The film absorbingly shuttles back and forth in time, tracking key moments in the trio’s lives that not only illuminate their pasts but effectively prepare us for who Matt, Nicole and Dane become, for better and worse, when the going gets tough. It adds up to a skillful kind of mosaic that pays powerful emotional dividends.

No Man’s Land comes out of the blue to comment memorably on the immigration crisis by simply giving human life its due. It’s wise and empathetic and worth a watch.

Imperfect as it is, this often-intuitive piece with a strong observational eye personifies the notion of the calm before the storm.

Rather than speaking to the moment coherently, the movie communicates its message in loud fits of dull screaming.

The result is a sharply assembled multiformat collage of memory and investigation that starts like a trip any of us might make into a what-made-him-tick past, but ends in the present with scattered feelings and tenuous bonds.

The brilliance of MLK/FBI lies in how effortlessly conversant it manages to be with the injustices of the present, without ever deviating from the injustices of the past.

Needless to say, the point of Ciorniciuc’s immersive, lively, warm and heartbreaking film is not to see the Enaches in the park as total paradise and their stab at urban living as some terrible detour into restrictiveness. Acasă, My Home is much more complicated, as any thorough portrait of our modern world is when progress is a balance between old and new ways and people like the Enaches find their notions of survival and independence challenged.

It’s easy enough to take this brisk documentary at face value and enjoy it for the well-shot curio that it is. And Oppenheim, just 24, is a talent to watch. Still, this movie shouldn’t preclude — and, who knows, may even inspire — a more definitive documentary about this debatable slice of “heaven.”

Everyone involved with Bloody Hell is doing their jobs with creativity and gusto, even if it’s hard to discern any larger point.

My Little Sister is frank and poignant. With a distinctive angle and the rawness of the cast’s first-rate performances, Chuat and Reymond elevate a premise that could have, in other hands, veered into the realm of the uninspired.

I’m wary in general of making any definitive pronouncements about Locked Down, whose charms and irritations (and it has its share of both) are largely a matter of timing and perspective.

The Marksman is more drama than thriller, but really more old-fashioned western than anything else — and a familiar one at that.

Even with a thinly drawn lead, Blizzard of Souls maintains an undeniably raw power as a small country’s coming-of-age story, told through a bright-eyed wannabe hero and forged in a maelstrom of death and disillusionment.

The suspension of disbelief that any celebrity impersonation requires may be multiplied fourfold here, but One Night in Miami ... turns that excess into a kind of economy. It moves, with light-fingered assurance, through sequences that transform from soulful arias into sustained duets, built around performances that are collaborative rather than imitative in nature.

It’s a profound, immersive lesson in empathy that should resonate with anyone interested in neurodiversity or simply seeking a more inclusive society.

Beautiful Something Left Behind, which won the documentary award at last year’s South by Southwest Film Festival when the film was called “An Elephant in the Room,” serves as a snapshot of kids in emotional crises, but sadly, little more.

In the bruising melodrama Pieces of a Woman, Vanessa Kirby does something remarkable and rare — or at least, she makes it seem rare. She brings sharp emotional definition to a character who, in the throes of a devastating loss, refuses to make her feelings easily readable, or consolable, for those around her.

Less a film about the iconic 17th century Dutch painter of the film’s title than it is an acute, often fascinating and occasionally puzzling rumination on aspects of the other titular word — “my.”

If not for Moretz’s expressive face, the film might stall out before it really gets rolling. It does get rolling though … and at maximum speed.

That silver-lining nature is also what keeps “Herself” from entirely distinguishing itself, too often leaving an admittedly powerful story about female fortitude to rely on schematics and clichés instead of the accumulated impact of its many well-played human details.

For all its flaws and missteps (more nose growing antics, please), the movie gets under your skin and holds interest, if only to find out not if, but how Pinocchio will reunite with his devoted Babbo (dad) and what the future might have in store for Geppetto’s lovingly crafted creation.

The grimly multitasking finale of Promising Young Woman feels both audacious and uncertain of itself, as Fennell tries to meld a cackle of delight and a blast of fury, with a lingering residue of anguish. It doesn’t all come together, though there’s an undeniable thrill in seeing it come apart.

Sweeping and flawlessly produced, Ashe’s epic works as an inherently refreshing entry in the canon of a genre designed to make us sigh with knowing elation or tear up in misery thinking about our own bygone rendezvous.

