Not everything on screen ultimately works here, with certain characters and situations more credible than others. But the director manages to spin a clever modern-day morality tale mixing art, social class and big bucks.

What’s quite novel about this work, as opposed to any number of well-made docs about (mostly male) war photographers, is that it directly addresses how Addario’s job impacts her as a mother.

With its sly, unsettling mix of politics and psychology, Anniversary is both over-the-edge and utterly recognizable.

At heart, it’s a story that shows no clear ending yet, and Noam makes for a fine guide to this purgatory.

There’s much to admire in Pálmason’s unconventional approach to what could have been familiar domestic drama. But the dreamlike detours threaten to overwhelm the tender portrait of a family breakup.

The film feels at times like Terrence Malick meets Hayao Miyazaki for tykes, combining playful subjectivity with surreal flights of fancy. But it also maintains a narrative throughline that’s simple enough for any kid to follow, showing how its titular heroine literally emerges from her bubble to discover the pleasures and dangers of real life.

This is the kind of robust entertainment — wholesome though not at all toothless, alternately joyful and heart-wrenching — that doesn’t get made much anymore. . . It’s a family movie in the best sense of the term, a crowd-pleaser with a ton of heart.

The result is a sharp-eyed, open-ended inquiry into marriage and romance.

The Man Who Saves the World? makes for both fun and thoughtful viewing.

As Shelby Oaks moves further away from its original conceit, it grows ever clunkier, ever more derivative. Stuckmann’s dialogue is stilted and generic; his storytelling and world-building even more so.

As for those over-the-top, extremely gory action sequences, they’re tremendously visceral, the eye-popping animation, propulsive musical score and deafening sound effects (there’s a reason Sony wants you to see the film, released in both Japanese and English-dubbed versions, in IMAX and other premium formats) delivering an enveloping, nearly psychedelic experience.

What truly hampers Regretting You is its inescapable unoriginality, its plodding, uninventive, unthoughtful attempts at swoon and heartbreak.

There are times when Black Phone 2 wears its stylistic influences — including not only the Nightmare on Elm Street films but many other horror movies from the ‘80s — too heavily on its sleeve. But the extensive borrowings are easily forgiven when the set pieces are delivered with the sort of panache that they are here.

By the time questions are answered, not just regarding Polly but also the way in which her history intersects with Caitlin’s, the glacial pacing and lack of suspense have dulled the thriller’s hook.

Fluk doesn’t have a firm enough handle on the material to make that story interesting. And the uneven division of the Keith and Vera plotlines makes Köln 75 a movie without a narrative center.

That the film has such a strong, timely moral argument makes one reconsider its creative merits.

The movie is a sweet star showcase that belongs unequivocally to the incandescent Maura, whose earthy naturalness, sly humor and tenacious spirit feed a direct link back to her Almodóvarian glory days.

It’s an unassuming comic drama that sneaks up on you, its emotional honesty fueled by gorgeous performances of unimpeachable naturalness from Will Arnett and Laura Dern.

Australian theater and film director Simon Stone’s blandly glossy, capably acted adaptation, co-written with Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, is mostly a pedestrian affair that waits until the denouement to crank up the suspense and show some teeth.

At times the movie feels so raw and unedited, it’s as if Loktev dumped all her footage onto the table without shaping it into a definitive cut. Perhaps a leaner two-hour version would have yielded something more dynamic, though the point of My Undesirable Friends isn’t to entertain us, but to capture every detail of a democratic movement that was doomed to fail.

A searing and detailed chronicle of murder, bigotry and robbery on a massive scale that also marks the director’s first feature-length documentary.

The precision, beauty and emotion in the film is built on strong writing (the screenplay is by Ghaywan and the story is by Peer, Ghaywan and Sumit Roy) and superb performances.

In Nothing Is Lost, Stiller uses the public image and private artifacts of the parents he and the world knew quite well, pondering the gap between public and private, along with his own difficulties following in his parents’ footsteps as an artist, a spouse and a father.

At the end of the documentary, Richard O’Brien reflects on his realization over the years that Rocky Horror hasn’t truly belonged to him for years. It belongs, he says, to the fans, and Strange Journey is a record they’ll be pleased to have.

