Anyone interested in gaming history will find a lot to enjoy here; and the general niceness helps make what is essentially a fun 15-minute anecdote tolerable for 90.

This is a tricky topic, and Hillinger sometimes strays too far away from it, indulging in sexually explicit digressions that are more titillating than germane. For the most part, though, this is a thoughtful look at a controversy unlikely to fade away, so long as modern technology and prurient interests continue to exist.

The more powerful parts of this picture have to do with their realization that people may be too eager to hear tidy stories with clear villains and conclusions — even if they’re not entirely true.

It’s a film that calls into question our own biases and accepted notions and encourages one to get out there and find the truth — it could be an adventure after all.

Even by series standards, it’s an astonishingly staged and sustained panorama of violence, much of it mediated (and attenuated) by the usual inventive weaponry and bulletproof menswear, and meted out by international action stars including Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada.

Zhang’s own authorial touch is unmistakable in the mazelike palace intrigues, the phalanxes of armed soldiers and the ferocious bursts of action, plus the climactic nationalist overtones of a story that pits the will of several individuals against the fate of an empire.

Katsoupis poses these probing and provocative questions about humanity but doesn’t offer any clear answers or messages. Rather, he lets his muse, Dafoe, simply inhabit this harrowing journey with his strange magnetism and sense of timelessness, in a performance that is simultaneously primitive and transcendent.

It may be a shoddily made Skittles ad masquerading as a superhero riff, but it’s Levi’s performance that sends it into the stratosphere of cringe.

If “lovely” is not the first word you’d think would be used to describe a movie about attempted murder, then you haven’t seen Moving On, an amusing and bittersweet little tale of love, friendship and, yes, retribution.

The plot of Punch follows a fairly predictable path, and it lurches into overheated melodrama in its second half. But Ings does a fine job of capturing the instant connection between these two young men.

If nothing else, this movie is an effective demonstration of the directors’ ability to lull the audience into a relaxed state before knocking them around.

The documentary can feel a little scattered due to its multiple angles, but it remains a fascinating and relevant tale, examining how any criminal justice system built around the idea that cops never lie is ripe for abuse.

"Fallen Sun” is best described as a movie-size version of a “Luther” season — which, for longtime fans, is better than no “Luther” at all.

The cast and the crew work well together in Unseen, delivering a taut, inventive picture about two young Asian American women helping each other survive one terrible day.

An inspired antiwar epic that recently won the Goya Award (Spain’s equivalent to an Oscar) for animated film, Vazquez’s sophomore nightmarish fairy tale culminates with frighteningly revelatory imagery signaling the pattern of destruction that has characterized human history.

Chang Can Dunk gets that the pursuit of fun, seemingly frivolous goals can be meaningful in itself, especially when undertaken with the loving encouragement of friends and family.

This Magic Flute has much to recommend and is a worthy, well-performed, often stirring and dazzling take on an enduring masterwork.

For the most part, it is warmly amusing without diving too far into the realm of the maudlin or treacly; and it side-steps anything insensitive while still enjoying some bawdy humor.

Is 65 a hall-of-fame bad movie? No, and that may be its problem. It’s just pedestrian dumb and dull.

Writer-director Jamie Hooper’s debut feature, The Creeping, is hampered a bit by following the modern supernatural thriller trend toward tying every jump-scare and creep-out to some profound personal trauma. Despite that, the film works quite well, thanks to Hooper’s command of retro horror style

Despite some nice mood-setting, too much of Wolf Garden is spent talking around the story rather than just telling it.

The film gets too mired in shock for shock’s sake in its final half-hour; but for a good stretch it’s a wild and unpredictable ride.

The movie’s handful of action sequences are good, but they’re too sparsely deployed and overwhelmed by lots of slow-paced scenes of characters stewing in self-pity.

The film is visually sharp and quietly absorbing, and Olenius and Vilo sensitively capture the isolation and self-doubt that can make an athlete’s life so lonely.

The movie is in some ways an exaggerated spoof of mid-20th century pop culture — and, in more profound ways, an explication of how greaser fashion, jazz clubs, beatnik poetry and complicated hairdos once gave repressed Americans a vent for their unspoken desires.

