It’s a tale of profound isolation and thrilling connection, alert and alive and gorgeously sensual even as every moment carries a bittersweet reminder of time’s inexorable passage.

Álvarez and Sayagues have delivered a blood-spattered potboiler that’s no work of genius but is much better than average.

Respect is fine, fitfully rousing, even respectable. And sometimes, it’s something more.

It’s a ‘70s paranoia movie in the best sense. And this is no hackneyed tribute; it’s complex, murky, propulsive.

Because Heder — whose previous work includes the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” and “Glow” and feature “Tallulah” — is so adept at establishing the emotional bonds between the film’s close-knit family, the presence of all these conventions doesn’t matter.

Reynolds is a bit too glib and smug to buy as the romantic lead. It’s actually a relief that the movie salvages the romance by relegating it to the game world. But the whole film remains a bit too glib and smug anyway.

At the simplest level, the stories of trauma and loss told in In the Same Breath exist as a necessary corrective.

With every added account of shameful contrition, the realization that this issue exists very much in the present tense weighs heavy on the viewer.

Never Gonna Snow Again, Poland’s submission for the 2021 international film Oscar, is an intriguing, hypnotic, often beautiful but ultimately inconclusive dramedy.

It’s also worth remembering that someone as complex as Alvin Ailey isn’t going to be captured in any one film. Ailey is, therefore, best absorbed as an elegant, impressionistic primer, a chance to bask in his mastery of movement and dance, as framed by those near enough to him to know what it took out of him to gift it to the world.

Narrative bumps and all, The Evening Hour gives Ettinger a full stage to parade his unassuming virtuosity.

A little too broad at times, Swan Song smartly balances its excesses with small, sweet moments that leave an impression on the audience just as significant as Pat’s imprint on Sandusky.

Quibbles aside, Whirlybird proves a memorably evocative time capsule of 1980s and ’90s Los Angeles and the people who made — and captured — the news, as well as a stirring portrait of regret.

Vivo takes off with a cute kinkajou, some good music and some interesting visuals, but ultimately doesn’t stick the landing.

Whether snarling behind shades in uniform or off hours in elegant dresswear, Chen is a rule-breaking hoot, never more so than when she’s gearing up to heap abuse on a near-tears little girl in order to break her.

Kennebeck’s handling of the labyrinthine narrative is commendable, particularly since the realigning she needs to do in the final act requires a deft touch, like changing the flavor of a dish already prepped, spiced and cooked.

Written by Scott Wascha, the script is simultaneously crude, rude and whip-smart. Wexler‘s direction is a rapid-fire attack of highly stylized skirmishes and aestheticized action.

With Sabaya, we witness documentary filmmaking at its boldest; we find hope in seeing not only the triumphs of the Yazidi Home Center but also what the medium can do.

Good intentions aside, this sluggish film never soars beyond its innate contrivances and frequently flat, knee-jerk humor.

This is a messy, riotous film worthy of Lunch herself, and just like Lunch, it isn’t asking to be liked.

The plot chugs along with no surprises, but that’s beside the point. While it’s not exactly a laugh riot, the film’s humor tends to land.

What does it mean to be a knight, or even just to be human? It isn’t an easy question, and The Green Knight, in taking it seriously, isn’t always an easy film. But by the time Gawain reaches his journey’s end, in as moving and majestically sustained a passage of pure cinema as I’ve seen this year, the moral arc of his journey has snapped into undeniable focus.

“All the Streets” feels niche to a fault.

Through an economy of exposition, Eyimofe, (translated as “This is My Desire”) delivers a timeless, universal portrait of human resilience while establishing Arie and Chuko as a welcome new addition to the filmmaking brood.

Psychotic, battle-weary and devoid of compassion as they may be, these merry professional killers aren’t entirely dead inside. By the same token, Gunn’s insouciant swagger isn’t entirely devoid of warmth or sentimentality, and the bonds of kinship that emerge between comrades — warm little cracks in the movie’s nihilistic facade — can’t help but sneak their way into your own affections.

Jungle Cruise, despite its more-than-capable leads and its much-vaunted attention to detail and verisimilitude, never feels transporting in the way that even mediocre blockbusters were once able to muster. It’s less an expedition than a simulation, a dispatch from a wild yet oddly pristine world where seeing is never close to believing.

