While the Nick Peet-directed film has its cheerfully outrageous moments . . . even mild shock value in the time of an epidemic might not be just what the doctor ordered.

Heavy-handed messaging that mimics a morally didactic PSA drowns the proficiently shot movie in long tirades more noticeable for their vociferousness than for actually delving into any revealing specifics.

The movie is disturbingly reckless, needlessly brutal and deeply homophobic. Later attempts to wedge in a few nice moments between James and Kareem fall flat.

A compelling and instructive look at the political practice of gerrymandering. It’s also an infuriating watch on several levels, which is entirely the point of this call-to-action portrait.

From the occasional flashy camera angles to a soundtrack peppered with deep-cut R&B songs, this movie slots right into some well-worn grooves. And yet it mostly works, thanks to an ace cast and a story that springs a few surprises.

Justine recalls the golden era of the conscientious, well-acted movie of the week: a slice of life built around hardships, but without exploiting them.

As a study in atmospheric seclusion, The Other Lamb is beautifully crafted enough to hold your attention, but you can’t shake the feeling that Selah’s next chapter — and Cassidy’s — might well be the more interesting movie.

Like a fan excitedly showing off their record collection, the documentary Streetlight Harmonies flips through its history of doo-wop telling a tale both tuneful and essential in the development of rhythm & blues, rock and roll and civil rights.

The movie, which begins streaming Friday on Disney+, emerges a generally charming, sometimes cloying exercise in wildlife anthropomorphism.

What results is an emotional appeal that highlights a grave problem but doesn’t give the viewer the scientific, factual foundation to be completely convinced. The film also doesn’t offer solutions.

This is cinema that pushes beyond the medium’s usual representational modes, beyond the observational qualities of neorealism or the interior states of psychological drama. Complex histories and unspoken emotions are distilled into a series of carefully composed tableaus, each one proceeding with slow, ceremonial deliberation.

Writer-director Penny . . . has crafted a thoroughly workable and well-informed vehicle, providing a nurturing atmosphere for the unhurried dramatic developments and uniformly gracious performances.

Tape might be based on a true story but it still feels disingenuous, both in its bleakest moments and in those meant to inspire solidarity. There’s clumsiness present in the filmmaking, with issues that deserve so much better.

Regardless of how far audience members are from their own post-high school, pre-college summer like these teens, there’s still truth and plenty of laughter here that feels specific to their experience yet universal to anyone who’s had a BFF.

One suspects Inside the Rain is a labor of love. One wishes its makers would have let us in enough to love it as well.

Finnegan offers a vision of domesticity as a soul-sucking grind, done for the benefit of malevolent overlords. His film chills the mind more than the spine.

A tense and gripping thriller inspired by yet another true-life, World War II-era tale of courage and resolve against one of history’s most unthinkable evils.

More than most real-life stories about marginalized individuals overcoming daunting odds and deep-seated prejudices, “Crip Camp” manages to be at once sweetly affirming and breezily irreverent.

Formidable from a technical standpoint, The Platform thrives on effectively grotesque production design and ghastly special effects that shock and disgust with purpose.

Its chill, holistic view of the clinic and its canine patients will likely appeal to pet lovers and wellness devotees alike, although the allergic and the skeptics might find their minds wandering toward its end.

Although the production establishes the requisite lived-in, small town feel, it has also chosen to take its dramatic cue from the seemingly sedated gaze of its lugubrious, aliens-obsessed protagonist, whom Le Gros portrays with a remarkable economy of expended energy.

Dosed works best as a purely anecdotal, personal chronicle of a friend’s struggle with addiction therapies. It is not recommended as a substitute for scientific conclusions.

While not everything connects in the movie, Hooking Up is saved by the efforts of Snow and Richardson. They make a charming couple, even if the film itself has less allure.

Bolt’s ethically engaging, easy-to-grasp and artfully conceived film covers a wide range of areas that stir us to think about benefits and costs.

A magnificent cast only partially compensates for the fizzling narrative.

A briny Northeastern noir powered by women with secrets, Blow the Man Down is a pleasantly spiky slinging of small-town sin that should prove to be eminently companionable viewing for these sequestered, streamable times.