The film’s themes of extinction and survival are worthy of thoughtful treatment, something that eludes the ambitious movie as it succumbs to a schematic and sentimental telling that overreaches for a grand gesture and obscures the more meaningful ideas.

The lingering lesson of Soul, a lovely, imperfect movie about life’s lovely imperfections, is that every moment is worth living to the fullest, this one very much included.

Trainer was MASS MoCA’s founding director of development. Which means that in many ways she’s essentially telling a story about her friends — and often, with friends, it’s easier to avoid uncomfortable questions.

Despite or perhaps because of its lightly sketched premise, To the Ends of the Earth emerges as the director’s most gracefully assured work in a while, though his natural gift for building tension is still made subtly manifest.

Allowed surprising access to Sotudeh’s life, the film achieves stirring results if not an always fluid narrative.

While Fatale isn’t special, it’s better than most specimens of the genre due to its turns (again, I recommend skipping the trailer — which also makes it look like a differently made film, one using bolder cinematic techniques) and Swank’s exploration of her character.

Handsomely mounted if never exactly stirring, Louis van Beethoven honors the struggles that gnawed at brilliance but is itself little more than an elegantly tailored time-filler.

The movie’s final act takes too grim a turn, leading up to an ending that’s overly dark and disgusting. But even as it goes way over the top, “Hunter Hunter” stays focused on the fragility of the Mersaults, who want to live by their own rules but discover that nature has its own agenda.

There’s a lot to see and to think about here, all well-curated by a documentarian with a clear passion for his subject.

The real stars of this picture are the kids, who in many ways represent the century following the Century Cycle.

This quietly engaging documentary is also subtly political, showing with clear eyes how good people are trying to patch gaps in our society that shouldn’t be there in the the first place.

Even at its most scattered though, Finding Yingying is haunting, largely because it’s so personal. In a way, this feels like Shi reflecting on her own life by honoring someone who had hers cut short.

While Assassins may be somewhat unsatisfying as a true-crime story, it’s provocative as an examination of power.

Its beauty lies in its empathy — something currently in short supply and therefore very welcome in the stories we consume.

For roughly two-thirds of its running time, the big-screen video game adaptation Monster Hunter feels like an attempt to answer a question no one has asked: What would the “Jurassic Park” movies be like if they were drained of all sense of wonder? The film rallies toward the end with a few genuinely spectacular images, but even its best scenes fail to justify a tedious first hour.

Gadot and Pine give great pillow talk, and their easy screwball rhythms provide not just levity but ballast: They ground a movie in which time, for all its malleability, always feels like it’s slipping away.

If it’s an Ip Man adventure you’re looking for in which he’s a full-on superhero, this one exists. Just know you’re getting the B Team.

Greengrass can be as shrewd and skillful a storyteller as his hero, even if News of the World finally inspires something less than total belief.

The riveting and superbly acted Iranian drama, based on a real variety show, poses a moral crucible born out of a theocratic system that disfavors women amid the heightened tension of the on-camera spectacle.

For all the struggle that takes place in this movie, it is its quiet grace that you most remember. Minari shares its secrets with a whisper, and as it unfolds, you find yourself leaning into it, enraptured.

Director Deepa Mehta ambitiously juxtaposes a teenage love story with rising political tensions and ethnic violence in a film that is ultimately about thriving and sometimes just surviving as someone deemed “different.”

Mason does a lot to make the characters’ distanced interactions — mostly via video chat — seem natural and not like a gimmick. But the real-world resonances are actually fairly dull. Though not especially objectionable, Songbird may suffer a worse fate: being forgettable.

The result is something refined, naturalistic, specific, enigmatic and funny — not unlike an Eisenberg story, for one thing — but also akin to any trip one might make in a reflective yet anxious state of mind, with people you think you know but might be unsure about.

The movie is Barrymore’s, of course. Even after the initial jolt of seeing her as a cursing hellion and an ambitious hanger-on wears off, she does not disappoint.

Although the whole thing’s a bit of a jumble, the L.A.-set film becomes more immersive as we slowly adjust to its ambitious conceit and unique rhythms. A solid third-act twist helps square the preceding puzzle pieces and takes us out on a satisfying and moving note.

