The virtues of The Aeronauts are real but they are almost exclusively visual. Despite the hard work of acclaimed actors in what sounds on paper like a strong story, the drama presented is determinedly earth-bound.

As Colewell sinks in, it reveals itself as the cinematic equivalent of a deep exhale after having attained peace within.

The ideas outpace the action in a movie that’s clearly been made with passion and intelligence, but without the kind of zip that this kind of story demands.

Varda’s playful tour of her life’s work in the movies is nothing less than an opportunity to get to know one of cinema’s greatest treasures.

The film effectively illustrates how the words “Most Likely to Succeed,” written under a yearbook photo can serve as both a cheering vote of confidence and an awfully daunting expectation.

Awash in Christopher Rejano’s neon-hued cinematography and punctuated by Nick Zinner’s eerie synth soundscapes, Reeder’s meandering tale is a fever dream of ideas.

It’s the rare movie that can take something as ancient as myth and use it to break your heart anew.

Watts is plenty convincing as someone well past the brink of a psychotic break, but The Wolf Hour takes too long to get properly cranked up. This movie is mostly just mood-setting, with much more going on in the background than the foreground.

Nothing on screen is as electrifying or surprising as it was on the page, as semi-fictionally enhanced as the writing was.

Taguchi and Lefferman approach it all less like journalists or vérité documentarians than friendly guests who want to be respectful yet connect to something deeper about pain, mourning and forward movement.

Zilbalodis’ storytelling is intriguing but oblique.

Unfortunately, as cobbled together by writer-director Patrea Patrick, those historical elements, in which grainy black-and-white archival footage is unconvincingly blended with repetitive reenactments, keep distracting from the main attraction, who is prominently featured in candid interviews conducted some years prior to his death in 2018.

Wolf’s strange, sad and finally exhilarating portrait is one of radical consumerism turned into a searchable legacy — the viewer as activist.

Although there are some tonal and plot issues, Gourmel’s directorial debut finely captures the dangerous energy of being a teen, especially one who struggles to deal with her life. Cavale is an imperfect film, but it’s evidence that Gourmel will be a filmmaker to watch.

Melody Makers never becomes more than a set of disconnected sound bites and archival photos, loosely assembled. At times the film feels like outtakes from another, more cohesive documentary about Melody Maker’s legacy.

The film poses half-formed thoughts about femininity through the lens of nationality, immigration, work, creativity and money, but ultimately the only profound thing it manages to say is on the nature of exploitation between subject and author. A fascinating albeit frustrating sketch on the topic.

Ly’s considerable skill aside, what makes Les Misérables such an immersive experience is the crackling sense of authenticity that is the film’s birthright.

Among the virtues of The Two Popes, a sparkling confection with a serious side, is that, given its prosaic title, its crowd-pleasing attributes come as pretty much of a surprise.

Don’t let its florid, mouthful of a title mislead you: The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is a film that’s as urgent and unpretentious as it is remarkable. It’s safe to say you haven’t seen too many movies quite like it.

More than anything, this is a film in love with its characters’ passions, a rich and effortlessly vibrant examination of the four March “little women” (so called by their father) and the ways, at least initially, they’re practically bursting with the innocent it’s-happening-right-now joy of being young and alive.

There are times when the nonstop visual momentum lends 1917 the feel of a virtual-reality installation, and others when the simulation of raw immediacy slips to reveal the calculated construct underneath.

This is, to be sure, a riotously funny movie — a priceless collection of puns, insults, one-liners and some of the best-timed barf gags this side of “Problem Child 2” — but it also treats the classical detective story with the seriousness and grandeur it deserves.

As the heroine of the chase thriller The Courier, Olga Kurylenko brings a lot of personal magnetism and awesome athleticism — and she needs to, because her director, Zackary Adler, has stuck her in an action movie that rarely moves.

The combination of Ruffalo’s quietly intense performance and Haynes’ direction illuminates both what drives him and what the cost can be.

Saint Cloud Hill is often dramatic, capturing tense standoffs between cops and vagrants. But this documentary is also filled with hope, and admiration for all those visionaries who see how neglected people and places can be put to good use.

