There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch involved in Drucker’s approach; and on the whole, the film’s balance between the celebrities and the wannabes doesn’t do full justice to either. But there’s a strong point of view here, as Drucker scrutinizes an era that established a lot of the codes and aspirations of our own influencer-saturated times.

This is an in-depth film about a person many presumed had no depth at all. It’s a cautionary tale — not just for future sex symbols, for those who write about them.

What emerges from the electronic noise and fussy aesthetic of “BlackBerry” is a compelling portrait of a company that flew too close to the sun.

That Bagiński’s Knights of the Zodiac amounts to a well-intended disappointment doesn’t mean it has zero merit as a work of entertainment, but it will neither satisfy the fandom’s demands for a true-to-the-bone homage to their childhood favorite, nor will it transmit to outsiders why this tale of blind courage in the face of insurmountable odds has inspired such decades-long devotion.

What is particularly powerful is that the film does not feel the need to overexplain Monica. The film offers glimpses into her life, her relationships and her livelihood, but Monica doesn’t have to spell out the details of her past or justify her present to anyone.

The Starling Girl doesn’t always hold our attention, mainly due to an occasionally shaggy pace that forgets we’re often ahead of the plot. There are also two endings: one built on a choice of Jem’s that’s incredibly stirring and naturally tense, but then a subsequent scene with music and dance that reads more like something scripted to be a meaningful bookend.

In a clever use of metaphor, the filmmakers have built an appealing world of wonders, hidden below the moon’s barren surface — suggesting there are fragments of hope embedded within even the grimmest landscapes.

The Five Devils saves some of the juiciest revelations for its final act, which can make the comparatively coy first hour feel frustratingly oblique at times. But this alluring and sneakily emotional film is never confusing.

From scene to scene, Lopez and Caro do fill these broad outlines with real feeling, bringing a personal touch to old pulp archetypes.

Serving as a potent reminder of the stellar athletic ability that, in time, had been overshadowed by his admittedly outsized personality, the affectionate It Ain’t Over offers a winning coda to the career assessment of the late, great Yogi Berra.

A love letter to its characters and their real-life counterparts, the film is, above all, a witness to the kind of expansive love and kinship that is formed in the margins but nonetheless expansive in its imaginings of the world.

It’s fun to see [Rodriguez] color in new shades of film genre, but the script and performances in “Hypnotic” are too laughably absurd to take seriously.

Sheridan doesn’t ignore the ways O’Toole could be destructive, both to himself and to anyone who got close enough to love him.

What really grounds the documentary is Sibley’s footage of Harris’ sons, Jared, Jamie and Damien, sorting through their father’s effects and sharing their impressions of who he was.

Only one of these two pictures works on its merits, and it’s not “Part V.” But that’s as it should be. That’s true commitment to the bit.

It’s hard not to be impressed by Burleson’s command of how old exploitation movies look and sound.

This is a picture that could do with a little bit of scenery-chewing and a whole lot of sensationalism — anything that would make its middling mystery plot more exciting.

What makes this schemer so exciting to watch is that he’s like a lot of guys in their early 20s, regardless of the time and place. He’s an incorrigible hustler, just making moves to get him through the day.

Hayakawa keeps her story at an intimate and, for the most part, effective human scale. Baisho’s beautifully calibrated performance holds us close, turning Michi’s every step — a brief stint as a traffic guard, a trip to a cafe she once frequented with her husband — into a quiet act of resistance against her perceived uselessness.

Whether you see Lévy, a spritely 74, as a hot spot gadfly or a dedicated war reporter, there’s no denying his dedication to the cause.

Barnabás Tóth’s richly acted film exudes a faith in human connection as relevant today as such relationships needed to be in the years after World War II for survivors of unimaginable trauma.

James and Latif make an appealing, soulful twosome, infusing their nicely dimensional, well-modulated characters with low-key charm and credible longing.

Compared to other true-crime docs, “Beyond Human Nature” doesn’t blow the lid off a huge conspiracy or untangle a complicated mystery. But this is a fascinating story with something to say about how the legal system can’t always offer a definitive answer about what’s true.

The film’s dialectic qualities can feel a little forced and wooden, though Ritch mitigates this somewhat by directing his cast to deliver their lines at such a snappy clip that viewers don’t have time to dwell on the clunkers

This is an ideal role for Lenoir, who handles the punching and shooting parts of action movies well, but really excels at the brooding. His Adam is aptly named; he’s a biblical kind of hero, sinning and suffering.

