Undergirding it all is a light but ever present tension between living up to the philosophy the men were taught as teenagers and making their way through the realities and compromises of American adulthood. Tran’s not preachy about that, but the filmmaker’s killer move is showing how his heroes’ souls can be as fragile as their aging bones, yet resilient when the situation demands.

Here Today is a weird case — not mediocre, not lukewarm, but genuinely bad and good, cringe-worthy and moving. Take this as a recommendation, and a warning.

The film’s overall aesthetic is a pleasing blend of naturalistic drawings, cartoonier designs and Heavy Metal magazine futurism.

Based on Elizabeth Brundage’s 2016 novel All Things Cease to Appear, Things Heard & Seen is a slow burn, and it spends a fair amount of time strewing elements of other ghostly tales throughout the premises. But then it takes a turn, those elements gel, and the characters come into sharper focus.

This character study, which was nominated for two BAFTA Awards, including outstanding British film of the year, is Sharrock’s second full-length feature. That he could make a film so warm and wise early in his career bodes well for whatever comes next.

The Virtuoso covers well-worn territory — the assassin story is almost a genre unto itself — and director Nick Stagliano, hampered by a predictable script, can’t bring much new to the game.

Sollima knows how to film violence, so individual moments stand out. What Sollima can’t do is make a good movie from a bad script.

As a woman struggling to define her own narrative, Yeo delivers a layered, heartbreaking performance. But she is ultimately ill-served by both the inertness of the story and Chen’s awkward approach to the material in the final half-hour (no spoilers here).

About Endlessness is like a bunch of Debbie Downer skits directed by Ingmar Begman, just not as entertaining.

Swedish documentarian Johan von Sydow lets Tim tell the story, mixing plentiful musical performances with narration drawn from Tim’s diaries (read solemnly by Weird Al Yankovic), illustrating the details with animation and a feast of vintage stock footage.

Those who just want to watch a cool, competent and only semi-dumb action movie, though, can thank god for small favors like that.

If you can buy the film’s unlikely core premise, you’ll be rewarded with persuasive speculative fiction in all its other aspects. Penna and company make it easy for audiences to do that, while putting four people whom they’ll come to really care about through all kinds of hell.

Beckwith, though, rallies with some memorable moments in the third trimester and nails the climactic scene with gut-wrenching efficiency. Her movie stays afloat because of Harrison (watch out for her in the future) and Helms, who both deliver a fitting finale that’s revelatory and emotionally satisfying.

Street Gang is a worthy celebration of a one-of-a-kind program. If you’re not careful, it might leave you humming your ABC’s.

Demon Slayer is sharply paced, colorful fun.

Farmers may wonder what the big deal is, but Gunda is quite a cinematic achievement whether you’re familiar with the livestock or not. Plus, the piglets, whom we see grow from birth to adolescence, alone are worth the price of admission.

Anyone wondering what 1960s TV show Ironside would have been like if Raymond Burr had been a dirty cop gets their answer courtesy of Morgan Freeman in the dreadful new thriller Vanquish.

Jeffrey Wolf’s exceptional documentary Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts seeks to tells its subject’s story in a deeply personal way, while also pulling back when needed to contextualize his work.

It’s an ode to the satisfactions of facing life head-on with whatever time you have left. And writer-director Maria Sødahl semi-autobiographical drama earns every iota of its hard-won uplift.

The likability of Lydia and Emily helps, but writer-director Ben Falcone’s tendency to milk emotion that isn’t there drags down the movie and some of the comic bits feel obvious and pushed.

The Man Who Sold His Skin may not be entirely believable, but its many great metaphors for multiple social ills create their own, withering truth. The film doesn’t ask us to turn our gaze away from the world’s ugly realities, but to see them in the very handsome images they inspired Ben Hania to make.

The technically elegant Voyagers, about a space colonization trip run amok, is easy enough to sit through, but it’s a story in need of more rocket fuel. There isn’t a bad scene in the movie, yet there isn’t a really good scene, either. It’s a quiet psychological thriller, even when it’s trying to stir mayhem.

Set amid a group of freshly arrived white army conscripts who will be sent to fight communist guerrillas along the Angolan border in apartheid-era South Africa, it’s a riveting portrait of a particular time and place while also being a broader assault on the type of pressure-cooker masculinity where torture, cruelty, humiliation and racism are the coins of the realm.

French Exit is worth seeing because it gives a juicy role to Michelle Pfeiffer, who is something to marvel at. But it’s a frustrating film because, as a whole, it’s just not nearly as good as its central performance.

Between the talking heads, Rothstein also uses kinetic imagery and spry cutting to keep the potentially eye-glazing subject matter as gripping as a true crime mystery, which it kind of was.

Beyond the superb acting, Concrete Cowboy gets a lot of mileage from its visually arresting riding scenes and its spot-on score, which is both haunting and inspirational.

Using footage mostly from the cameras of various passengers and crew, the documentary takes us inside the experience of being stuck inside a floating prison, unwanted by any port, as COVID cases and fears mount. It’s an experience you would not want to have directly, but it’s fascinating to watch.

If you’re looking for scenes of big, awful creatures fighting each other and knocking over skyscrapers — and for the spectacle of people scurrying below, running from the huge stomping feet — you will find little to dislike in Godzilla vs. Kong. It does its job. It’s a monster movie.