Citizen K uses Khodorkovsky’s story as a way to guide us through the thickets of modern Russian history, a tangled, through-the-looking-glass world that the film surveys from the days of Boris Yeltsin in 1991 to today’s increasingly autocratic reign of Vladimir Putin

Delgado Aparicio’s reflective direction with a patient eye for lived-in behavior and kinetic symbolism bears artistically ripe fruit in an affectingly measured, near-perfect tour de force that demands serious attention.

Longinotto’s film is a rollicking depiction of the wonderfully self-possessed Battaglia.

That Kasbe, who also shot and co-edited, so firmly embedded himself in this distant, hardscrabble world results in a wealth of candid, you-are-there moments that highlight the complex intersection between the fraught state of wildlife preservation and the desperate scramble for human survival.

As with “The Better Angels,” Edwards’ new movie is magnificently impressionistic, with Colin Stetson’s rhythmic score and Jeff Bierman’s sun-dappled cinematography making Richie’s life seem as wondrous as it is hard.

It’s all a very believable, close-quarters theater of exhaustion and pain, with moments of lightness and warmth that only add to the difficulty of Mickey’s predicament, and all of it captured in alluring fixed images of depth and color by cinematographer Conor Murphy.

Although its storytelling is at times naggingly staid, its central characterizations teem with complexity and sensitivity, and for that, it’s a modest coming-of-age gem.

Lee coaxes moving performances from a young cast, and he beautifully captures the cultural nuances of the Bronx neighborhoods where his story is set. But he has a tough time finding much new to say with this tale of star-crossed lovers.

Mann, an emerging Latino filmmaker, exhibits signs of vocation for the craft that could lead to a more fruitful product some day. For now, what he serves is a tortuous trick with a confusingly dark punch line for an ending.

The Tower is an angry, ambitious and often moving film from an underrepresented group, but its story might have been told more effectively in live action.

Acceleration is like a quest story with all the cool complications and nifty narrow escapes removed.

More often than not, it feels like Dutoit uses shock and surrealism as a way to cover up for the movie’s plodding pace, crude blocking and nonsensical story. It’s admirable that she’s trying to defy convention here, but the result is something ultimately too befuddling to disturb.

Anyone interested in the complexities and controversies surrounding Australia and New Zealand’s involvement in Vietnam may find Danger Close disappointing. But the movie actually works OK as one long fight scene.

Fichtner’s love for upstate New York — and his interest in exploring the dynamic of longtime married couples — makes this movie easy to root for. But he doesn’t have much of a story, or much of a directorial eye. His passion project is admirable but minor.

In the end, there’s a point about black struggle alongside white dominance in The Cotton Club Encore that Coppola can’t get quite right because, ultimately, atmosphere won out over emotion.

What might have been a pertinent, evenhanded examination of the notion of free speech on today’s college campuses wastes little time in exposing an overwhelmingly right-leaning bias in the disappointingly sensationalistic agitprop that is No Safe Spaces.

Writer-director Frank Sabatella falls back on a few too many high school and monster movie clichés; but a good young cast and a strong sense of purpose compensate for most of the shortcomings.

Given how visually inventive and unusual the film’s first five minutes are, it’s disappointing that, by its last half hour, it essentially turns into one undistinguished chase scene after another. A heroine as strong as Reese deserves a more consistently exciting plot.

Souza and his cast explore a familiar milieu, and though they fall short of saying anything startlingly insightful about it, they do a fine job of making it feel real, and even vital.

There’s scarcely a minute of the amped-up action movie Line of Duty that isn’t absolutely ridiculous … and scarcely a minute that isn’t mindlessly entertaining.

The real strength of Feast of the Seven Fishes is the attention to detail Tinnell brings to the wintry West Virginia setting: from the blue chill of the outdoors to the welcoming bustle of the bars, kitchens and churches.

Remaining child-free is still a relatively taboo issue, and To Kid or Not to Kid deserves praise for exploring it so openly. The film wanders a bit in that exploration, lacking a structure that might make it more effective in having the conversation, but there’s value in broaching the topic.

A poorly produced experiment by writer-director Dae Hoon Kim, also the act’s lead singer on- and offscreen, the film’s mere existence baffles.

Some of the special effects are genuinely spectacular, but the narrative is often difficult to follow.

As pop culture narratives go, “Scandalous” wants to be as colorful and fun as a flip through of the rag itself at the supermarket. But in these truth-challenged times, the jovial tone of “Scandalous” all too often outweighs the judgmental.

