When the end finally arrives, it brings no sense of completion, just a sort of numb awareness that the pain has stopped.

Aside from the defection scene, the only tension in The White Crow concerns whether Nureyev will achieve the renown he deserves or whether his career will be killed in the crib. That’s not nothing, but it’s small stuff to peg a two-hour movie on, especially one with an unsympathetic protagonist.

There is a kind of historical British movie — Tolkien is one of them — that almost feels as if the subject were incidental.

Reynolds often seems lost for material, whether it’s the restrictions of the PG rating, or deficiencies created by the four screenwriters. By the halfway mark Pikachu might as well be in an “Alvin and the Chipmunks” sequel, resorting to bodily function jokes.

Judging by her funny, warm, drawn-from-life feature directing debut Wine Country, Amy Poehler is a gracious friend. She and screenwriters Emily Spivey and Liz Cackowski ensure that the many former “Saturday Night Live” performers and writers assembled for this Napa Valley-set Netflix comedy get moments to shine.

UglyDolls is a mind-numbing, low-rent version of “Toy Story,” with saccharine songs and a plot with echoes of, no kidding, the Holocaust. If you’re under 10, you might like it.

A B-movie with a few thrills and plenty of inane dialogue.

By the end, we’ve experienced one of the best films about street hustling ever made.

Visually, Bi is already a master. There are amazing shots that recall Tarkovsky (especially “Stalker,” an acknowledged influence), or early Wong Kar-Wai.

Like the best love stories, funny or otherwise, this movie also recognizes that being in love is an education, and that, if people are lucky, they choose the right teacher.

Diego also lacks any nuance as a character. He is grim and humorless, like most everything else about this film.

White, who has done documentaries about Serena Williams, Beatles secretary Freda Kelly and the Netlfix series “The Keepers,” is an efficient storyteller who keeps things moving. There is a wealth of archival material, and clips from her 1980s television life. He neatly makes the case for Westheimer; openly talking about sex is now commonplace, but not when she started.

The overall mood is out-and-out misty-eyed, a feeling emphasized by the movie’s piano score. Ramen Shop has some flaws — the movie jumps jarringly back and forth in time — but voluptuous closeups of delightful dishes like chilli crab make up for a lot.

The joy of discovery is at the heart of Penguin Highway, a delightful new anime that is about the mysteries of life, both scientific and personal. Oh, and it’s about penguins, too.

Hail Satan? is too lacking in conflict (apart from the eternal one) to be a true study of a movement. But it’s a highly entertaining survey.

It’s rather amazing that Sophie Cookson, who has most of the screen time as young Joan, isn’t detestable in the role. It tells you that she’d be perfectly charming in another movie. Actually, Dench is more off-putting here, if only because destructive naivete is more forgivable in the young.

If you partake of the Marvel universe, this movie is for you no matter what. And if you don’t, seeing it would be like going to church if you’re an atheist — an experience of spectacle unmoored from any purpose or definition. In the case of “Endgame,” we’re talking fine spectacle, to be sure, the best that money can buy. But all the same, this one is strictly for the faithful.

JT Leroy is on safer ground when Albert and Knoop are matching wits, mainly because it’s a pleasure to watch the perfectly cast Dern and Stewart on the screen. It’s easy to understand what attracted these fine actors to these roles, but the script allows them to only scratch the surface of this maze-of-mirrors story, where the truth remains deliciously elusive.

So, Dogman is a strange case: Great actor, great character, but a story that’s like an overstretched anecdote infused with art-film portent.

The movie’s one flaw, a notable one, is that the first hour is better than the second. The first is jaw-dropping. In the second half, the film slow downs somewhat, but by then, the audience is hooked into the movie’s reality, so there’s no turning away.

Girls of the Sun has an air of authenticity and grit that’s convincing, and Farahani, an Iranian-born actress, makes us care.

Everyone comes out of Little Woods looking good, and DaCosta comes out with a directing career.

Fast Color is not a success, in that it’s not enjoyable as entertainment. It doesn’t hold an audience.

The story is well-told, but what makes it interesting is that each character confronts his or her own crisis — even Tommie, the paramedic who rescued him. It also drives home the point that a seemingly small tragic event can affect an entire community.

It’s admirable, but it has long stretches of dull, and the tickets aren’t free.