OF: RDG is classic recent Ritchie: star-studded, snarky, and ultimately grating, lousy with weird glasses and bad accents. This thing is so slight, a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a “Mission: Impossible” that it’s barely a movie.

Writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick keep the blade sharp, while directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett bring a brawny, bruising and bloody style to this “requel sequel.”

The filmmaking maintains its discretion and unblinking restraint even in its most terrifying passage, shot with an implacable calm that renders it all the more unbearable.

The lovely and lyrical Blueback is a transporting mother-daughter (and fish) drama as well as a beautifully shot memory piece that will reward patient viewers able to settle in and enjoy the film’s accessibly low-key vibe.

Ithaka isn’t as effective an advocacy doc as it could be, sometimes feeling trapped between wanting to intellectualize with onscreen text and contextualized history and looking for observational moments that crystallize the pain and concern for the Assange family.

While it doesn’t venture far from its evident stage roots, neither does “What We Do Next,” a sinewy, tautly calibrated morality play, ever stray from the decidedly contemporary issues at its complex core.

In scene after scene, Serra holds beauty and menace in a kind of uneasy equilibrium. He’s made a trouble-in-paradise movie where the trouble doesn’t overwhelm the paradise so much as poison it, at an almost imperceptible slow drip, from the inside.

Coogler and Baylin’s screenplay isn’t all that innovative with the sports movie formula, and it unfortunately tends to rely on characters plainly spelling out their inner monologues, rather than leaving it to subtext. But Jordan’s steady direction elevates the material, keeping a strong hand on the tone and emotional tenor.

A wonderfully unforced, lightly intimate experience existing in a dramatic arena between observational nonfiction and bare-bones theater’s nowhere-to-go focus.

God’s Time has an endearingly scrappy vibe and a talented cast filled with unfamiliar faces. But it also feels cobbled together, as though Antebi had multiple ideas for how to approach this material.

Some may find all this tedious or confusing, but there’s an admirable integrity to Banfitch’s approach. The Outwaters genuinely feels like a first-person perspective on the end of the world.

Ambush has the structure of an old-fashioned two-fisted combat picture, but with too little actual combat.

The elements of a good, “Winter’s Bone”-like depiction of the rural social order are here. But they only really coalesce — and combust — when Thornton’s on the screen.

If this gently philosophical film has a lesson for Darious — and for us — it’s that life is long and things change. The choices made yesterday don’t always have to define who we are today.

Landon gets a lot of help from Harbour, whose facial expressions alone capture this ghost’s wit, hopes, fears and heartbreak. He’s one lovable dead guy.

The premise of My Happy Ending is somewhat slight, but there’s nothing insubstantial about a woman coming to a profound realization about her life thanks to a surprising encounter with unexpected new allies.

West has a lot on his mind with this film; and he’s ultimately less interested in explaining everything happening onscreen than in free-associating about the complicated, lifelong relationship between children and their parents. But Gaffigan’s everyman presence and seeker’s soul make him a great vessel for big ideas.

Saville too often skims the surfaces of his characters, substituting traumatic concepts and plot devices for narrative logic and truly authentic, compelling emotion.

It’s hard to completely dismiss a mainstream horror-comedy that offers a nice supply of sharp and grisly, at least until it takes a disappointing turn for soft and cuddly.

Unfortunately, despite the interesting history, the film itself is a dry, scattered slog, neutered of all the thorny, contradictory details of the real story.

There are no false moves in Marder’s truly radiant lead performance.

Swallowed is slow-paced and often aggressively unpleasant — unless your idea of a good time is watching people moan in pain for minutes on end while clutching their stomachs. But it’s a memorably intense experience, with sharp points to make about how the lives of outsiders and outlaws can tip in an instant into sloppy chaos.

The movie’s premise is clever; but what really makes it work is that these two use this ghost schtick as a way to examine the ways that friendship can be a hassle.

Indie filmmaker Pete Ohs and a small cast of committed actors ventured out into a barren New Mexico nowhere for “Jethica,” a horror-comedy that doesn’t offer much in the way of scares or laughs but is strangely fascinating regardless.

For the most part, this is an absorbing and nuanced character sketch, with a well-deployed supporting cast.

