This increasingly convoluted tale moves quickly but goes nowhere.

The cast is talented — and occasionally funny — but they run out of fertile material quickly.

It’s a little like a post-apocalyptic survivalist thriller, crossed with Lynn Ramsay’s impressionistic masterpiece “Morvern Callar,” crossed with a Radiohead video. Not all of those pieces fit together. But they combine into something strikingly original.

Halston places the designer at the top of fashion’s most influential artists, but it avoids hagiography, showing his ego and addiction. Unfortunately, just as Halston did in life, this documentary avoids delving deeply into the mysterious man.

An exceptional tribute.

As Gamal, himself raised in a leper colony, knowingly navigates the uncomfortable glares he encounters along the way, Yomeddine (Arabic for “judgment day”) takes an affecting path toward belonging and acceptance.

It’s as absorbing as a caper, as maddening as a broken romance, and as thought-provoking as an impassioned editorial.

As the true purpose of the quest becomes clearer, Huang raises the film’s stakes, aiming for a profundity that he can’t quite hit — though he takes a solid shot.

There’s just not enough of that good De Palma stuff here. The lush Pino Donaggio score and some well-choreographed chase sequences only hint at the movie Domino could’ve been, if a great artist had been granted access to his full palette.

Ultimately, Ferrara makes a convincing case for being Pasolini’s biographical caretaker, one troublemaker looking after another’s legacy, albeit with a more serious, thoughtful approach than a transgressive one.

Amazingly, somehow, an overstuffed Godzilla movie feels scant.

Spencer succeeds much more than the movie itself does; even when the writing and the filmmaking fail her, which is annoyingly often, she’s awfully good at using her beatific smile and tough-talking charm to elicit your nervous chuckles.

Always Be My Maybe is pleasant without being particularly powerful, appealing if not exactly transformative.

A numbingly obtuse experience, a feat of maddeningly indulgent non-storytelling hiding behind a symphony of bared midriffs and jiggling derrières. ... Kechiche doesn’t just sell out his characters, his story and his collaborators; he sells out his own talent.

Perfect also shows that striking images alone aren’t always enough. Alcazar and cinematographer Matthias Koenigswieser have concocted some fine illustrations. Now all they need is some decent text.

Amanda Crew and Adam Brody give bracingly realistic performances as a grief-stricken couple in “Isabelle,” a supernatural thriller ultimately too sensationalistic to make proper use of the stars’ excellent work.

Even with solid supporting performances by Morgan Freeman, Robert Patrick and Peter Stormare, this movie’s just … well, sad. Twenty-five years ago, this exact cast and creative team might have turned this material into something to rival “Harper” or “Body Heat.” Now, they all seem slower and lazier: as committed to making a taut mystery as they are to mastering a Texas drawl.

There’s nothing especially original about “Assimilate.” But director John Murlowski and a talented young cast — including Joel Courtney, Calum Worthy and Andi Matichak as the plucky high schoolers trying to save their town — do at least keep the action lively and unpretentious.

Avengement features a good balance of colorfully profane British gangster-speak and intense, explicitly gory punch-outs.

With its overly arch dialogue and characterizations, airless gentility and forced period trappings it seems that the harder writer-producer Karen R. Hurd and director Barry Andersson strive for authenticity — on what’s clearly a deeply limited budget — the less convincing the film feels. The often stodgy acting doesn’t help.

This is largely a well-made movie from the technical perspective, but a stronger hand in the editing room would’ve made for a more watchable one.

By keeping things short, sweet and dutifully tuneful, Echo in the Canyon is like the doc version of one of the period’s sonic nuggets, leaving you with a peace/love/understanding high and a desire to break out the vinyl for more of the same.

Both riveting character study and experiential glimpse at the Africa-to-Europe sex slave trade, Austrian-Iranian filmmaker Sudabeh Mortezai’s “Joy” builds its reservoir of sadness with pulsing efficiency.

Parasite begins in exhilaration and ends in devastation, but the triumph of the movie is that it fully lives and breathes at every moment, even when you might find yourself struggling to exhale.

What begins as a realist snapshot of the global migrant crisis gradually expands into an aching story of love, loss and the return of the repressed.

Listening to the film’s gorgeous renderings will make you a believer.

As the legal proceedings progress, Carracedo and Bahar wisely keep their probing camera trained on the passionate faces of their subjects, allowing their stirring testimonies to take the spotlight.

It is when Paounov reveals Christo’s leonine qualities that Walking on Water achieves a rare authenticity.

[An] entertaining, if straightforward documentary.

Booksmart leaves you feeling unaccountably hopeful for the state of humanity — and the state of American screen comedy too.

Funny Story is only mildly humorous, but it’s watchable thanks to Glave’s game performance that makes him likable despite his foibles.

There is much that is finely wrought here as a tactile slice of women’s history told in careful observances, hidden textures and the sights and sounds of nature unbound.

