Say what you will about Mad Mel Gibson, he’s a driven, febrile artist, and there isn’t a second in his war film Hacksaw Ridge — not even the ones that should register as clichés — that doesn’t burn with his peculiar intensity.

This is not the kind of material for a stately biopic or a political drama. This is nasty, strange business — perfect for Ferrara, whose work often hovers between art and exploitation, between angst and sleaze.

What emerges is a portrait of a man whose fall was precipitous but whose sensibility and techniques outlive him and continue to evolve. This is the acid test for a good journalistic documentary: No matter how far back it reaches, Divide and Conquer always feels as if it’s in the present tense.

The film ... is more emotional than definitive; stopping just short of bestowing sainthood on the artist, but still aiming for something a little more cosmic than reportorial. This is not a “what really happened” exposé of his death, nor is it an academic postmortem on Peep’s musical or cultural legacy. It’s most effective as a character study.

The movie’s central motif — rituals that dull pain and heighten unhappiness — doesn’t clobber you. It seeps into you.

Even if the film is more thoughtful than pulse-pounding, the intelligence brought to bear is appropriate for a sport that’s as much about mental toughness as it is physical skill.

At its best, 22 Jump Street is less an action comedy than a loosely plotted revue, and though it’s not as witty as either Joe Dante’s "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" or Edgar Wright’s "Hot Fuzz" (in which the directors evinced genuine love for their chosen genres), it’s sure as hell better than a straight buddy-cop sequel.

The movie spreads bad vibes like a virus.

The film’s conclusion leaves a lot to be desired, which is unfortunate given how well it weaves its atmosphere and small ensemble together.

Brad walks around seething, and Stiller is a good seether. He has made a career of playing men with colossal chips on their shoulders. He has a zest for humiliation. Maybe he fits the role of Brad too well. He’s so convincing that he’s difficult to watch. So is the movie, though on balance it’s very fine.

If Penn really lets these actors sing, his watchful camera also knows how to respect their silences.

I'm not sure I have it in me to rant yet again about what a deprivation it is for our finest actor to deny us his genius in this way.

Predictable, not so much from his (Zhang Yimou) previous movies as from the work of the many sentimentalists who have already plowed this well-tilled turf.

Showcases some of the world’s finest and funniest actors having a high old time. It’s best enjoyed as a kind of traveling music-hall revue.

Beyond the many jump scares involving aliens and the terrifically terrified-out-of-their-wits performances, what makes A Quiet Place Part II special is the sheer joy we get from feeling like we’re in the hands of a confident filmmaker.

David Fincher's American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adds nothing to the previous adaptation, but it's certainly the more evocative piece of filmmaking.

Mamet has to learn to trust the camera more than he does; he has to stop trying to control everything with language; he has to let loose a little and just give in to the fluency, the ease, the free-flowing pleasure of making a movie.

Predator: Badlands is a charming surprise. He may surprise us yet again.

Despite the visual splendor of this movie — the beautifully animated creatures and elegantly imagined settings — what will ultimately determine whether you respond to this final How to Train Your Dragon is how well you remember the earlier entries. For some, it’ll be a moving conclusion to an epic series. For others, it’ll be one less kids’ franchise to worry about.

At its best, it’s effervescent. Leads Taylor-Joy (an inevitable future star) and Flynn (perfectly sad-eyed) are lovable and surrounded by some very funny supporting performances from Mia Goth as Emma’s friend and underling, Harriet, Miranda Hart as the garrulous Miss Bates, and Bill Nighy as Emma’s adoring dad.

I can’t decide if Kurzel’s Macbeth is worse than the geriatric Maurice Evans–Judith Anderson version I was forced to endure in high school, but it’s certainly less lively than the two terrible gangster updates, Joe Macbeth and Men of Respect.

Even with its complicated moral vision, Wouk’s ending reoriented the story’s emotional focus; some might argue it clarified it. Friedkin’s ending leaves you unsure of what to think or feel. It sends you out questioning your beliefs — about war, about service, about madness, even about right and wrong. In that sense, despite the lack of ornament and the reduced scale, this Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is pure Friedkin.

Moment to moment, Sleepwalk With Me is smooth and very entertaining, but it's arrested somewhere between fiction and autobiography.

For all the artfulness, the feel of the film is rough-hewn, almost primitive. It’s a fabulous tree house of a movie.

Director Matt Spicer’s Sundance breakout is a friend-crush tale as old as time, modeled almost to a T on "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (without the murder). As such, your mileage will vary depending on whether or not you’ve ever been to Café Gratitude and how much of a tolerance you have for Aubrey Plaza.

Both the film and the “notorious” figure at its center are the best imaginable retaliation to mansplaining.

It's a marvelous, resonant joke that never quite succeeds: Stretches of the film resemble a Dario Argento horrorfest crossed with a Mel Brooks spoof. But the director, E. Elias Merhige, and his screenwriter, Steven Katz, occasionally bring some rapture to the creepiness, and Dafoe's vampire, with his graceful, ritualistic death lunges, is a sinewy, skull-and-crossbones horror who seems to come less out of the German Expressionist tradition than from Kabuki.

Most of the time we are with Cruise and Foxx, and their interplay is never less than galvanizing.