It’s stylish and well-acted, and it does keep viewers guessing. It does its job well. It’s a pretty-looking puzzle.

Overall, the approach proves too cluttered and diffused, especially if the goal — as it should be here — is to build real dramatic tension.

Written and directed by the Australian actor Frances O’Connor, making a vibrant feature filmmaking debut, it will surely madden sticklers for accuracy, which is all to the good.

The moments of wit and feeling that occasionally steal into the frame. . .feel like emotional outliers in a flat, inexpressive void.

An exquisitely tender tribute to love in its purest expression, The Blue Caftan doesn’t romanticize the complications and conflicts facing its two soulmates, and precisely because of that it feels like an utterly honest tale of romance.

Gravel, in the heart-stopping vein of Belgium’s social-realism-minded Dardennes brothers, invests his protagonist’s one-challenge-at-a-time needs with the kind of visual intimacy and racing rhythm that makes us feel intensely close to Julie, from first sprint in her dehumanizing day to the exhaling bathtub soak she takes each night.

One of the film’s biggest weaknesses is that Smith and Cook withhold key information so they can spring a big twist. When the threat the characters are facing remains so vague for so long, it robs the story of tension.

Even at its bluntest, Seriously Red draws a lot of heat and light from Boylan, whose Red enjoys embodying the casual confidence, folksy wisdom and bombshell bravura of one of the world’s most beloved entertainers.

Kohn’s talking heads are remarkably animated and, collectively, the interviews present a provocative debate about the meaning of “valuable.”

The symbolism remains heavy, but it’s all in service of a powerful prisoner’s story, about the small ways people find freedom.

When Attachment becomes more of a full-blown possession thriller in its final third, it loses the lighthearted charm and keen observation of its earlier sections. Still, that first hour is so sweet that the comparatively sour parts don’t spoil the picture.

There are jokes here, and dramatic moments too; but everyone is so darn earnest all the time that nothing truly exciting happens. Instead, we just hang out with some pretty decent folks for a while, and then the credits roll.

What saves the picture is McKenna’s knack for finding something real and relatable within quirky comic characters like a hyper-organized overprotective mother and a swaggering cool guy who makes a living telling other people how to succeed.

The remarkable debut from writer-director Michelle Garza Cervera is as effectively blood-curdling as it is intellectually incisive.

Admirably ambitious if conceptually muddled, it short-circuits a lot of those signature “Magic Mike” pleasures — including some of the lust, and a lot of the laughs — and signals its headier ambitions with a dramatic shift in scenery.

Despite his perceived failings, Karski and “Remember This” serve as a crucial reminder of society’s duty to bear witness, especially whenever and wherever it would seem impossible to raise one’s voice above the din of indifference.

The movie is, like so many Nuremberg accounts, an alternately thrilling and chastening portrait of accountability in action. But it is also, as its title suggests, a thoughtful appraisal of the moral properties of the moving image.

The film works best when it gets into the nuts-and-bolts of the sex scenes themselves, past and present.

There’s an earnest, yearning passion here that makes the film feel vital even at its clumsiest.

Working from a Will Honley screenplay, Anderson here crafts a thorny horror film that’s unsettling even when Owen isn’t lunging at the necks of babies and old people — because, like King, Anderson and Honey are as interested in life’s everyday bruises as they are in gaping wounds.

The Locksmith screenplay (credited to five people, none of whom are Harvard) doesn’t have the snappy dialogue of the best noirs; but its storytelling is efficient, with enough characters to make its world feel well-populated but not overstuffed.

Anderson’s story becomes a tale of perseverance, about a passionate woman still searching for her happy ending.

Give credit to Spillane for making sure that this movie isn’t just about the heartwarming highs, but about the hard work it took to reach them.

Although this well-acted film, which was Israel’s official submission for the 2022 international film Oscar, is a bit slow-going, it presents a timely, pointed, at times cleverly satirical snapshot of Israeli-Palestinian relations. It also offers an often poignant look at a dysfunctional family at the center of it all.

In its empathy-driven terror and ghoulish wit — including the Chekhov’s-gun rule hilariously applied to the placenta — “Baby Ruby” won’t be for everyone, although it only ever feels steeped in the honesty of experience, which, according to the press materials, was partly Wohl’s own.

