When juxtaposed against a history of Iranian cinema that has often relied on child-centric allegory and non-specific narrative to make its societal critiques, There Is No Evil practically blisters with the intensity of specifically living in Iran as it exists now, as a state once believed to carry out the most executions of any country outside China.

Adams tries, as always, to make intelligent choices, to underplay the intensity and avoid the obvious. She works against the freneticism of the filmmaking, emphasizing Anna’s moments of groundedness and lucidity as well as the instinctive empathy that likely made her a good psychologist to begin with. By rights she should be the centerpiece of a great and genuinely Hitchcockian thriller. This one is for the birds.

Profile works on several levels — as a cinematic feat, dual character study, gripping thriller … and as a cautionary tale.

If Spiral hoped to reinvent the franchise, the dull installment merely amounts to bad fan fiction.

The upshot, deftly blending over-the-top violence and healing crisis management sessions, ultimately ties all the laugh-out-loud audacity and tender sweetness together with a festive Christmas bow

Fast-moving and slow-burning by turns, The Killing of Two Lovers suggests that real life — and real drama — so often unfold in the in-between moments, in the anticipation rather than the actual execution of the next move.

Less a hand-wringing dispatch from a repressive land than a judiciously glossy nudge toward a better world, The Perfect Candidate isn’t complicated, yet earns its mixed/hopeful conclusion.

The scenery’s gorgeous, Redgrave and Bergin are pros, Tom Everett Scott is fittingly gross as the selfish stage dad and Goodacre has some charm. But the film forgot to graft a personality onto its protagonist and seems so determined to be PG-clean that sparks between the leads are … hard to “find.”

For better or worse, it’s very much a Zack Snyder production: unwieldy but absorbing, awash in stilted dialogue, flimsy characters, bone-crunching violence, ridiculous-verging-on-sublime needle drops . . . and have-it-both-ways political subtext.

It’s a film to be watched not for its more literal filmmaking achievements, but rather for its ability to make you feel seen, with vulnerability and with love.

Burnette handles the genre film and the art film pieces of Silo fairly well but shortchanges them both by not committing fully to either.

A lot of big action pictures add “a little heart” between the thrills, but The Unthinkable reverses the ratio, centering emotions. Some genre fans may be impatient with this approach at first, but by the end, it really works.

Monster is a terrific film: a strong, absorbing, beautifully performed and crafted social drama that, unfortunately, proves even timelier today than when it was shot in 2017.

Ego-stroking bio docs being a cottage industry these days, Balvin is one of the more disarmingly open figures to get this kind of treatment. But it’s also nice that The Boy From Medellín makes the most of its allotted time with a busy phenomenon to at least dabble in the ins and outs of an artist contemplating his place in the world.

Heavy-handed acting from the young cast and Needell’s hackneyed dialogue further unmask the movie’s lack of visual wonder and narrative cohesiveness.

Among other things, “The Disciple” is a decades-spanning chronicle of an entertainment industry in constant technological flux, which means it’s fascinated by the ephemeral as well as the eternal.

Paper Tigers may not be a deep comment on aging or friendship, but it has enough humor and action to make it worth a few rounds.

An offbeat and life-affirming triumph, “Limbo” is the kind of original work of art that moves the needle on an issue by interrogating the human factor rather than hanging out on the impersonal surface. A movie born of our times but destined to outlive them, it deserves to cross the threshold from festival darling to audience favorite.

The story moves crisply, though with all the twists and the lack of introductions to the main players, it’s not easy to follow at first. The fights and chases are handled expertly (the “action director” is Jung Doo); they’re dynamic but believable and deliver emotional impact.

With a colorful blend of biting absurdity and copious dad jokes to offset the commonplace narrative, Rianda and Rowe optimize their dysfunctional family road trip for high-functioning enjoyment.

The absence of God, the trauma of war, the weight of history: None of these are new ideas for Andersson, a fact that reaffirms the wisdom of this movie’s title. But the implied grandiosity of those themes is dissipated, again and again, by the exquisite lightness of his touch and the startling tenderness of his gaze.

It takes a peculiar kind of ineptitude to cast an actor as good as Michael B. Jordan and wind up with something as decidedly not good as Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse.

The film is a vital historical corrective, inscribing the names of these women into history as the innovators, independent thinkers and trailblazers they were.

Youthful self-expression is a joyride in a minefield in Danny Madden’s Beast Beast, an adrenalized, tone-shifting indie bringing the technology-fueled lives of three suburban souls of varying circumstances, hopes and concerns into pathways destined to converge.

Writer-director Chen, along with the two leads, delicately navigates this story, and the result is something deeply humanist and nuanced rather than sensational, though the rainy milieu adds drama to the proceedings.

Inextricably rooted in lead Arndis Hrönn Egilsdöttir’s quietly defiant performance, The County tells an immersive, timeless David vs. Goliath story set against a contemporary backdrop of shifting societal norms.

While the cast is great, the milieu is vivid, the images are polished and the atmosphere is effectively moody, Things Heard & Seen fails to connect on a visceral level.

King for a Day is never less than riveting.