It’s a tedious mess to endure and seemed like way more fun making than watching.

By burrowing within the brutal propaganda of apartheid, Hermanus, in his intensely expressive, achingly sorrowful fourth film, has captured a mean machinery at work — one that still abides, long after the end of apartheid.

Voyagers is simply a semi-effective thriller with about as much emotional intelligence as its lab-produced, hormone-controlled, sequestered youngsters.

Concrete Cowboy, an impressive debut by writer-director Ricky Staub that overcomes formulaic dialogue and we-saw-that-coming plot twists with its sheer heart, is based on a novel, Ghetto Cowboy by Gregory Neri.

It doesn’t always work, but the writing is sharp, the performers top-notch and the set designs achingly beautiful.

Godzilla vs. Kong, the only creature feature to dare wide release in some time, is a rock ‘em-sock ’em monster-movie revival with all the requisite explosions, inane plot twists and skyscraper smashing to satisfy most lovers of gigantic amphibians. Vive le cinéma!

The film, as you would expect, walks us again through the tremendous upheavals in Turner’s life. But it’s ultimately about Turner telling her story — why she struggles having to tell it; why she needs to tell it, anyway; and why she wants to be done with it.

Six Minutes to Midnight is entertaining enough if a little underwhelming.

Without spoiling any secrets, the film progresses in horror-film mode before, in its third act, tying things up in a somewhat clever, unexpected way. By then, though, you may have given up on this group.

While it might not be on the same level as Bridge of Spies, it’s solid, well-acted and enjoyable nonetheless.

It’s a smart film, certainly, but maybe not as smart as it wants to be. And there are a couple of clunkers that bring the mostly meditative experience to a halt.

Arteta (The Good Girl, Cedar Rapids) has an underrated ability at crafting comic, humanistic movies out of commercial concepts. But Yes Day slides too often into contrived, loudly scored montages of “fun” that don’t transfer to those of us watching. And while Garner and Ramirez are both very fine actors, neither of them is funny.

Overly long, bombastic and poorly focused.

Again, it all feels like a 30th reunion — maybe because it IS one — where the liquor flows, old stories are rehashed, the men haven’t aged quite as well as the women, the kids steal the show, and by the end you’re happy to have gone but feel no need to be at the next one.

Just as last year’s beekeeping beauty Honeyland, The Truffle Hunters is a richly allegorical documentary of a vanishing agricultural pastime.

Raya is undoubtedly a visual feast. It’s also the best kind of feminist film in that it’s one that doesn’t clobber you with the message. Raya is allowed to be awesome without the script shouting about it all the time and it’s better for it.

This does not come across as a vanity project that’s been intensely controlled by the star or the machinery around her, either. It’s refreshing. It’s also probably one of the last times we’ll all be invited into her life in this way.

A clever concept, not a profound film. Terrifically acted and finely crafted though it is, it’s a brilliant but hollow exercise in perspective that calls more attention to its artful orchestration than it does life or loss.

In the frustrating The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Day gives it her all as Holiday but she can’t save a film that is overstuffed and also thin. Director Lee Daniels and screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks offer an unfocused, meandering work for much of the time, interrupted by devastating scenes that feel like a punch to the gut.

It doesn’t all fit together, and I Care a Lot has ultimately no way of resolving its fairly ludicrous plot. But it’s strong, gripping, unpredictable pulp, and Pike pulls something off that few else could as a protagonist. She’s quite detestable and completely compelling.

This film is a small miracle and a uniquely meditative experience.

The film nicely sends up spy capers, Broadway and buddy movies and is a lot like its two leading characters: Kindly, a little silly and as sweet as a candy-colored drink at the pool bar.

Luckily, The Mauritanian, directed by Kevin Macdonald, gets one thing very right: Tahar Rahim’s masterful central performance. The French actor achieves something his big-name costars — Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley — do not, presenting a multi-layered, subtly shaded and deeply moving portrayal that proves hard to forget.

A potent and vividly acted drama about the FBI’s subversion and assassination of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Minari could not be more personal. Filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung based the film on his own childhood in the 1980s, when his Korean American parents moved to Arkansas to start a farm. And it’s the specificity of this delicate tale that makes it so universal and so great.

As cinematography, Malcolm & Marie (shot by Marcell Rév) is great. As cinema, not so much.

Talk about timing. When he began making Little Fish, an intimate and affecting romance in a sci-fi setting, director Chad Hartigan had no idea the world would be coping with a real pandemic in the real 2021. Watching this fictional society begin to fray in panic feels just a tad too close for comfort.

Religion and horror are hardly novel bedfellows, but writer-director Rose Glass crafts something fresh of the construct in her promising debut Saint Maud.

The actors Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth have been friends for 20 years and that is plainly evident watching them play longtime lovers in the wrenchingly beautiful film Supernova. The award-winning duo are like a well-worn sweater onscreen, comfortable and lived-in, showing the kind of tart affection people show when ardor’s lust has given way to the slow burn of adoration.

Compelling performances make Palmer watchable and fairly affecting despite the fact that we’ve seen this kind of thing so many times before.

