It suffers from the greater problem of emphasizing a feel-good plot within the context of mass destruction.

Despite the film’s introductory text, most of Calle Malaga could happen in any city in the world. Without Maura’s performance, there’d be no specificity to speak of.

If there’s any issue with “Lost in the Jungle,” it might be that there’s too little of it. At 90 minutes, the film is quick and efficient, but it leaves little time to explore more about the collaboration between these two search parties, or the unsteady relationship between the region’s indigenous communities and the narco-guerrilla units ruling over them.

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform is not a subtle film. But these are unsubtle times, with unsubtle problems, and the most alarming thing about this grimly affecting Spanish allegory — which literalizes capitalism’s dehumanizing verticality with twice the gross-out terror of “Parasite,” and almost half of that masterpiece’s furious grace — is that it sometimes doesn’t seem like an allegory at all.

The dimming prestige of the brand perhaps allowed Hoppers the freedom to be something much more modest, and also way more fun and satisfying — a hilarious, joke-a-second comedy that has its moments of sweetness and emotional resonance, but isn’t looking to force tears out of you.

Montana Story doesn’t reinvent the Western wheel. Rather it offers tender mercies as a sentimental work that explodes in well-earned fury.

The first half of I'm Glad My Mother's Alive effectively inhabits a child's mind in a manner that recalls Maurice Pialat's marvelous 1968 debut "The Naked Childhood."

Every interaction is rip-roaringly funny — even the more disquieting ones — resulting in a film where you can’t help but laugh at the riveting absurdity.

For almost 45 minutes, Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan is on pace to become the best, most urgent zombie movie since “28 Days Later.” And then — at once both figuratively and literally — this broad Korean blockbuster derails in slow-motion, sliding off the tracks and bursting into a hot mess of generic moments and digital fire.

A tribute to those children of immigrants, especially those in families divided across borders, pulling for their own aspirations while carrying on their backs their parents’ hopes for a life without fear, “Mija” beams with the knowledge that in its specificity it speaks to millions. That this documentary soon becomes a rock in an avalanche and not an isolated bright star of representation is the hope.

Propulsive battle sequences in which sandstorms make the fog of war quite literal are the ostensible focus of American Sniper, but the real tension comes from our anticipation of how they'll affect the life this sharpshooter is reluctant to return to until he feels he's done everything he possibly can.

The Raft, like the people aboard it, floats along the surface of a vast ocean of mystery and memory. The result is a bizarre, captivating, and borderline unbelievable memory play that only supports a hypothesis Genovés wasn’t prepared to consider: We are blind to the world as it is when we only saw the world as we are.

While Bill Nye: Science Guy may not spend all its time on the man himself, it proves that the guy behind “Science rules!” hasn’t gone anywhere.

The Forgiveness of Blood examines the barriers of ritual and the passage from youth to adulthood in Albanian society with the perceptive detail of a grand literary feat. At the same time, it retains the simplicity of a parable.

Ideas might be recycled in “Funny Pages,” but they’re converted into something distinct.

Anaïs isn’t so different in the wonderfully surprising last shot than she is in the first, but at last we can see that she’s having the time of her life.

With trademark stoicism and inscrutable poise, Krieps gives a performance that never tries to extract easy pity from the viewer or reach for low-hanging fruit.

The success of Extra Geography rides largely on Clear and Duggan who make a wonderful odd couple pair.

“Homecoming” works by allowing itself to become an actual genre film, the first of its ilk to recognize that superhero movies might be more interesting if they were also something else.

The opposing genre extremes never entirely come together.

“The Last Wish” has no qualms about testing the expectations of its young audience while delivering a freewheeling tale about appreciating the nine lives we already have.

The parallels between Watergate and Trumpocalypse are so boggling that they preclude any other reason for why Ferguson chose to make this film now. And yet, it’s the film’s deliberate timing that calls its value into question.

Intermittently action-packed and lethargic, the movie dances around formula. By delivering an expressionistic character study with bursts of intensity unlike anything else in his oeuvre and yet stylistically representative of its entirety, Wong practically has it both ways.

The lessons here may go down easy, but “Out of My Mind” knows better than to resolve the lifelong tug-of-war between what’s possible for Melody and what isn’t. Instead, it simply suggests that she has more to say than most people have learned how to hear, which is almost their loss as much as it is her own.

Even as Honey Boy settles into the tropes of a familiar coming-of-age saga, it’s an admirable variation — the earnest attempt by an elusive movie star to bring his mythology down to Earth.

The Killer is nothing if not committed to its own one-note bit, an existential nihilism that stays the same even as the protagonist, in a mostly silent Michael Fassbender performance, starts to change. It’s as unfeeling as any Fincher thriller, at once predictable in its simplicity but also strangely daring because of it.

My Name Is Pauli Murray balances Murray’s varied interests and causes with a deft hand, acknowledging their contributions to the women’s movement while not minimizing their trans-ness, as many scholars had done until Rosenberg’s book.

The Ivory Game may be a harsh wakeup call to anyone concerned about the future of the largest land mammal, but it’s also a keen evaluation of the efforts being made to correct the situation.