A heartfelt and hopeful portrait of four of the original AGs that feels more complete and finds each of them on steadier footing — eventually.

It is a fun time, just one that doesn’t need so many versions packed into it.

It’s only in the film’s final moments that Diana realizes the power of the team, but “Nyad” would have felt just that much deeper if the film itself recognized it earlier. There’s more to “Nyad” than Diana, and there’s more to this story than swimming.

Even if Stamped from the Beginning frequently weakens its more nuanced scholarship by drifting into Kendi’s trademark good vs. evil narratives, it’s undeniably a well-intentioned film that gets many things right.

Wish serves as a throwback to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle push into the future.

A somewhat funny, perversely family-friendly musical-comedy about all of the ways that modern parents are making their children insane with anxiety.

The Tuba Thieves is about embracing uncertainty and misunderstanding — something d/Deaf/hard-of-hearing people do every day. In fact, the film’s entire genesis was intended as a large-scale “game of telephone,” deliberately seeking out disorder and unexpected end products.

Thanksgiving will get a visceral reaction out of you even if it’s not as graphic as you might expect from the guy behind some of the so-called “toture porn” genre’s most infamous staples.

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.

The problem is that, after that early peak of a first act, The Accidental Getaway Driver doesn’t have much tension.

The result is an extremely multi-dimensional portrait of a First Lady, one who, you can’t help but think, was the most significant at that point since Eleanor Roosevelt in her accomplishments and her influence on policy.

It’s queer and contemporary — a decent addition to an already lengthy Christmas horror movie marathon that can edge out 1997’s “Jack Frost” but doesn’t come close to touching “Gremlins” or even “Krampus.”

With the help of a hideous haircut, Eisenberg gives a convincing performance as a repressed loser who never discovered who he is and has officially run out of time to start. But Trengrove’s script is as directionless as his protagonist.

Preciado’s Orlando, My Political Biography is a film of many visual pleasures, and they’re ones Preciado clearly shared in while devising this generous and buoyant inquiry into institution and identity.

Significantly more intimate and grounded than the previous “Hunger Games” movies (despite being longer than any of them and responsible for seeding all of their lore), “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” is the rare prequel that manages to stand on its own two feet and still feel taller than the other stories it’s ultimately meant to support.

A Still Small Voice — much like the residency program that it chronicles — is all the more valuable because it never pretends that being a palliative chaplain is an inherently selfless task.

Tellingly, the most pleasurable moments in Nia DaCosta’s “The Marvels” don’t hinge on the audience having an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Marvel. . . . They’re just solid pieces of blockbuster filmmaking: charming stars (like the full-force charisma of Iman Vellani and the appealing vulnerability of Teyonah Parris), sprightly action, and zippy humor.

While the film fumbles through a stripped down script and stumbles towards a surrealist attempt at reframing the threats of tourism, Waikiki still offers a voice from a Native Hawaiian about his homeland.

Bernstein’s debut is at once both too grounded to be so broad, and too heightened to honor the tragic reality of its circumstances.

Kaur creates a vital portrait of the intersection between the spiritual and industrial in the world’s most religious nation, grounded in the poignant interpersonal drama between friends, families and communities. In moving fashion, she captures how the effects of climate change ripple far beyond the shore, into the homes of those who depend on the sea not for their living, but for their cultural identities.

There are sparks of chemistry between Ryan and Duchovny that feel reminiscent of better rom-coms, although none quite matching the films that Ryan is most known for.

Perhaps suffering from the same kind of identity crisis as its heroine, Burger’s soggy mishmash of an adaptation struggles to thread the needle between pulpy fun and a probing character study.

The documentary is hesitant to dip even half a pinkie toe into genuinely harsh subject matter, because to do so would contradict its clear mission to coronate Perry as an industry great. All that nuance gets elided for a fluffy, forgettable hagiography that purports to tell Perry’s story, but keeps him constantly out of reach.

Hall and Tiexiera create something incredibly special with Subject. The subject matter (pun totally intended) yields a documentary that isn’t against the documentary world, but wants audiences to simply question what they’re watching

For true crime fans, Last Stop Larrimah isn’t an urgent must-see, and I am told that the “Lost in Larrimah” podcast from five years ago is an even sharper recounting of the mysterious events. But the unsettling unsolved nature of the tale remains pungent, and so do the Missing posters throughout the community.

A repetitive slog that’s only shape or narrative momentum comes from its slow unmasking as religious propaganda.

A film about a haunted Chuck E. Cheese clone doesn’t exactly need to be complex to be watchable. But Five Nights at Freddy’s somehow misses the arcade for the flashback forest, undercutting the obvious appeal of animatronic cartoon characters as menacing slasher villains by refusing to ever become a real horror movie.

Every winking iris shot and cheesy cross-dissolve adds to the timeless spirit of a film that knows beauty may be short-lived, but good schlock never dies.