Aesthetic flourishes abound, which make it an entertaining viewing experience, but one does wish that the narrative was a touch more complex. Lelio embeds some compelling meta-textual moments — ones that mostly address that fact that he’s a man tackling this subject — but the actual story of Julia can feel secondary to the melodic pageantry.

Beautifully shot and tenderly acted, placing all its faith in pure emotion rather than in overly convoluted twists and turns, this is the sort of gem that feels all the more special for appearing, at first, so ordinary.

The movie’s captivating sweetness is hard to resist, showering its love on a pint-sized human character so out of step with her kid contemporaries she has difficulty making friends. Turning around the lonely life of 8-year-old Bonnie (voiced by Scarlett Spears) becomes an urgent mission for the toys.

It’s all very atmospheric, including the frequent bloodlettings that Sister Brigid applies to Robin’s arm (the camera lingers lovingly on every spilled drop). But the dour, humorless proceedings never achieve the profundity they’re aiming for, and the revisionist take on Robin doesn’t prove very interesting or revelatory.

There are allegories that can be read about fear of the unknown breeding cruelty and exploitation, but Disclosure Day is first and foremost a propulsive yarn with thematic roots in hope, truth, empathy and perhaps even spirituality.

An overly mannered affect undermines the rawness of the emotions, keeping them from landing with the impact they ought.

Using a well-edited combination of vintage and recent interviews and copious amounts of archival footage, the documentary recounts the band’s story in compelling fashion, with Questlove providing enough imaginative stylistic flourishes to prevent it from feeling like an extended Behind the Music episode.

The film tells a story that will probably be familiar to anyone who grew up in Japan. It then takes that classic narrative and adds a few new twists, as well as a decidedly anti-war message that seems to be speaking to our time as well.

This is a Valeska Grisebach movie, so even if the stakes initially seem high, the director does everything she can not to deliver a predictable action-packed suspenser, but rather an intermittently fascinating and frustrating portrait of a place that’s been left to the dogs.

While not every grown-up romance needs to be sexually explicit, this stiff restraint sits at odds with a script that often seems to be reaching for Apatovian raunch.

The actors are reduced to joke machines trapped in a nonsensical nonplot, and while some of those gags yield laughs, a far greater number fall flat.

Masters of the Universe touches all the fan-serving bases, with a fun cameo by a certain star of a previous film incarnation and enough post-credit sequences to guarantee several sequels. But it all comes off as terribly forced, as if everyone involved was already trying to figure out exactly how much they’ll earn signing autographs at future Comic-Cons.

The heart of this action-comedy that’s really a high-concept girlfriend movie is Ginger Minj and Jujubee, their characterizations in perfect sync, their rapport endearing and their triumph-of-the-underdog arc something worth rooting for.

And like Bargatze, The Breadwinner is relatable, inoffensive and also thoroughly bland.

If the film captures something of the concept’s intriguing unease — with 20-year-old director Kane Parsons drawing from his own Backrooms-set short films, created when he was just a teenager — its underbaked storytelling made me wonder if some spooky ideas might be better left as whispers in the dark.

Featuring an award-worthy performance by Andrew Scott in the lead role and solid supporting turns by Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon and Chris Messina, Pressure lives up to its title with its expert ratcheting up of sustained tension.

Ben’Imana contains whole worlds in one very specific here-and-now.

This is the sort of generic “things that go bump in the night” chiller that seems more suited for late-night cable than theatrical release, especially in an era when superior efforts have lifted the horror genre to a higher level.

At times, the movie veers almost into spoof territory, but it never commits to the bit enough to be anything more than a mismatched genre hybrid, despite its atmospheric visuals and strong design elements.

Barnard has always coaxed layered, thoughtful performances from her cast and knows this kind of battered but unbowed community like the back of her hand. But the drama here feels too diagrammatic, foretelling a tragic fate from the first scene onward as everyone parties down like their lives depend on it.

A pileup of movie-ish improbabilities in the climactic act notwithsanding, the new film is a taut nail-biter with a strong cast.

Featuring an impressive cast of unknowns and a fluid style that captures them with both lyricism and verisimilitude, this deserved winner of the Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize announces the arrival of a formidable new talent.

So subtle that it’s hard, at times, to discern much of a plot, this delicately made tale of grieving and recovery doesn’t resonate until it ultimately does so in a big way. But when that happens, it can feel like too much, too late.

Jim Queen is a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp through a heap of stereotypes about gay life in Paris. It’s teeming with jokes about prostate orgasms, about tops and bottoms, about fetishes and bodily fluids and G’d out party bois. It comes as a welcome shock to the system here at this august, black-tie film festival. I just wish the movie was funnier and fresher than it is.

More powerful than an argument or a treatise, The Last Interview is an immersive experience. It will be a reminder for some and an eye-opener for others of why John Lennon mattered to people, and why his murder was so shattering.

Some may see in the final gore-splattered climax a simply expedient way to wrap things up, but both Stewart and Harrelson’s performances — all in by this point, or at least tonally in tune with Dupieux’s antics — somehow sell it all emotionally.

Everything is connected in a movie that never ditches its razor-sharp view of class exploitation.

There’s a radical bent to the Esiris’ interpretations of and deviations from Mrs. Dalloway.