It’s no sci-fi insta-classic, but there are worse things to be than a surprisingly entertaining post-summer popcorn bucket.

While there’s something to be said for the communal experience of absorbing an album surrounded by dozens of likeminded fans, what’s actually being served up on screen is more filler than killer.

The Ice Tower doesn’t grip you as much as it asks you to gaze at its hazy, nightmarish imagery, and either fall under its sway — or not.

It’s an introspective portrait of how grief forces Maron, who spent a career metabolizing his feelings into cantankerous jokes, to finally confront his emotions.

As in most of his roles since The Departed and The Fighter, Wahlberg shows little charisma, particularly when he’s flanked by an actor with the irreverent verve of LaKeith Stanfield, who steals every scene without even breaking a sweat. That’s not to say Wahlberg is the movie’s sole shortcoming. Not by a long shot.

Regardless of the film’s shortcomings, it’s a thrill to have this giant of an actor back on a movie screen, hopefully next time with a more satisfyingly fleshed-out screenplay.

It’s all harmless fun, other than the fact that parents will undoubtedly be forced to shell out money for cat ears for their children. Kraner is a suitably likeable presence and Estefan provides the requisite warmth as the grandmother.

Kudos are due to supervising editor Mark Becker and his team, who never put a splice wrong. That deft level of craft is maintained throughout, while the aching musical bed by contemporary composer Nico Muhly adds just the right tone of plangent despair tinged with hope.

The comedy never quite settles into a comfortable rhythm, and eventually backs itself into a corner so far away from any recognizable reality that it threatens to undermine the very message it wants to send.

Easy’s Waltz is a harmless, fleeting curio, a piece of ephemera that lilts by like a song that isn’t quite catchy enough to get stuck in your head — it has the decency to do its thing and then leave us alone.

With a charismatic cast headed by Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley, California Schemin’ is a nimbly paced yarn that may not have set out to reinvent the wheel, but makes for a buoyant excursion nonetheless.

It’s certainly a tasty premise — one that holds considerable noir-tinged promise — and for at least the first half of the film, the quirky blend of increasingly grisly goings-on and wryly observed social commentary forms a cohesive whole before veering irretrievably out of sync.

Handling it all with a detached, shrugging sense of doom, Odenkirk proves the right man for the job at hand in both of the film’s two tonally separate halves, and he’s supported by a colorful cast.

This documentary portrait of the hip-hop superstar certainly delivers what it promises — an unflinching look showcasing its subject’s many inner demons. But for those not fascinated by the twists and turns of Ye’s clearly disturbed mind, In Whose Name? makes for a painful viewing experience.

While it starts out promisingly, it seriously devolves in its second half into a surreal phantasmagoria that’s more gonzo than chilling.

Its humane message is potent even though it comes in the offbeat package of this gleeful, violent but entirely successful dark comedy.

Packed with visual gags and a cast of gifted comedic actors, Maddie’s Secret straddles the line between comedy and melodrama, creating a wholly unique cinematic experience.

Maybe it was too much to have expected something fresher than the totally 80s feel-good vibe that Drivers’ Ed is content to deliver, but considering the source, the comedy can’t help but feel unmotivated. It’s what the kids today would call mid.

It is a frightening and galvanizing vision, Anderson putting away his complicated nostalgia for old (and more easily understood) days to confront, with disarmingly noble purpose, the here and now.

With many strong elements, it’s frustrating when The Astronaut fumbles in the final stretch.

For all I know, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey actually takes place on the Holodeck of the Starship Enterprise, so phony is everything contained within it.

There’s a story worth telling here, a snapshot within a sprawling tragedy, but Avrich can’t make a bigger statement that doesn’t feel oversimplified.

Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quotidian foibles, in a film that explores our mysterious relationship with both the green world and one another.

The film is a mess, opaque in its argument and tiring in its effortful weirdness, and yet in its best moments has a hypnotic pull.

A ghostly story that’s not exactly a ghost story, Rose of Nevada is a typically imaginative film from the director Mark Jenkin.

