Set, script, performances, and direction - it all works.

Aside from the exquisitely executed acts of outrageous (comic-book) mayhem, KILL is fun. KILL unleashes a vicious ballet of hand-to-hand combat, all within the narrow confines of a passenger train en route to New Delhi.

The stubborn ambiguity of Last Summer — with its genuinely could-be-this, could-be-that head-scratcher of an ending — will either be a dealbreaker for viewers or proof of bold, irreverent storytelling that refuses to be neatly packaged. To be sure, the film isn’t judging so much as presenting a fraught scenario for its audience to consider.

Returning director Chris Renaud, co-director of parts one and two, knows his way around the characters, and he knows what his audience wants: cartoon mayhem, mild naughtiness from the Minions, social awkwardness from Gru.

At any rate, you’ll be entertained. What you won’t be is transported, and that’s kind of the goal.

It’s not reluctance that prevents Leiser from divulging the driving force of the film’s narrative but rather a self-assured and less defensive “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude. The “opera” aspect of the film will be highlighted in the review and press material, but for Leiser, Freydís and Gudrid, it is simply a good story told through music.

Chapter 1 of this undertaking is imperfect, at times meandering and once or twice confusing, but it is never boring and never feels over-long. And it is spectacularly beautiful to look at.

Shot in black and white, with scenes of razor-wire barriers and terrified families hiding in the forest, Green Border evokes images of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the subject of Holland’s films Europa Europa (1990) and In Darkness (2011).

What the film does well though is deliver a precisely balanced combination of jump scares, intense situations and confrontations with truly horrible creatures. It’s an effectively scary story, and it’s through the silence of the audience that you can measure this film’s success. Punctuated by some powerful emotional delivery, the audience is able to connect with characters meaningfully, distracting them from convenient story factors and encouraging willing disbelief.

It’s fascinating stuff, and it rests both on its leads and on the universal truth that unburdening to strangers is often easier than unburdening to intimates, as any real-life cab driver or bartender can attest. And yet, as Daddio shows, that very spontaneous act fosters an intimacy all its own.

Kinds of Kindness is certainly a display of disparate kinds of weirdness. But unlike Poor Things, which was both provocative and told with absurd clarity, this anthology is a mixed bag of wannabe profundities.

While the film prompts a mildly interesting inquiry, in the end, it’s simply nostalgia that is the draw.

The Bikeriders sparks enough interest to hint at the possibility of stronger stories being washed away in the flow of an unfocused narrative. There are good stories in The Bikeriders, fleshed out within an inch of their potential.

It’s one of those movies where, short of any actual existential terrors to throw at the audience, the sound engineers merely crank up the volume from time to time so that a door closing sounds like a cannon going off. Our Lady of Jump Scares preserve us!

Thelma is really entertaining. The cast (which includes Malcolm McDowell) is very strong. The performance from Squibb, a 70-year vet of the industry and Oscar-nominated for her work in Nebraska, is fantastic, and Roundtree is likewise magnetic.

Like sequels of beloved movies, puberty can either be terrific, passable or really suck. So, while Riley, the lead character in Pixar’s Inside Out, has a rough-ish start to adolescence, the sequel Inside Out 2 — I’m relieved to say — is terrific.

It is also astonishingly tender and very human despite its fantastical premise, which rivals any superhero film for boldness of imagination yet summons uncommon emotional heft.

It’s never a good sign when the Wikipedia page is more interesting than the based-on-a-true-story movie it references.

The Watchers is not a perfect movie, but it is an excellent start, heralding the arrival of a bold new talent.

Whatever magic that writer/director Savi Gabizon brought to the original seems to have evaporated for this second go.

It’s a wistful, beautiful, and tender movie that works across generations, yet another feat accomplished. It's not just clever storytelling, dammit! There’s heart and magic at work here.

It’s wonderful for its restraint, and for the things it doesn’t do.

In a Violent Nature follows the traditional path of a slasher and rises above the genre to be something other than the norm.

In another era, in a more dramatic coming-of-age story, we would expect something life-changing, possibly terrible to happen. But Gasoline Rainbow remains gentle, optimistic and free-flowing. It’s a vision of America that is almost banal in its lack of menace, an alternative kind of docu-fiction that belies the angry drama of the daily news.

There aren’t zombies rampaging through Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s quiet film. Instead, the spare, slow-paced, thoughtful film is an affecting story about coping with grief.

For this viewer, always on high alert for emotional manipulation, Ezra is an engaging movie that works because of sharp writing and terrific performances.

Solo largely succeeds, thanks to Dupuis’ confident handling of the tonal shifts between off- and onstage scenes in a series of stylishly lit interiors. The performances feel grounded and credible, with Pellerin especially good in revealing Simon’s contradictions, between anxious vulnerability and resilience.

It’s a deceptively simple movie, a lot of fun. And it doesn’t require you to do a deep dive to really enjoy it.