That dance of performance and being — mindsets committed artists don’t always manage smoothly — is what makes Val an appealing, at times even touching hodgepodge of the actor’s journey.

The core question Settlers asks is who “deserves” to occupy this inhospitable planet. To Rockefeller’s credit, he doesn’t offer any pat answers.

Maybe this picture is just a string of wacky ideas, with no deeper meaning. But for those who take the ride, it’s an hour and 17 minutes they’re unlikely to forget.

What audiences are likely to come away with most of all is a pondering over how these many sides could coexist in the same person, perhaps wondering what they think of him — and finding it difficult to arrive at an answer.

Death and grief may exist in the soul of “D-Man in the Waters” but “Can You Bring It” is full of vitality and energy, a testament to the power of art in the face of tragedy.

Taylor plays Dawn’s slide into this mental health crisis beautifully, and with conviction, and Owen is stunning as the high-achieving, yet fragile Melanie, who seeks oblivion and solace in a risky boyfriend (Ian Nelson).

[The] story never fully comes into focus. You catch glimpses of it in between the busy, mechanical lurchings of the plot, in the swirling movement of a camera pan and the ardent commitment of the actors.

Old grabs you right away, starts losing you at the half-hour mark, pulls you back in with some agreeably bonkers set-pieces, drags you through a tedious closing stretch and finally leaves you in an oddly charitable mood: Say, that wasn’t so bad, except when it was terrible.

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins ends up having enough good-time action sequences to make it worth the popcorn money.

Artfulness and restraint can be admirable qualities in a filmmaker, but rage and despair, when channeled with this much force and purpose, can be undeniably effective substitutes.

Even Hansen-Løve’s characteristically light, unassuming touch feels like a playful rejoinder to the weight of the Bergman mystique, a refusal to let him dictate the terms of the argument.

Nobody here actually calls Julie the worst person in the world (that insult is reserved for another character entirely), but you can imagine her thinking it about herself as she considers the mistakes she’s made and the people she’s hurt. But over the course of this charming, wistful, ineffably tender movie, you also see her learn to embrace the possibility of good in herself and in every precious, unhurried moment. It’s time well spent.

Nearly every scene of this richly novelistic movie — which won the festival’s screenplay prize — teems with ideas about grief and betrayal, the nature of acting, the possibility (and impossibility) of catharsis through art, and the simple bliss of watching lights and landscapes fly past your car window.

If Memoria is a gorgeous reassertion of form, it is also a bold excursion into new territory.

While Serebrennikov may be banned from leaving Russia, his imagination, as well as his cast and crew, have been left gratifyingly free to roam: In its form-bending construction and surreal imagery, Petrov’s Flu plays like the work of an artist thrillingly unbound.

How It Ends works both as an alternative to the usual, race-against-time or humanity-sucks apocalypse dramas, and as a personal exploration of settling affairs — and it’s a comedy.

How to Deter a Robber is a mildly likable dark comedy that never finds a steady groove. It’s neither dark enough nor comic enough; and it never really settles on whether it wants to be a breezy spoof of home-invasion thrillers or an earnest story about teenagers realizing they need to grow up in a hurry.

Although Salomé’s lower-key approach to the material occasionally creates the sense that moments of ripe comedy have been left untapped, as well as a low-key ending that might have benefited from a final twist, there’s plenty to appreciate.

This is a compelling, often profound film, one that creatively surmounts its inherent limitations and shines a vital and heartfelt light on being transgender.

Seen then as radical, her views are in fact rather reasonable and still applicable. That said, the dense paragraphs in silent title cards prove strenuous. Since her inferences are immensely relevant, one can only wish that the format were more accessible.

Fusing exquisitely shot color 16mm footage from 1964 of the team’s training sessions, drone-like music and splices of animation, we get a delirious sense of what these committed women endured six out of seven days a week.

Pig is a rich character study, marked by several riveting Cage monologues.

Consider the sequel curse broken: Fear Street Part 3: 1666 satisfyingly wraps up Netflix’s R.L. Stine movie trilogy with deepened themes, more fully realized characters and enjoyable twists that lend dimension to the arching story.