Writer-director John Patrick Shanley’s old-fashioned, at times transporting, romantic comedy Wild Mountain Thyme has a lot going for it, which makes it a shame that it’s not a wholly stronger film. That said, as a stress-free chance to take in the lush, gorgeously green Irish countryside, you could do worse.

A first-time performer without formal training, Betancourt is a true revelation and the most accomplished player in an impressive ensemble of nonactors.

Ordinary but sufficiently effective in its execution, the film’s most resonant segments are those where the upstanding son reflects on his torn family and a rotten system in which paroling alleged offenders even after so much time is seen as an affront to the toxic institutional loyalty to police.

Watching [Frahm] at work — and hearing the audience react whenever he hits an especially tricky stretch of moving between keyboards — is little like watching an athlete at the top of his game.

Like White’s music, this film is catchy and engaging, and it leaves its audience wondering why there isn’t more.

Billie isn’t just about the stories we tell about great artists. It’s also about why we tell them — and whether we can ever really get them right.

It’s a rousing and illuminating tribute to a brilliant musician who burned out quickly, but burned so brightly.

We are likely to be watching films on this subject for years to come, but for it’s sheer in-the-moment rawness, 76 Days is one that will stick in your consciousness for some time.

[A] beautiful, engrossing and potently subversive new crime thriller.

Another Round itself often moves and swings like a piece of music: Staccato in its rhythms and symphonic in structure, it’s awash in Scarlatti and Schubert, bar tunes and patriotic songs, and climaxes with a jubilant blast of Danish pop/R&B. It sings, and it sparkles.

Rothe and Shum Jr. have such nice, authentic chemistry that they should put it to good use again. Perhaps there’s a jaunty rom-com out there with their names on it.

There’s a much appreciated sweetness and innocence to what we witness, a truly diverse group of Americans selflessly helping one another, joy being their only compensation.

In its modest, quiet maturity, Luxor avoids the cliché of presenting the East as exotic or renewal as a catharsis — it’s the rare travel story that understands how sometimes being someplace else is as much about the “being” as it is the “someplace else.”

It’s smart and engaging once it gets going and presents a tense, fun labyrinth for viewers to navigate. One just wishes the cheese at the end were more rewarding.

There’s much to like about the road-trip comedy Half Brothers. It’s funny, smart, topical and even touching at times. But it’s hard to overcome the inescapable rot at its center.

Mayor proves a unique, involving and edifying experience.

The highlight of the movie by far is the relaxed, easy chemistry between McCarthy and Cannavale.

An unremarkable if far from unpleasant sequel.

The new David Bowie biopic Stardust could be marketed as “Bowie as you’ve never seen him,” but it feels like “Bowie as no one ever saw him.”

A finely acted, often deeply emotional period piece that, despite its share of strong moments, stacks the deck too much for its own dramatic good.

The conventionality of Happiest Season might be the most radical thing about it. The movie boasts the usual surface delights and yuletide setpieces: It has competitive ice skating and a white-elephant-gift party, shticky running gags and acres of throw-pillow-heavy production design. It also has two lead performances of remarkable grown-up complexity and moment-to-moment coherence.

The stories here are of triumph and tragedy, from those who’ve grown up in a society where they felt free to be themselves to those who’ve been reshaping their faces and bodies since long before it was socially acceptable.

This intimate slice-of-life doubles as a haunting meditation on the meaning of “identity” to someone who has long felt discouraged from expressing every part of who she is.

Dylan allows his interviewees to refute some of the more slanderous and/or ill-informed accusations hurled at Soros; but his general approach is to focus more on the accomplishments than the backlash. He’s made a documentary that’s nobly informative, but — given the juicy subject — a tad dry.

Even more than describing her cause, the affecting I Am Greta introduces us to the person herself, digging deep into why she’s pushing herself so hard, to do what our planet’s adults apparently won’t.

The movie as a whole tends to circle the same points, becoming less bracing the longer it runs. Still, for the most part, Coded Bias takes something huge and scary and breaks it down into small, easily understood morality tales, featuring everyday heroes fighting to save our future.

Intellectually intoxicating and stylistically sumptuous, this romantic oddity about the passage of time (for an individual and for a country) evokes the grand elegance of a Wong Kar-wai epic infused with mature droplets akin to anime like “Belladonna of Sadness” or “Millennium Actress.”

