Gloria Bell is best when it’s least definite, when the conversations are full of awkward holes and the relationships are in flux.

It’s amazing how skilled he (Allen) is in making his old ideas seem fresh, lively, even urgent. His new drama Blue ­Jasmine comes this close to being a wheeze. But he sells it beautifully.

The cast functions brilliantly as individuals and as a unit, each in his or her own world but linked near-telepathically to the movements of the others. Like, come to think of it, a family.

The best scene is when Hellboy and Abe get drunk and sing out raucously, which after "Hancock" suggests a trend toward superhero alcoholism.

Holofcener’s plotting can seem casual (many characters, no speeches pointing up the themes, no conventional climaxes), but her dialogue is smart, an oscillating mixture of abrasiveness and balm, of harsh satire and compassionate pullback.

Michel Bouquet's performance makes Anne Fontaine's How I Killed My Father required viewing.

The mystery of the artistic process is left mysterious -- as it should be.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a boundlessly generous and frequently surprising two-hander.

Chapter 4 is blissfully entertaining, full of pratfalls and acting turns that lead to the audience swelling with oohs, aahs, and yelps.

Roadrunner may have been made too soon, and made with a misguided approach in mind, but in its closing moments, it manages a sudden magnificence in affirming that there’s no right way to mourn. Grief, in all of its ugly reality, is a part of life too, and there’s no tidying it up for the camera.

Under the Fig Trees is a big-minded film that grounds its ideas about labor, sexism, faith, and modernity in the zippy rhythms of its characters’ negotiations around friendship, romance, and work. Most of the film’s runtime is people talking, but with evocative dialogue and lived-in performances from mostly first-time actors, it’s an unapologetic slice of life.

High Flying Bird is an unshapely piece of storytelling — there are gaps in the plot, and it never locks into a rhythm — but that mournfulness and resentment seep into you.

What makes The Card Counter so delicious, aside from the Mad Libs quality of the way it connects card playing and government-sanctioned torture, is that the movie undermines the Spartan swagger of William’s half-existence as often as it basks in it.

Grady and Ewing use music as scary as in any horror film. They had no interest in making an “objective documentary,” although I doubt the Hasidim would have made themselves available to two women with a camera and their own hair. In such cases, they usually say, “If you want to understand us, read the Torah.”

Though worth seeing, should be better than it is.

Scattershot but rousing documentary.

A startling achievement, but its lack of psychological dimension prevents it from making much human contact with us. It ends where it begins: in a state of shock.

The Lost City of Z(ed) isn’t as expansive as you might initially wish but still pulls you in and along.

Miroirs No. 3 has nothing on Phoenix, Petzold’s post–World War II masterpiece about a woman haunting her own life, but it is entrancing. The key to its unsettling pleasures is the way it acknowledges that what is happening is disturbing only if one of its characters says it is.

Even at three-plus hours, the gargantuan Avengers: Endgame is light on its feet and more freely inventive than it needed to be. Given the year-long wait, its audience — Pavlovian dogs, myself (woof!) included — would have salivated over less. It’s better than Avengers: Infinity War, which was better than Avengers: Age of Ultron; and it is, for a change, conclusive.

Blue Ruin is more artful and evocative than any recent revenge picture, but it’s still drivel.

With a light touch but deep reserves of respect for fans both old and new Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda is an extremely fitting portrait of the influential composer. There’s an air of patience that presides over director Stephen Schible’s footage, even during a period that presents a lot of tumultuous questions for his seemingly unflappable subject.

Clever novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland makes a half-dandy directorial debut with Ex Machina, a sci-fi film that — like much of his work — fakes excitingly in the direction of breaking new ground before turning formulaic so fast.

The people who maintain the status quo are those with power, and those with power are often unwilling to share: with those who are weaker, with those who are younger, with those who are other. The propulsive energy of the film is driven both by that injustice and by the scars it leaves on places and on people, and so the horror, the horror, of Saloum is both timeless and timely.

The Tribe is a harrowing, corrosive film, but there’s great, urgent beauty in it.

Put up side-by-side, the redemption of killers doesn’t feel quite as urgent a narrative as the alliance of idealists, and in its final minutes The Sisters Brothers retreats back from some interesting, adventurous territory to something all too familiar.

There's a new sensibility at work here, wry yet lushly disaffected, and it will be worth watching what Martel does next.

Lorenz is the kind of role that Hawke thrives in — a big talker and a self-mythologizer who everyone can’t help but like, despite being aware that he’s mostly full of shit. He wisely approaches the character like he’s giving a performance of a performance, his Lorenz committing himself as thoroughly as he can to acting like someone who’s happy and having a good time despite everything in his life crumbling away.