Despite the noble ambitions of writer-director Sally Potter (“Orlando, “The Party”), The Roads Not Taken proves a morose and baffling drama; a painful, snail’s-paced 85 minutes with little payoff.

Though “Virus” could have lived without the presence of director Goldberg as an on-camera through-line, it is at its best in presenting strong and vivid examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions.

Filmmaker Herbig and his team prove to be especially adept at contriving situations where anything anyone does causes fear, anxiety, stress and worry, leaving everyone, very much including the audience, existing on the knife’s edge of unremitting tension.

Those looking for inspiration will find it without looking too hard, but those who don’t attend church regularly will be as bored as they would be by a sermon.

Though the film eventually gets to where it needs to go, it feels scattered, stumbling over true crime tropes on the way.

Despite Tanović’s efforts to depict these crimes and their aftermath as aestheticized abstractions, there’s something depressingly mundane about the way the murders and the investigation play out.

In its extreme length and precise technique, it’s decidedly not for everybody. But although it is at times distractingly opaque, occasionally Heise’s family’s words, juxtaposed with his sounds and images, crystallize into something singularly wise about the nexus of place, history and trauma.

It is funny and fast paced, with an outstanding cast, and Orley modulates the tone well, conveying both the fun and the danger of being young, impulsive and poorly supervised.

Unfortunately, this Australian horse racing film remains a standard underdog narrative that fails to rouse the audience from their seats, despite the best efforts from its cast and a few charming moments.

The story is struck from a familiar template: inactive protagonist, dead parent, worries about popularity, a regional competition looming. But the film distinguishes itself from there, largely due to the direction of “Fast Color’s” Julia Hart.

Despite its penetrating handheld camerawork (by Arnau Valls Colomer) and mind-altering sound design, Lost Transmissions never quite manages to tune out the lingering element of self-indulgence.

A Kid from Coney Island proves to be as surprising and affecting as the unorthodox career trajectory of its subject, basketball player Stephon Marbury.

The Hunt lacks the courage of its presumed convictions, displaying no more than a determination to make as much cash as possible by exploiting national divisions less covetous individuals are despairing of rather than monetizing.

Adapted apparently quite loosely from Atkins’ Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, Spenser Confidential has ended up with a genially amusing script expertly tailored to its actors by Sean O’Keefe and the canny veteran Brian Helgeland. And, as smartly cast by the veteran Sheila Jaffe, Spenser Confidential gets spot on performances from a variety of actors, from household names including Alan Arkin to other less celebrated but undeniably talented folks.

The film never really delves beyond the level of observation and the simplistic explanations it does offer are not very satisfying; cloaking possible mental illness in religious zealotry simply clouds whatever the directors meant to convey.

This procedural quality to Escape From Pretoria — combined with an accomplished cast that includes Ian Hart as the anti-apartheid prisoner most opposed to Jenkin’s plan — adds some oomph to a movie that features limited sets, a simple story and none of the Hollywood polish of The Shawshank Redemption.

The fact that Laverty and Loach take their cues from research and interviews keeps the tension visceral, not artificially heightened. More than usual for these evergreen chroniclers of everyday strife, their politics contextualizes the drama, and vice versa. In their domestic gut-punch of a story, they’ve exposed our new feudalism in a way that feels honest and blisteringly human.

The seductively photographed and well-acted production simply can’t gloss over the inconsistencies in the Scott B. Smith-credited adaptation, which pile up higher than all those discarded cigarette butts.

The movie, although truthful, moving and, at times, profound does more “telling” than “showing” and could have used a more visually commanding approach.

A sweet, funny and thoroughly winning romantic comedy that’s a kind of a bi-curious take on When Harry Met Sally for the Millennial crowd — or anyone else looking for some brainy, banter-rific fun.

For good stretches, The Banker can be as dryly engineered as a loan application, but the galvanizing story it tells — like a last stand of rebel ingenuity before the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made discrimination unlawful — is a solid interest-earner.

Smart, ambitious and impressive, Run This Town is the best kind of feature directing debut, a film that entertains and makes you look forward to what will come next.

Anchored by delicately moving performances from O’Sullivan and the amazing Williams, Saint Frances is a quietly riveting film that slowly but surely draws you in.

Swallow is difficult viewing at times, but it’s psychologically rich and always feels genuine, even in its gorgeously stylized approach to the interior life of its complex protagonist.

