Despite bursts of intelligence, especially when it comes to conveying the fractured quality of trauma narratives, Without Blood’s vagueness ends up blunting many of its lessons.

The director has assembled a strong cast, whose committed performances do the playwright’s famed drama justice. But the duty can also be limiting, and there are times when The Piano Lesson is too faithful, struggling to shake the specter of the stage.

Lacking in tonal connective tissue, The Life of Chuck may still leave in its wake the desired upbeat, life-hugging effect, but it ultimately proves to be an ephemeral one — as transitory as the apparitions who usually haunt Flanagan’s more potent ghost stories.

Besides the raucous, de rigueur action sequences, Transformers One provides numerous witty jokes of both the verbal and visual variety and — surprise, surprise — genuine emotion. Consider this a franchise revitalized.

The relationship between Paxton, Barnes and Mr. Reed remains the most absorbing thread throughout Heretic. Even when the screenplay heads into deflating territory — trading potential acerbity for more neutral conclusions — their cat-and-mouse game keeps us curious and faithful.

The film’s slow-burn pace is an asset, not a flaw. Speak No Evil works best when it focuses on the Americans’ escalating fears, and collapses near the end when the psychological horror story turns into a predictable potboiler. But for a good three-quarters of the way, this Blumhouse production is an entertainingly elevated genre piece.

Even if The Last Showgirl feels slender overall, more consistently attentive to aesthetics and atmosphere than psychological profundity, there’s moving empathy in its portrait of Shelly and women like her, their sense of self crumbling as they become cruelly devalued.

The film is not merely an observation of aging. It is also about how this process echoes the emotional dramas of adolescence, and Friedland liberates the story of older adults from the confines of melancholy.

This violent first feature is carried more by leads Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan than by its dour storytelling.

Part of this tender animation’s appeal comes from its committed and absorbing voice performances.

There’s an achingly palpable, playful chemistry between Pugh and Garfield that leaps off the screen. But they also refuse to shy away from letting their characters’ less attractive qualities bleed through.

Adams is reason enough to see it anyway in a performance that gives us intimate access to her character’s fears and anxieties.

Chapter 2 proves to be more fun to watch than 1, at least for this critic.

With this prickly, piercing new film, the writer-director presents an intriguing challenge, pushing the bounds of our empathy and asking us to look, really look, at someone from whom we’d surely avert our gaze if we had the misfortune of crossing her path in real life.

Is it all poetry or just a put-on? Again, Baby Invasion is a bit of both, and viewers are likely to either vibe out or tune out.

The surreal bolt-on doesn’t work all that well, but the limpid cinematography and more quotidian dramatic elements are impactful and striking enough to distinguish this as one of the stronger films to emerge this fall festival season.

A perfectly agreeable, if limited, piece of work.

Nutcrackers is not exactly robust as uplifting family comedies go, but for audiences willing to get in sync with Green’s free-flowing groove, the emotional payoff will be affecting.

What makes Tropics so riveting is the way Costa constantly shifts between the epic and the intimate, the macro and the micro.

This is a sizable step up for the Boukherma brothers from the smaller-canvas genre films they have done up to now and they bring a satisfying cinematic sweep to the material that feels more Hollywood than French — for better or worse. Their sensitive direction of the intimate exchanges is sharp, even if scenes veer at times from melodrama into soap.

The Front Room perhaps leans more toward the repulsive than the highbrow, potentially carving out its own distinct genre niche.

I’m Still Here is a gripping, profoundly touching film with a deep well of pathos. It’s one of Salles’ best.

[Perry's] approach is one of a consummate enthusiast and completist, and he does manage to convey that dedicated fan energy on screen. But he doesn’t necessarily make it feel contagious enough.

Gaga is a compelling live-wire presence, splitting the difference between affinity and obsession, while endearingly giving Arthur a shot of joy and hope that has him singing “When You’re Smiling” on his way to court. Their musical numbers, both duets and solos, have a vitality that the more often dour film desperately needs.

This story of corruption and conspiracy in a small Louisiana town might have passed as a taut if familiar action thriller — if it had actually been taut.

In Queer, Luca Guadagnino meets William S. Burroughs on the iconoclast’s own slippery terms and the result is mesmerizing.

Swinton and Moore imbue the movie with heart that at first seems elusive, along with the dignity, humanity and empathy that are as much Almodóvar’s subjects here as mortality.

Ross, honoring the perspective shift that characterizes Whitehead’s novel, switches between Elwood and Turner’s points of view, remaining, at all times, in the subjective mode. The commitment to this way of storytelling imbues Nickel Boy with an overwhelming intimacy and becomes another way that Ross, as a filmmaker, stretches what it means to represent Black people.