While it gets mileage out of its two fine lead performances and the story has deep emotional roots for the filmmakers, its journey fails to capture the imagination.

In Swan Song, [Ali] lives in both drama and sci-fi worlds as he crafts a man coming to grips simultaneously with his own mortality and the dawn of something new for humanity.

Mosley feels well-intentioned, though its lessons are unclear, especially considering its ending. And more humor and more fully developed characters could have enlivened the familiar hero’s journey template.

As a crash course in extreme mountain climbing, the triumph of the human spirit, love of country and family, and those driven, fearless souls who choose to reach above the clouds, “14 Peaks” is a uniquely stirring journey.

For all “No Way Home’s” vertiginous heights and precipitous drops, few things here shake you more fully than the anguished closeups of Holland, in which Peter’s genetically modified strength — and his all-too-human vulnerability — are on tear-soaked, grime-smudged display.

As can be expected from a film intended for children, Even Mice Belong in Heaven is a pretty straightforward story that touches on a lot of familiar lessons. But the magic is in the way that it’s told.

Satisfyingly emotional without ever feeling sensationalized.

Michell, working off a jaunty script by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, keeps the action bubbling along with little room to ponder the stranger-than-fiction improbability of the steal, one that, with the plethora of security measures and protocols in place nowadays, feels quaint — though in a fun, nostalgic way.

In White on White, what permeates is a merited sense of dread, by design too starkly impenetrable on emotional grounds, but direct in its fierce thematic intent.

In part because of the depth of Seydoux’s performance, the film becomes less an allegory of a nation and more a gripping character study, a portrait of a mask of personal and professional regard slowly slipping away.

Red Rocket is both a laser-focused character study and a scrappy, scrupulously observed portrait of a tight-knit community.

Ultimately, if Miller and Pollard don’t paint a particularly warts-and-all portrait of Ashe, they don’t set him up as some sort of saint either: just a certain man of a certain era with an amazing talent. It’s a fitting tribute.

You don’t have to be into football to appreciate the high-stakes struggle in National Champions.

Sometimes this movie is unsettling; sometimes it’s funny. Mostly it’s a strange and fascinating inquiry into the nature of belief, which takes viewers far away from where it begins and then leaves it to them to find their way back.

Flee is a work of great empathy for the refugee experience, bringing audiences close up to the fears of violence and repression that drove Nawabi’s family from their home and the abuse and apathy he describes that they faced once they left.

Nothing about the foolishness and outrageousness of what the movie shows us — no matter how virtuosically sliced and diced by McKay’s characteristically jittery editor, Hank Corwin — can really compete with the horrors of our real-world American idiocracy.

It’s an effective if reductive conceit, which more or less describes Being the Ricardos, one of those pleasantly tidy biographical fantasias that aim to compress something remarkable — a life, a career, a cultural phenomenon — into the space of one revealing week.

Disconcerting in its justified bluntness, Myers’ brisk film is more monologue than movie, but undeniably essential in jolting everyone out of the collective complacency induced by the false perception of progress for all in this country.

Verhoeven clearly wants us to laugh; the movie’s a gas. But he doesn’t mind if we think too — about the earthy realities of the body, the higher abstractions of the soul and all the thornily ambiguous ways they do and don’t connect.

The movie has its share of disturbing visuals, but it’s the profound emotional toll taken on the Braudes and their fellow Jews that packs the biggest punch.

Taking a cue from its taciturn protagonist, I Was a Simple Man prefers to let its soulful poetic imagery do the bulk of the talking.

The thin stereotypes in Silent Night are weirdly uninteresting to observe in this ultimate pressure situation.

As snapshots go of bright kids facing the next step, Try Harder! is winning enough, but considering how much more there is to follow up on, here’s hoping it’s only part one.

This film offers a flurry of provocations and up-to-the-minute cultural references that never fully connect. It keeps coming to the brink of saying something clearly and furiously about sex, power and class before retreating back to the simpler path of raw shock value.

If Harjo wants to put all these remarkable artists in one place, to let them tell their stories and to show their work, why not? Just like creativity, acts of thoughtful curation have enduring value.

