While a straightforward documentary in the classic sense, it’s polished, affecting, professionally edited, and bursting with big personalities.

Despite appearances, The Independent isn’t much interested in the implications of a three-horse race for the Oval Office, or the viability of a down-to-earth superman uniting the country with promises that appeal to both sides of the aisle. No, that stuff is just a pretext for a tense but ultimately toothless polemic about the value of truth and the need for an independent press

With its bisexual lighting and hyper-designed oddball aesthetic, Please Baby Please looks a lot more polished than its messier camp influences. Aesthetically, the film cobbles together its many cinematic influences with admirable swagger. But film isn’t solely a visual medium — it’s a storytelling one as well.

If this weren’t a Cartoon Saloon movie, it would probably fall apart long before Meg LeFauve’s screenplay arrives at its touching finale, which trusts kids to confront some of the more difficult truths that childhood forces you to intuit. But good news: My Father’s Dragon is a Cartoon Saloon movie, and the open-hearted sincerity of the studio’s work breathes singular life into even the least engaging scenes of its most anonymous feature.

"Black & Blues” is a doc that will make you appreciate Armstrong, the man. Someone far too complex to reduce to any one thing.

The film reunites most of the principal cast and crew of director Harry Bradbeer’s 2020 Netflix feature, “Enola Holmes,” and while that franchise-starter was frisky and fun, its followup rehashes the original’s charms (with wishy-washy results), while expanding elements that required no additional attention.

Hopeful and deeply emotional, McKenzie has crafted a film that feels like a fairytale for these isolating times. It reminds us how much we need each other in order to flourish and fully know ourselves.

I can’t say whether Hong has suffered any of the creative self-doubts that animate his latest heroine, but the film he’s made for her feels as revealing as the one she then makes for herself. Free your art, your art will free you in return — a nice idea, but one that the uniqueness of Hong’s career makes easier to admire than it is to internalize.

The director’s palliative need for drama often snuffs out the very truths that Peaceful vows to restore to the process of dying. Where is the tedium of sickness? The discomfort of suffering? The banality of waiting for it to be over?

Shana Feste’s initially grounded “Run Sweetheart Run” takes the concept of a “bad date” and runs with it to wild extremes, unfurling a white-hot, blood-soaked yowl of feminine rage in a tidy horror package that can barely contain all its biggest ideas.

The documentary lets its subject’s weathered charisma do most of the hard work here — Scorsese and Tedeschi love him too much to beg for your attention — and yet it weaves in enough context to convince even the biggest New York Dolls neophytes of the band’s legacy. Even longtime fans might be struck by the contrast between the breeziness of the film’s tone and the weight of its history.

While V/H/S/99 is a far cry from the original, it still manages to be far more fun than it has any right to be. By connecting its horror vignettes with trippy stop-motion sketches instead of a unifying plot device, it crafts a viewing experience that essentially amounts to an Adult Swim programming block for horror fans.

Fans of Soman Chainani’s popular fantasy series might feel as if a giant bone bird swooped out of the sky and carried them to streaming heaven, but not even Charlize Theron’s Mad Hatter cosplay or Michelle Yeoh’s cameo as a professor of smiling will be enough to enchant a wider audience to such a painfully overworked saga of friendship.

This is a curious, slightly underwhelming offering. Even so, falling flat as a result of being understated to a fault is a promising event in a genre dominated by obvious signposting, and Wright is certainly one to watch for the future.

The problem isn’t that Johnson can’t act — he definitely can! — the problem is that he doesn’t want to. He still wants the simple idolatry that a kid might have for their favorite athlete. He wants to be larger than life. But even the biggest of movie stars need to be a little smaller than that in order to give people something to watch, and not just look up to.

Within his means and interests, Posley continues the legacy explored at length in the must-see 2019 documentary “Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror,” while still experimenting with original elements that expand its possibilities.

Menkes will often admit that many examples might be the result of unconscious choices — a particularly useful and astute notation when dealing with films directed by women, plenty of which contribute to the same gendered way of shooting — but rarely engages with the possibility of a different intent by the filmmakers whose work she is unpacking.

Jones clearly has valuable insights about being a Black woman in entertainment and has the chops to tell a captivating story. What any of that has to do with the sex industry is a total mystery.

Pinocchio feels like the best mix of classic del Toro and new del Toro, with the wisdom and melancholy that comes with age and experience, yet his bright-eyed love of fairy tales from his Spanish-language films. Perhaps more impressive is how Pinocchio pushes the oldest form of animation to new places, and like the puppet himself, breathes life into inanimate objects.

A tight script, stellar ensemble cast, and plenty of easy-on-the-eyes shots of California wine country make for a delightful time at the movies. Rich people might live in a world without consequences, but Pretty Problems reminds us that it can be pretty damn fun to join them for a couple hours.

Aided by a dynamite performance from newcomer Laura Galán, Piggy uses the tension of a slasher thriller to weave a painfully relatable tale of adolescent angst gone terribly awry. As body shame and self-loathing morph into a disturbing complicity with violence, Piggy pushes the torments of youth to their naturally wicked ends.

The Curse of Bridge Hollow makes no attempt to hide the fact that its only selling point is that it takes place during the holiday audiences are currently celebrating. The combination of autumnal B-roll and nonexistent storytelling ambition results in something that’s more of an addition to your living room’s Halloween decorations than a piece of cinema that commands anyone’s attention.

That Weinstein’s downfall was the product of diligent reporting, dogged persistence, and the resilience of a few brave souls is essential to remember. In Maria Schrader’s artful and incendiary She Said, we’re reminded of something else that makes for one hell of a movie: It was women who did it.

If there is one lesson that “Halloween Ends” — hell, that this entire trilogy, this entire franchise — easily imparts, with blood and guts and terror to spare, it’s that horror never really ends. It just takes a different shape. This story surely will, too, but for now, it’s concluded in fine fashion.

The sum of Hedges’ film is greater than any of its parts, even if its parts are not always worthy of the people who have been hired to play them. Individual scenes feel flat, but even the least effective of them contribute to the larger web in some way, and the touching final call that brings this curio full circle effectively articulates how our isolation has only made us all more essential to each other.

Pacifiction is not a vicarious experience of luxury; it is an experience of life. Set to its own tidal rhythm, it is one of the most beautiful and rigorously introspective movies of this or any year, a film that makes you deeply ponder the fate of humanity itself.

Messy, personal, timely, brimming with ideas, overflowing with pain, and without answers: that’s the debate, and that’s the doc.

Despite the expansive nature of the film, Mitchell’s narration makes it all feel personal. The documentary flows freely from topic to topic, giving it a conversational quality.