The script by Tracey Scott Wilson (Fosse/Verdon) is a collection of scenes that don’t add up to much, never really building and interrupted — by necessity, of course — with overly long music sequences. This film needed someone to sharpen and clarify.

Onward makes the most of its strange assemblage to tell a sweet and moving story — enough so to leave you yet again shaking your head at Pixar’s magic act.

If the plot feels truly chaotic, blending (deep breath here, please) mythology, astrology, autobiography, confessional, modern romantic comedy and Old Hollywood glamour (still with us?), it is so J.Lo — so very, very J.Lo — that it feels logical, too.

Abominable is sweet and simple enough, but its emotionality always feels thin and, like much of the film, paint by numbers.

Jittery, tense, fast-talking and always on edge, this is a Hamlet, above all, in a rush.

The Front Runner is appropriately paced like a thriller, as everyone involved gets pulled down into the drain, helplessly.

What does it say about a nearly two-and-a-half hour drama when the 80-year-old footage from inside Nazi concentration camps that was shown inside the real courtroom is the most compelling and memorable sequence?

Blue Beetle, light, lively and sincere, is a tribute to the tenacity and indomitability of Mexican-American families that have clawed their way into an often inhospitable society. Family members, usually plot points of some animating trauma in superhero movies, are here a central part of the action.

The rebelliousness of each of the strong women here — mother and daughter — somehow coalesces into understanding. Such moments can be sappy, but here, as with her lovely opening shot, Keshavarz does it well. She sticks the landing.

The Comfort of Strangers is a sinister movie, not scary in the sense of a horror film but eerie enough to haunt the deep recesses of your mind long after the operatic music and the lush Italian settings have faded. [02 Apr 1991]

Velvet Buzzsaw doesn’t lead anywhere inward; it becomes just a litany of (exquisite) death scenes for art-world caricatures. Still, what caricatures they are.

Eisenberg, who has already proven himself to be a talented, unsparing writer, shows promise as a director. He has not made a flashy art film, but it’s a smart, biting and occasionally sweet character piece about unlikable characters that you still may want to root for, because, though it may be hard to admit, they’re not so different from us.

Despite the change of scenery, Scream VI is less a sequel and more a stutter-step, a half-movie with some very satisfying stabbings but no real progress or even movement. It’s like treading water in gore. And to fully enjoy this “sequel to the requel,” you need to have watched most of the others.

Even if the material — a haunted scarecrow, a young woman’s vengeful ghost — can feel stale off the page, Øvredal’s filmmaking is fresh and vibrant.

There’s a mean potency to the borderland noir of both Sicario films, enough that it sometimes recalls another tale of explosions and drug enforcement agents on both sides of the border: Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil.” Day of the Soldado is too sober and grim for the sweaty heat of “Touch of Evil.” But it has taken to heart one of its best lines: “All border towns bring out the worst in a country.”

Make no mistake, the clever writing is here, as is the style, the sleek technique, and some terrific performances (Rosamund Pike is especially delicious in a supporting role). What’s missing, or muddled, is the message — and perhaps even more, the heart.

The script could certainly be sharper, the comedy more clever. But for two hours on Netflix, Coopers Chase is rather a comfy place to be, with some moments to cherish.

Ultimately it all rides on Robbie, who, along with her blond, color-dipped pigtails, brings an appealing blend of looniness and grit to the role, and a hint of something sadder and darker. Still, one gets the sense the filmmakers weren’t quite sure how far to go with the feminism thing. When she says sadly that “a harlequin’s nothing without a master,” you don’t immediately get the sense that this is a post #MeToo Harley Quinn.

As producer of Goodbye Columbus and Kramer vs. Kramer, Stanley Jaffe has proved his understanding of human relationships. As a first-time director, he seems overly attentive to everyday detail. But he handles his actors with skill, evoking a beautifully sustained performance from Kate Nelligan as the mother who would not abandon hope. [07 Feb 1983]

This “Saturday Night” may have a legacy of its own; a lot of this cast, I suspect, will be around for a long time. And, ultimately, when the show finally comes together, it’s galvanizing.

It may not be great cinema in any traditional sense, but it’s great fun and a much-needed antidote to all the bad cover versions floating around.

Is it a little glossy and sanitized with a jaunty score? Sure. But it also thoughtfully explores themes of redemption, invisibility, pride and sportsmanship without being preachy or condescending.

Raimi doesn’t take “Doctor Strange” to an entirely new tonal place, like, say Taika Waititi did with Thor. He mostly sticks to the framework established by Scott Derrickson.

The chief weakness of “Freakier Friday” — which brings Curtis and Lohan back for an amiable, often joyful and certainly chaotic reunion — is that while it hews overly closely to the structure, storyline and even dialogue of the original, it tries too hard to up the ante.

The filmmakers employ all kinds of ways to try to keep viewers interested, like split screens, some farce and a surreal dream sequence, but there’s not enough humor or grit or anything other than actors swanning around in period clothing.

Thankfully, someone has come to the not-hard-to-deduce realization that Clooney and Pitt are good together.

Let’s offer up some praise for this sequel-to-a-movie-based-on-a-smartphone-game, for finding a way to actually improve on the 2016 original in a way that’s clever but not snarky, sweet but not syrupy.

An adaptation of a Bernard MacLaverty novel of the same name, “Midwinter Break” is a delicate film that stays in a minor key, but whose impact is profound if you can get on its level.