While fairly straightforward in its attempts to galvanize viewers around efforts to combat the disease, Gleason hits those familiar marks with superb aim.

Smart and affecting ... It’s not flashy. It’s not often revelatory for any super fans, or even anyone who watched "Being the Ricardos" ... "Lucy and Desi," however, is still meaty as a standalone work, and an essential, authentic salute to these trailblazers.

Linoleum is difficult to pin down; the obfuscations and slippages that run through it seem just as likely to frustrate viewers as they might compel them.

Zero Fucks Given is refreshingly unwilling to be prescriptive or teach Cassandre any moral lessons, but it often struggles to crystallize how she finds the strength to seize control over her own flightplan.

What could have been a generic piece of standard Netflix fare in less skillful hands ends up being a nuanced story of belonging that’s slightly less cliche-ridden than you might expect.

It’s a lot to take in, but Mikhanovsky doesn’t hesitate to keep barreling forward, and it’s an impressive gamble even when it runs out of gas.

Always interesting, seldom enjoyable, and somehow both smothered and excessive at the same time (and at all times), this nearly three-hour bonfire of Searchlight Pictures’ annual budget is a towering monument to human love that betrays almost zero interest in actually being liked.

At a taut and elliptical ninety minutes, a couple of awkward final steps hardly feel like fatal flaws. Getting in, getting down, and getting out as style hopping sizzle reel, Disco Boy heralds a promising new talent who totally has the moves.

Egg shows the Scottish actor-director’s continuing ability to ground her films with strong character work and a buoyant sense of humor.

A strong cast, unique perspective, and handful of undeniable moments that terrify and mesmerize recommend this stomach-churning debut as a standout in a loud subgenre.

By placing vastly different people into a situation in which they find common ground, it highlights the tantalizing idea that the minutiae of day-to-day problems matters less than the prospects of escaping them through companionship.

It’s a loud, colorful, frantic and pitch black horror comedy about identity that mercilessly critiques modern anxiety about desirability and success.

What Majors does here, how raw and vulnerable and brave he is not just with his craft, but his very body, is something to behold. This is true artistry, absolute commitment.

Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t break fresh ground by Marvel standards, but it livens up the proceedings just enough to grease up the wheels of this franchise behemoth as it careens along.

The film’s most telling scene unfortunately marks a steep divide between the fine-tuned first half and a back end that threatens to crumble into cliche.

It’s enough that this heartfelt delight makes par on its premise; there’s a birdie here and a bogey there, but director Craig Roberts (“Eternal Beauty”) keeps a firm grip on the film’s whimsical tone from start to finish, the former “Red Oaks” star finding a way to have fun with his shots without risking his straightforward approach to the pin.

Maybe it’s a copout to argue that a film’s makeup is deliberately frustrating and disordered because it reflects a frustrating, disordered reality; maybe it’s a filmmaker’s job to force some coherence onto the chaos. But when you’re dealing with evil that has no easily discernible justification, it’s probably best to accept that the mystery will never satisfy.

Bolstered by a strong performance from Teresa Palmer (who only gets better with each role, and seems happy to mix things up when it comes time to pick them), Berlin Syndrome doesn’t break much new ground in the genre, but it’s certainly a worthy entry into it.

Don’t Make Me Go is a sweet, charming, and eventually daring dramedy with tons of heart.

It’s more of the same, but more of the same has always been what “Phineas and Ferb” does best.

As Riegel builds to a conclusion that feels both predictable and satisfying, Dandelion must decide how far she’s willing to go to bet on herself. More people should bet on Riegel and Layne, and fast.

Raw, empathetic, and so insistently humane that it plays like a fun 82-minute “fuck you” to the power structures of a country that wants to squeeze the life out of its poorest black environments, This One’s for the Ladies is at its best when it slows down and keys in to a small pocket of the culture where strippers and customers really can have co-equal standing in the community that brings them together.

At what point does a story about one failing democracy become a story about all failing democracies? Perhaps there’s no way of knowing until it’s already too late.

As scary as it is when something abrupt takes place, The Conjuring 2 generates its deepest sense of dread when nothing does, and anything could.

At its core, this is an iPod-shiny parable about the pain of being left behind, and one that — like so much of the best sci-fi — poignantly literalizes some of the the anxieties that have dogged humanity since the dawn of time.

As commercial entertainment, The Martian delivers on expectations of a "smart" blockbuster even as it adheres to the formula of a relatively simple feel-good drama. Though "Interstellar" aimed for more ambition, The Martian plays it safer: It's a brainy studio effort that sticks to familiar ground in more ways than one.

The relatively gentle, meditative, and straightforward Hotel by the River is like everything and nothing that Hong has made before; to say that it’s “just another Hong” movie is an accurate way of emphasizing what makes it special.

This is a solid biography portrait with enough diaristic candor to compel a relisten to her greatest hits, in life and music.