Guided by Angel Manuel Soto’s slick direction and a breakthrough performance from Jahi Di’Allo Winston, the movie works overtime to energize real-world struggles with the thrill of street life.

The story is so outlandish — and the film so dry — that it’s hard not to be impressed by the discipline White showed in refusing to have more fun with it.

Lively makes off with one of her best performances ever, and one that makes an unexpected case for giving the actress a real action franchise next time around. One of contemporary cinema’s most underrated chameleons, Lively throws herself into the role with real gusto.

Deadpan in her delivery and facial expressions, Zadie is indeed a mess, but she’s working her way toward something better, and Meghie’s frisky comedy gives her the space to make some strides. As the weekend amusingly crumbles around her and the rest of her cohorts, Zamata tentatively approaches something like maturity (and definitely like getting the hell over Bradford), giving shape to a mostly freeform narrative.

The filmmakers illustrate that governmental power is a fickle thing, prone to exploitation and good will alike, depending on who decides to pursue its offices.

The overarching plot of Palm Springs isn’t especially novel, but each scene is just sweet, funny, and demented enough to feel like a little surprise.

Nothing connects, nothing gels, and every thread is lost.

If The Nest amounts to an elaborate exercise in style, at least it matches the material. Rory’s obsessions are all surface and no depth. For better or worse, the movie follows him into that void.

Gentle as the stream that flows through the Yi’s property, and yet powerful enough to reverberate for generations to come, Chung’s loving — and immensely lovable — immigrant drama interrogates the American Dream with the hard-edged hope of a family that needs to believe in something before they lose all faith in each other.

As Levine unravels clever jabs and jibes at current culture — few recent features have so smartly picked apart both feminism and caveman culture with such insight and humor — tenuous bonds break down.

While Worth is most literally concerned with a stupefying question — what is a life worth? — it’s more precisely about the price of calculating such a wrenching ask.

While there are a few truly moving detours along the way . . . Uncle Frank fumbles through its fairy-tale finale so fast that it sours everything that came before.

Wendy doesn’t take the appeal of “Beasts” in a new direction, but it clarifies its strongest qualities. Zeitlin’s roving narrative techniques may have their limitations, but this spellbinding followup proves they still have juice. Everyone grows up, but the “Beasts” formula has yet to grow old.

It’s hard to ever shake the sense that everyone would be much better off just queuing up Östlund’s film and moving on.

Decker’s characteristically sawtoothed and delirious new film is set in the same latent space between fact and fantasy — a story and its telling — where she located all of her previous work.

Emerald Fennell’s raucous debut, Promising Young Woman, twists its buzzword-laden, spoiler-free synopsis — it’s a #MeToo rape revenge thriller with bite! — into something fresh and totally wild.

Possessor never manages to wrest control of your mind, but it’s unnervingly good at getting under your skin.

It’s a smart and sturdy behind-the-scenes look at a high-profile #MeToo drama, and succeeds at scrutinizing the conundrum facing countless women still afraid of speaking out.

Great horror movies should feel unsafe, but this one just leaves you feeling beaten down.

July’s style is at once cerebral and irreverent, but “Kajillionaire” doesn’t always find the most satisfying way to juggle those dueling tones. However, its spell lingers as July’s biggest concepts take root, and the movie turns from tragic to hopeful at an unlikely moment in tune with the artist’s previous works.

Splitting the difference between “Terms of Endearment” and David Cronenberg’s “Crash” in a way that’s often sweet and surreal (but never sinister), Wittock essentially takes an ultra-familiar premise and coats it with the candied shell of something you’ve never seen before. It’s enchanting stuff, at least until that colorful layer of hard sugar melts away and you’re left to chew on the beige core inside.

Oscillating from intimate father-daughter exchanges to surreal meta-fictional tangents, the movie lives within its riveting paradox, reflecting the queasy uncertainty surrounding its subject’s fate.

The 40-Year-Old Version doesn’t overcome all of its rough edges, but they’re so closely tied to the personality of the creator that it’s hard to shake the underlying appeal.

Lloyd’s feature strikes a fine balance between all of life’s ups and downs, illustrated by Sandra’s unfortunately relatable traumas and a series of stellar performances.

A confident, entertaining, and well-upholstered historical spy thriller about a regular guy who stumbles his way toward saving the world, it’s the perfect movie for anyone who watched “Bridge of Spies” and thought: “If only that had been 30 minutes shorter, a bit less artful, and a lot more British.”

What starts as a blandly divided documentary eventually finds its way to something inspiring, infuriating, and unbounded by old ideas.

It makes up for a dry and sometimes stilted filmmaking approach through sheer clarity of purpose.

Although Doucouré steeps Cuties in emotion and experience, she abandons its grace to make crazier gestures.