The movie is entertaining and has a professional polish; but it’s also very safe. It feels like it was made more for the Darling children’s parents, not the Lost Boys.

Ultimately, this film celebrates living — including the part that includes taking big swings and making terrible mistakes.

The more fanciful qualities of Freaks vs. the Reich work fairly well. Mainetti has a gifted cast and a talented special effects department, so the scenes of these X-Men-like outcasts fighting fascism do look fantastic. But the film’s exhausting length is a challenge, as is Mainetti’s failure to use his historical setting meaningfully.

An enjoyably eccentric, insouciantly funny and often beautiful-looking jumble of an entertainment that plays — at least when it isn’t let down by a wobbly seriocomic tone and some excessive narrative multitasking — like a sincerely moving farewell to some of the more likable rogues and motley misfits in the Marvel cosmos.

While the movie becomes a little repetitious in the middle, it ends strongly with a succession of unforgettable scenes of gruesome body horror. Clock leans too heavily on too-obvious visual metaphors, but it’s still a vivid and visceral explication of one woman’s fears.

It can feel more like an audio/visual presentation for a decarbonization conference than an impassioned, artful work building its message to a fever pitch.

Manzoor, an instinctive stylist, always finds an honest vibe to win you over, whether it’s sisterly camaraderie (or annoyance), youthful awkwardness or you’re-going-down spunk, which allows the abundant personality in her wonderful cast to hit all the necessary top notes.

Part Frederick Wiseman-esque medical study, part endoscopic-horror tour de force, it is a thing to be experienced, ideally in a theater — a movie theater, not an operating one, though the filmmakers have a particular genius for blurring the difference.

The cat-and-mouse action is uninspired and slackly paced; and any pizazz that Wilson, Lundgren and Fehr bring gets lost once they stop talking and start shooting.

Ultimately, this film is less about her final decision than about how having these choices helps her figure out who she wants to be.

Though the movie’s leads are undeniably charming, director Steven K. Tsuchida and screenwriter Eirene Tran Donohue don’t give them much to do that hasn’t been done many times before. What does distinguish their film is its setting

It may have benefited from a quickened pace, or touches of humor, or heightened stakes because — at least in this film — watching Nazis get theirs is a vein of amusement that runs dry.

Mungiu is a master of the long, talky slow burn, and if R.M.N. often feels less focused and more sprawling than some of his earlier movies (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “Graduation”), that’s a testament to its expansiveness and ambition. The story becomes increasingly gripping as it meanders and lingers, broadens and deepens, putting peripheral characters into play and bringing latent hostilities to the surface.

What a wonder that the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s beloved 1970 young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is as lovely, heartfelt and, indeed, deeply radical as the original text.

The film is at once gently intimate and breathtakingly expansive in scope.

A visually arresting, politically forceful melodrama from Pakistan.

The evocative, if narratively slight, doomed romance is charged with otherworldly intensity.

A fresh pivot that starts out strong before caving to fan service, this femme-centered installment at least doesn’t skimp on visceral horrors and black humor, finding inventive ways to make its audience cringe, cower and cackle as it puts its heroines through hell.

"Everything” — anchored by strong performances from Marceau and Dussollier — is a refreshingly in-the-moment chronicle of what it means to love someone enough to grant them something so final, and, in a society that doesn’t fully accept it, to see it through legally and logistically.

Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s touching documentary “Judy Blume Forever” is anchored by a comprehensive conversation with Blume, now in her 80s and as disarmingly frank and cheery as ever. She looks back at her life and career, and discusses how they intertwined in ways that inspired her best work.

[Evans and de Armas] take the film’s ridiculousness just seriously enough to keep barreling through while navigating the more puckish bits with the requisite charm and buoyancy.

Directed by Stephen Williams with a sense of momentum and fluidity, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this version of Bologne’s life story glides over the most interesting parts.

A long-overdue creation corrective that gives an outwardly revolutionary cultural icon his trailblazing due at the same time it grapples with the conflicted soul that rarely knew a lasting inner peace.

Partly drawn from Zlotowski’s own personal experience, Other People’s Children sneaks up on you, with a depth and complexity of feeling that throws those glossy, idyllic opening moments into bittersweet relief.

Somewhere in “Queens” lies a stronger, more unique and inspiring story about family, culture and the place we call home. It’s too bad Romano didn’t fully find it.