Moving in its humanity and forceful in its pragmatism, the documentary feels like essential viewing, especially for decision makers with the power to enact similar initiatives.

You might say this magical, intoxicating piece of work does not have an ordinary bone in its body, and what a delight that turns out to be.

As dramatized, “The Warrior Queen” takes all the biopic shortcuts (narration, sped-up timeline, ham-fisted exposition) only to get to a depiction of the drumbeat to conflict that traffics in platitudes and clichés.

Calibrated with rare edge-of-your-seat pragmatism, Scott Z. Burns’ must-see procedural The Report diligently abides by the logical proposition that no end justifies premeditated immoral means as it scrutinizes how the CIA succumbed to post-9/11 paranoia and authorized sadistic abuses in the name of freedom.

Although 16 Bars doesn’t always effectively balance its powerful music element with its stirring personal profiles, the film remains a vital and involving portrait.

A barnburner of a motion picture that mainlines heart-in-mouth excitement and tug-at-the-heart emotion, Ford v Ferrari is made the way Hollywood used to make them, a glorious throwback that combines a smart modern sensibility with the best of traditional storytelling.

Like the first film, Frozen II is less a triumph of storytelling than of packaging. It bundles together a bunch of familiar, likable characters and a fresh list of bright, catchy songs, expertly written (by the returning duo of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) with an ear toward the Broadway showtunes they will one day inevitably become.

Sometimes an experiment feels like just an experiment, and that’s where the well-intentioned query The Hottest August ultimately lands.

Devotees will appreciate a different look at their fallen idol, while those who aren’t familiar with his music might find the film a bit long at nearly two hours but will see what the appeal was to those who loved him.

Perhaps the biggest bit of fakery involved is that for all its twistiness, The Good Liar’s plot, which can be more than a little frustrating, is as much of a liability as a benefit in a production where the characters turn out to be more involving than their story.

Instead of engaging what we get is a plodding, unfocused effort with few genuine thrills to speak of, the kind of movie that would play best on an airplane when you are eager to kill time.

With its cast of veteran child actors and its baked-in holiday warmth, Let It Snow has some baseline appeal. But like the formulaic Christmas movies that fill the Hallmark Channel this time of year, this film isn’t exactly a timeless classic. It’s more like something to put on in the background, while making cookies or wrapping presents.

Primal ends up being more exhausting than awesome.

Harrill is awfully good at ambivalence, at teasing out the feelings of people who are uncertain what they want and in no hurry to talk about it — a condition that afflicts more characters than we often see in American movies, independent or otherwise.

The Kingmaker may end on a queasy note of alarm about the Philippines’ future, but it also reminds us that we neglect the past at our peril.

Enhanced by playful animations, this nicely composed documentary serves as an engagingly honest profile of a driven man and his prodigious movement.

Buoyed by sensitive and ferocious ensemble turns, “Honey Boy” is a cinematic salve for a tortured soul, in many regards a powerful vehicle for its star-screenwriter-subject and a vibrant narrative debut for documentary and video artist Har’el.

This is a film that’s better off unseen despite its lovely visuals.

It’s hard not to be taken by these beautiful animals’ intelligence and devotion. More specifics about the dogs’ training, care and the costs involved would have been a plus. Otherwise, it’s a stirring portrait of war, duty, sacrifice and the love of a good dog.

Midway is so square, so old-school and old-fashioned, it almost feels avant-garde. Ambiguity is not its goal, nor is nihilism its motivating philosophy. It aims to celebrate heroism, sacrifice, determination and grit, and if you don’t like that it really does not care.

Fickman’s directing is uninspired at best, barely competent at worst. The framing and composition is dire; there’s no sense of rhythm or flow, and characters constantly appear and disappear at random. But it’s the writing that truly fails the film and characters.

Youmans’ poetic wade into rural black Louisiana, and the private realms of the faithful and faltering across three generations, is the kind of boldly off-road and unapologetically arty family drama that makes one sit up and take notice.

Though this film analysis has its interest, the most involving parts of “American Dharma” are not Bannon expounding on his political philosophy but his postmortem on the nuts and bolts of the successful campaign he helped run against Hillary Clinton.

