Megalopolis, the film, may not be lots of fun to sit through, but its making-of, Megadoc, is a blast, offering a rare inside glimpse at a major movie artist at work.

By the director’s standards, this is a sober and distinctly mature film, centered by the unwavering composure of Servillo’s De Santis. But it’s not without the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished Sorrentino’s best work.

Caught Stealing is an anomaly, a dark soap bubble of an entertainment. And that weirdness makes this unlikely film sparkle.

The lead actors’ combative chemistry is what keeps Jay Roach’s overcrowded remake zingy even when it threatens to turn from savage to sour.

A mystery about retirees who solve cold cases for fun, it is as gentle as a game of Clue and as cozy as an Agatha Christie novel, but its glittering cast and a touch of self-awareness make up for that lack of originality. This modestly entertaining film is uncool and filled with stock tropes, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything more.

The sequel is certainly a stupendous achievement in terms of its animation, and clearly has great cultural resonance in its native country. But those looking for coherent storytelling or emotional depth will have to wait for the next Pixar offering (not that the company has been distinguishing itself lately).

Although she lacks the imposing height and fierce muscularity of Nielsen, her predecessor in the role, Lutz makes up for it with impressive physicality and excellent thespian skills, the latter of which come in handy while she’s striving to keep a straight face during the absurd events here.

Set over the course of a single harrowing night and driven by a performance from Vanessa Kirby bristling with raw nervous energy, hunger and searing inner conflict, Netflix’s Night Always Comes is more compelling than the average original streaming movie even if it could use an extra shot of emotional power.

The filmmakers keep things moving at such a brisk pace (the film clocks in at a mercifully brief 89 minutes) that you go along for the ride, and there are so many terrific action sequences and injections of mordant, deadpan humor that it proves wildly entertaining.

What’s remarkable about The Blue Trail and makes it such a delight is that despite all the oppression in the air, it’s a movie filled with hope and faith in human resilience at any age. The closing image will make your heart soar. And no, it’s not the one you were expecting.

In less assured hands, Cactus Pears might have edged into trite territory, yielding to the familiar beats of trauma-laden queer love stories, but Kanawade’s considered direction and spare storytelling keep the narrative refreshing.

[An] exquisite and gripping documentary.

Although its very R-rated humor inevitably starts to wear thin during the course of its feature-length run time, Fixed manages the neat trick of injecting some genuine heart into its nonstop offensiveness.

What saves this from being just best-of list bait for upmarket film critics is the sincerity of the performances, especially from the core trio of Wu, Lee and Panna, each of whom projects a profound loneliness that’s never more apparent than when they’re in the middle of a crowded place. Which, this being Singapore, is just about everywhere.

Nisha Ganatra’s “freakquel” (blame Disney for that one, not me) swaps the earlier film’s buoyancy and charm for manufactured chaos that’s far more strained and aggressive.

In many ways, this is an expertly crafted chiller. . . A strong cast and an intriguing chapter structure also work in its favor. But ultimately, it’s not really about anything much.

The film boasts a strong comic cast with Murphy, Davidson and Palmer at the lead. Their chemistry is naturally compelling, which helps us buy into their increasingly ridiculous situation.

On one hand, She Rides Shotgun is a New Mexico-set crime drama that makes Breaking Bad look like family entertainment. On the other hand, it’s an ultimately touching portrait of the growing bond between a criminal father and the young daughter he’s barely gotten a chance to know.

Even if the movie kind of stalls midway as Schaffer struggles to balance the gags with the action of an overly elaborate crime plot, there are enough laugh-out-loud moments to keep nostalgic fans of the earlier films happy and maybe make some new converts.

The place Beecroft stumbled upon is fueled by girl power, and the story she and her collaborators have created is wise and messy, keenly aware of the dark places at the margins as it burns bright with life.

Like the first film, the sequel (directed by Kyle Newacheck) proves moronic, witless and relentlessly vulgar. Which is to say, Happy Gilmore fans will love it.

It smacks of overkill, but fortunately the film, smartly directed by Pierre Perifel, also features the same wit and charm that proved so appealing to youngsters and adults alike in the first movie.

Despite the care with which DeMonaco and his collaborators build dread, The Home only partially delivers on its frightening promises. The film suffers from uneven pacing, as it waits a touch too long to capitalize on the suspense it musters.

