The filmmakers materialize a fascinating cinematic language that interrogates itself about matters of spontaneity and manipulation, man-made products and earth-given treasures, simplicity and sophistication, and how these all intersect.

While Disco’d is an unvarnished, moving look at the lives affected by the rising crisis of homelessness, it could have used a bit more polish and structure in telling these stories.

Even ignoring the fact that it was completed back in 2017, Reality Queen! a punishingly shrill, unfunny mockumentary about a social media darling of a Paris Hilton-type celebutante, can’t help but feel totally so yesterday.

Like the original experiment, this film fails when it tries to impose a conclusion, rather than letting its meaning reveal itself naturally.

The Sonata is well-made but not exceptional. It could use fewer long, expository conversations and more heart-stopping horror set-pieces. The actors have a lot of verve, but because their characters are so straightforward — bordering on archetypal — their situation is hard to connect to on an emotional level.

Its emergence from the dark waters of studio oblivion is far from unwelcome: It’s solid enough by the diminished standards of January, when the multiplex becomes a cinematic dumping ground, and it’s visually slicker and more sophisticated than its setup would seem to warrant.

At both its highest and its lowest, Inherit the Viper lacks excitement. The action sequences are sparse, and the plot is underdeveloped.

If there’s one word to describe the girl-power comedy “Like a Boss,” it’s incomprehensible. Structurally, industrially, philosophically and emotionally incomprehensible. What should have been an easy breezy buddy comedy is rather a flabbergasting tone salad.

This is not a “fun” horror picture. It’s about miseries both supernatural and mundane. And, yes, it’s scary. Pesce’s art-film roots are evident in the movie’s slow-burn first hour. But in the final third, The Grudge piles on the explicit gore and jump scares — all leading to a final scene and final shot as terrifying as anything in the original series.

The most gripping parts of Advocate are the film’s fly-on-the-wall cinéma vérité sequences of Tsemel at work, meeting with clients’ families, navigating the legal system and conferring about cases with fellow attorneys and her staff.

Playfully taunting title aside, Mullinkosson’s film is an affectionate portrait of a fraternal bond that no tribal council could ever tear apart.

One of the unexpected pleasures of Ip Man 4 is a warm montage of highlights from the previous three films that plays at the close. Star Yen has said there are no more Ip films in his future, but no one would be upset if another one happened to come along.

It’s a profound, affecting and beautifully told chronicle of faith, family, obsession and the language of music.

The film portrays the ferocious resistance of some people to the possibility that this man had nothing to do with the crime. And that’s when Just Mercy is at its best.

While the escalation in anti-Semitic violence and rhetoric is justifiably alarming, Hate Among Us, which spends a lot of screen time covering attacks in Paris and Berlin, would have made for more incisive viewing had its exploratory journey kicked off closer to home.

Reflected in its native language title (“My Lens”), Chinese Portrait is a personal reflection on the country’s past and present. Brimming with humanity, Wang’s contemplative, minimalist approach forces us to consider the day-to-day lives of these people, and perhaps our own.

The freewheeling, DIY quality of Lost Holiday works both for and against this quasi-caper comedy.

Schmaltzy, overlong and a bit tedious.

It’s a drama of resilient women, thoughtless men and crushingly unrealized dreams, told with supple grace, deep feeling and an empathy that extends in every direction.

For the most part, Cats is both a horror and an endurance test, a dispatch from some neon-drenched netherworld where the ghastly is inextricable from the tedious. Every so often it does paws — ahem, pause — to rise to the level of a self-aware hoot.

The Rise of Skywalker nakedly offers itself up in the spirit of a “Last Jedi” corrective, a return to storytelling basics, a nearly 2 ½-hour compendium of everything that made you fall in love with “Star Wars” in the first place. The more accurate way to describe it, I think, is as an epic failure of nerve. This “Rise” feels more like a retreat, a return to a zone of emotional and thematic safety from a filmmaker with a gift for packaging nostalgia as subversion.

Unfortunately, much of the acting (save by Bagatsing and Rachel Alejandro as Quezon’s vigilant wife, Aurora) is so spotty that it undermines the story’s potential tension and emotional heft.

At the center, Gyasi is an oasis of stillness and solemnity in a naturalistic performance, but the surrounding action never hangs together in anything authentic, especially with the unnecessarily flowery script and laughably heightened score.

It’s impossible to overstate what Fraser brings to this movie, with his imposing frame, manic energy and slangy dialogue. The other leads are strong too — including Abhay Deol as an undercover cop. But Batra doesn’t do enough fresh or surprising with the plot or action scenes, both of which are merely functional.

In Mob Town, the cast’s definitely got the goods, but the writing and direction consistently fail to seal the deal.

Low-key indie First Love has some interesting but fleeting moments in its story of twins in crisis, but it feels like a first draft whose script could have used more fleshing out, particularly in the characterization of its leads.

The key reason Richard Jewell works as well as it does is the perceptive nature of Hauser’s lead performance. His sense of who this character is, how he thinks about himself at his core, leads to scenes with both Rockwell and Bates that are unexpectedly powerful.

Black Christmas is a fun film that gets its kicks out of literally smashing the patriarchy.