While the rest of the film feels slightly juvenile, Quinn, who costarred in “Landline,” keeps Good Girls Get High afloat, with her wide-eyed combination of pathos and humor that vacillates from deadpan to goofy.

It’s the performances and well-earned character arcs that make Last Christmas a satisfying holiday flick worth giving your heart to.

As admirable as it is that “Klaus” in the overall isn’t a sugar-rush cartoon fix of wisecracks and mayhem, it’s also too lazily reliant on insults and insolence as its go-to mode for comedy. But what does work is the snowy, hilly luster of this bygone-era fairy tale environment, and the seasonal soul the filmmakers have tucked inside their invented history about children’s yearly haul.

Marriage Story is an emotionally lacerating experience, a nearly flawless elegy for a beautifully flawed couple, a broken-family classic to set beside “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Fanny and Alexander,” to name two films that Baumbach references visually here.

The storytelling’s smart, but the style’s tediously reverential and somber.

Eminence Hill isn’t that good, but as edgy westerns go, at least it’s on the right trail.

This picture is just one upsetting scene after another, which then only belatedly coalesce into a story — too late really to pay off any investment in those remarkable early moments.

Genre fans may be disappointed that Spell is more of an artful character sketch than a supernatural thriller. But by focusing on despair and regret, the movie is still pretty haunting.

Even at its most pulse-pounding, Bloody Marie remains locked on its sympathetically pathetic protagonist.

This is all fascinating in isolation, but transitions between stories and the experts’ insights never feel cohesive. The Portal also lacks the depth to fully engage — and convince — the viewer.

The tricky brilliance of Queen of Hearts is in how el-Toukhy uses a well-worn narrative — the unsuspecting, hidden passion with the appearance of erotic freedom — to unveil what in reality is a poisonous tale of abuse.

Motherless Brooklyn is the kind of knotty, ambitious, character-rich, politically conscious entertainment the studios so rarely get behind anymore, you can’t help wishing it were better.

Try as he might, Westmoreland can’t muster the same portraiture skills with a woman of mystery and brokenness that he’s shown with bold, expressive types (“Still Alice,” “Colette”).

With its blend of the archival, the interviewed, and modern-day footage, the first miracle of the film is that it never feels overstuffed with talking heads, or perfunctorily assembled, or rushed in covering its many glories across nearly a century. It’s a real beating-heart tribute, always streaked with feeling, whether joyous or poignant.

A searing, maddening, explosively brainy movie about the mutability and immutability of the self that, appropriately enough, never stops changing shape.

Adopt a Highway is a small film but mighty, thanks to Hawke’s reserved yet touching performance as a broken man learning to test his wings again, and Marshall-Green’s willingness to take Russell down unexpected paths.

In work that emphasizes the unstoppable power of a persuasive performance, Erivo not only convincingly conveys the strength of the celebrated abolitionist’s fierce personality, she creates her as a realistic, multi-sided character, a complex woman of formidable self-belief and not any kind of plaster saint.

Cox is a wonder to watch, and seeing him in this gentle, vulnerable role, also spouting folk tales and seductions in ancient Scottish Gaelic, is a treat. If only the rest of this sappy story stood up to his talents.

While the casually demonstrated prep work isn’t for the squeamish, the film’s aptly timed release should ensure viewers never consider their Thanksgiving turkey the same way again.

Although the film dutifully follows a familiar path to the courtroom, along the way, it serves as a solid demonstration of the fissures that can form when the bonds of friendship are tested against those of familial loyalty.

The codirectors, unconcerned with visual ornamentation, disseminate facts clearly in an undertaking that’s scholarly adept yet disappoints artistically.

If often sad and unsettling, the film is also livelier and less oppressive than it may sound thanks to the fine writing, deft direction by Adrian Noble, and the superb, if painful interplay between Redgrave and Spall.

There’s much to recommend here — emotionally, sociopolitically, musically — and it’s heartening to see greater openness to LGBTQ+ folks than outsiders might expect; compassion, grace and humor are in abundant supply.

Corny to its core but with enough charisma to avert total insufferableness, it’s a bubbly counteraction of a movie boasting a progressive conclusion.

Directors Mark Blane and Ben Mankoff bring a kinky sweetness to this oddball dramedy, but audience’s appetites for it will depend on their patience with its lead character.