His Three Daughters asks major questions but distills them down to this precise story, life’s biggest worries in jewel box miniature.

Macdonald has crafted one of the most riveting rise-fall-redemption story arcs in documentary format in recent memory, with Galliano himself as his unreliable — but never less than compelling — guide.

Gasoline Rainbow simultaneously succeeds as a nuanced depiction of a generation’s concerns and an ironic look at what young people have yet to learn.

Dear Jassi succeeds with shocking efficacy at luring viewers into a pocket of bliss and then shattering it so viscerally that it will — and should — haunt the audience long after Grewal’s melodies fade into the background.

It empowers its women with quiet victories and lessons and presents a range of masculine characters in which it’s obvious which characteristics compose a respectable man. To mince meanings, Rao’s latest feature is the opposite of lost — a joyous, resounding win.

The film is realistic about the role that art can play in overthrowing an oppressive regime, but ultimately reaches the conclusion that we should pursue it anyway. Movies might never be the thing that stops evil from triumphing, but making them might stop it from using you as a vessel.

Mostly, it’s Stallone who impresses here, as a disarmingly open and self-aware icon whose hardest lessons have left a mark on him.

Wildcat is too tame in its portrayal of suffering to let its Catholic undertones sing or take powerful cinematic form, resulting in a work where paradoxes are half-baked dilemmas that seem too conveniently solved, and life itself is something that happens far off-screen.

The result is an aggravating missed opportunity to tell a story that absolutely needs to be told to an audience that needs to hear it.

As the film’s themes announce themselves again and again, it weakens the mystery. The film seems to be yelling at us who the culprit is while hoping we remain engaged by mugging and hijinks alone.

A fun premise can get a horror film far, and “When Evil Lurks” has one that could be taken to interesting, terrifying places. But rather than lean into what makes its world of demonic diseases intriguing, the film squanders its own potential by leaning into its worst qualities and instincts.

Betts’ adaptation never loses its sense of humor, and the multiplex flair it brings to such a sensitive subject — its wry, politically inclusive approach to illustrating how burying America’s heartache without a headstone only guarantees that the pain will continue — allows for a verdict that feels damning and hopeful in equal measure.

Though it is not an unpleasant experience, it is a limp one.

It’s only 100 minutes long, but upward of 99 of those minutes are likely to be spent in silent boredom, if not irritated disbelief at being subjected to such guileless, artless nonsense.

The whole Brit falls for an American trope has been done to death, and Love at First Sight doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. While Richardson turns in the best performance of the film, even that’s not enough to push Love at First Sight to higher rom-com heights.

Although Thank You for Coming is overstuffed with too much plot and too many characters, director Boolani brings Kanika’s world to life with sumptuous visuals, kinetic editing, a jaunty soundtrack, and punchy rat-a-tat dialogue.

This nostalgic and melancholy trip is also a celebration.

Long on voiceovers, short on specificity, and so high on the generic-brand Scorsese of it all that it glosses right over the gray areas that make its characters so tragic, Yates’ film is more focused on being easy to swallow than it is on meaningfully addressing the source of the pain.

Next Goal Wins is largely a misfire, one that’s too unwilling to stop kidding around for even the most important of moments.

Ultimately, American Fiction is an impressive debut from Jefferson, who has seamlessly made the leap from the small to big screen with a strong comedic voice and characters crafted with empathy and care. While the satire could have been sharper and more complex, the film is mostly saved by its humor.

Ultimately, one just gets the sense that “Knox Goes Away” is unsure of what it’s supposed to be. On one hand, it leans into the chillingly gruesome; on the other, it wants to laugh at the grimness of its own scenarios.

There is nothing artificial here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t mystery. It’s the mystery of people and their unusual behaviors and the way they can flit in and out of our lives and our consciousness.

Dream Scenario is simply the best absurdist comedy of its kind since “Anomalisa” (the Kaufman connection being further cemented by a Cage performance that feels like it was born from superimposing both of his “Adaptation” characters on top of each other. …And also by a running joke about antkind).

Kendrick’s image as an actor isn’t necessarily tied to dark, edgy material, but as a director she shows a talent for staging scenes of Hitchcockian suspense alongside her signature wit.

They mix like Fireball and water, but the odd couple nonetheless shares a sensational chemistry, building on the base amusement of seeing Oh let her extension-laden hair down and Awkwafina crimp the straight-man character into weird new shapes.

Chastain and Sarsgaard give a pair of haunting, expert performances as damaged people making sense of their own agony together. Franco gets out of the way of his actors without manipulating them.

Garrone’s film has a three-dimensional and devastatingly realized human soul at its core. The world could do with paying attention to Seydou’s story and the millions of other real ones like it.

Much like “Les Misérables” before it, “Les Indésirables” is a series of riveting setpieces that are strung together with a mess of exposed wires, and much like “Les Misérables” before it, “Les Indésirables” can be easy to forgive for its contrivances because Ly’s anger is so palpable, his vision so viscerally lived-in, and his widescreen cinema so capable of galvanizing suffering through spectacle (a mixed blessing).