Filmed by the great Romanian cinematographer and frequent Loznitsa collaborator Oleg Mutu in long, patient takes that intensify each sequence’s brittle contrasts, Donbass coalesces into an unflinching dispatch from a state of embattlement both region-specific and 21st century-pervasive.

The horrors of Collective are sickeningly specific; the implications, as suggested by its comprehensive indictment of a title, are universal.

Boseman, evincing the same integrity he clung to his entire career, refuses to soft-pedal the destination. He imparts to this seething, shattered man the gift of a broken soul, riven by anger and trauma, and makes him all the more human for it. His final moments of screen time are among his darkest, and also his finest.

Think Guy Maddin as the long-lost seventh Python. But it’s also one of the more vivid and amusing excursions in a year marked by unclassifiable realities and the need for diverting art.

By zooming in and out of his protagonist’s consciousness, Marder casts aside any pretense of omniscience; he empathizes, but he also knows when to detach. Ruben’s journey is a privilege to witness, but it’s one he’ll ultimately have to walk alone.

Given that “Ghosts” runs a compact 80 minutes, there was room to further explore the many tentacles of the film’s intricate, delicate topic. Still, this is vital territory that will open less initiated viewers’ eyes to the deep commitment and dramatic lengths it can take for many gay couples to become parents.

Chloe’s determination and smarts make Run much more enjoyable to watch than the vast majority of specimens of the genre. She credibly thinks her way through problems. When things are dire, she ratchets up her courage — and Allen sells us on it all.

In Embattled, the human side feels explored, as if the film could have been made without the MMA scenes and still been a worthwhile watch. But it does have those adrenaline-injecting fights, so … all the better.

It is the type of stirring entertainment that delivers both the thrill of the moment and the kind of sophisticated ideas that can lead to discussion and even debate long after viewing.

Laden with bittersweet sentiment, the film packs a muted but lasting emotional wallop.

With sci-fi touches and sanctimonious eroticism, the incisive satire intently takes on the influence of evangelical Christianity on the state — namely the far-right movement that elected populist Jair Bolsonaro.

Fatman isn’t a lump of coal. More like a fruitcake your neighbor dropped off in early December that’s left on the counter through the new year, its red and green cherries hardening into buckshot before being hauled out to the curb with the Christmas tree.

With every line and look, Loren both reminds us of her legacy playing tenacious women and paints Rosa’s distinctive fire and grief like an artisan. It’s a compact master class in the movie star’s craft: exquisitely tailored glamour and deft characterization working seamlessly in tandem.

Fascinating stuff is at play here amid the heady theorizing and arcane references (panspermia, anyone?). But it’s blunted by Herzog’s clipped, Bavarian-tinged narration that’s by turns logy, deadpan and florid. Maybe his trademark voice-overs have simply worked better in the past.

Not all of the ancillary characters and their stories are fully developed in the film’s quick 92 minutes, but Dating Amber convincingly channels the angst and awkwardness that can be a part of teenagers’ struggles with their identity.

Polak’s film is an unflinching exploration of beauty, identity, sex and self in the wake of a life-changing event.

A masterpiece of bromantic woes, the movie subdues toxic masculinity and makes a case for men’s often dismissed necessity for platonic companionship.

The new Margot Robbie vehicle Dreamland seems to be about legends, the price of escape, maybe unreliable narrators — but ends up not saying much about any of them.

The ending that seems meant to be wistful, even magical, reads instead as appalling, lamentable, gloomy, however you want to say “the opposite of wondrous and happy.”

Freaky has a lighthearted tone and a bouncy energy that keeps it watchable, even though writer-director Christopher Landon and his co-writer, Michael Kennedy, don’t do as much as they should have with a killer idea.

If tension was the filmmakers’ aim, they decisively miss — especially if it was meant to come from the puzzlingly casual sniper situation. Any possibility of buying into the story’s reality is defused by the soldiers being so dang gabby, and loudly so.

It’s an insightful, deeply felt film that lets us in on a personal evolution.

Directed by Ron Howard and denuded of any meaningful politics to speak of, Hillbilly Elegy is an extended Oscar-clip montage in search of a larger purpose, an unwieldy slop bucket of door-smashing, child-slapping, husband-immolating histrionics.