Freeland is clearly having fun behind the camera, but broad and superficial performances mean the fun doesn’t always translate.

Mockler transforms the material into a solid thriller with an edgy vision of millennial lunacy, sketching out a psychopath unique to the viral video age.

An emotionally riveting documentary that may very well be the most powerful group therapy ever caught on camera.

By making a satisfactory crowdpleaser that doesn’t overextend itself, Swanberg has delivered his most traditional movie to date — and for this prolific filmmaker, who spent ages defying conventions, that’s nothing short of a radical step forward.

A pulpy slice of pie from deep in the heart of American nowhere, Evan Katz’s Small Crimes is far too convoluted for such an admittedly modest thriller, but the film ties together in such a perfect bow that it’s tempting to forgive all of the knots it took to get there.

The Most Hated Woman in America makes it abundantly clear that Madalyn Murray O’Hair was a riveting human being whose story is worth telling in our messed up times, but the film never has the slightest idea of what that story might be about.

Considerably less ambitious or provocative than Boyle’s barnstorming first crack at these characters, T2 Trainspotting (can we please just call it “T2″?) is an enjoyable nostalgia trip about the extraordinary headache of trying to go home again.

Creating a lucid sense of reality only so that she can defile it with a wicked pivot towards madness, Asensio’s film creates a vision of immigrant life in America (and its value) that’s all the more urgent for how it uses genre elements to exaggerate the experience.

Gemini resists easy categorization, evades tidy plot points and sometimes lead to frustrating dead ends. But it’s an absorbing world defined by open-ended possibilities, a kind of comedic psychological thriller in which the thrills exist in air quotes.

While the entirety of Frantz holds less appeal than its gorgeous ingredients, it’s impossible to deny the sheer narrative sophistication that makes this gentle story much more than your average retread.

Badrinath Ki Dulhania may hit several faulty notes as a flag-bearer for feminism, but as delivered by this endearing duo, it’s bound to touch more than a few hearts.

Oscillating between the relentless energy of “John Wick” and the dense plotting of a John Le Carré novel, Atomic Blonde never quite finds a happy medium between the two. But when Theron goes back to kicking ass, nothing else matters.

From laugh to laugh — and there are many — you might question the target of the jokes, but that’s often because The Disaster Artist rarely works on one level: There’s meta humor, self-referential gags, and human reverence paid to the earnest pursuit of a Hollywood dream. Such are the layered joys of this exuberant — if surprisingly conventional — buddy comedy about the making of the worst movie of all time.

The pervasive elegance makes up for a largely derivate plot. We’ve seen variations on this story before, and Mean Dreams doesn’t do much to shake up expectations — until, that is, a violent finale that punctuates the characters’ psychological development.

The film is never funny, and its attempts to wink at the adults in the room are so lame that you wish they’d been left on the cutting room floor, but the deeper the film delves into Tim’s imagination the less imaginative it becomes.

The director’s most ambitious work to date is a wildly successful romantic heist comedy, propelled from scene to scene with a lively soundtrack that elevates its slick chase scenes into a realm of musicality that develops its own satisfying beat.

Ducournau tears down the walls of a genre so often identified with male filmmakers. (Like the father of body horror, David Cronenberg.) Shrewdly using the art-horror format to upend the traditional teen Bildungsroman, “Raw” makes it impossible to look away — as much as you might want to.

There’s plenty of intrigue to the dissonance of a hard-rock lifestyle and Malick’s gentle touch, but much of the movie’s potential is overshadowed by the impulses of a director unwilling to get there.

Modest in its ambition but profound in its specificity, Batra gets to the core of the slipperiness of memory and the allure of the past. It’s not through grand pronouncements and cosmic love stories; instead, a handful of unshakable moments do the trick.

It may not be entirely inspiring, but Betting on Zero captures the everyone-for-themselves desperation that would make any wronged individual furious, be they jilted employee or frustrated stockholder.

When it keeps its aims small and its attention narrow, The Other Half lands on a simple love story that speaks outside its familiar boundaries.

A limp and lifeless historical melodrama that aspires to be the “Pearl Harbor” of the preamble to World War I and still falls well short of that ignoble goal, Joseph Ruben’s The Ottoman Lieutenant tries to snatch a love triangle from out beneath the Armenian Genocide but fails to get any of the angles right.

If, for all of its godawful men, “Brimstone” has a hard time sewing its feminist fervor into anything more than a thin shawl over its bleak spectacle, this disturbingly watchable religious Western makes a solid case that hell is a place on Earth.

By highlighting sweet, indicative, or hilarious moments rather than tracing the teachers’ relationships with any particular students, the film is more attuned to the rhythms of Headfort than it is the people in it.

Specificity is the film’s strong suit, and The Last Laugh is at its best when eschewing its gaggle of celebrity interview subjects in favor of sticking with Firestone as she reckons with their comedy.

Aside from the thrill of its lavish sets and costumes, there isn’t much new to offer in this Beauty and the Beast.

Kong: Skull Island may include some clever period details and idiosyncratic asides, but it’s largely a blockbuster B-movie less interested in depth than scale.

Spencer and Alush turn in the film’s best performances, and Spencer’s natural warmth and Alush’s deep charm keep The Shack hammering right along.