Despite the film’s introductory text, most of Calle Malaga could happen in any city in the world. Without Maura’s performance, there’d be no specificity to speak of.

Varley’s homages and nods can’t help save The Astronaut from a sudden tonal shift that takes away what makes the first half of the film interesting and brings it into redundant — and honestly, quite baffling — territory.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is miscalculated as a romance and a fantasy, and while I’m loath to blame a craftsman as intelligent as Kogonada entirely for the outcome, he did, after all, agree to direct this lousy script. A big, bold, beautiful bore indeed.

It’s a playful movie in form and content, one that rarely takes itself too seriously, and as such, it can’t help but skate by as a pleasurable ride, whether through allowing Hoffman, Woodall and Liu space to trade quips, or through snappy editing when entering a new location.

In the end, Silent Friend is a film of contradictions, profound, complex, and beautiful, but occasionally interminably boring.

A propulsive (and hilarious) comedy that gradually melts into a dreamlike (and not so hilarious) modern fable, this hyper-stylized whatsit might be at its best when shooting fish in a barrel, but Gavras’ film is much less interested in poking fun at easy targets than it is in leveraging its characters — terrorist and hostage alike — towards unformed ideas about truth, performance, and the cleansing power of death in the face of a society so ego-driven that it’s impossible to tell the difference between heroes and clowns.

Rose of Nevada does not abandon or anonymize any of Jenkin’s hallmark quirks, and is thus unlikely to convert any agnostics. But for the faithful and the curious, here is a work of hypnotically accomplished form and legitimate depth.

Apatow shoots her mother with obvious affection, especially in her scenes opposite Dora. Yet, it’s the dudes who steal the show. Feldman and Hoffman have that magnetic chemistry.

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 director does an excellent job of nailing the small details required to translate Shakespeare’s verse into the realism of film.

The result is a light, low-key crowdpleaser that occasionally steps into more harrowing territory before neatly spinning right out of it.

Even with a ridiculously fun premise and more than a few twists, the film never fully regains its initial suspense after the bomb explodes relatively early in the film.

The deterministic narrative drive of “The Fence” ultimately proves to be the film’s undoing. At some point, the film eventually goes through the motions until its inevitable downbeat climax, at which point its dramatic shortcomings become difficult to ignore.

Ferreira is a believable and sympathetic protagonist, bringing a vulnerability to Grace that makes the viewer root for her even as she blows up her life for reasons even she doesn’t seem to understand.

For all its filmic flourishes, this a sweet film at its heart, one interested in the darker side of childhood, not just the fears we have as children, but the anger as well.

Charlie Harper is the kind of film whose impact will always be the strongest as you’re walking out of the theater. The lack of originality and occasional on-the-nose dialogue cancel out most of its rewatch value, but it’s hard not to be affected in the moment by the sincerity of its storytelling and the chemistry between Robinson and Jones.

Gallner and Weaving’s erotic chemistry, which begins at a simmer but quickly reaches a boil, helps smooth out the lumpier patches in Carolina Caroline that comprise the film’s middle section.

It’s fun enough at first, thanks to McAvoy’s energetic direction and strong turns from its young stars.

This is a film of rare joy and spirit, and one that deserves to be celebrated as both a feminist fairytale and a manifesto that will inspire a myriad of future stories.

If there’s any issue with “Lost in the Jungle,” it might be that there’s too little of it. At 90 minutes, the film is quick and efficient, but it leaves little time to explore more about the collaboration between these two search parties, or the unsteady relationship between the region’s indigenous communities and the narco-guerrilla units ruling over them.

The Long Walk doesn’t tell you or ask you anything new if you’re feeling pent up with rage by American leadership these days, but the film’s grim commitment to the bit is a rarity for a studio movie: There’s no holding of your hand on this long walk, nor does it read you a bedtime story and tuck you in at the end.

For a franchise that’s so frenzied and kinetic in general, “Infinity Castle” effectively sets the tone for what’s to come, promising diehard fans the spectacle they’ve been craving which newcomers will also find enjoyable, if somewhat confusing at times.

This is a movie that would probably be really funny if you were high. The laughs are mostly dry and deadpan, depending on your closeness to and fondness for the material — in other words, very much in line with the mockumentary world of producer Christopher Guest.

The Sun Rises On Us All soon becomes the disheartening but affecting story of a pair of broken people for whom salvation is simply unaffordable in a morally expensive world.

Hypnotic from start to finish and unexpectedly hopeful for a movie with so much arsenic in its blood, Islands knows that even the greatest of vacations can never compete with the rewards of fostering a reality you actually want to return to when it’s over.

Real or fake, finished or not, a genre exercise or a full-hearted statement of purpose, the things we create have an impact on the world that no market could ever be able to measure. And, for better or worse, the same is true of the people who are brave enough to create them.

Like a firecracker with a long fuse, Normal builds up, burns fast, makes a big noise, and then it’s gone.

In both feel and form, Nuremberg is either classic or staid, depending on your stomach for such films. All of it is necessary. None of it is new.