It’s a charming throwback to the martial-arts films of the ’70s and ’80s, with dazzling combat sequences punctuated by stiffly delivered exposition and hammy acting.

This Hellboy has story problems, with too much exposition and not enough character development. “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, seemingly a perfect choice for his ability to project melancholy and a luggish humor, isn’t given enough time to do either of those things.

It’s hardly a masterpiece — it’s a fairly simple tale, well-told, with a silly, derivative climax and rather disappointingly brief depiction of the Yeti culture. Yet it is blessedly devoid of the manic, ADD pace of many animated movies, with a winning trio of characters. As Commander McBragg might say, “Jolly good show!”

Is Little lousy? No. It goes along pleasantly, unimportantly, predictably. Here and there, a mild chuckle might escape your lips. Ten minutes later, a half-hearted titter, or perhaps a knowing chortle. Just don’t expect to guffaw or cachinnate, and forget all about busting a gut. It’s not that kind of comedy.

Peterloo, despite top-notch set and costume design, is this claustrophobic, interior movie. And despite the wall-to-wall dialogue, there is little character development — everyone seems to be a “type” rather than an actual person. So when the massacre does come at the end of the film, it is oddly underwhelming.

In The Chaperone, Brooks is something of a fixed entity, a fully-formed force of nature already heading toward her peculiar form of glory. She has stuff to do all day — studying by day and partying by night, while Elizabeth McGovern as Norma has time to look inside.

Isn’t bad, but it seems unnecessary. It’s even a little bland.

Estevez further undermines the film by casting himself in the lead role. He gives an odd performance, in which he consistently seems to be going for enigmatic, but he ends up just inexpressive.

The movie also benefits from the presence of Anne Heche as Ellis’ wife. Heche doesn’t say much, but she conveys a lot.

This doesn’t have the budget or the marketing push of “Pet Sematary,” the other horror film out this week, but The Wind has a boldness and imagination that transcends such limitations. This is indie horror at its best.

With Diane, as in life, it feels like nothing’s going on, but everything’s going on.

Yes, eventually, after about 100 minutes, it does default back to the usual nonsense, of protracted superhero battles in which no one can get hurt, and of commotion that makes a movie screen seem like a very big computer monitor. But until then, Shazam! is sensitive, imaginative and funny, with a good story and a smart premise.

Too much of what we see feels contrived and ham-handed.

It’s a lovely children’s movie, which isn’t to say that every moment of it is splendid and enchanted, because that’s not the case. The experience of watching Dumbo is more like, “This is OK, this is all very pleasant” — and then suddenly, there are tears in your eyes, and not from allergy season.

We can only describe the result, which is that this director — in her first feature film — has the ability to synthesize emotions and ideas through pictures. She shows you something; it means something, and you know what it means. She has an emotion, so she shows you something else, and you feel it, too.

The Hummingbird Project — is at once an offbeat comedy and a satisfyingly weird thriller.

Last time, Peele made a movie about the country. This time he made a movie about himself, and it’s even better.

Transit has a hint of science fiction, and more than a hint of Kafka. And despite the story’s link to World War II, it’s clear that Petzold wants it to resonate with today’s immigration problems.

There’s nothing wrong with Aftermath, but for one strange and nagging thing: To watch it is to want to be faraway from its world and everyone in it. The movie draws a circle around itself that holds no attraction or appeal, though it’s in every other way competent, well-acted and reasonably intelligent.

Costner’s performance is mostly monotone, but Harrelson has some nice moments portraying Gault as surprisingly reflective.

An exceptionally fine movie that plays out on a large and leisurely scale.

It’s a slickly made piece of entertainment that’s a good time out at the movies.

Wonder Park, frankly, isn’t very much fun. It becomes so enslaved with its nonsensical plot that it forgets this is supposed to be about coming to terms with the possible loss of a loved one. It gets lost in its own Rube Goldberg machine.

At 116 minutes, Five Feet Apart is too much of a just-OK thing. All the same, I want to see Haley Lu Richardson’s next movie.

The story, based on a novel by Victor Headley, is pointless and occasionally ridiculous. And the movie is hardly helped by a protagonist that we’re expected to care about, even as he does an unending series of colossally stupid, violent and self-destructive things.

An exquisite tale about coming of age and coming to terms.

Like the best noirs, The Wedding Guest is an efficient crime thriller that clocks in at around 90 minutes. It’s a B movie with style — the stuff that dreams are made of.

