheer depth of those gaps, and how desperately our soldiers need us to meet them half way.

For a film that explores how the way that we’re looked at can inform how we see — a film capable of knotting the beautiful and toxic aspects of that process together in a way that makes room for them both — Clementine is too prone to navel-gazing to leave a strong impression.

It’s frustrating that West often scores with his few modest attempts to stamp his own imprint on the genre, as those flashes of fun hint at what this movie could have been.

The movie arrives at an eye-roll inducing final twist, and hints at an inevitable sequel. But this app isn't exactly begging for an upgrade.

In aiming for a piece of atmospheric sensuality, she instead lands in an erotic no man’s land, where the dramatic but obvious filmmaking — like an orbital shot when Emmanuelle finally reaches orgasm — isn’t surprising or evocative enough to make up for the silly monologues and empty characterizations.

While not without its touching moments, "Mister and Pete" is inevitably defeated by its own good intentions.

Yakusho never misses a beat; fittingly enough, even this movie’s greatest weaknesses are an opportunity for him to prove his strength.

The home stretch of We Broke Up is so knowing that the forced smile of the movie’s first hour achieves a certain poignancy in hindsight.

A harsh and largely unwelcome change of pace from Japan’s greatest living humanist filmmaker, The Third Murder finds Hirokazu Kore-eda abandoning the warmth of his recent family dramas (“Still Walking,” “After the Storm”) in favor of an ice-cold legal thriller that pedagogically dismantles the death penalty.

A wish fulfillment in feature-film-shaped form and little else, “You, Me & Tuscany” isn’t especially memorable or surprising, but there’s a soothing, smoothed-over quality to this film — which was shot on-location in Tuscany, so points for that — that makes it a suitable candidate for your next airplane viewing.

Cole clearly deserves as many posthumous tributes as the culture can afford, especially since he received so little in his lifetime, but reverence, particularly as a way of combatting decades of indifference, isn’t necessarily the best solution

Unfortunately, Framing Agnes gets too wrapped up in the questions surrounding storytelling to do any actual storytelling.

Your Lucky Day moves along at an engaging pace throughout, although it doesn’t reach its brutal potential as a thriller until two-thirds of the way through. Up to that point, it’s burdened by clumsy repetition of its central theme.

Despite a handful of headline-worthy moments and a generally blasphemous — or perhaps just humanistic? — attitude toward the dogmas of the Catholic Church, Benedetta can’t help but feel like one of Verhoeven’s tamer efforts.

Popov is meditating on relevant themes, but what she diagnoses about the superficiality of the self-serving media and fashion worlds is already received wisdom, rather than the lethal satire she’s aiming for.

Esteban is a black hole that sucks out all the air from the space around anyone in his midst; Bardem’s perpetually alpha aura makes for a great match to the material. His performance is terrific and internalized as ever, bringing vulnerability and edge to a stereotype.

Justin Chon’s overcranked but achingly heartfelt “Blue Bayou” is a case-study in how issue-driven melodramas are a double-edged sword.

It’s fantastically unrealistic stuff from the first minute to the last (and there are far too many minutes between them), but Idris Elba and Kate Winslet generate enough heat to keep the frostbite at bay, and Mandy Walker’s stunning location cinematography ensures that the film looks considerably more authentic than it feels.

Sargent shows talent at constructing a down-to-Earth, largely observational character study that admirably doesn’t lean too hard on inspirational pathos or turgid trauma porn to generate drama or emotion. It makes for a very promising first feature, one that unfortunately undercuts itself with an underwhelming, emotionally vapid fantasy of a conclusion.

Despite the apparent care and respect that went into Keough and Gammell’s film, “War Pony” also makes clear how very far there is still left to go when telling “authentic” stories.

Age of Rage is much more potent when questioning its own purpose than it is when giving fancy racists yet another platform to espouse their bullshit.