The story of Here surrounding Richard and Margaret is relatable, entirely predictable and utterly dull.

Not only has a real filmmaker emerged with A Real Pain, with both the sensitivity and boldness that could launch a career, but Eisenberg has never let himself be this exposed as a performer.

Dahomey is at its most blazingly confrontational when Diop includes footage of a panel session in which students discuss the issues at hand.

None of it would work, however, without the command of this justifiably Cannes-honored cast.

Despite its intimate focus, Memoir of a Snail is a towering achievement. This touching animated film serves as a reminder that Elliot is a humanist who clearly sculpts his “clayographies” (as he dubs his films) from the very essence of life itself.

For anyone who needs a gut-punch primer in what the lack of reproductive freedom looks like now, the propulsive documentary Zurawski v Texas from co-directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault is here to put your voting decisions into sharply delineated, heart-rending focus.

Sober and heartfelt, Union lets us see what Amazon and the world would soon discover about the power workers have when they invest in their dignity first.

The richness of the filmmaking, including the powerful acting, obfuscates the fact that the story itself is a pretty thin and silly mystery with twists that cheapen the intellectual quandary at the center of the tale.

Thanks to the deadpan chops of the cast, the low-grade silliness is funny enough to offset the occasional feeling that a shorter, tighter version built around its biggest laughs might have been more effective.

In artist Titus Kaphar’s emotionally knotty, semi-autobiographical directorial debut about hurt and resilience — and, of course, making art — we get a refreshingly bone-deep view of how someone can be saved by the act of creation, yet flummoxed by its therapeutic limitations.

One wishes that space in Separated had been saved instead for real stories told by the policy’s victims, or perhaps more historical context. Nonetheless, what we glean from the totality of the interviews and research, and Morris’ well-honed style of coalescing information, is damning enough.

Nothing in The Universal Theory is going to blow your mind, but as it plays its fastidiously crafted notes of conspiracy and chaos, you’ll know the idiosyncrasies of the art house are alive and well.

Baker wrote the part for her, and Madison returned the favor with a star-making performance, leaning into Ani’s audacity while revealing the fragile façade, the vulnerabilities and self-deception lurking underneath.

Some may want “The Apprentice” to go further. It does humanize Trump. But it also presents a plainly obvious depiction of how a man can turn into a monster with the right personality, background and guidance. What more could it possibly need to say?

It’s so detached from the supervillain narrative that it’s almost meta. But as the musical numbers become lengthy detours rather than lending further insight into Arthur, the sequel doesn’t sing as a character study. And it sure ain’t a thriller.

The strength of White Bird lies in its young performers, especially Glaser and Schwerdt, who deliver complex, nuanced performances of young people experiencing their part of global atrocities on an intimate scale, while also trying to navigate the complications of connecting as young teenagers. They are both excellent, and keep the film emotionally grounded.

Pugh gives Alma an edgy unpredictability that almost makes you believe some of the implausible things she does. And the expressive Garfield can convey water-eyed empathy so deftly that you know Tobias would be laid low if Almut so much as stubbed her toe on the leg of a coffee table.

Piece by Piece is ultimately a surprisingly moving biography, and a resonant reminder of Williams’ outsize cultural footprint. The Lego format doesn’t cheapen the power of Neville’s message, but rather reflects the quirky, outside-the-box thinking of the artist himself, who has always marched to the beat of his own drum, steering the cultural ship according to his unique point of view.

The problem is that Ronan is also forging her compelling warts-and-all portrait of obliteration and recovery in another type of gale storm, that of undisciplined filmmaking at odds with the patient harvesting of characterization.

In Jason Reitman’s overstuffed, adrenalized Saturday Night, a dramatization of the windup to that fateful first broadcast, you don’t feel the buzzy air of revolution so much as hear the voice of present-day legacy curation getting in the way.

It’s a quietly shattering place All Shall Be Well goes to, in which a time of consoling devolves into petty matters of consolation.

This is a penetrating biopic, and while it may take a familiar shape, the pioneering woman at the center was anything but traditional.

The Wild Robot has a lot to say and its own way of saying it. It’s a big-studio animated feature that has its own look, feel and identity, wrapped around an unusual story with ample humor and plenty of emotion — all of it earned. The movie’s vocal performances, especially from leads Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal, are excellent. It’s lovely on the outside and on the inside.

Never Let Go becomes an unpleasant slog for much of its runtime.

As respectful as writer-director Jon Watts is toward creating opportunities for wise-ass capering, the movie is curiously both a labored and lax attempt at restoring that luster.

Cooley’s film remains very much a mainstream product entrenched in the build-it-as-we-go mythology of these sentient machines, but there’s an attention to the motivations and desires of its characters missing in many Hollywood cash grabs. Animation can be a transformative, liberating force, even for stories that have been told ad nauseam.

Coming-of-age dramas may be a dime a dozen at Sundance, but one this tender and truthful can make an entire subgenre feel shimmeringly new.

The Kafkaesque reversal-of-fortune humor that follows — centered on how outgoing, beloved Oswald’s mere presence pours salt on Guy/Edward’s identity crisis — is as shrewdly conceived a comic bad dream as we’ve gotten since the heyday of “Zelig”-era Woody Allen or Charlie Kaufman (whose film “Synecdoche, New York” this feels like a cousin to).