Even while we’re watching it, a funny feeling sets in. Lots of things happen in American Made, but it’s as if the frenetic pace is to keep us from thinking about what we’re watching.

The fly-on-the-wall style is a slow build that leads to an immersive experience, and then an ultimate payoff as the change-minded department detours into another scandal. The Force is like watching a drug addict take a few meaningful steps toward recovery, only to relapse again.

Lego Ninjago is still nowhere near bad “Alvin and the Chipmunks” sequel territory. But at this rate, we may be only one or two movies away.

All this is dramatized expertly and with a lightness of touch in Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay and in the direction of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the team behind “Little Miss Sunshine.”

The designer’s own recollections paint the most vivid pictures throughout the film, as do his sketches and the extraordinary parade of shoes that go by like models pivoting on the runway.

It’s a quiet film that almost slips by without notice.

Stronger always feels right in the moment, solidified by an outstanding central performance by Gyllenhaal, and some wonderful ensemble work, especially the actors just below the top billing.

When explored by writer-director Mike White’s expert, soulful script, Brad, against all odds, becomes a sympathetic figure, and the film itself achieves a sort of poetry.

Despite all the mayhem, “The Golden Circle” often feels slow and belabored, particularly in its middle section, when inspiration is nowhere to be found, and the chaos seems to be there just for the sake of being there.

Cuesta’s direction is all blunt objects, like a doctor performing surgery with a plastic fork from Burger King. But he shines in the more testosterone-charged scenes, including the opening terrorist attack with its tracking shots above and below water.

Jolie has crafted an intimate epic about a tough war subject that probably would have gone unmade without her humanitarian influence and star power. First They Killed My Father is a much more assured film, even if a bogged-down middle section prevents it from greatness.

Polina is spare in dialogue; more is conveyed through painterly wide-screen cinematography by Georges Lechaptois.

Salinger, who died in 2010 at age 91, probably would have hated this movie. If Jones doesn’t quite pull it off, it is at least a film of many pleasures and a thought-provoking look at American literature’s most famous loner.

Aronofky gets exactly what he needs from his top-notch cast. Lawrence is appealing and never allows herself to be reduced simply to a howling victim. Bardem, Harris and Pfeiffer are menacing in their own varying ways, with Bardem capable of turning on the charm at key times that makes us wonder if we haven’t misjudged him.

The bold, masterful Beach Rats, one of the most exquisitely haunting LGBT coming-of-age stories ever told, takes place in the unhip fringes of Brooklyn, a land that time has forgotten. But nothing about this film is forgettable.

Home Again is plain vanilla, from start to finish.

The locally sourced documentary is always engaging — lively and well-paced with an impressive list of interviewees from Hillary Clinton to Huerta herself.

It’s smart and funny and makes great effort to capture not just a time and place, but the specific feelings of being on the verge of adulthood and thinking the world is against you.

The film is undeniably energetic, with a lot of good lines written by Shores, but it descends into obvious preachiness, and from this view, the unrelenting wackiness becomes overwhelming. Still, good times are had by all.

Director Byung-gil Jung, a trained stuntman, is an expert in staging action set-pieces, and for fans of dazzlingly violent shootouts on motorcycles and buses, this brutal revenge tale should be right up your alley, even if the proceedings often get sidetracked with a confusing back story.

A play-it-safe film, with its chaos a little too controlled. But Bell’s examination of the institution of marriage has it insights, and there are laughs.

Crown Heights is a challenging film with long treks between uplifting moments. And there’s no question the film earns every moment of grace.

The problem with Birth of the Dragon, George Nolfi’s largely fictionalized account of a 1964 fight between an Oakland martial arts instructor named Bruce Lee and San Francisco instructor Wong Jack Man is that Lee...is the third-most important character in the film.

Gook is at its best when detailing the interactions of the three in the shoe store, but it strikes a more urgent note when the riots break out and the store comes under threat.

It’s less about music and more about how hard it is — and how bad it feels — to be absolutely and completely on the outside. And though the movie is uncompromising on that score — and shows its heroine going through a series of humiliations that are almost as painful to watch as they would be to experience — it’s not self-pitying. It’s dead-eyed accurate, and that’s its ultimate redemption.

The Fencer, directed by Klaus Haro, is basically a “Hoosiers” remake — a true story set in a 1950s small town, in which a coach with a mysterious past arrives to shape a rag-tag bunch of kids into tournament contenders (there’s even a halfhearted romance that seems thrown in at the last minute in both films) — but that’s OK. It’s a winner here, too.

Leap! is the kind of movie where if you see someone holding a stack of dishes, they will certainly break in the name of a lazy comedic moment.

Hamm perfectly plays Walter as a sort of suave, GQ version of HAL 9000, and Davis and Robbins have their most satisfying feature film roles in years. Along with the pitch-perfect Smith, they provide the humanity to Almereyda’s vision of a species in danger of slipping into the void of selective memory and loss.