Thanks to the synthesis of adaptation, direction and ensemble — especially its leads — The Valet rewardingly finds its own way.

The movie becomes noticeably clunky whenever anyone stops to explain what’s going on. But Exposure 36 has stretches that work remarkably well — and feel incredibly relevant — as a moody portrait of a city emptied out by a crisis, left to people unwilling to accept that their round-the-clock party may be over.

Castro’s Spies becomes genuinely challenging once Aslin and Lennon get to the trials of these men, who argued they were acting within the bounds of U.S. law to push back against the actions of a country that had interfered in Cuban affairs for more than a century.

Homebound burns too slowly in the early going, but the tension and confusion in the first half eventually explodes into chaos. Throughout, Loftus gives a gripping performance as a woman desperate to make a good impression on a family that may be evil.

For the most part this is a captivating mood piece, held together by Ricci’s take on a woman who is chasing an impossible idyll while being trailed by something dark and murky.

Senior Year is not an ambitious movie, but it’s mostly a sweet one, and frequently funny.

Operation Mincemeat isn’t groundbreaking cinema, but it’s well-crafted and thoughtful; and when the heroes are inventing the personal details for their dead soldier and imagining all the real lives they’re affecting, the movie becomes appealingly bittersweet.

A stirring debut by both Thyberg and Kappel and a daring picture that makes you love it, not for tawdry reasons but for all of the truthful crimes, perils and delights it covers.

This is a definitive statement of what Carmichael can do as a director, transcending the small scope of the film into something grander and more epic.

When it’s a cautionary tale about an unusual family who’ll never know a moment’s peace because of their past choices, Firestarter is worthy of its source material. When in its last half-hour it turns into chapter one of a potential new superhero franchise, it joins the long list of Stephen King movies that are all gimmick, no guts.

While the events that transpire are minimal, the poignancy of “Montana Story” resides in watching these two strangers, once inseparable, reconnect now as different people but with the same scars.

“Jazz Fest” isn’t without flavor and rhythm, but what’s lacking is the thickness.

Thanks to Cruise and Kosinski’s unfashionable insistence on practical filmmaking and their refusal to lean too heavily on computer-generated visual effects, their sequel plays like a throwback in more than one sense. But the era that produced the first film has shifted, and “Top Gun: Maverick” is especially poignant in the ways, both subtle and overt, that it acknowledges the passage of time, the fading of youth and the shifting of its own status as a pop cultural phenomenon.

The film maintains a quiet dynamic even throughout the most horrific moments, and while you might expect, or even want, the film to climax more operatically, the understated tone is a radical choice.

The cast and creative team’s memories are vivid and moving, as they describe — often while on the verge of tears — how this experience changed their lives, forged tight friendships and transformed their understanding of art, performance and what it means to be alive.

It’s a fascinating story, mostly told by Crow herself, who is disarmingly honest about the capriciousness and cruelty of the music business — and about how the best way to survive for decades is to learn how to connect with people.

This is a poignant and poetic film, where the strife just outside the characters’ little bubbles is ever-present and always visible.

Trocker’s insights into a family crumbling due to a lack of trust aren’t all that fresh or keen, but his movie is tense and absorbing regardless, because he and his cast excel at dramatizing the lingering resentments and passive-aggression that foul the air between loved ones.

While the plot here is thin (and slow-paced, and oppressively grim), Owen has a remarkable facility for generating atmosphere. He’s made a film where one man’s internal strife has been effectively externalized as an inescapable, picturesque purgatory.

Veteran action director Louis Leterrier delivers exactly what audiences expect: some banter, a couple of surprise plot twists and a few thrills. He does so more than capably, with two sequences in particular.

It is a remarkable piece of filmmaking, rigorously controlled in ways that he doesn’t always evince: It’s a bone-deep sensory immersion that never feels merely sensationalist, anchored by two performances of astonishing commitment and emotional power.

Lux Aeterna, to its credit, is a pretty terrible commercial and an undeniably fascinating experiment.

To call this movie timely would be both an understatement and a bit of a misnomer, since the battle for women’s bodily autonomy has never not been a timely issue. It might be more fitting to praise Happening for its urgency, not just because it arrives in American theaters under particularly fraught circumstances, but also because of the gut-clutching suspense and the wrenching intimacy that the director brings to the telling.

What transpires is an exquisitely controlled yet diverting blend of pre-mourning and in-the-moment pleasures, a tonal blend of miraculous balance for a first-time filmmaker, even one with Panahi’s one-of-a-kind training.

The documentary Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen is as wondrous, buoyant and heartwarming as the film it celebrates.

Raimi’s sheer passion for his material can sometimes overwhelm the coherence of his storytelling, and his unfashionable sincerity doesn’t always mesh with the breezy quip-a-minute tone that is the Marvel enterprise’s preferred comic idiom. I mean those both as compliments.

As documentaries go, few arrive with as much ripped-from-the-headlines urgency as The Will to See, an eye-opening return visit to the backdrops of some of the world’s worst atrocities.

There are times when The Tale of King Crab seems like it could have been made in the silent era, so dedicated are Rigo de Righi and Zoppis to the simple, dramatic power of what they choose to show us. Their characters search for love, justice and gold while the filmmakers make clear what they treasure: ageless tales like these.