An almost sturdy, often gripping genre exercise that ultimately doesn’t find enough fresh material in the serial killer procedural to warrant its blast from a stylish and shlocky past.

Conor Allyn is clearly a talented director and has a lot of reverence for the Western genre, but for as good and lofty as it’s intentions are, No Man’s Land comes up short.

Bahrani, with Paolo Carnera’s vivid cinematography, builds a dense, incisive film that nevertheless feels uneven in structure.

The movie’s gathering momentum, even as it grows more claustrophobic, is owed to a few things. It comes from Ben-Adir’s artfully calibrated performance as Malcolm — here more consumed with doubt, worry and self-awareness than the usual firebrand portrayal. It comes from Odom’s deft sense of Cooke. And it comes from King’s remarkable elegance as a director.

Locked Down is inevitably, and intentionally, of the moment. But I hope some of its off-the-cuff spirit lasts after the pandemic. So much Hollywood moviemaking is laboriously preordained.

There is nothing terribly new in the telling, no huge revelations or bombshells. Most of the details — including King’s infidelity and the use of Withers as an FBI informant — have been known for years. But that’s not Pollard’s interest. His canvas is large, stretching back to post-Civil War Jim Crow, exploring how notions of Black sexuality were turned into social weapons and into the way FBI agents were made mythical in popular culture.

In some ways “The Dig” feels like its own artifact too, like a lost Anthony Minghella film made 30 years ago and buried until now.

The film, earthy and sober, refuses to be carried aloft by sentiment, instead navigating a difficult and painful path toward self-preservation and renewal.

This movie will not be for everyone, but it is important not least because it continues to advance the discourse around miscarriages which is a trauma that couples, but mainly women, have been expected to shoulder in secret for far too long.

It should be required viewing for anyone who cares about free speech and democracy.

Written and directed by Eugene Ashe, Sylvie’s Love is an ode to classic melodramas, with sumptuous set design, gorgeous costumes and an enveloping soundtrack of mid-century hits.

Many of the best scenes are silent, enhanced by a wonderfully wistful score by James Newton Howard.

Soul turns out to be not an exploration of the afterlife but a wondrous whirligig of daily life.

It has the makings of a stealth classic.

The tone shifts radically from one moment to the next, and humor is a regular companion to mayhem, pain, even violence. That brings us to the wild and harrowing ending. It’s an ending that may not be expected — well, it’s definitely not expected — but Fennell has said it was the truest way to end a real story of female revenge, not a comic-book version.

The ambitions of Wonder Woman 1984 may be just outside its grasp, but it seldom feels predestined or predictable — a preciously rare commodity in the genre.

Although the event and aftermath were widely, exhaustively covered, I don’t think I’m the only one who lost the thread early. This not knowing is part of what makes Ryan White’s extraordinary documentary Assassins, about the trial of the two young women, so compulsively compelling.

Eventually, the movie does seem to get where it’s going. A scene between Alice and Roberta touches upon issues of literary ownership and artistic license that haven’t yet been fully mined. It’s a bit late in the game. But the ride has been pleasant.

The Prom works hard to be a good time, and I hope it is for many who could use one.

The writing is wry and occasionally quite funny. It’s not unsurprising that it made for a good play. But on film it moves at a languorous pace. Like its characters, it’s not interested in getting anywhere anytime soon.

The film itself might not wrap up in any sort of tidy or satisfying way, but nothing leading up to the conclusion would lead you to expect something so basic.

When it’s at its best, I’m Your Woman feels like you’ve slipped through a trap door, revealing a hidden pathway in an old genre apparatus.

It goes without saying that the performance is brilliant, and yes, electric, but it’s also heroic. If there had to be a final role, what a gift that it was this, an exclamation point to a career that seems ever more momentous.

It might not be as novel as the first, but it’s essentially harmless, if a little chaotic, fun for kids and doesn’t need to be anything more than that.

Collective is not a walk in the park. But it’s admirably awake to the cause-and-effect tragedies that can follow seemingly slight or obscure governmental decisions.

Christmas on the Square is pure, studio-lot fantasy and not really trying to be anything else.

Marder, who wrote the screenplay with his brother, Abraham Marder, takes far too long to get to his points in a sluggish middle but has crafted a quite lyrical tale of a man trying to find his way when everything he knows is taken away.

Utterly original and utterly excellent, the modern bromance The Climb is a thrilling ride, an unconventional and idiosyncratic American film that acts like a old-school arty European one.

This Hillbilly Elegy has stripped away the most sermonizing, debatable parts of the book, but it’s also denuded it of any deeper purpose, leaving us with a cosplay shell of A-list actors chewing rural scenery.

A film like this should give life to its characters and reveal essential truths beyond the book-report versions of their existence. But Ammonite keeps you at a distance on a rather vacant, but beautiful, journey.

The story itself is unremarkable, even thin — there are no surprising twists or turns, no big lessons in the script by Nicolaas Zwart — but the relationship at its core is hugely entertaining to watch.

It’s simply telling a story about a man behind so many of our movie memories and making a new one in the process. And it is, without a doubt one, of the year’s very best.