Like those cheeky genre-splicing comedies that came before it, the Ahern-Loughman collaboration doesn’t merely goose the boundary between charming and outrageous, it gleefully tramples it into oblivion.

Both parts of The Dark Red are hit-and-miss. The film’s premise is engaging, regardless of whether Bush and Byrne are using it as a foundation for a moody chamber piece or for a Kill Bill-esque thriller. But the movie suffers from its low budget, which makes its overall scope too limited to suit Sybil’s sprawling story.

Muscularly directed by Gavin O’Connor, whose facility with emotional dramas with sports connections goes as far back as 2004’s Miracle, The Way Back is elevated and transformed by one of Ben Affleck’s strongest and most convincing performances.

Not every note rings true, but this breezy pop song of a movie is mostly fun while it lasts.

A mediocre screenplay renders the movie far less thought-provoking than it could be. By-the-numbers jump scares, perplexing speeches and a glaring score further hurt its impact.

The movie leans too heavily on quirk to express character and we are left as annoyed at Timmy’s antics as the adults in his life or the kids in his class (save the one girl who finds him “fascinating”).

Suffice to say the plot’s every unfolding development is a deft and delightful surprise, and it may be the most suspenseful and entertaining demonstration yet of Reichardt’s rigorous attention to detail — her patient, genuine and remarkably cinematic fascination with the workings of process and minutiae.

Though it’s not without humor, All the Bright Places takes teens’ emotions seriously and will move romantics of any age — in possibly unexpected ways.

Using all his resources, Hedlund has created Mike Burden whole on screen in all his tormented awkwardness. Confused and conflicted, incapable of doing the right thing without recidivism and backsliding, this is hardly a conventional hero. Siding with the angels can seem like a snap in films, but Burden has the grace to show how difficult and wrenching a choice that can be.

This is a blistering drama, intense, disturbing and inescapably thought-provoking, a film that gets its power from a merging of potent opposites.

This isn’t an easy movie, which is to say its meanings and motives have no interest in announcing themselves. But neither is it especially difficult, and if you let it, Schanelec’s gentle, supple stream of images and their attendant associations will bear you dreamily aloft. The meanings, if not necessarily the motives, will follow.

It digs deeply into youth homelessness, as well as its roots in the foster care system, LGBTQ discrimination and sex trafficking.

Howden, with an able assist from editors Luke Haigh and Zaz Montana, keeps this anarchic gore fest moving at breakneck speed, but it’s a brash, crass, often mind-numbing ride.

Your wandering attention may begin to fixate on other deficiencies: the flimsiness of the narrative scaffolding, the thinness of the characterizations and the filmmakers’ tendency to mistake platitudes for poetry.

Coalesces into a thoughtful, pointed, at times deceptively profound look at how the rich get richer and, well, you know what happens to the poor.

It makes for one of the more alive portraits of artists in the moment you’re likely to see, a thumping gallery show forged from survival, and assembled out of passion and need.

When the focus is on how he made Playboy pop on the page — as backed by archival footage, interviews with Paul and those who worked for him, plus plenty of examples from the issues — director Jennifer Hou Kwong’s movie compels as a portrait of unwavering dedication to aesthetics and breakout creativity.

Blood on Her Name runs out of juicy “So now what’s” by its final stretch. But Lind is terrific throughout; and it’s a welcome change-of-pace to see a story about lawbreakers where no one involved is any kind of psychopath or super-crook. They’re all just plain folks, leading ordinary lives … and making terrible mistakes.

Where Disappearance at Clifton Hill really excels is in exploring the visual and sonic textures of a decaying resort, and in hailing the plucky resourcefulness of a broken woman, trying to piece her memories — and maybe herself — back together.

A gutter ball of a sophomoric, white middle-age male sex farce fantasy that quickly wears out an already tenuous welcome.

Perhaps the slickly made documentary overstates the cultural impact of a little-seen and widely disliked film. However, it earns points for scraping at the surface of something rarely discussed in film fandom — homosexuality in horror.

The film is well-intentioned and rooted in harrowing real-life stories. Unfortunately, it’s made in the style of British television, with cinematic clichés that telegraph outcomes. The heavy-handed use of music, in particular, is intrusive.