Spielberg’s movie may be rougher, grittier, more lived-in and, in terms of cultural representation, more truthful than its 1961 cinematic incarnation. But it is also more unabashedly classical, more radiantly stylized, than just about anything a major American studio has released in years.

Encounter has its moments, but it suffers from multiple storytelling approaches that don’t mesh.

Sometimes Wolf is slight, relying on mystery and metaphor to build suspense, but Biancheri’s sense of narrative adventure imbues this survivalist picture with more than uneasiness. She gives it tenderness.

The first hour’s parade of oddballs and exaggerated vignettes under the bright Neapolitan pop of Daria D’Antonio’s cinematography can be broad to a fault, but there’s an honest perspective at work about what lands in an awkward boy’s memory.

The most entrancingly feel-good movie of the year.

The film’s beautifully painted mountains are particularly striking, and the climbing sequences are among its standouts. Live-action has nothing on the way these scenes convey both the majestic scale of the peaks and the technical skill necessary to attempt these summits (as well as the physical toll involved).

It’s a surprise contender for Best Christmas Movie of the last several years.

Fascinatingly muddled.

Is The Humans a haunted-house movie? Maybe; Karam is not above unleashing a good jump scare or two. But for all the creeping dread he summons here through sheer formal concentration, the nature of the horror he’s addressing turns out to be much harder to pin down.

The Unforgivable transcends its own self-importance and becomes an experience that is often rattling, challenging and haunting.

It’s a simple but resonant tale, but Encanto is a charmed and charming film that just might offer a bit of healing too.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” may reward longtime fans of the video games by returning to the series’ origins, but others will find themselves wanting to leave town, much like the movie’s characters.

There’s something fitting, even respectful, about the sheer number of movie stars that have been pressed into service here. Throwing subtlety to the wind with wild gesticulations and exaggerated Italian accents, they may flirt with and sometimes tumble headlong into stereotype, but they do so with a verve and commitment that, for the better part of 2½ hours, disarms judgment and suspends disbelief.

Observational documentaries are by nature intrusive, but Procession, miraculously, never feels that way — you sense humane engagement, not imposition.

Shouting in all-caps about unions and shortages of food, Călinescu symbolizes the power of individuals that dare to discern from their own personal trenches, regardless of how insignificant they may seem.

When JR turns his gaze toward a person and pastes their image on a wall, he’s inviting others not just to participate in this project but also to look their way, to pay attention to someone or something by seeing it differently in the world. It takes a village, but all they need is paper and glue.

This is a movie at which some will shrug and some will love. It’s a spiritually probing, deeply personal, stubbornly idiosyncratic work of art. It’s an Abel Ferrara film.

The film takes its cues from Elwy’s remarkable performance as Cadi, who is at once seductive and terrifying.

If its rueful, midlife nostalgia doesn’t carry quite the same current of vibrant, urgent empathy as “20th Century Women” or “Beginners,” the small, polished pebbles of wisdom it unearths are still a pleasure to observe as they’re sent skimming across the surface of a delicate, compassionate film.

What we see on-screen is both rewardingly jagged and uncommonly thoughtful, an engrossing family drama that doubles as a sharp rethink of how a family operates within the overlapping, often overbearing spheres of race, class, sports and celebrity.

Viscerally disturbing and achingly humanistic.

This is a compelling and inspiring portrait of a singular life journey.

The story is thematically muddy at best and problematic at worst in the ways it handles Sparkle’s newfound independence and the horrors she experiences. Despite these issues, the arresting images of She Paradise and the distinctive voice of its director mark Cozier as a filmmaker to watch.

Some 40 years in the making, the remarkable Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is a gorgeously rendered, unexpectedly moving appraisal of the life and craft of one of the best-loved literary voices of the late 20th century.

Despite its omissions, the film proves a rich and satisfying meal and should be embraced by Chaplin fans and completists.

Warmth and intelligence — and a strong sense of both fun and feminism — make Malik’s film worth a watch, and rising star Ali is worth keeping an eye on as well.

The nimble, naturalistic performers are uniformly terrific.