Mann, Hoffman and Feldman are clearly having a good time, and their comedic chemistry carries the film. But for the most part, Poetic License feels just as aimless as Liz, wandering from scene to scene without much of a vision.

The assessment of Candy’s life and legacy provides ample cause for laughter while also provoking plenty of tears.

Karia’s attempts to make the play cinematic work well at times.

The film prizes style, but has no higher ambition than to entertain, with an economy of means and no fussy pretension. That’s a noble mission, especially in this time of auteur worship, when so many genre movies seem determined to be something more.

The difference here is how explicitly that tragedy appears, whereas the director built much of her best work on nuance and suggestion — on the viewer experiencing events rather than fully grasping them. The Fence features some of that moody allusiveness as well, but ultimately plays like the minor work of a still major filmmaker.

Only once we’ve gotten the full picture, near the end of the movie, does Charlie Harper finally start to come into its own. The film’s last scenes are its finest.

It all feels like the film is setting up for nested tales within tales, but instead the layers don’t go that deep. Nor does the film offer up much in the way of thematic substance beyond love (between women) is grand, men are mostly bad, and matriarchal societies are better than patriarchies.

Overall, though, Lost in the Jungle is a solid telling of a story that’s hard to make anything other than compelling.

While the Hulu release ultimately adopts a tone of triumph, its themes of empowerment ring hollow coming from such a thinly written script. It’s most persuasive as a portrait of the frequently toxic culture surrounding those apps to begin with.

Moments of humor and rare quiet are essential to relieve the manic chaos that more often reigns in this unflinching but compassionate slice of social realism.

Hedda is a delightful, sexy ride made that reminds us that Thompson is a star and DaCosta has many more tricks up her sleeve. It’s good to hear her unique narrative voice again.

The humor is very droll and deadpan but, as the above examples indicate, more chuckle-inducing than hysterically funny. As with so many belated follow-ups, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues mainly coasts on nostalgia and affection for the original.

Most romantic dramas go from meet-cute to hooking up to some kind of major dilemma, but The Sun Rises on Us All heads more or less in the opposite direction.

Few are going to rate The Christophers as top-tier Soderbergh, but it bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.

Vanderbilt’s commanding Nuremberg couldn’t have arrived at a more consequential time.

The premise is so cute it’s surprising a movie hasn’t done it already. Eternity mines its compelling conceit for both peppery comedy and bleary sentiment.

Few documentary subgenres have been more burgeoning in the past couple of years than the sports doc, with Yogi Berra and Willie Mays getting very solid standalone films. If you’re a devotee, you can add Clemente to the ranks of the good ones.

Guided by the beauty of the landscape and the nostalgia of childhood, Okuyama constructs a quiet narrative buoyed by an understated charm.

The end result is a nifty ethical puzzle about balancing the needs of individuals versus those of the community. Still, it’s best not to take the plot too seriously given the wild implausibilities that come into play in the third act.

This is the kind of disarming crowd-pleaser for which cringe-inducing clichés like “it will sneak up and steal your heart” were invented. What’s refreshing about Roofman is that it’s never too aggressive about it. It’s sentimental but sincere.

For a story primarily about the dregs of modern life, what’s most admirable about At Work is how it never succumbs to pure miserablism, leaving us with the feeling that if Paul somehow managed to adapt to this brand new, horrible world, perhaps so can we.

Thanks to the engaging ensemble and the breezily improvised feel to many of its funnier line readings, Good Fortune coasts along agreeably on all those good intentions.

Time stands still and leaps across the epochs in Below the Clouds, which reveals how much our world has been transformed over the millennia, while also remaining the same.

The standout performance here is Charli XCX as Bethany, channeling her party girl persona into a character who approaches her wanderings as an introspective vision quest, searching for a deeper truth within herself.

This puzzler with neo-Gothic trappings, while it gets off to a promising, very funny start, becomes too clever and convoluted for its own good. That becomes apparent almost as soon as the investigation gets underway and the movie starts losing its fizz.

[Fraser's] superbly nuanced and expressive performance proves key to the film’s power, and he’s well matched by excellent supporting players.

The film proves at least somewhat compelling, with director Latif providing enough tension and chilling visuals to keep viewers engaged.