Duplass and Strassner’s script traces the one-step-forward, two-steps-back progress of the main characters’ connection over the course of the night with delicacy, never stretching the boundaries of credibility.

Despite its vivid and electric space sequences, the visually striking movie often feels like a throwback analog good time, which certainly worked for me.

No Sleep Till does a particularly fine job of portraying an eerie kind of climate adaptation, one in which people acquiesce to their fate in the face of the elements. That’s especially true of the families for whom the idea of evacuating doesn’t seem to cross their mind.

The film confidently highlights the delicate relationship between people and their spaces, while also acknowledging the understated harshness of a job that requires you to assess, with a certain degree of remove, one of the more intimate elements of another person’s life.

Matarrese may be capturing a tiny utopia in one public hospital in northern Italy, but his movie leaves us with the hope that, sooner than later, such a place may not be so unique.

Fortunately, Prinze Jr. and Hewitt are on hand to provide some much-needed gravitas to the proceedings (which is not a sentence I ever envisioned writing). Both are in excellent form, providing connective tissue to the original film and its sequel.

This latest incarnation represents the sort of charmless, wildly chaotic animated effort that has the unintended effect of reminding us why cutting publicly funded children’s television is such a terrible idea.

Vigalondo’s film has a compelling premise, but the story (he also wrote the screenplay) gets away from him, resulting in a film that never quite hits its stride.

What matters most is that the movie is fun, pacy and enjoyable, a breath of fresh air sweetened by a deep affection for the material and boosted by a winning trio of leads.

Shot in grainy 16mm to better capture the mood of the epoch, Broken Voices keeps its drama grounded in the social and cultural realities of its time. Provaznik coaxes strong performances from the young cast, whether in their chorus rehearsals or behind the scenes.

It’s too on-the-nose and front-loaded with sentimentality. But it will put a smile on your face — and perhaps even nudge you to suspend judgment the next time you encounter someone who doesn’t fit your definition of normal.

Whatever its shortcomings, The Old Guard 2 is a better-than-average original streaming feature — well acted by a highly capable cast, peppered with enough action to satisfy most appetites, and underscored with a melancholy vein of introspection about the conflicted roles of superheroes.

Whatever the new movie lacks in originality, it makes up for in propulsive narrative drive, big scares and appealing new characters played by a terrific cast — even if they are mostly cut from an existing mold.

It’s all about as predictable and rote as could be.

Ponyboi seamlessly integrates its character’s challenges with identity into a propulsive story about a sex worker on the run. It also introduces Gallo, whose strong performance offers audiences a new hero worth rooting for. The result is a sleek film, only occasionally hampered by predictability and contrivance.

The film, from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, is a typical action-comedy that benefits greatly from its two stars, and slightly from their unexpected characters, before plunging fast into explosive but trite set-pieces.

There are amusing moments reminiscent of the original, but in terms of tone and coherence, the movie loses its way.

Unicorns traces their twin journeys toward self-acceptance with empathy, curiosity and a refreshing disregard for constricting labels.

One of the chief rewards of 28 Years Later is that it never feels like a cynical attempt to revisit proven material merely for commercial reasons. Instead, the filmmakers appear to have returned to a story whose allegorical commentary on today’s grim political landscape seems more relevant than ever.

It may not be as sensational and buzzy as bringing down a major university or a sitting congressman, but since Surviving Ohio State won’t do either thing, it’s worth praising the potency of what it does well.

It’s not entirely a bad time, as things involving Allison Janney and Bryan Cranston tend not to be. But it’s not exactly a satisfying one, either.

The conceit of letting Walters’ own interview tactics steer the documentary isn’t a bad one, but as executed here, it isn’t interesting either, which is a pity since Walters was absolutely interesting.

Should you see Thug Life? Yes, because so many masters are at work here. But go in knowing that though the film has sparks which blaze momentarily, they never ignite into a glorious fire.

Without for a minute undermining Ride’s importance, this clear-eyed film doesn’t sugarcoat her sometimes prickly personality.

Of course, there are some unrealistic elements in F1, moments that might have sticklers raising an eyebrow, but the film doesn’t feel any less dramatic than the real thing.

Elio feels just a tad too familiar in its sights and story beats to seem totally fresh.

