Most true crime fans know that the real stories that have enraptured them in film and television are much crueler and grosser than their fictionalized counterpart. If Akin’s goal is merely to pull away that curtain, it ultimately feels like a hollow unveiling.

An odd film like this needs a charismatic anchor in its lead role to keep it from losing its human connection and Boyd Holbrook just can’t muster the energy to do that. It’s a strangely flat, unengaging performance that doesn't match the ambition of the overall piece.

The results are mixed cinematically — crisply lensed by Marcel Zyskind, the Florida-set film looks like an average episode of “Veep,” which Morris has directing credits on. And the laughs are pretty sparse, too, despite a non-stop flow of zingers.

In his mind, Cohn was still the hero of his own story. And we get the impression from this film that, right up to the bitter, agonized end, he was engaged in an internal battle to justify himself to himself, and to the world.

Kapadia's film shows us that for better or worse, Maradona's loyalty was always to the game, and that, as much as his skill on the field, deserved more loyalty from the fans.

There’s a lot of crunch and dazzle here. While the overall tone is pitched to a teen demographic, the creative energy and the execution on display is consistently engaging.

An incoherent blob.

Britt-Marie Was Here is based on a novel by Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove), whose themes often include cranky people who isolate themselves and community sports that bring people together. Thankfully, he and director Tuva Novotny keep the characters astringent and his tone wry, so it never gets cuddly or cloying.

A strong sense of style and a promising premise are undone in a film that never quite figures out how to write itself out of its corner.

Loro feels like the work of a more mature artist. Sorrentino knows exactly who his Berlusconi is, and, with the help of Servillo — who delivers a characteristically impressive performance — manages to make the former Prime Minister’s total lack of introspection seem ironically revealing. Ecco Silvio: pathetic, alone, indestructible.

It’s antagonistic comedy that’s brilliantly designed so that nobody actually gets hurt.

With a surprising amount of side laughs and an isolated, elaborately decorated chamber in the woods full of opportunities, Villains sets an intriguing stage for a quartet of skilled performers, all clearly enjoying the chance to fly their freak flags to comical effect.

Imagine “Office Space” with forgettable characters and nothing to say about this next bleak phase of the business world.

It works. It really works. It's goodhearted and clever, and it knows when to end.

The title is perhaps the cleverest thing about it.

By virtue of its subject, Always in Season is going to be a very hard sit for many, but this film should be seen. It is an unflinching look at how the racial sins of the past remain flowing through the arteries of the present day.

This is rare, nuanced storytelling, anchored by one of Brad Pitt’s career-best performances and remarkable technical elements on every level. It’s a special film.

What Hawley has delivered is a garden variety bad movie, proving the TV wunderkind of “Fargo” and “Legion” was not quite ready for the big screen.

Midnight Traveler might have carried an even greater emotional wallop if we had a greater understanding of the feelings of the filmmaker whose work has endangered the lives of the people he loves most.

As played by Renée Zellweger, this Judy is painfully and visibly anxious. Or, perhaps this is her idea of drug-induced twitching. Either way, there are spots in the movie where Zellweger’s affected manners become too distracting and overshadow everything else around her.

A typical biopic buoyed by its unrelenting hilarity, its affection for its subject and commitment to the time and place it is set. And yet, something still nags at me about its lead performance. Don’t get me wrong, Murphy is very, very good, and on the basis of this, I’d love to see him tackle Pryor next. I just buy him more as Rudy Ray Moore than I do as Dolemite.

By the time Margo finally announces that she’s ready to leave, I was eager to gather my things and join her in escaping this would-be comedy.

3 from Hell has moments of abject horror, but fans of Zombie’s autumnal provocations will be rewarded with his most earnest and laid back nightmare yet.

Can You Keep a Secret? doesn’t elicit warm laughs so much as heavy sighs, even though the film has some zippiness — there’s a slapstick spirit to the movie that doesn’t shine because the jokes are plain, the couple is tough to root for, and the general tension behind this weird situation is on the lazier side of rom-com premises.

Half-nifty, half-cheesy.

If you’re a maven or even vaguely curious there’s a lot of production value to be derived here. The human story that the filmmakers want to drape over their atmosphere, though, never quite connects.

Fessenden’s prickly sense of humanism makes a considerable difference in Depraved, his engrossing take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and maybe his best movie to date.

It isn’t until deep into “Moonlight Sonata” that you start to realize how many patterns Brodsky has woven into the fabric of this tale.