The comedy isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, and the story beats are almost painfully predictable, but the picture hangs together thanks to this group of legends and the loose, absurdist humor of the screenplay.

The more you realize where Shyamalan is leading us — and by this point, it’s not exactly a surprise destination — the more difficult it becomes to locate a worthwhile point. Perhaps the point is in the impressive discipline of the filmmaking, though if anything, given its premise, the movie wants to be a grislier, more nastily unhinged piece of work than it manages.

Le Guay effectively keeps the pressure on his characters and their loaded situation throughout, using ominous camera angles and anxious music cues to heighten the dread and uncertainty. He receives a fine assist from Renier and Cluzet, who commit to their divergent roles with unnerving intensity. It’s a terrific film.

The inherent backstage machinations and underlying corruption and hypocrisy that go with the church/state backdrop may not be unfamiliar territory, but Saleh, who controversially took on the 2011 Egyptian revolution in his acclaimed 2017 political thriller, “The Nile Hilton Incident,” keeps it all quite compelling.

If yielding to nostalgia often makes people recall a more affectionate and wistful version of what actually was, this stirring, evocative film likely will leave viewers haunted by what might have been.

Michael Madsen brings a much-needed jolt of bad boy energy to this dreary psychodrama that squanders good performances and a sharp midfilm twist.

The Mission is less about Mormonism or Finland than it is a poignant and relatable portrait of loneliness.

This is a stifling film about solipsistic people.

The lack of explosive action hinders Condor’s Nest, as does the reliance on spare, nondescript locations like bars, offices and open fields. But Blattenberger can write punchy dialogue; he also wisely spends some of his money on ace character actors.

This is a well-crafted chase picture that doubles as a fiery warning about the dangers of an authoritarian government that can create its own reality, with no accountability for mistakes or malevolence.

Shotgun Wedding peters out down the stretch, as the explosions and gunfire overwhelm the banter. But the middle hour is snappy, helped by the chemistry of Lopez and Duhamel, playing two over-analytical, over-prepared types who have different ideas on how to thwart their attackers.

You People busts out of the gate with the lit, razor-sharp zip of a “Dear White People” only to limp across the finish line with all the edge of Up With People.

Deadliest of all, Fear is just not scary. The jump scares don’t land, the fears themselves are all a bit silly and it feels like Taylor is holding back for the majority of the run time.

As good as his actors are — especially the wonderful Dequenne, whose Sophie quietly seeks to repair the boys’ broken bond — they cannot conceal the calculation inherent in this story’s design. Nor can they quite overcome the disconnect between the glossy, self-admiring visual beauty of Close and the stormier, uglier emotional depths it purports to uncover.

If you’re willing to surf on the wonderfully weird and wild wavelength of Infinity Pool it is indeed a singular, and unforgettable, ride.

If Fair Play spends the better part of two hours tracing this newly lopsided romance to its logical, unhappy conclusion, the blow-by-blow machinations are still a chilly wonder to behold. What gives the movie its driving tension isn’t just the glaring imbalance between Emily and Luke as employees, but a deeper incompatibility between the personal and professional imperatives they’ve chosen.

There is nothing better about this Cat Person, which coarsens, flattens and torturously over-elaborates a story whose elegant concision was precisely what made it such rich and elastic interpretive fodder.

A brutal study of physical extremity and psychological meltdown built around an entirely astonishing lead performance from Jonathan Majors.

Sorry About the Demon is too slackly paced and there’s a broad tone to the jokes and performances that skews corny. But the central comic premise is a hoot; and the movie has an unexpectedly philosophical dimension.

Mixing freaky folklore with slapstick splatter, writer-director Fabián Forte’s Argentine horror film Legions tells a story that spans generations before landing in a surprisingly emotional place.

The film is bracingly frank about the younger generation’s pursuit of sensual pleasure (and pain). And it’s graced by Weil’s superb performance as Avishag, a multilayered character who swings from maudlin sentimentality to the extremes of human desire.

There’s something wrong with the children, all right. The filmmakers can’t figure out what to do with them.

While the script (co-written by Eisener and John Davies) is weak, there is an endearingly scruffy vibe here, goosed by some cool-looking costumes and effects.