Remake is certainly a movie about memory, especially bad memories, but in a Proustian sense it’s a movie in search of lost time — both the time McElwee spent with his son and the time slipping away as the director and his peers grow old and die.

As a documentary subject, Hersh is thoroughly engaging — by turns charming, surly and vulnerable. He opens himself to the attention of filmmakers Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus with a sense of purpose, a bit of squirming, and occasional flares of regret.

Dead Man’s Wire is a timely, entertaining reflection on the way the offer of the American Dream often tends to be snatched back.

Camus’ formidable antihero may be lost to his own demons, as well as to the demons of colonialism, but Ozon boldly suggests that the memory of his Algerian victim may live on as a harbinger of what’s to come — that is, of a time when rebels like Meursault no longer exist, in a country finally free of them.

Ben Hania lights a connective fuse between documentary and drama.

Julian Fellowes’ typical witty script proves a pleasure throughout.

It all feels old hat by now, with returning director Michael Chaves (The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, The Nun II) failing to bring much freshness or vitality to the proceedings.

Eight years since her last feature, Kathryn Bigelow returns with an unrelenting chokehold thriller so controlled, kinetic and unsettlingly immersive that you stagger out at the end of it wondering if the world will still be intact.

Neither Baranov nor Putin — nor the many oligarchs, whether dead or alive — are the protagonists of The Wizard of the Kremlin, whose main character is ultimately Russia itself. In that sense, Assayas has crafted an ambitious chronicle that serves up plenty of compelling facts, but never turns them into the stuff of legend.

The Smashing Machine’s greatest attribute may be the way much of it doesn’t feel fake at all.

Seyfried builds a powerful force around Ann’s convictions, but there’s too little intimate knowledge of this historically significant woman to convey much beyond her zeal.

At once a satire of artistic pretensions and a tantalizing character study, Late Fame isn’t focused on big cathartic moments, and its third-act cataclysms are almost anticlimactic. But there’s a satisfying depth to it, and the movie abounds in exquisite grace notes

Ballad of a Small Player has plenty of flash, as befits the story of a man whose everyday wear consists of jewel-tone velvet suits and silk ascots. But there’s not much substance to be found underneath the consciously cheap glamour.

For a three-part piece, it gains a gorgeous fluidity from the gossamer ribbon of melancholy threaded through it. Like Paterson, it’s a film whose simplicity, sweetness and unvarnished ordinariness make it seem almost a miracle.

The movie remains the work of a master craftsman with his own idiosyncratic storytelling signature, though the pathos and suspense of a hardworking family man driven by desperation to murder get short-changed in favor of wacky humor.

One of del Toro’s finest, this is epic-scale storytelling of uncommon beauty, feeling and artistry.

In Hamnet . . . the two always go hand in hand: joy and fear, love and loss. One feeds into the other in a cycle as old as life itself, and unavoidable. But just as her William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) turns the pain of being caught between the two into the masterpiece that is Hamlet, Zhao harnesses those elements into something gorgeous and cathartic.

Movies about depression are tough, but fans invested in the subject during a transitional moment of artistic and personal catharsis will be rewarded.

As riveting as she is, Roberts ultimately is ill-served by a film so studiously cryptic that it ends up just frustrating. To be fair, there are several electric confrontations, distributed evenly enough to ensure that After the Hunt remains absorbing. But even so, this is a date movie to be used in relationship sabotage maneuvers.

There’s pleasure to be had from Sandler’s nuanced work and from the ensemble’s ridiculously deep bench of gifted supporting players. But the director’s fourth feature for Netflix is mid-tier Baumbach at best.

Stone and Plemons are both in top form, clearly vibing with the director’s idiosyncratic sensibility and upping each other’s game. And newcomer Delbis is a sad-sack delight, a sweet-natured naïf caught in Teddy and Michelle’s ferocious battle of wits.

Other attributes carried over from Liu’s nonfiction work are his restraint and avoidance of sentimentality in a slow-burn, heavily observational drama whose unhurried pacing requires patience. But there’s a haunting quality to the melancholy story that stays with you, and despite what often seems like a bleak outlook, it finds resonant notes of hope.