Rarely has a sequel been this listless, this creatively bankrupt, or this unaware of the charm and appeal of its predecessors. Rarely has a film been this craven in appeasing an imaginary audience by mimicking what came before it and refusing to challenge itself in terms of dreaming up a new world, crafting new characters, or fashioning new stakes.

In stripping genre ornamentation away to get to what brings people together in stark, lonely, and in this case, mighty cold circumstances, Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen (“The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki”) has achieved something genuinely unlikely, and quietly renewing about what a love story can be.

More of a broad overview than an exhaustive history, “No Straight Lines” is nevertheless an enjoyable and informative look at the careers of Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, Mary Wings, Rupert Kinnard and Jennifer Camper and their influence on queer comics and the queer comics community.

Campion handles the story with puzzle-box precision, but the power of this movie goes beyond its clockwork plotting and startling, deeply satisfying denouement.

The superb fight choreography and committed execution by the two women in the ring (real-life UFC champ Valentina Shevchenko is convincing as Jackie’s opponent), informed by Berry’s skill as an actor conveying Jackie’s desperation, make the final fight thrilling and cringe-inducing — in a good way.

The result is a film made of loosely connected scenes, the best ones floating between observation and storytelling, not unlike a dream.

The dire theme of innocent children being blamed for “the sins of the father” — and the attendant social and political turbulence they face — as efforts are made to find these youngsters a safe and loving place in the world receives a vital spotlight here.

With Licorice Pizza [Anderson] has sifted through a haze of wildly embellished tales and half-forgotten memories — and pieced together something that feels more concrete, more achingly, tangibly real, than just about any American movie this year.

A uniquely compelling, exhaustively researched documentary by Israeli filmmaker Maya Sarfaty that never settles for pat answers.

Though its seriousness of purpose and visuals of trees whole and hewn keep Peepal Tree intermittently compelling, one wishes the more pointed audaciousness of Kanadé’s last film, the stylish acting-school melodrama “CRD,” were in effect here to rev the urgency of what is clearly a deeply personal crusade for the filmmaker.

Miranda and screenwriter Steven Levenson (“Dear Evan Hansen”) have made an inspired jumble, a surprisingly graceful Franken-Steinway of a movie.

Although Goulet’s film is ultimately better at scene-setting than storytelling, the world she builds is a remarkably detailed, revealing reflection of our own.

Like any good sunset, the beauty to be found in “Cusp” is in between the darkness and the light, in the almost imperceptible shades of gray. Most important, it’s found in the bonds the girls have with each other.

An achingly poignant testament to the unwavering strength of parental and filial bonds.

There is a little whimsy, or perhaps a touch of blarney, in “Belfast,” though you can sense Branagh hard at work, straining to keep every impulse toward cutesiness in check. The tone is stringently measured.

Hive is occasionally bumpy, but it’s the rough terrain of a raw narrative — the out-of-place music cue or awkward dream snippet doesn’t disrupt the social realist momentum, which is at its best when focused on the grit of how moving forward is also moving on.

Involving as the film is, it is decidedly short on propulsion and significant conflict.

Low-key and likable, the Nassers’ Gaza Mon Amour is a movie with no use for sentimentality but in which the timing of a simple kindness, a nervous smile or a cathartic laugh means everything. Which it often can.

As breezy primers go in a life that’s as full as it gets, this collection of the archival and the anecdotal, with the occasional preparing of dishes as mouth-watering interludes, is decidedly more feast than fast food.

While 7 Prisoners doesn’t pack many surprises, it is remarkably well drawn, featuring gripping performances and a vividly squalid setting.

A mishmash of star power, bleakness, CGI and the cutes, it will on the one hand remind you of how charmingly adaptive Hanks can be, while the same time proving just how problematic the end of the world is as a scenario for schematic heart-tugging.

Ghastly humor coated in serrated-edged commentary on corrosive power creeps in through Jordan’s yearnings for a world before online accountability.

The movie is nothing if not unnervingly timely.

The result is as poetic as it is insightful as the Yanomamis’ current experience coexists onscreen with their mythology.

The absorbing romantic drama Cicada feels as real as it gets.