The good news is that the pace picks up — Giant Little Ones actually gets better as it goes along. And despite its lapses into self-consciousness, the movie presents us with a set of characters that we end up believing and caring about – not tremendously, but enough to keep watching to see how they all turn out.

The best we can hope to get from a movie of this kind is an interesting story, a hint of the artist’s work, some factual accuracy and surfaces that make sense. We get that from Mapplethorpe. And while Smith can’t show us Mapplethorpe’s depths, he can suggest them, enough so that, if anyone wants to know more, they can consult the ultimate source — Mapplethorpe’s own work.

The movie’s sympathies are with Halla and against the climate-change deniers, but it also sees something slightly ridiculous in her David-and-Goliath actions. What sets the film apart is how it balances both this sense of irony and an abrupt plunge into serious personal matters stemming from a forgotten decision Halla made years ago.

A movie that moves slower than it should and that keeps us detached for long periods of time. Most of the problems can be traced to the script, which does a poor job of establishing the characters and giving us a sense of how they relate to each other.

Let’s get the bad news over with quickly: Captain Marvel is no “Wonder Woman.”

It’s innovative and exhilarating at times, and then innovative and oppressive and relentless and repetitive and tiresome, but it’s never exactly boring. People will walk out of Climax, not for lack of interest, but for lack of endurance.

Greta is not just silly but obvious, and without any hint of a larger purpose, beyond hitting the various plot points of the human monster genre. Twenty minutes before the finish, it degenerates into a joke, and not a good one, but just fair enough to see through to the end.

The movie’s failure to engage is illustrated by directors Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra’s approach to the climactic scene. They shoot it almost entirely in long shot, as if inviting the audience not to care — or worse, as if admitting there was nothing to care about, after all.

An invigorating and inspiring viewing experience. The mission was indeed a giant leap for mankind, and now we have a documentary worthy of its subject.

Obviously a passion project, but Ejiofor keeps his film grounded in reality and avoids histrionics. And even though the plot is predictable from the get-go, the cast in uniformly good, and it’s hard not to be moved when William’s water-pumping invention carries the day. His story is one that’s worth telling.

Refreshing and worth seeing.

By the way, if you’re wondering about the subliminal appeal of the dragons — why these animated creatures look adorable on screen and not menacing at all — here’s why: Their movements, behaviors and expressions are based on cats. Once you know, it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Isn’t It Romantic isn’t romantic, and it isn’t funny. It’s a bad idea stretched to feature length, a gimmick picture that never gets past its gimmick and never grows into something better. It runs 88 minutes and runs about 80 minutes too long.

Pleasing, it is. Good, solid stuff. But one wonders how much better the film would have been had von Donnersmarck honestly explored the life of his inspiration, artist Gerhard Richter, rather than the fictional “Kurt Barnert.”

As is often the case with Farhadi’s films, Everybody Knows progresses as though nothing special were happening, and yet it’s all very interesting, anyway.

The “Happy Death Day” franchise isn’t going to revolutionize filmmaking. But the uplifting vibes — and occasionally absent slasher — haven’t come close to overstaying their welcome.

"Alita” is an action movie, and some of that is who-cares. But the bigger thing about this film is that it makes us think about humanness, what it means, what it is, and what it might be in the future.

An unexpected pleasure that’s heartfelt at times and humorous throughout. Yes, the plot is ridiculous and often coarse. Yes, the story is predictable. Yes, a condom stuck to a women’s jacket is played for laughs. But it’s a very steep uphill climb from there.

Despite very little dialogue and only one actor with a speaking role, Arctic has a smart script. Something is always happening.

Does nothing to elevate the form — and yet it doesn’t disappoint.

Neeson is as earnest as ever, but the movie’s tone is arch. Neeson doesn’t think he’s funny, but the director thinks everything is funny, or at the very least, absurd.

A real surprise. It seems to promise an exploitative genre movie, about gangsters and drug deals, and it delivers on that, but it’s something more. Director Catherine Hardwicke and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocet have taken a Mexican thriller, with a female victim at its center, and have turned it into an intelligent feminist film.

But it would be a mistake to leave the impression that the rewards of They Shall Not Grow Old are in any way akin to that of the usual BBC historical documentary. There is some overlap, to be sure, but by and large this Peter Jackson film does not offer a historical encounter, so much as an encounter of humanity, a psychic linking of hands across time.