It’s a lot of fun — and often quite funny — while it lasts, though I could have used less gunplay and more whistling, an element that, more than anything else here, speaks to Porumboiu’s gift for deadpan absurdity.

Like a more showily virtuosic version of his countryman Jia Zhangke (who worked with Liao in his own recent gangster thriller “Ash Is Purest White”), Diao uses the conventions of genre to illuminate a world where crime, corruption, rapid social flux and soul-crushing inequality are inextricably intertwined.

There’s some truly nasty stuff here — both violence-wise and in its outlook on evil — but it still somehow manages to be fun amid all the carnage.

Like leading lady Williams, the exterior of The Perfection is flawless, covering up the darkness that lies beneath. The wild ride in store is both supremely disturbing and unpredictable. But rendered with such care, skill and sheer glee — it’s utterly divine.

No one really needs this mostly middling, fitfully funny and never unpleasant movie. And the movie itself seems cheerfully aware of that fact as it deftly lifts lines, beats, characters and songs from its 1992 predecessor, every so often punching up the comedy, wrinkling the plot and injecting a dash of politically corrective subtext.

Despite the strange but winning chemistry between Danner and Lithgow, the script ultimately fails the fascinating characters.

The final act of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is funny, scary, troubling and exhilarating by turns; the meandering structure clicks into place as it becomes clear where Tarantino has been taking this story and, given his track record, perhaps could only have taken this story.

Ly surveys all his characters without judgment, but a longer, richer version of this movie might have distributed its sympathies to even more powerful effect.

Malick, a Christian philosopher-poet whose meanings can often be vague and elusive, seems to have been stung into an uncharacteristically blunt response, a forceful denunciation of the complicity of church and state.

This is a quietly insinuating picture with, by my estimation, one good jump scare, a lot of queasy chuckles and an overall atmosphere of slow, creeping, heavily perfumed rot.

As a stripped-down, minutely detailed portrait of the daily grind as back-breaking Sisyphean ordeal, “Sorry We Missed You” is engrossing and bluntly persuasive. I was less convinced by the family dynamics.

But if the tone is more restrained, more elegiac, and lacking that signature Almodóvar outrageousness, the emotional force still knocks you sideways.

A brazen mix of head-through-the-glass violence and pie-in-the-face slapstick, with a dash of Capra-esque working-class comedy for good measure, Police Story is remarkably seamless in tone and execution.

There’s something special here, but it’s surrounded by drudgery.

Everyone is terrible in Extracurricular Activities, a dark comedy without any laughs and a mystery that doesn’t need to be solved.

At best, it’s an amateurish effort with ill-judged ambitions that surpass both the skill level involved and its budget. At worst, it’s an incoherent collection of brutishly crafted and edited scenes.

Short on cultural specificity or distinctive attributes, “Maria” is utterly universal in the most discouraging manner.

The resulting genre stew is rich and flavorsome, if also somewhat chunky and uneven. The characters are thinly drawn by design, but Mendonça Filho and Dornelles know how to use the magnetism of their actors to maximum advantage.

As with its beloved subject and his enormous catalog of multiplatinum earworms, the movie’s familiarity turns out to be crucial to its charm.

Weçel’s documentary is aimed at broadening the audience for “Loving Vincent,” yet it is also a wonderful tribute to the vision and craft of independent moviemaking.

These kind of indie neo-noirs can be little gems when done well. Here though, directors Kevin and Michael Goetz and screenwriter Michael Arkof have delivered something largely devoid of style or narrative tension.

A dispiritingly familiar story.

There’s nothing particularly awful about the film (title aside), but it never develops into the “Shaun of the Dead”-like social satire it strains to be.

While the “Wait Until Dark”-like suspense of the film’s climax feels a little rote, that’s OK, because the foggy depiction of a troubled marriage is plenty disturbing.

It’s a grim vision, sure. But it’s a compelling one too, using the flash of a space opera to remind viewers that — whether on the ground or in the stars — we’re stuck with each other.

Although ostensibly set in the present day, this odd, frightening and entrancing little movie seems stuck in a moment out of time.

The movie, which comes off strangely wide-eyed about such “outré” things as marijuana and same-sex attraction, evokes some 1970s-era George Segal vehicle as it struggles to pair hip defiance with come-to-Jesus-style pathos, the latter of which provides a few of the film’s more compelling moments.

Far more than simply “The Longest Yard” with hoops, the remarkable Q Ball serves as a potent illustration of the redemptive powers of team camaraderie.

The Serengeti Rules celebrates not only the diversity and beauty of the natural world but also recognizes the transformative power of curiosity and knowledge.

Heightened but airless, this “Castle” is like a checklist of the novel’s peculiarities, rather than its singular soul brought to life.

The story takes some unbelievably tragic twists and turns, and along the way, Dastmalchian unfolds a riveting performance, aided by Schiffli’s beautiful and unobtrusive style.

It’s an old-fashioned injustice barn burner with narrative and emotional beats so sturdy you can practically see the rivets. But on the big screen, it’s just not convulsive enough to stir us and instead feels trapped in a limbo of not quite awards-prestigious, but not exactly indie-fired.

