A star-studded new historical comedy that’s amusing at best, noxious at worst, and frantically self-insistent upon its own negligible entertainment value at all times as it strains to find the beauty in the mad tapestry of life? That’s right: David O. Russell is back.

Overall, Smile delivers a captivating and claustrophobic mental hellscape that will cause one to both grimace and grin.

It makes you recognize, through the force of its telling, why the story of Poitier’s life matters. And will matter forever.

Janney makes a great murderous curmudgeon, but the script’s big reveal strands the actress with a “layered” character who’s never given the chance to transcend the most basic aspects of her archetype. Worse: She only gets to kill like three people!

While much of the information shared in “The American Dream” is stunning, tenuous threads and too-zippy pacing keep it from landing with much impact.

If the movie itself can be as clumsy and erratic as its heroine — especially during a third act that tries to split the difference between the Dardenne brothers and “Dog Day Afternoon” — Davis’ performance holds it all together with the power of centrifugal force, the actress spinning in circles of joy and rage so fast that you couldn’t get up from your seat even if you wanted to.

The kinetic, captivating tone disintegrates once the narrative remembers that it needs to tell us about these people.

It’s a film that seemingly aims to be average, but unlike so many other remakes, it actually achieves that goal.

The juicy teen drama of Do Revenge is a contemporary riff on an age-old classic. It’s nothing if not of the moment, and at the moment, teenagers are reading the same panic-inducing headlines as everyone else. If they want to do a little revenge on a world that seems hell bent on driving humanity off a cliff, Do Revenge offers some clever entertainment for the ride.

Coming out as a bold filmmaker with a fearless voice, prolific alt comedy editor Vera Drew’s mixed media dystopia is an experimental trans coming of age story wrapped in a scathing critique and confident rebuke of mainstream comedy. Fiercely original and deeply personal, it’s too damn good not to be seen.

It’s both entertaining and smart as hell.

For all its promises of an inside look into the Dalís’ lifestyle, the film never does much more than document it.

As urgent and necessary as their story is, it also feels too familiar on cinematic terms.

Efira imparts her character’s early anticipation — and eventual yearning, bliss, and hurt — using nothing but a glance. Rachel is a woman of the world with a universe inside.

While the central character’s arc will likely launch a dreaded “discourse,” there is a tenderness to Master Gardener that may prove its biggest surprise.

While depicting a landmark moment in humanity’s efforts to understand our place in the universe, Good Night Oppy renders the rovers’ journeys with such oppressive sentimentality terms that it can be hard to feel the full weight of the awe and wonder the movie drops into your lap.

Devotion can be stiff and hackneyed at the best of times — it’s nothing if not a war movie that has seen too many other war movies — but it lifts a few inches off the ground whenever it locks in on the loneliness that Brown must have felt as he flew towards an aircraft carrier whose landing signal officer may have wanted him to crash, or soared in formation with people who might have been happy to shoot him down.

Chevalier, despite its steadily devolving storytelling, is enjoyable and worthy of appreciation. When Williams and Robinson loosen up the strings and allow the film to feel as original and free as Bologne was at the height of his creative powers — a battle! with Mozart! with dueling violins! — and refuse to be beholden to the usual narrative beats and expectations, Chevalier soars. So does Harrison, whose cocky take on the young star is funny, flinty, and entirely justified.

There’s some fun to be had in the Brando-like flickers of Cage’s performance, but Polsky’s film is too practical and logic-driven to indulge them.

The onslaught of death is more relentless (and numbing) here, yes. But we don’t know these young men as well when they do meet their deaths, which makes the loss hurt just a little less.

Kendrick makes the case for why she belongs in more dramatic roles that allow her to shed her normally peppy usually cheery onscreen persona. We know how good she is, and we’d only love to see more.

Spare but poignant, "Monica" is a pensive family drama that’s loaded with the empty space of things left unsaid.

What Corbijn lacks in filmmaking panache here he makes up with strong journalistic chops: These interviews are great.

Even a movie as evocative and well-mounted as this one can’t help but feel like a shadow of a shadow. It traces the silhouette of “The Strange One” without ever achieving the emotionality it needs to feel her touch first-hand.

With its everyday setting and social interactions mixed with an obtrusive, innovative soundtrack (composed by the band Aunt Sister, along with Colin Self and Ben Babbit) and hyperactive visual style, The African Desperate straddles the line between shock and banality.

Though the original novels were written in the ’70s and ’80s, at times Confess, Fletch feels like a ’50s farce, with good old-fashioned misdirection and mistaken identities doing the leg work. Unlike James Bond, Fletch doesn’t need gadgets or fast cars to untangle this mystery, just a few Negronis and heaps of charisma. The formula works.

Like “Green Book,” The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a broad historical outing based on real people and real events, condensed down into an essence that can only be billed as “crowd-pleasing.” The trick this time: Farrelly seems far more aware of how he’s playing fast and loose with history to offer a zippy feature to a fractured world. Dare we say it: It works far better.

Panahi is a director who has always mingled fact and fiction, and here the distinction is more addled than ever, so that by the time the final credits roll it’s not exactly clear what was staged and what was real.