A depressing reminder of what Hollywood considers “original” material these days, “Red Notice” plays one of those self-consciously convoluted, ultimately derivative long cons that strain so hard to seem breezily insouciant they wind up wearing you out. By the end, it’s the clichés that warrant a rest.

The royal family’s travails have long been likened to that of a soap opera, but Spencer, even as it conjures the emotional extravagance of a first-rate melodrama, refuses to be hemmed in. It’s a historical fantasia, a claustrophobic thriller and a dark comedy of manners, all poised on a knife’s edge between tabloid trash and high art.

As messy (and even physical) as the family’s exchanges can get, Benguigui always has the sisters’ inherent solidarity in mind. But it’s still a jarring mix of tones to contend with, and the many narrative strands — which include a trip to Algeria — aren’t all satisfactorily resolved.

Beyond Glenn-Copeland’s magnetic onstage presence and rich, sonorous, still-flawless vocals, it’s the candid moments in which he dances to the music, riffs on spontaneous beats in between sets and shares meals on the sidewalk with his younger bandmates that leave a hopeful grace note on Glenn-Copeland’s legacy.

With its numerous supporting characters, many unfortunately embodied through mannered acting, Steel’s picture spins around Levine’s superb turn of tender sensuality and suppressed rage seeking catharsis in the body of another.

Utilizing such overt stylization of a high-concept approach, Violet is a bit of a one-trick pony. But Bateman, as well as Munn, manage to pull it off in a feature-length format, and Violet’s eventual hard-earned redemption is deeply satisfying.

Schweighöfer does have a memorable screen presence, and this film is well made, as formulaic pictures so often are. But this one never fully justifies its existence, or its expense. It’s a big movie with skimpy ideas.

Attica is a jarring, engrossing, and enraging reminder of how those in power will lie, humiliate, kill and cover up to retain it, and the documentary is one of the year’s best.

If it sounds critical to say that the resolution of the murder at the center of the narrative is the least interesting aspect of the movie’s intrigue, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

For a film so grounded in the real-life issue, the movie doesn’t work to make its characters feel human or its world feel real, blunting the emotional impact it could have had.

This visual and aural feast does have a stumble or two on the dance floor, though in the 11th hour, Wright manages to right the ship, with an assist from the ever-reliable Taylor-Joy.

This dark and dreary monster movie is indeed horrific, but it’s also undoubtedly a downer, for more reasons than likely intended.

[Hall] picks up on their contrasting energies, the way Negga eagerly draws the camera’s gaze while Thompson quietly deflects it. But what’s most striking about Hall’s direction is her visual acuity, her gift for composing images that are gorgeous, disorienting and strangely intuitive.

You walk out in the depressing realization that you’ve just seen one of the more interesting movies Marvel will ever make, and hopefully the least interesting one Chloé Zhao will ever make.

Sun-drenched Luzzu is an unaffected triumph with a simmering power, the type of deceivingly familiar film that helps us sail into a place and a lifestyle most of us ignore but that are made vividly compelling in the hand of a new storyteller with classically honed sensibilities.

Jacquot pays tribute to his mentor and friend, by adapting Suzanna Andler less as the movie you want than as an intimate walk along that precipice of desire or nothingness.

Becoming Cousteau may not be as deep a journey as some would hope, but for having to chart a lot of years, it hits its points about passion, fame and activism smartly, even movingly.

Ron’s Gone Wrong dots its primer on friendship with chase scenes and warnings about Big Tech, with only mixed success.

Like the real-life events that inspired it, Broadcast Signal Intrusion is most thrilling when it’s at its vaguest — like a juicy rumor that’s impossible to confirm.

Surely the truth (or something close to it) of who these men and women were must have been more fascinating, and more worth mythologizing, than what transpires in this strained mashup.

Tottering unsteadily between mining Wain’s vast repertoire of eccentricities for comedy and slathering them in pathos, the movie winds up so busily whimsical it forgets to actually be about anything. If you don’t know who Louis Wain was before you see it, you’ll only be fractionally more illuminated, and possibly a good deal more irritated, after.