An appealing Brazilian animated feature, and it’s conveyed in a handsome, expressive style that’s pleasing to watch.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: If Gilroy wanted to set a horror movie in the world of art commerce, fine. No problem. It’s not a bad idea. But to do it, Gilroy needed to respect the horror genre enough to create something sophisticated. Instead he went to the horror bargain basement and pulled out the cheapest horror conventions he could find, straight out of slasher bin.

Serenity is not just awful. It’s amazingly awful, which means that very few people will want to see it, but some probably will. People who can enjoy laughing at something made in dead earnest, who can appreciate, in a perverse way, a phenomenal, jaw-dropping mess, may find an experience close to pleasure in this strange, misbegotten, three-headed freak of a movie.

The young actors are adequate, but they’re not intrinsically interesting, so their interior movements hold no fascination. With that in mind, The Kid Who Would Be King should have been an hour long, but an extra 20 minutes, just to stretch it to feature length, would have been forgivable. But a full 120 minutes for this was just borderline crazy.

Polish actress Joanna Kulig has been waiting for years to show what she can do, and in Cold War she gets the chance. She takes the role of a lifetime between her teeth, chomps on it, pounds it into the ground and never lets go for a second. Ferocity and intensity are present in every moment of her performance, even when she’s contained. With Cold War, Kulig breaks out as a lioness of international cinema.

A relentlessly quirky British comedy-drama that demonstrates why more is not always more.

Unoriginal, except in the ways that it’s bad.

French cinema has a lot going for it, but the one thing Americans do best is story. And so “Intouchables,” now The Upside, has a story that finally works.

Destroyer makes “Manchester By the Sea” seem like an afternoon party with clowns and balloon animals. But if there’s a reason to see Destroyer, it’s for Kidman’s performance. It’s to take that journey with her.

The movie is made even worse with embarrassing flashbacks, painful voiceover, and inane dream sequences. It’s like a Merchant-Ivory film – on Quaaludes.

A gentle movie. It’s valedictory, with a sense of the ephemeral nature of life, the inevitability of regret, and the bittersweetness of looking back on past happiness.

As an exploration and celebration of a sub-culture, the movie fails. The people don’t seem especially bright or interesting. Whatever fascination Moselle felt for this world doesn’t come across in the movie.

It’s hard to imagine anyone in this role but Redford. Without him, there would be little here worth seeing.

To be clear, there are dazzling sequences in The Other Side of the Wind, and virtually every minute has something interesting in it. It’s absolutely worth seeing as a curiosity. But as a work of narrative art it doesn’t sustain itself for its full two-hour running time. After an hour, you might even have to struggle to stay awake.

Escape Room is an amusement park ride. It has no reason for being beyond that base-level kick, and it doesn’t, as they say, transcend the genre. But there’s something to be said for amusement park rides. People like them for good reason.

A serious movie that slowly earns its emotion and enlists our involvement. Even before the finish, it’s goosebumps all around.

Perhaps because Jenkins can’t translate to the screen the incisiveness and music of Baldwin’s prose, he brings on real music from other sources. Over and over, and increasingly as the movie wears on, Jenkins drowns his film in mirthless jazz and pop interludes to the point that the action feels stuck in cement.

Dick Cheney deserves better than this — or worse. So does Lynn Cheney, played by Amy Adams, who strains in vain to give dimension to a script that paints Mrs. Cheney as little more than an amoral social climber.

So, there you have it, a bad good movie, or a good bad movie, but a very decent Jennifer Lopez movie.

Welcome to Marwen does not work as a drama of addiction, and frankly it doesn’t work as a celebration of Hogancamp’s creations, which work best as stunning still-photo images.

The script stays on safe, formulaic ground, but it’s effective — and somehow breathes new life into a franchise that had become a junk heap.

Aquaman continues to revel in the outdated 1970s superhero ideal that mankind is unquestionably worth saving. Add to that some awkward dialogue, a poorly conceived visual effects palette, and a soul-crushing and bladder-crushing 139-minute run time, and you have another disappointing entry in the DC Comics cinematic universe.

The story doesn’t deliver. The songs are forgettable. And the magic never descends. Supposedly, Mary Poppins returns, but that’s not Mary. Emily Blunt stole somebody’s umbrella.