Though “Seven Kings Must Die” suffers some from the gray palette, dim lighting and general somberness that weighs heavy on a lot of modern television, the movie delivers viscerally exciting fight scenes and a strong sense of what life was like in an ancient, unsettled world.

The fight sequences are so dynamic — and so frequent — that the 90-minute runtime flies by. This is the kind of movie that connoisseurs of over-the-top action like to seek out.

There are talented people up and down the One True Loves cast and crew list, so it really makes no sense that director Andy Fickman’s film is so off-key. Nearly every creative choice goes awry.

It’s an artful piece of work, with some memorable moments where these Texans pick at each other, playing on the weaknesses that are hard to hide in a small town. But the movie is also relentlessly sour, reducing nearly everyone in it (except Joan) to a few immediately observable and mostly unflattering traits.

That disconnect between people’s performative selves and their true selves is the most intriguing part of Longest Third Date because it also speaks to how new couples behave when they’re trying to impress each other.

Porous enough in their philosophical intent though as not to impose a strict meaning, and yet sufficiently potent to make us reassess our priorities, the array of interpersonal conflicts floating in the idiosyncratic “Blind Willow” feel like elegantly animated lucid dreams full of poetic imagery: far from realistic but viscerally truthful.

As the satire retains its acridness to the very end, Sick of Myself proves itself well-aware that narcissists don’t learn lessons — they learn how to adapt.

Beau Is Afraid offers arresting confirmation of Aster’s talent and fresh evidence of his limitations. It’s a big, wildly ambitious swing of a movie, one that seems eager to liberate itself and its characters from the conventions of form and genre. But that more expansive energy is at odds with and ultimately constrained by the story’s mother/man-child dialectic.

Some films benefit from tying their persuasive abilities to sustained righteousness more than careful slickness, and this collaboration between Cheyenne filmmaker West and veteran documentarian Kempner (“The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg”) is one of them.

The execution struggles from the outset to find a sustainable comedic pitch.

The stylish Renfield is a bit of frothy fun. It may be too flip for some, but flippancy isn’t the issue — it’s the flimsiness. Hoult and Cage sell the toxic odd-couple dynamic well, but a sturdier story is required to fully support their performances, especially Cage’s operatic Dracula, who delights in terrorizing his foppish familiar.

This isn’t the first time Shinkai has raised the specter of environmental disaster within the context of a swooningly sentimental teenage fantasy, and if this one doesn’t achieve the dazzling intricacies or soaring emotional heights of “Your Name,” its easy blend of enchantment and feeling is nearly as hard to resist.

As with the similar ‘80s and ‘90s films of director Chris Columbus (a producer on this project), the characters in Chupa are likable and memorable, with a fun dynamic. And Cuarón — the son of the Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón — creates a rich sense of place here, encouraging the viewers to come to love Mexico as much as Alex eventually does.

Nothing that happens really matters that much. Nevertheless, the movie has the kind of personality and heart too often missing from grimy little crime pictures. It’s endearingly ramshackle.

Reece’s ideas don’t always fit together neatly, but by gosh he has a lot of them. It’s a treat to watch him play.

This revealing film is filled with pleasant balladry from a likable troubadour; but it also shows what it’s like to sing his little tunes while under unfathomable pressure.

The situation isn’t that catastrophic for Isbell in this film, but in a way that’s what makes it so moving. He’s dealing with the same kind of ordinary disconnects that so many of us do, like trying to focus hard on doing good work while also keeping some of himself open to his loved ones.

Simultaneously rousing and unnerving, “Pipeline” strays from despair. It doesn’t complicate the story with the loss of human life the way “Night Moves” does, and in that sense it can seem too neatly wrapped-up. Still, its pointed timeliness enthralls.

Paint may ultimately be just modestly amusing, but at least it understands that a palette of well-blended tones has a better chance of earning our laughs than the one-color-fits-all kind.

Thankfully, in the stretches when Monk is playing, he gets to be exactly who he is, his exhilarating music doing the talking, his exquisite dissonance suddenly more revelatory than perhaps intended.

More than once in Showing Up, her wry and wonderful new movie, the director Kelly Reichardt gives us something that feels rarer than it should in American cinema: a lingering moment in the presence of an artist at work.

In some ways, the movie is also carrying on a subliminal, more subtly nostalgic conversation with the ’90s, the decade that transformed Affleck and Damon into household names and saw some of their key supporting players here first rise to prominence.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is mildly amusing, swift, noisy and unrelentingly paced, which is par for the course considering this is the studio that brought us the Minions.

