This is a tumultuous and ultimately tragic tale about the exploitation of athletes.

There’s a tear-jerking moment roughly every five to 10 minutes in this movie, as Gomez reveals her essential dilemma of being someone who loves making fans happy and loves being creative but lives in fear — as many people do — of disappointing their benefactors and loved ones.

Viewers who can endure the at-times tediously dour first hour of “Next Exit” are rewarded with a tense and emotional final stretch, with a lot to say about what gives life meaning.

The leads have a wonderful chemistry, with Bell hitting the right notes of anger and confusion and Morales maintaining the alien’s comic deadpan. Everyone involved has clearly thought through how such a wild fantasy situation might play out — and more importantly, how it would feel.

Yankovic diehards will likely enjoy this movie since — like his parody songs — it takes self-serious pieces of pop culture and changes the words to something silly. Those songs though are usually under four minutes. This picture runs 108.

The story’s a bit convoluted, though no more than most detective plots. Ultimately, it’s a solid mystery, explained well by Enola in her fourth-wall-breaking chats with the audience. The pairing of actor and role here is just about perfect, and as much a star-making turn for Brown as her breakout performance in “Stranger Things.”

The structuring theme of The Novelist’s Film may be artistic frustration, the kind that can spur a writer to call it quits, an actor to take a break and even an established director to reconsider his calling. But it’s also very much about finding creative renewal in unexpected places — a bookstore, an outdoor trail, a movie theater — and learning to embrace, rather than resist, life’s beautifully meandering flow.

It’s all plenty inventive and heart-conscious, grim without being punishing and, in its openness about impermanence and humility, could spark some significant parent-child exchanges about love, flaws and the necessity of meaningful time together.

It’s telling that both the first “Black Panther” and this messier if seldom less engrossing follow-up are at their strongest when they resist or even flat-out ignore their franchise obligations.

Distinctively incisive on an emotional level, the film applauds the bravery of its participants to relive a painful shared trauma and create a permanent testament of what they endured.

It’s not funny, it’s not satirical, and it’s not worth your time, or Toni Collette’s

The story does build, in its second act, to an unsettlingly persuasive indictment of a society that teaches even its youngest members to hate, condemn and destroy women. But did the movie have to fixate so lovingly on that destruction, or make its chief destroyer so compelling?

Even if he couldn’t summon the experience of walking in Ferragamo’s shoes and getting to know him deeply, Guadagnino makes one appreciate the shoemaker’s indelible footprints from afar.

For the first 90 minutes or so, there’s remarkable vibrancy and spontaneity to this picture, as its creators and stars seem to be coming up with their story on the spot, with the cameras rolling. They seem inspired and excited. The mood is infectious.

The Wonder undeniably resonates in these confounding times concerning belief, fact and manipulation.

Director Tommy Boulding and screenwriters Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines do deliver a lean, effective action film, with lots of shooting, stabbing and clever traps. It’s ideal for anyone who enjoys the sound of tortured screams in a bucolic English countryside.

The Lair doesn’t finish as spectacularly as it starts; but that just means it’s a good genre picture and not a great one.

Lee structures the film like a mystery, which gives it a sharp hook in the early going but leads to an inevitable letdown in the final stretch when the answers prove less interesting than the questions.

“Black & Blues” isn’t a straightforward biography so much as a collection of engaging anecdotes and keen observations, meant to spark a renewed appreciation for someone too often misunderstood.

Feste handles the action and horror in Run Sweetheart Run well; and for those who can handle its more preposterous twists there are trashy pulp kicks to be had here. But given that this movie is also trying to say something honest and angry about how the powers that be protect abusive men, its silliness is a setback.

As offbeat and personal as the director’s best.

As deliberate as the image-making often is, it’s always to train us in looking as the brothers do, to consider the breadth of life and interconnectedness in our world: Wherever you are, All That Breathes is asking, can you see what’s there, what needs your attention?

Henry is such an earthy, captivating presence that he holds the center of gravity in Causeway — when he’s not on screen, the film drifts, rudderless, as Lynsey does.

A glossy and breezy summation of Black cinema history this is not, and thank goodness for that.

While it’s instructive to witness the luxuries enjoyed by the lofty and powerful — the tea, the wine, the pastries — in contrast with the soldier’s miserable starvation diet, it’s ultimately a mistake to cut away from Bäumer and his comrades, removing us from the physical and psychological hellscape to which they’ve been abandoned.

Though the film is politically and culturally urgent, it’s too much of a challenge to connect with the void of character at the core of this screenplay. We may all have the power to be Jane, but the image of Jane remains frustratingly hazy in Nagy’s depiction.

What it isn’t is especially insightful or memorable. Just because evil is banal doesn’t mean a movie has to be.

My Policeman is an absorbing, resonant, deeply wistful adaptation of the 2012 novel by Bethan Roberts that will probably be best appreciated — stylistically, thematically, romantically — if judged more within the context of its mainly mid-20th century setting than by contemporary expectations.