It’s a heavy lift that, to do her efforts justice, required a more dimensional, broadly contextual and, for a movie about art, visually adept depiction than first-time filmmaker Rynecki has managed.

A lovely, charming and gently transporting journey.

Director Russo-Young, whose roots are in independent film, has brought a bit of a welcome indie sensibility to the proceedings.

Parabellum excels when it tees up the sublimely inventive and wince-inducing close quarters fights with the lethally graceful Reeves baring John Wick’s psyche and soul between reloads and headshots.

While Just Say Goodbye reveals the filmmakers’ inexperience, with a bit of finesse, Walting could be a promising new voice.

For her directorial debut, Vilaysack has made an authentic documentary that deals honestly with issues of identity, immigration and family. There’s little self-editing here, giving the audience insight into her pain, an experience that is both moving and uncomfortable in its raw state.

It’s a one-day-at-a-time kind of portrait that’s dispiriting, unsettling and undeniably authentic.

A thin plot and a distractingly jaunty score hold The Bastards’ Fig Tree back. But for the most part, this is a thought-provoking historical fairy tale about the values — and grudges — that survive whomever’s in power.

The vibrant visuals contrast with a muddled narrative, leaving the audience less satisfied than the characters.

An eternal nurturer, the black mother whom Allah dissects and praises in this transfixing hymn of a movie about the place where the woman that gave him life was born is far more than just a homeland but a direct link to the answers about existence.

At its intimate best, Merata is an embrace and an education, a son’s love letter and for cineastes, a celebration of inclusion and voice.

This almost unclassifiable Brazilian horror film is one of the most assured, unconventional genre pictures of recent years.

Shéhérazade wins us over with what we love about love: its strength in even the direst of circumstances.

This frequently fascinating, frustrating study in naiveté, personal turmoil and self-discovery leaves the viewer stranded in process.

The step-by-step examination of how so many smart people with such a good idea failed so badly results in a film which offers up not only a crackling story but also enough lessons that it could be a Harvard Business School case study all by itself.

[An] engrossing, propulsive film.

Carmine Street Guitars is a leisurely Sunday stroll of a documentary.

The Hustle nods to its predecessors and feels at times like “To Catch a Thief” meets “Absolutely Fabulous.” But what makes “The Hustle” work is its stars.

What makes Non-Fiction stand out is the adroit way it keeps everything in balance. The writing and the acting, the questions about contemporary society as well as personal relationships, they all exist in enviable harmony to create an incisive snapshot of the present moment.

The experience of watching Ask Dr. Ruth is a bit like that of meeting someone unaccountably delightful and almost being knocked backward by the gale-force strength of her personality, and then wanting to go out and buy one of her books so as to actually learn something about her ideas.

Charlie Says is a fascinating and feminist exploration of Manson’s first victims: the girls themselves.

The combination of technique and message is ultimately winning. It’s tempting to think of Biggest Little Farm as the real-life equivalent of an epic pastoral storybook tale, but with the kind of happy ending that suggests a blueprint for saving the earth.

The story is thin and merely serviceable at best, and it often feels like the film has barely been written.

To merely describe what happens in Rafiki would be to overlook its transporting sense of place, its striking visual pleasures and its credible and moving performances.

It isn’t good, exactly — as boozy friend-reunion comedies go, it’s no “Girls Trip” or “The World’s End” — but it has its ticklish grace notes, plus some first-rate second and third bananas, despite a script that seems to be working both too hard and not hard enough.

What Tolkien offers instead is a picturesque, amber-soaked balm for armchair Anglophiles: the manners and mores, the crisp witticisms and stirring, stiff-upper-lip sentiments. These pleasures aren’t negligible. But neither are they a substitute for a genuinely cinematic window into a genius’ mind.

Though well shot by Justin and Ian McAleece, the narrative is a disjointed mess that ends in an eye-rolling conclusion. Its spiritual insights feel like a mishmash of appropriated sentiments from a variety of philosophies.

Go For Broke unfolds across Hawaii with lo-fi charm but introduces more characters than it can balance, falling into uneven and overly earnest stretches.

Less would have been more here; a less scattershot approach would have yielded a more resonant film.

Modern dance devotees and fans of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham will find much to appreciate in the lovingly crafted documentary If the Dancer Dances. For others, the film may prove too repetitive and narrowly focused.

An intimate, intensely dramatic film that holds us in its grip like a page-turning novel. Except it’s all true.

Directed by Deon Taylor with a cheeky sense of fun and deep knowledge of the genre, The Intruder is the kind of schlocky yet satisfying genre filmmaking that makes you jump and laugh at the same time.

Less a journalistic endeavor than an admirer’s tour — with room for blackly funny Herzog-ian touches in his choice of archival clip or patently demonic voice-over.

Fortunately, both the film’s gorgeous look and its meticulously choreographed action sequences keep us more than occupied until the plot pieces fall into place.