Both Lane and Costner, direct and earthy performers from the start, have only added depth with age. As long-married Montana ranchers in Let Him Go (in theaters Friday), they’re basically the platonic ideal of an old-fashioned, homespun Americana. They could sell you a mountain of jeans if they wanted to.

This very American fable has been blessed with three remarkable performances.

The best thing that Holidate has going for it is that Roberts and Bracey do have great chemistry, but they just don’t have a story or a script that can do it justice.

By bringing the migrant crisis into a horror-film realm, His House has forcefully captured the traumas of the refugee experience. The grounded performances and pained faces of Dìrísù and Mosaku offer no easy answers.

As it races to its cool supernatural climax — and then a coda that connects it to the first film — “The Craft: Legacy” is firing on all cylinders, looking back respectfully but also showing how the same story in different hands can soar.

A work of fierce interiority has been turned into a hollow exercise in exteriority.

It’s not going to be as iconic as Roeg’s, but it should provide some nice family entertainment at home for Halloween. And, bonus, post-viewing nightmares and trauma should be minimal this time.

The transition — from hyperreal cooked crabs that glisten in a bowl in the first 30 minutes of the film to amorphous, gooey Candyland critters 30 minutes later — is jarring. The sequences on the moon grow tiresome, despite huge toads that fly and squeaky-voiced critters.

It takes a little while to get going...The “Borat” sequel will make you laugh and squirm as much as it will send shudders down your spine.

As in any Sorkin joint there are at least three lines of dialogue that might make your eyes roll into the back of your head and your body produce an involuntary groan so extended that you will likely have to rewind. But it just goes to show how good the rest of it is that a few clunkers could stick out that much.

This hypnotic film experience is a badly needed shot in the arm for all of us — music lovers, theater lovers, dance lovers, culture lovers, life lovers. It’s also one of the best concert films in recent memory.

It’s one of the freshest college movies in years, a nano-budget breakthrough of rare sensitivity that announces more than one new talent.

Honest Thief, co-written and directed by Mark Williams, is a predictable and slack affair, relying on eerie music, dark sets and smoke to create tension. There is no particular set of skills here.

The last few moments contain some of the most exhilarating and moving moments ever committed to film.

A quick-witted and lively debut.

The jokes aren’t often Sandler’s best material but Hubie Halloween is as sweet and easily digestible as a Milky Way.

Yellow Rose sings an affecting, sorrowful and defiant song where dreams collide with a cruel reality.

On the Rocks is perhaps more conventional and modest than Coppola’s other films, but it’s no less entertaining or profound.

It doesn’t always work, but has a natural engine and spirit to it that keeps you focused.

I’m sure for Johnson, Dick Johnson Is Dead will one day be a heaven-sent reservoir for remembering her father. But its larger gift is in spurring us all to meet mortality with humor and honesty, and appreciate loved ones while they’re here.

A diversion like Save Yourselves! might just save your week.

The whimsical, unpredictable artistry of “Kajillionaire” turns out to be no con, at all.

At the end, you might be a bit confused by what has really happened, or is yet to. But the journey has been absorbing.

The craft and thick Gothic atmosphere of The Devil all the Time is impressive. The movie has such fine-wrought texture that it holds you in its cold grasp. But it’s also somewhat oppressive.

Antebellum will inspire conversation, just probably not the one the filmmakers anticipated.

Because seeing what happened to Furie and his chill stoner frog dude — spoiler alert, he became a hate symbol of the alt right — will likely make your blood run cold. It sure makes for a chillingly effective internet-era cautionary tale.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things nearly sustains something beautiful and sad that blends consciousness and time.

There is more good than bad in Mulan, and we should be so lucky to get a gorgeous and inspiring war epic that is suitable for children to watch. Mulan might even inspire some kids to dip their toes into all that Asian cinema has to offer, which would be the best possible outcome. But something has to give in this blind fealty to the animated films, because it’s getting in the way of greatness.

Have plenty of tissues nearby when you watch the top-notch Netflix film All Together Now, a teary tale of fellowship.

It’s a sort of spiritual companion to Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy, blending horror and thriller elements with absurdist comedy.

The Personal History of David Copperfield is one of the more lively, colorful and whimsical Victorian costume dramas you’re likely to see. It’s a movie flowing with fresh air, which isn’t something normally said of adaptations of 700-something-page books.

Tenet lacks the elegant mastery of “Dunkirk” or the cosmic soulfulness of “Interstellar,” but it has a darkly grand geometry.

It is a sobering and worthwhile film for its exploration of the subject of police brutality and race and how little has really changed in over a century.

At certain points that strain all credulity, you’re just hoping Crowe will look up and wink, and maybe whisper his famous “Gladiator” line: “Are you not entertained?” Because then we could laugh along with him — as we can with a humorous tweet he recently sent, promoting the film.

While its ideas are often intriguing, the movie feels like high-concept scaffolding that only thinly conceals it hollowness. It’s a Tesla without electricity.

The real story of Ivan is more interesting even if it’s probably too dispiriting and shameful for a Disney movie. At the same time there’s some awkwardness in relating such an animal-rights tale with fart jokes and a celebrity voice ensemble.