Jinn is a familiar story, told in a cultural context rarely depicted on film, and Mu’min’s approach is so lyrical and empathetic that it feels completely fresh and new. It’s a remarkable film with sensitive and stirring turns by Renee and Missick in the mother-daughter roles.

Under the Wire brings a vivid immediacy to this tragic event. Conroy speaks candidly to the responsibility that he feels to survive and to tell the stories of the others, a task that he will carry with him for the rest of his life.

The Last Race is a high art film about a blue-collar subject, and that unlooked-for ability to see beauty in the everyday is what makes it both a surprise and a success.

Green Book is a savvy and super effective piece of popular entertainment.

At every turn in Speed Kills, director Jodi Scurfield and a team of screenwriters sand the edges off a complicated, multi-decade saga, making a featureless knockoff of seemingly every sweeping true-crime movie of the past three decades.

Strong lead performances by Aaron Paul and Emily Ratajkowski are squandered in Welcome Home, a low-tension suspense picture with pretensions of saying something profound about broken relationships.

On a narrative level, Mazzei and Goldhaber don’t come up with enough ideas for how to capitalize on their hooky premise. But on a character level? The filmmakers and Brewer capture the mounting existential anxiety of a woman who’s constructed an entire identity on-line and is horrified to see that it can keep on living without her.

While the story’s a little shaky, Poots is outstanding; and de Fontenay has a terrific eye for the details of a drifter’s life, shuffling from hovel to hovel, never able to scrape up enough cash to sleep comfortably.

Skiles keeps the film’s pacing slow, which at times builds tension, at times makes everything feel more off-kilter, and at times is … well, just slow. Mostly the director and his superb cast use the extra time to explore the nuances of Ford’s tale of sick compulsions and social pressures.

An acrobatic, larkish globetrotting adventure about paintings and psychotherapy that defies easy categorization save inclusion on any adult animation fan’s must-see list, its slinky, colorful pleasures and wittily referential joie de vivre are like a lifeline in a season when the art house is typically beholden to severe, award-seeking bids to depress you.

Madness, Farewell is best when introducing viewers to Liza’s simultaneously dark and sunny world, but later it turns into more of a standard quirky indie than its premise suggested.

Individual moments work, but there’s little to tie them together in a cohesive narrative.

Director Xiaozhi Rao’s facility with behavioral extremes that disguise the hardships of life in modern China is a scattershot mix of the Tarantino-esque and melodramatic, with bursting pop songs and visual tricks filling in any perceived gaps in logic or attention.

While Elgort, whose big breakout role was in last year’s “Baby Driver,” does a decent job of delineating the two characters and Patricia Clarkson reliably comes through as their sympathetic doctor, the clinically distancing production never forms a meaningful bond with its audience.

Dafoe’s work, the look in his searching, despairing eyes, feels beyond conventional acting, using intuition as well as technique to go deeply into the character, putting us in Van Gogh’s presence.

There’s a potentially smart and sexy lesbian dramedy at the heart of “Anchor and Hope” that gets lost amid idiosyncratic filmmaking and a lack of narrative discipline.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is a witty, fastidiously imagined adventure and a touching, sometimes troubling ode to the power of friendship. But it also demonstrates some of the problems that can befall a movie when its vast ambition and confidence outstrip its finesse.

The filmmakers’ choice to focus so heavily — and, unfortunately, dully — on the odd-couple friendship between the tightly-wound, workaholic Hughes (Hilary Swank) and the brashly spirited Riese (Helena Bonham Carter) instead of on the bigger-picture legal wranglings and wider effects of the landmark lawsuit against a San Francisco hospital may point to the chapter’s cinematic limitations.

There’s a sense of beauty and contemplation in Albertin’s work, and though it seems like danger hangs in the air, there’s an odd lack of tension or suspense, and the film’s pace requires incredible patience. Nevertheless, Nivola’s work is somewhat of a revelation, while Haley proves to be a worthwhile discovery.

O’Rowe...evokes both a theatrical and literary sense of narrative (it’s likely no coincidence that Jim references novelist John Updike), with scenes effectively unfolding like well-honed chapters. The cast is also first-rate.

The Price of Free benefits from a potent mix of compassionate heroism and hard-won hopefulness.

A sluggish film that incessantly tries but never quite hits its big-as-a-barn emotional targets.

Though her script overloads its characters with confusion to the point of farce, there’s still a warm, authentic core that drives this well-meaning effort.

Over the course of a generous 137-minute running time, Mackenzie evinces a patience in his own storytelling that only occasionally tests yours. There are excesses and longueurs, to be sure, but crucially, the tone of the piece never feels monotonous.

The New Romantic follows a very familiar arc, but the path is certainly a pleasant one, thanks to Barden’s naturally ebullient performance. Her enthusiasm in the fun parts is infectious, and she holds the camera during the moments of melancholy.

Liz and the Blue Bird may appeal to fans of “Sound Euphonium,” but many recent Japanese features have dealt with teen friendships and angst in more interesting ways.

A chatty and enjoyable but decidedly nondefinitive look at one of the cinema’s most acclaimed, influential auteurs.

The Crimes of Grindelwald is somehow both hectic and leaden, a thing of exhausting, pummeling mediocrity. It offers up dazzling feats of sorcery and realms of wonderment (early 20th-century London and Paris among them) and manages to conjure the very opposite of magic.