Even if its elements don’t always gel, The Beloved offers another prime showcase for Sorogoyen’s art of unease, as well as for Bardem’s talent for playing men who can fly off the handle at any moment.

The Japanese director has no shortage of ideas — chief among them the potential for advanced robotics to bring closure to the bereaved. But too few of those ideas yield satisfying conclusions, resulting in a drama that becomes treacly and insubstantial, reaching for a profundity that remains elusive.

Gray and his superb cast are in blazing form and full command here in a bruising movie that reveals the heavy price of pursuing the American Dream too recklessly.

Like a photograph developing in a bath of chemicals, Kreutzer’s strategies and themes slowly become clearer, and the scene isn’t pretty.

Club Kid isn’t really a whitewashed vanity project. It’s a confident, exciting directorial debut, stylish in an unobtrusive way and agreeably paced.

All of a Sudden is an odd but audacious film in the way it favors the thematic over the dramatic. Those not attuned to Hamaguchi’s wavelength may find it overstretched and desiccated. But if you can get on board with its leisurely pace, there’s transcendant beauty in its view that all lives are of value, no matter how diminished.

The problem is that all the various strands — the parallel tales — dilute our access to the characters, limiting their dimensions.

If nothing else, Guy Ritchie’s latest effort proves that a movie can be ridiculously convoluted and simple-minded at the same time.

Sometimes eloquent and often rocky, Magic Hour is good enough to make you wish it was much less predictable.

Balagov is indisputably a filmmaker with his own distinctive vision, ideally matched with Evgueni and Sacha Galperine’s glowering score and with Fray’s nimble shooting style, which often takes its cue to get in close from the knotted bodies on the wrestling mats. Story-wise, however, Butterfly Jam is too diffuse to measure up to the brutally transfixing Beanpole.

It is immaculately performed by Zischler and especially Hüller, grounding the film throughout with an uncanny, expressive stillness.

A Woman’s Life is, in its own way, something almost as gratifying: an elegant, enjoyable sophomore outing that proves the breakout was no fluke.

It’s such a seamless, harmoniously composed work, effortlessly edited and elegantly shot, that it’s almost too easy to just drift along with it, like floating down a river on a canoe, letting its currents take control. This isn’t a grabby, attention seeker of a film, but a quiet, watchful sort of movie that whispers its secrets sotto voce.

It’s heady, strange stuff, perhaps not as emotionally resonant as TV Glow, but captivating in both its confusion and honesty.

While there’s not exactly a surfeit of character development, the screenplay co-written by Corrigan and Hope Elliott Kemp provides just enough motivation to keep us interested in more than just the caper.

The actors are all likeable enough, especially the gamine Demoustier, but they are stuck with limp material that’s more twee than captivating.

What makes Obsession so fun, and so disturbing, is how it takes typical aspects of dysfunctional romantic relationships to initially comic and then horrific extremes.

Marty, Life Is Short is, as much as anything, a documentary about not being defined by failure or tragedy.

Nobu is a straightforward and admiring portrait of its subject.

As a film about animals, Remarkably Bright Creatures is human-centric treacle. But as a film about people, its gentle sense of humor and depth of feeling are enough to sweep you away on a wave of emotion.

With its vivid footage, sometimes captured from breathlessly intimate proximity, you might be able to believe, just for a moment, that you could really reach right through the screen and touch her.

The film has its rewards, mostly of the unsophisticated kind, since the fight sequences come fast and furious and the cheesy dialogue has enough groan-worthy one-liners to inspire a thousand drinking games.

The film never gets too heavy-handed in its themes, thanks to its fast pacing, frequent doses of humor, and myriad plot twists, including one that qualifies as a doozy.

That exciting crash sequence — from initial turbulence through to catastrophic Pacific Ocean landing — is where high-stakes action specialist Harlin is most firmly in his sweet spot.

David Frankel’s sequel hits familiar beats that fans will eat up and deftly reconfigures the core trio of women into new adversarial positions, even if it ultimately lapses into cozy sentimentality. The movie is best when it sticks to fluffy, fun nostalgia rather than shooting for substance.

While it’s not without entertainment value, Motor City feels like it wants to be Don Siegel meets Michael Mann meets Walter Hill with a dash of John Woo, but ends up an ersatz version of all their work.

This version sacrifices the story’s powerful political and social themes in favor of by-the-numbers plotting.

If at times the dramatic balance feels off, or the passion exasperating in particularly Gallic ways (l’amour!), Desplechin and his superb cast convincingly bring the angsty emotions to a place of unexpected brightness and clarity.