Uncertain is somber and effective work of mood and tone — a study of time and place, biography and geography that offers a slice of life that’s perhaps cut a little too thin.

While Mean Dreams stumbles once or twice, it is a thrillingly dark fable draped in beautiful images and a layered, menacing performance from Paxton.

Set in the picturesque Portuguese city of the title, the film demonstrates first-time fiction director Gabe Klinger’s eye for visual storytelling, but his script, co-written by Larry Gross, feels undeveloped for anything further than glib, Instagram-like testaments to cherished moments in time.

Beat by beat, though, Lauler (played by the stellar Shirley MacLaine) “evolves” in Mark Pellington’s predictable dramedy The Last Word. Cinematic comfort food comes to mind, and rest assured, mom and grandma will probably have a nice time.

Any number of sequences find feelings both externalized and hidden intermingling within the same shot, continuing in a subsequent image that carries the impression, the feeling, without replicating the exact tenor of what has just been seen. They exist simultaneously as certain backstories and what motivations they may inspire delicately unfold.

Despite the contrived drama surrounding it, this is a refreshingly uncynical portrait of familial strife.

Rat Film stalks between being repellent, riveting, and darkly humorous.

The film is more of a clip show, awkwardly cutting together elements once presented in a drastically different manner. In doing so, it obfuscates the power of a manifesto, allegedly what it means to pay tribute to.

In this digital world that allows for Kong to be as big as a building and believably so, Roberts is smart to pull out all the stops. And if some of the story and character motivation gets left in the dust, so be it.

Director Martin Koolhoven shows the heaviest of hands in approaching the story.

In Loco Parentis is a warm work of cinéma vérité.

There is no uniform answer to whether a joke is funny or not, but Pearlstein has done a superlative job of exploring the reasons for why that is.

By the time the credits roll, these stronger components all feel like they are in service of a film with more digressions than conclusions, and more on its mind than it knows how to say.

While most of Table 19 is a flop, director Jeffrey Blitz does sometimes graze the surface of what could have been an outside-the-norm approach.

Never genuinely thrilling or sincerely hilarious, Beauty and the Beast ho-hums along until the next needle drop of a prominent musical cue. If Disney believes these tales are as old as time, they ought to have a better reason for bringing them back to life than unimaginatively cashing in on nostalgia.

The film builds to its conclusion without building its main character.

I admire the film’s ability to commit to a rather simple idea, but that idea seems to lack the gravity and impact it ought to.

The film gradually becomes more and more focused on the plot mechanics set forth at the outset while forgetting what is ultimately the most interesting part: the characters.

The Raid star Iko Uwais deserves to silat his way through a million hapless evil men, but here’s hoping that, going forward, he picks better cinematic vehicles for his frighteningly fast feet and fists.

While not without the occasional jolt of a sudden execution, the film feels so wholly tell and not show. Its left-wing politics about toxic masculinity bleeding into the justice system are so much a given that it’s just a dead-weight experience to watch.

Often blatantly ugly or boring, it’s not so much deliberately confrontational in the way so many experimental films are (or pride themselves on being), but rather risk-taking for the sake of something almost impossible to articulate — even if based in something obvious.

It’s a spiritual, ambiguously plotted journey through the Atlas Mountains, and those willing to give in to its mystical embrace and gorgeous visuals should find it a sensual, engrossing watch.

This should be an intense ride to oblivion or perhaps even a satirical romp chock full of self-indulgent camp, but it proves to be neither.

Step is a universal story of triumph.

It’s a familiar tale pitting selfish desire against the greater good, but it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen thanks to the wondrous South Pacific landscapes.

It might not quite end on a satisfying note, but Have a Nice Day remains an urgent, thoroughly entertaining, and inventive piece of filmmaking.

It’s an interesting and quite tragic saga, as if Linklater were to cut his Before trilogy into a single film.

Holland keeps things going at a reasonable pace but, caught by a TV-esque practical blandness, seldom achieves something distinctly cinematic in terms of scale or style.