The previous feature, “Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us” (2018), offered an original and relevant story. ”Mewtwo Strikes Back” feels like poké-business as usual.

It’s elegant and diabolically poised, a familiar story expertly retooled for an era of tech-bro sociopathy and #MeToo outrage, but also graced with an insistently human pulse. Studio brand extensions rarely feel this intimate, this personally unnerving.

Director Kenji Nagasaki pulls out all the stops in the climactic battle, serving up a dazzling array of explosions, lightning, punches, kicks, storm clouds and more explosions. The brilliant palette infuses the sequence with a striking visual beauty, even if the result is a foregone conclusion.

Less would have been considerably more in the case of Tread, a needlessly overstuffed documentary chronicling the path that led to a disgruntled muffler repair shop owner going on a remarkable 2004 rampage in a heavily armored bulldozer through the streets of Granby, Colo.

Onward is a touching, lovingly crafted oddity — a movie that acknowledges its borrowed elements at the outset and then proceeds to reinvigorate them with tried-and-true Pixar virtues: sly wit, dazzling invention and a delicacy of feeling that approaches the sublime.

Like its predecessor, “The Boy II” is a fairly corny and stodgy spook-show, with a few good jolts and one genuinely creepy killer toy.

The gags are often better in theory than practice.

The movie, filmed over several start-and-stop years (credited director Eric Etebari completed the shoot) contains lots of weak dialogue, heavy-handed faith talk, awkward voiceovers, thin characterizations and illogical plot turns. Any questions?

“Giraffes” benefits not only from Dagg’s charismatic presence but also from excerpts of letters she wrote during her first trip to Africa (read by Tatiana Maslany) and 16-millimeter color film she shot back in the day.

It is a measure of the singularity of the Band’s story, and the way their music remains such a tonic to experience, that “Brothers” still demands to be seen.

Emma partisans, fortunately, never say die, and a very satisfying new version of Austen’s sprightly novel has been directed in high style by Autumn de Wilde.

Directed with bristling immediacy by Rashaad Ernesto Green (“Gun Hill Road”), Premature could be classified as a love story, a coming-of-age drama, a cautionary tale (the title offers a clue) and a portrait of young black women and men finding their way in contemporary New York. But it also strikes me as a movie about the uses and occasional uselessness of language, with stop-and-go verbal cadences that seem particularly attentive to what its characters say and don’t say.

De Clercq’s clear directorial talent gives the film the illusion of respectability, but it can’t remove the sweaty sheen of smarm.

Contemplative, analytical and troubling, this is a nature film refracted through a historical trauma, a compilation of visual wonders that doubles as an act of remembrance.

Cunningham’s beguiling openness, coupled with as many estate-sanctioned photographs from his collection as Bozek can squeeze into the brisk running time, easily overcome a general roughness of assembly.

Even when the picture eludes your narrative grasp, its estimable craft — evident in the shadows of Yves Cape’s photography and the moody ambience of the score, which Bonello composed himself — exerts its own hypnotic pull. The director’s talent, as ever, is predicated on an avoidance of the obvious.

Treading topical waters with an incisive flair, de Jong offers no didactic salvation or pessimistic prospects. Goldie’s sole assurance is to trudge one rocky step at a time, and that’s all any of us can do.

While the template may be familiar, the nicely balanced blend of comedy and pathos still hits the mark.

Those anticipating something more traditionally calibrated will likely be disappointed with the film’s muted thrills and noncommittal denouement, but the elegantly composed film nevertheless makes for a creepy, contemplative entry in the Cristofer canon.

The filmmakers give Hinako weaknesses and doubts as well as strengths and talents. She’s a more complex, fully realized character than many heroines in recent American features.

The movie can only be classified as something truly terrible, escaping any other categorization that would make it resemble an actual film.

Ultimately, just as the events tread a fine line between fantasy and reality, so does the film teeter precipitously between promise and pretense.

The Photograph is a movie of seductive, slow-savored pleasures.

Because Manville and Neeson are such potent performers, they are expert at playing out all the implications of what this experience is like.

Downhill is a misfire, unable to show either of its stars to their best advantage. Neither the actors nor the film can decide how to balance humor with drama and that is the heart of the problem.

The story is rescued from its somewhat formulaic groove by the vividness of its milieu and the vitality of the performances.