When a movie is so dire you begin to suspect you’re in for a bad time before the title card drops, you cling to what tiny scraps of fun are to be found like shards of wood in a shipwreck.

The film approaches its action tropes with an effective sense of absurdity, but it’s the stars’ kinetic commitment to the bit that makes this relentlessly silly film work.

Going way, way back, at least to The Great Train Robbery in 1903, the western remains one of cinema’s oldest genres — and certainly the one where it feels like everything’s already been done. It’s therefore all-the-more disappointing when a brand new western, like Richard Gray’s gunslinging geezer flick The Unholy Trinity, brings nothing original to the table, rehashing movies we’ve seen before and doing it in a way that feels altogether generic.

The superbly acted drama yields rewards, making astute observations about mental health, inherited trauma, self-determination and absent or unfixable fathers.

How to Train Your Dragon honors the charm of the original. I’s not an essential remake, but at least it’s not an offensive one.

Also featuring an unfortunately underutilized (but always welcome) Nancy Travis, Sovereign benefits greatly from its empathetic, non-exploitative approach to its controversial subject matter. It’s uncomfortable but necessary viewing.

Playwright turned filmmaker Celine Song’s assured second feature is a refreshingly complex look at modern love, self-worth and the challenges of finding a partner in an unaffordable city, which once again treats three points of a romantic triangle with equal integrity and compassion.

The handful of overly contrived moments disappoint, but don’t amount to an insurmountable betrayal, because Echo Valley delivers where it matters.

Predator: Killer of Killers provides the non-stop action that the diehard fans crave.

We don’t always know what, exactly, we’re watching in Architecton, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is how the movie offers us a new way of seeing — not only seeing our planet of stone and cement, of rocks and ruins, but seeing movies in general.

If the dizzying crescendo of intricately choreographed fight scenes is the main attraction in Ballerina, it’s those occasional moments of dry humor that make it a welcome extension of the John Wick universe.

Diciannove is unflinchingly honest about what it’s like to be 19, and, for the most part, totally lost. And Tortorici’s insistence on capturing that feeling while avoiding the usual narrative tropes is what makes his film both fascinating and somewhat impenetrable.

The true draw in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is Agathe, a compelling protagonist whose passion for literature and love keeps us sufficiently engaged.

There’s a satisfying balance between biography and pop-culture history.

There’s never a false note from the young actors, all of whom have deeply moving scenes. But Young Mothers is also captivating when it’s simply taking in the quotidian responsibilities of new parenthood — feeding, diaper changing, bathtime — or when it catches an expression of wonder or joy as a mother gazes into the tiny face of the child she has created.

For all its playfulness, there’s an intellectual heft to A Useful Ghost that exerts its own gravity.

The film isn’t a total misfire, and it conveys a strong, at times moving message about the sacrifices required in love and marriage, especially during a period as chaotic as the post-war era. But it does so in ways that can feel overcooked and clichéd, relying more on melodramatic tropes than on the subtle drama found in Quillévéré’s previous works.

This latest addition to an apparently unkillable franchise adds nothing original to the formula. It’s a formula that works, to be sure, making for a pleasant enough time filler. But that’s about it.

Caught between sophisticated comedy and silly fluff, between Hitchcockian mystery and zany amateur sleuth caper, A Private Life (Vie Privée) is a lot more fun than it probably deserves to be thanks to the disarming chemistry of its seasoned leads, Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil.

Peck, who profiled another writer of blistering moral clarity and prescience, James Baldwin, in I Am Not Your Negro, brings a healthy dose of sympathetic rage to his exploration of Orwell’s worldview, and sensitivity to his life story.

From the pastoral beauty of its opening sequence to the gut punch of its last, Hadi’s film is an exceptional screen debut, as perceptive as it is kinetic and, with one eye on the bombers overhead, brimming with life.

Davies Jr. deftly connects the broken promises of the nation state with the fragility of the family at the center of his story. It’s in these final scenes of this impressive debut that he displays his full promise as a filmmaker.

Yes may be purposely over-the-top and unsettling to watch — at two and a half hours, it won’t win over audiences looking for light arthouse fare — but Lapid is trying to show us that it’s hardly an exaggeration of the truth, or at least his own truth about his homeland.