When the movie goes in for an infrequent closeup — a shot of ultrasound gel being smeared on Lynn’s belly or of Lynn’s face as she puts on a surgical mask in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 outbreak — the intimacy is startling, and instructive.

It is enlightening, though, to see Pope Francis in so many different contexts. Whether he’s comforting the suffering masses or chastising the powerful for spreading inequality, he models the many ways that rhetoric can work.

Watson’s fine performance and Brown’s thoughtful stylish touches (especially in the sound design) make the slice-of-life scenes special. The rest of the picture is more sketched-in.

Some of that professional lingo (like calling contracts “shows” and first assignments “debuts”) makes the story function as a sly metaphor for the entertainment business; and Byun’s stylish action sequences juice up the film’s second half.

It’s not a criticism to say that Smoking Causes Coughing doesn’t hold together, because cohesion isn’t what Dupieux is going for. He’s more about surprise and delight.

This is a rom-com with heart, wit and style. But it also shows a clear-eyed understanding that one dreamy day — no matter how epic — is really just a good start.

Scheinfeld (“The U.S. vs. John Lennon”) pieces together an evocative time capsule. Somewhat less convincing is the film’s implication that the contentious tour ultimately led to the group’s demise.

The primary assets here though are Aniston and Sandler, who are totally present in every scene, playing off each other like old comedy pros and coming up with little bits of improvisatory business that make Nick and Audrey feel like a real and loving married couple.

The film is utterly absorbing, anchored by the unpredictable performance of Taylor, playing a hopelessly complicated, but deeply caring woman.

Walk Up flows as absorbingly as a dream and is no less pleasurable to puzzle over afterward.

The filmmaking lacks the style to pull off its willful blending of fact and fantasy. At least there are the songs to enjoy.

It’s worth your time, your discomfort, your possible scorn and your weirdly grudging affection, maybe all at once.

Nature nurtured into an eerie consciousness by a celluloid craftsman, it feels like a throwback to “Wicker Man”-era folk-tinged freakouts — confounding enough to not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those ready for a pot of its brew, plenty transporting and tingling.

The film’s affable nature and the sheer charisma oozing off Pine and Grant is intoxicating, but overall, there’s a sense that it doesn’t quite gel, the engine revving but never hitting the speed of which it seems capable.

The mix of busy comic exaggeration, affectionate ’80s nostalgia trip and gloomy mid-perestroika history lesson never comes together.

The best thing about this film is that it doesn’t reduce either man to a stereotype — or even to a pat story of redemption. Bernhardt and Blankenship do what they want the people who watch the movie to do: They observe, they listen and they stay open to accepting people, no matter who they are.

Last Sentinel is more geared toward delivering a message about humanity’s bent toward paranoia and self-destruction than in producing any tension or thrills. It’s a very heavy film — really too heavy to move.

What emerges won’t be revelatory for anyone who has spent time studying the Kubrick filmography. But it’s still such a rare treat to hear the man himself say anything at all — let alone to hear him talk about why the ideas in his work and the challenges of bringing them to the screen excited him as much as they did his fans.

There are times, though, when Stapleton’s disjointed structure is distracting. Also, by centering so much of the narrative on Jackson’s voice rather than on the people who worked alongside him over the years, the film’s perspective can feel limited.

While director Matt Smukler and screenwriter Jana Savage deliver moments throughout the film that feel vividly real, too often they veer into the maudlin or cutesy, as though trying to soften this material for the broadest possible audience.

Rodeo takes its blind corners and open roads with plenty of ferocity, but also a necessary compassion for the searching force of nature at its center.

Cinema doesn’t suffer for shoutouts to the great Italian stylists of the grotesque and/or bleak, but we could also use more descendants of Risi’s sturdy faith in the alchemy of well-timed long shots, middle shots and close-ups in real-world settings to reveal simple, lasting, bittersweet truths about people.

A Good Person isn’t an easy ride but, like such disparate, if similarly themed, movies as “Rabbit Hole,” “Waves” and “Four Good Days,” it’s a haunting slice of real life that will make you think, feel and maybe even want to reach out to your loved ones.

Rather than exploiting her sorrow-fueled mission for a “Taken”-like revenge spectacle, the verité social drama understands Cielo’s determination to find answers not as mere courageousness, but a tragic, nothing-left-to-lose lack of concern for her own safety.