The last five minutes of Midnight Sky are touching and beautifully acted — if you’re willing to wait for it.

Apart from the excellence of this film, Fennell may have tapped into something tonally that truly expresses the moment we’re in. Point being, we’re in a time of horrible ridiculousness, and ridiculous horribleness. The revelation of Promising Young Woman is that its heightened reality feels more real — closer to actual reality — than comedy or drama.

It’s a grand bogus mess passing itself off as a philosophical statement. It has its moments, but they’re few. Often, it’s a beautiful-looking film — but it’s beauty without substance.

This is a bad film by a good filmmaker. It has the veneer of substantiality, but it’s unsubstantial. It is the product of sincere conviction and artistic confidence, but both were misguided. Every filmmaker needs to take the occasional chance, as Christopher Nolan did with “Tenet.” Not all chances pay off.

The main event here is Swank, who was a plaintive and sentimental figure in her earliest movies and has only fully come into her strength in youthful middle age. This strength makes Fatale an entertaining diversion and holds out the promise for something deeper and more satisfying in the future.

The gentle spirit of Wild Mountain Thyme envelops us early, to the extent that, midway through, even though there is very little left to resolve, we are in its spell.

Ultimately, Black Bear is about the price of art — not only the price the artist pays, but that the people around the artist end up paying, unwittingly. Yet in the actual experience of it, the movie doesn’t feel so lofty. It just feels tense and disquieting, like a thriller. In that sense, it is a thriller, but one of the emotions, and it’s riveting every step of the way.

The movie unfolds as a series of enjoyable, pressurized encounters between the lead character and everyone else — particularly, Bobby Cannavale as Carol’s ex-boyfriend.

Vulgarity is fine when it’s pure and democratic. But when it’s mixed with sentiment, it feels false. That’s the problem with Buddy Games.

Everyone in the movie is excellent, everyone is tonally spot-on, and no one has a single bad moment – which is another way of saying that Clea DuVall, best known as an actress (“Veep,” “Argo”), is a real director. She has made one of the best Christmas movies of the millennium.

So there’s a lot going on here, and director Joel Crawford and his teams efficiently keep the story moving along. There’s a wonderful “Flintstones” versus “Jetsons” vibe, the characters are, as usual, appealing.

San Francisco was the first major U.S. city to forbid the police and other agencies from using facial recognition technology — and the persuasive documentary Coded Bias makes it easy to understand why.

A fascinating documentary that seems to unfold over real time.

For the most part, this film has the disadvantages of Chinese action films, without the advantages. That is, it overdoes the action and it’s short on character, without attaining the manic, wild heights of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early ’90s. Still, it’s nice to see Chan once again in a Chinese environment.

Cage’s latest film, Jiu Jitsu must represent his career worst — and keep in mind, this is the man who made 1989’s “Vampire’s Kiss,” in which he ate a cockroach.

The important thing is that Dreamland accomplishes its main intention, which is to make us invest in this strange love story.

A tense, nail-biting thriller featuring powerhouse performances.

While Sound of Metal doesn’t venture to unexpected places, director Darius Marder — working from a script based on a story by “Blue Valentine” director Derek Cianfrance — keeps it all rooted in a heartfelt reality.

Come Away is an idea that never takes flight.

Freaky is, dare we say, soul-sucking?

In the humor department, Fatman’s is a scattershot but often clever affair thanks to the film’s director brothers, Ian and Eshom Nelms. Their last feature, the eccentric desert noir “Small Town Crime,” worked positive human connections into a dark, violent framework, so that seems to be a theme dear to the Tulare County-raised siblings.

It’s just fantastic. Sorry, fantastique.

She is a great talent, a legend, someone who has made enduring classics, and just the fact that she’s still working at 86 is a gift. But somehow none of that makes The Life Ahead, coming to Netflix on Friday, Nov. 13, an experience worth having.

Monsoon, an offbeat story about a man’s cultural dislocation in Vietnam, is more of a slow drip than a torrential downpour. It’s a lovely film that suddenly and magically can wash over you, then lose you in its opacities.

An exquisite achievement.

Adams, a six-time Oscar nominee, is likely headed to a seventh for an admittedly showy but nuanced turn that manages to bring Bev’s humanity bubbling to the surface even as her ugly side dominates — as Thoreau might say, a life of not-so-quiet desperation. Close is terrific as usual.

I Am Greta does show why she is a powerful voice. The key to her appeal is her honesty and her “innocence,” or as some would say, naivete.

The appeal of A Rainy Day in New York, to the extent it has any, is nostalgia.