Honey Don’t! is a better movie than Drive-Away Dolls thanks to an engaging whodunit plot, but it ultimately suffers from the same issues as its predecessor: The film feels like a series of gags with nowhere to go.

Reichardt has made a genre picture that peels away all the usual tropes to focus on character, on human failings and on the reality that even someone from a comfortable middle-class background can be worn down by struggle and reach for unwise solutions.

What does it mean to lose faith in one’s role models and form an identity outside their ideological purview? It’s a conventional narrative drama, but Amrum approaches this question with commendable tenderness.

As unwieldy as this melodrama is, much of it proves that Roustaee remains a gifted young director who surely has more stories to tell.

It’s certainly entertaining enough while you’re watching it, thanks to the expert performances of its four lead actors, but it’s unlikely to make as much of an impact in the cultural zeitgeist.

There’s a hopefulness in Bi’s enigmatic concoction, not necessarily in what it’s saying but in how it’s being said, finding exquisite new forms in old and dead ones so that the cinema can keep on living.

If you tap into The History of Sound’s soulful undercurrents, the soaring spiritual dimensions of the music — in songs more often about people than Divinity — and the depth of feeling in Mescal and O’Connor’s performances, this is a film of lingering melancholic beauty.

Sentimental Value is uncommonly rich in emotional rewards and contemplative in its reflections on the places where we live becoming a permanent repository for our memories, remaining there even after we move on. The movie’s poignancy accumulates gradually, every supple turn expertly modulated as the presence of generations past becomes more tangible.

It’s a thought-provoking subject that probably plays better on paper than on screen, urging us to seek out the writer’s books once the movie is over.

The film is the sort of mindless, glossy entertainment tailor-made for streaming, even if its large-scale action sequences and exciting locations would look great on the big screen.

The movie captivates early on with several scenes of physical and mental mayhem, before settling into a more classic comic formula — albeit one with plenty of twists to come.

The strengths of this slender film, which Tsou co-wrote with Baker, stem from its authentic rendition of daily life in a bustling metropolis.

The film lurches between comic set pieces and more dramatic beats, and while Johansson proves a competent helmer, it’s not enough to overcome some dizzying tonal imbalances.

Once again navigating a labyrinth of corruption and bad behavior inside contemporary Egypt, writer-director Tarik Saleh delivers another solid, thought-provoking thriller with Eagles of the Republic.

Bonnin, who adapted the script with Dimitri Lucas from her César award-winning short, offers up a boilperlate coming-home scenario bolstered by a few keen observations and a fair amount of charm.

Panahi’s latest feature is a straightforward 24-hour narrative staged with his usual attention to realistic detail, and backed by a terrific ensemble cast. Subtly plotted like a good thriller, the movie slowly but surely builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power and its long-lasting effects.

It’s an extremely honest depiction of adolescence, but one that doesn’t always make for compelling drama. The result is a film that fails to pack a sufficient emotional charge, even if it leaves us longing to know where Enzo will go next.

Pillion is less about the shock factor of some very graphic gay kink than the nuances of love, desire and mutual needs within a sub/dom relationship.

Vibrantly felt yet impressively controlled — and blessed with a stone-cold stunner of a central performance — The Little Sister is indeed an instant classic of the genre, as moving in its humanism as it is sexy.

Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge.

The live-action Lilo & Stitch is faithful enough to the original to please traditionalists and tweaked enough to feel somewhat fresh.

Throughout, Hayakawa maintains a steady control of this delicate story. There are moments toward the end when Renoir takes sentimental turns that feel a touch too obvious for its subtle framing.

It’s a minor work for the director and its emotional heft feels softer than usual, but even his lesser films can be compelling, and Beer is never less than transfixing.

Made with the same laser-cut precision as his previous work, but with a greater emphasis on procedure than before, Moll’s new thriller puts the viewer in an uneasy place — between law and order, good cop and bad cop, protester and rioter — raising questions for which there are no easy answers.

It can impress with its utter originality and technical know-how, but there’s so much going on for so long that many viewers will be exhausted by the midway point, if not earlier.

Ironically, Sirat gets muddled near the end. Although the last act is in many ways the liveliest — viewers will be jolted by a series of bleak twists — it’s also where Laxe relinquishes narrative coherence in the service of making his metaphors more literal.