The movie is just a big, empty declaration of corporate dominance, a whirling CGI tornado that — like a much stupider Tasmanian Devil — ingests, barely processes and then promptly regurgitates everything in its path. It’s Upchuck Jones.

For two hours it places Bourdain’s voice alongside the voices of those who knew him, as if they were still able to converse on the same spiritual plane. There’s beauty and solace in that illusion, even if the movie can’t — and maybe shouldn’t — begin to answer the unbearably sad question that haunts every frame.

It’s more of an action gallery, not a blood-pumping story accelerated by its flights of fury.

Casanova, Last Love, which looks at the famed 18th century philanderer’s infatuation with the supposed “one true love of his life,” is a dull and uninvolving portrait that, despite its sumptuous settings and costumes, never takes flight.

One of the more delightful surprises of “The Souvenir Part II” is that it’s both a sadder, heavier film than its predecessor and a looser, funnier one.

It never quite comes together — the decades-spanning connective tissue somehow feels both overstated and thin — but Husson’s skill with actors, among them Colin Firth, Olivia Colman, Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù and the great Glenda Jackson, yields undeniable dividends.

A taut, strikingly beautiful drama.

The experience of watching it produces readily identifiable flavors and associations: It’s a gentle-toned family drama and a moody futuristic fable, with a faint techno-paranoid aroma, a melancholy mouthfeel and a lingering aftertaste of existential unease.

McCarthy pushes the thriller narrative in directions more extreme and harrowing than plausible, bringing Bill and Allison’s story to an unexpected point of reckoning.

The sunny, diverse musical delivers sugary messages of self-affirmation with the shine of a lollipop and the stickiness of a half-eaten sucker. It’s a bold attempt, putting a neo-realist spotlight on a bevvy of first-time and nascent actors, but presented under an obnoxious treacle banner.

In the terms it sets at the start, Dachra is mostly but not entirely successful. It’s not overtly political (though an argument could be made that it’s partly about how Tunisia has changed since 2011’s civil unrest), and it is pretty gripping.

Clear-eyed, compassionate and compelling, the documentary “The Price of Freedom” efficiently unpacks and debunks the myths it posits the National Rifle Assn. of America has deployed to further its all-guns-all-the-time agenda and foster a culture war.

Fear Street Part 2: 1978 is no classic, but it’s a clear improvement on “1994,” with more tension and excitement (and generous gore).

Running Against the Wind is purportedly based on real events, and it’s sloppy and sort of random enough to be true.

It’s hard not to feel stirred, even moved, by the sheer improbable fact of this picture’s existence: Moment by moment, you’re held by its loony flights of lyricism and gorgeous images (shot by Caroline Champetier), and by the mix of sincerity, irony and Sondheimian dissonance that animates every sung-through line.

What Gaines does not miss is Gregory’s spirit, and its effect — amusing, bemusing, inspiring — on the world around him.

Pribar’s humane and heartbreaking drama is beautifully photographed and performed; a loving, warm, and even sexy film about death and dying that is teeming with life.

The Tomorrow War tries its hand at throwback ‘90s action glory, back when cinematic adventures could be everything for everybody. Instead, this post-apocalyptic combat flick lacks the intensity to reach the 1.21 gigawatts worth of power needed to emblazon our screens in escapist flair.

Kid Candidate isn’t about winning as much as a reinforcement of the notion that apathy is the death of democracy, a lesson best learned, as Pedigo comes to understand, when you’re young.

Zola’s authorship and Bravo’s respect for her storytelling make Zola a wholly original experience. It’s a brutally honest account of sex work, often dangerous and infrequently sexy, punctuated with Zola’s one-liners, observations and recounting of laugh-out-loud moments.

DeMonaco and Gout cook up such delicious comeuppance that you can’t help but indulge in the pleasure of revenge, even if the terrors and pleasures are incredibly fraught.

The result is a ride that feels smooth and bumpy in all the right places. You are pulled along by the seductive glide of Soderbergh’s filmmaking, by the jazzy riffs of David Holmes’ score and the suavity of the camerawork, only to be jolted into high alertness by the nasty, bloody surprises in Solomon’s script.

It’s more of the same, for better or worse, but likely with enough bells and whistles — especially those new characters — to please younger fans.

