Fans might be appeased by a successful bunt in a long summer of disgraceful strike-outs, but this is still a maddening failure when compared to the remarkable artistry of “Into the Spider-Verse” or the raw pathos of Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2.”

It’s hard to imagine a more crystalline look at the suppleness of someone’s self-identity (and the moral dilemma of someone else choosing to overwrite it) than Ed Perkins’ Tell Me Who I Am, a documentary so harrowing and horrific that it can only bear to scratch at the surface of its remarkable story.

More of a snack than a fulfilling meal, Good Posture is too scattershot to make good on the full potential of its protagonist.

"Blood Brothers” is worthwhile for the introspective investigation of lives so often, in the public eye, devoid of the tangled humanity that all interpersonal relationships carry.

It’s clear that something went terribly wrong in the making of this movie, but the worst part about it is how much goes ecstatically right before the wheels fall off. Bad films are a dime a dozen, even at the world’s most prestigious festival — this one is only so painful because it first gives you the hope of being great.

A viscerally charged movie that foregrounds surface tensions and gripping performances, Ginger and Rosa is the filmmaker's most accessible and technically surefooted work to date.

Historians, media scholars and even Boston citizens may debate whether this is the most worthy way to honor those fallen in the attacks. But Berg mounts a heartfelt, harrowing tribute to the film’s real-life heroes.

Most of the movie’s machinations seem merely in service of deepening the central gambit, which is to follow Mona’s journey and to look cool while doing it. On that front, it succeeds, but the movie’s charms are limited when the originality it purports to offer only feels like a bit of a costume.

Boone’s unobtrusive style takes cues from the subdued nature of the material, but there’s little about the movie that makes the filmmaking stand out. Instead, it derives its chief strengths from a series of efforts to take the drama seriously, mainly embodied by Woodley’s onscreen investment in it.

DeBoer and Luebbe have further expanded their nutty vision of suburban ennui and the painful consequences of keeping up with the status quo into an unsettling and amusing send-up of human behavior.

Walsh sends about a half-dozen plot lines, styles, and themes into the air and keeps them all whizzing along like a master plate spinner, but he makes it look effortless — you never feel the director straining for his effects, all seamlessly integrated into 96 smooth minutes.

Poe has built a rich world that’s equal parts “Rushmore,” “Heathers,” and “The Godfather,” with all the unpredictability that teenage behavior can possibly engender.

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.

That Tortorici pulls this twist off is both perverse and pleasurable, and that he keeps it all feeling funny is even better.

It doesn’t help that Plante frustratingly writes around the palpable tension between the swimmers’ individual success and their value to each other as teammates. But if his film sometimes mistakes murkiness for ambiguity, it still resolves as a deeply felt (almost anthropological) look at a rare butterfly in search of the second chrysalis she needs to spread her wings and become herself all over again.

While The Greatest Night in Pop may not amount to anything more than a sanitized and somewhat masturbatory look back at one of the wildest get-togethers in the modern history of music (the film doesn’t offer any commentary deeper than “isn’t it so fucking crazy that this happened, and that we have it all on tape?”), there’s no denying that it’s a lot of fun to watch it all go down.

If you already loved John Candy, this doc will make you love him even more. If you were born after his time, it will be a lovely introduction. Still, the way the doc lingers on its unabashed celebration of Candy’s life and work yet rushes through its brief examination of his psyche prevents it from being a total knockout.

The action is taut, the stakes are clear, and Kirk never misses a chance to remind us that all of these are just regular people who’ve crossed paths in a dark place.

The honesty with which Bamford approaches all of this (and, yes, surely you must be sick of reading the word “honesty,” but there is simply no better term for who Bamford is and how she lives) is, as her fellow comedians have told us, real and refreshing and actually unique.

Although a lot of the film feels like a breathless box-ticking exercise designed to Include Every Pertinent Fact, the chemistry between Turner and Mari leads to a relationship rarely seen in cinema: a platonic friendship between an older man and a younger woman born of mutual respect.

For all its youthful self-seriousness (or maybe in part because of it), Permanent Vacation is a touching vision of what it was like to be head over heels with art, love, and oneself in late-1970s New York.

The film presents a contemplative elegy for a hotel whose history is (still) being eroded, but by focusing on the literal walls (and how they, of course, can’t actually talk) only further removes the voices of the very people who live (and dream) inside of them

Given the brief period of time that separated romance and tragedy, it’s understandable that McGann might have been grasping at straws, but omitting certain voices — for what seems to be the benefit of cheap suspense — can’t help but cut her movie off at the knees. The result is a fascinating but frustratingly superficial portrait.

While Gregg offers a cheeky sense of what it really means to gaslight someone, no one will feel as injured by the film’s final-act choices than its audience.

If nothing else, audience members will walk away from Martha with a far greater understanding of Stewart — of all the “good things,” in her parlance, and plenty of the bad — and equal admiration and unease of what that all adds up to.

The undeniably moving nature of Winton and his associates’ deeds swell the narrative with rich emotional currents, however the film’s bid for consistent quality is kneecapped by a ridiculously on-the-nose script.

It might not be his best filmmaking, but Fahrenheit 11/9 is fraught with a critical mindset that syncs with the zeitgeist. It’s a messy movie for messy times.

Entering boldly into this bunch is Happiest Season, a shiny holiday comedy which is by all accounts indistinguishable from the rest save for one little detail: It’s gay! Unfortunately, this tiny tweak isn’t enough to make a lasting impression on the genre, especially with a lackluster script that offers little in the way of surprise or delight.