The dialogue can be clunky and easy to guess in advance, and there’s an unfortunate reliance on jump scares. The thing to remember is this is all part of a larger story, and without spoiling anything, that story does get significantly more interesting.

Like the young Natasha herself, Black Widow feels as though it’s been programmed into submission — and scarcely allowed to live and breathe before it’s suddenly over.

Though affecting and humbly breathtaking, Sun Children doesn’t bargain in condescending pity.

The film lacks slam-bang, signature action sequences that would make it more memorable.

Its imperfections and its beauties are inextricable from each other, and also from the sad, inspiring real-life story it has to tell.

Fathom presumably gets its name from both the watery depths and the attempt to understand these mysterious aquatic mammals, but it doesn’t delve deeply enough into either the science or the scientists.

Where the documentary succeeds most plangently is in its fan testimonials of the album’s impact and Blige’s emotional recollections of the songs’ roots.

Sisters on Track is a lovely, immersive look into the lives of three Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, girls.

Against the Current is a gem. It’s gorgeous in many ways.

What Lin restores in this mostly solid entry (which he co-wrote with Daniel Casey, both stepping in for longtime series screenwriter Chris Morgan) is a sense of emotional continuity.

Lee (who directed episodes of “Broad City”) and Glazer swerve from comedy to horror, using the genre as a vehicle for social commentary about modern motherhood, misogyny and manipulation. False Positive is Glazer’s “Get Out,” which is a phrase you want to scream at her character, Lucy, over and over again.

You may know Thompson as a member of the Roots and as the musical director for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” If you’ve read his book, “Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove,” you’re aware that he’s also inquisitive and a first-rate music geek, making him the perfect person to crate-dig through the musical and cultural history documented in this film. His respect and enthusiasm for the material jumps off the screen.

A Crime on the Bayou never explodes with fury. But that doesn’t mean you won’t feel enraged while taking in the maddening series of systematic wrongs committed against Sobol and Duncan.

Even in a film that makes no bones about presenting its subject in a flattering, softening light, this 89-year-old stage and screen legend has refreshingly few qualms about saying exactly what she thinks.

What keeps Les Nôtres from being effective, however, is that it rarely makes the transition from coolly observed case study to compellingly messy, resonant human drama.

Credit Wilson and Sheen . . . Nothing that happens in 12 Mighty Orphans is unexpected, but these two pros still react with infectious wonder as the messages they send to their students take root and then sprout.

Vreeland’s documentary serves as both a wonderfully evocative time capsule and a candid tribute to a pair of artistic legends.

Summer of 85 has the matter-of-fact sensuality and youthful focus of so many of Ozon’s earlier films, but it’s also a startlingly specific greatest-hits compilation from across the director’s tirelessly productive career.

Though Logelin’s story of loss and perseverance is touching, there isn’t really anything deep or convincing about grief or parenting in Fatherhood, making this promising tale something more middling and a touch disappointing.

Luca is about the thrill and the difficulty of living transparently — and the consolations that friendship, kindness and decency can provide against the forces of ignorance and violence.

If you care about Sparks, this movie is heaven, a long-overdue answer to the group’s 1994 song “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way.’” (With this doc, Ron and Russell have to feel, at least a little bit, “like Sinatra felt.”) If you don’t know about Sparks, Wright has created an introduction that gleefully demolishes any barrier you might think you have toward their music.

Although the constant shifts between contemporary Toronto and ‘90s New York can at times cause confusion, the film remains firmly rooted in Williams’ quietly powerful, laser-focused performance.

With its human relations a bit dicey, the movie lives or dies by the cuteness of its CG animals. Fortunately, it probably will never stop hitting the cute button inside us simply to see rabbits scurry-hopping with earnest little faces. The cinematic technology’s growth is remarkable.

[Barden] becomes the vessel to express Riegel’s quiet cri de coeur, which is not just yearning to escape one’s own circumstances but the absolute necessity of it.

It’s an evocative film that creeps up on you in unpredictably tender ways, so prepare to shed a tear or two — or three.

The script doesn’t reincarnate so much as it recycles, drawing freely on the nested realities of “Inception,” the free-your-mind metaphysics of “The Matrix” and the amnesiac-assassin revelations of the Jason Bourne movies. Maybe watch one of those tonight instead.