The tyro directors manage to thread a tricky needle with their first feature, navigating the chasm and the overlap between agitated and quiet, between cartoon brightness and angst.

The whole collaboration feels undeniably stagey, but it’s still an empathic and frequently moving work that touches on the sheer volume of callers that workers like Thompson’s character, often unpaid volunteers, must contend with every day.

Cheap commentary is scarce here, and empathy runs deeper than a first glance suggests.

It’s a compelling story told in largely engaging fashion, anchored by Dano’s terrific turn as the eccentric, strong-willed Gill, who becomes an unlikely folk hero.

While Hugo Perez and Cathryne Czubek don’t tell a perfectly crafted story in Once Upon a Time in Uganda, their film captures enough of Nabwana’s resourcefulness and enthusiasm to make one wish his movies (which have played some fests in North America) were easier to see here — not on YouTube, but in theaters where their shout-at-the-screen, howl-with-your-seatmates vibe would be just the thing to remind you how essential the communal experience of cinema is.

Ferrari is unlikely to go down as canonical Mann, lacking the glimmering, hard-edged stylishness of his best work. But admirers of the director’s high-intensity, muscular filmmaking will not go unrewarded.

While it’s a wisp of a movie, almost directionless at times and self-consciously quirky at others, Fremont contains enough poignantly observed interludes to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The chemistry between Awkwafina and Oh proves to be more layered and touching with each leg of their characters’ zany mission.

I had quibbles about the consistency of the documentary’s narrative approach — but not its bracing message about the challenges of political idealism and the wide-ranging consequences of democracy in peril.

Taking the inspirational sports movie template, then infusing it with so much weed and foul language that it deserves its own MPAA rating, The Underdoggs is a good example of what happens when Snoop Dogg steps into an otherwise familiar tween-age comedy to wreak havoc.

It’s a credit to the cast and Rodriguez’s assured direction that we believe Miguel’s efforts stand a chance.

Greer, Gathegi and Maadi are all on-point as regular people facing spatial-temporal realities the impact of which they fail to fully grasp until it may be too late. Sure, they’ve changed the world, but be careful what you wish for.

As Kevin recalls in voiceover, Fritz instilled a belief in his sons that if they were the toughest, the fastest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt them. The dismantling of that belief in the face of all-too-human physical and psychological vulnerability is ultimately what makes the uneven but heartfelt film affecting.

Despite all that loopy energy, Dicks: The Musical still can’t help but remain an inescapably one-note proposition, albeit a subversively melodic one.

Totally Killer may not be destined to become a classic in its own right. But the Amazon release is fun enough for a spooky season night in.

Like so many of his other movies, it’s pithy, punchy, a little shouty at times, but made with brio and swagger.

It’s nonetheless the very slipperiness of Sakurai’s passion — to humbly become the god he worships — that continually compels.

The film, which is just over an hour long, dishes out some smart twists and a few good laughs, as well as a decent level of suspense. But like many of Dupieux’s movies, it’s also a strong concept in search of something more.

It is a tribute to Bening’s performance that she keeps us mesmerized by Nyad even at her most stubbornly pigheaded.

The film maintains a certain level of suspense as it leaps between various epochs, often without warning. But, like many of Bonello’s movies, it lacks forward momentum and a sharp edit, lumbering along as it reaches into a grab bag of thematic and aesthetic concepts.

It’s a lot to handle and also a bit silly, but Besson often pulls it off — thanks in no small part to a commanding performance by the chameleon-like Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), who manages to be touching and slightly terrifying at the same time.

It feels closer to Taxi Driver or the films of Gaspar Noé than to Kiarostami’s work, and yet Ahmadzadeh’s portrait of his country’s disaffected youth, especially during the current period of revolt, is just as socially vital.

We’ve seen the story of a woman searching for herself after tragedy many times before, but in Origin, DuVernay affectionately makes it her own.

Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ The Mission is an empathetic and reconstructive portrait propelled by questions surrounding Chau’s voyage.

Cornwell died in 2020 and it’s a treasure to have this last opportunity to glimpse into the mind of a master raconteur, to hear his erudite explanations for his thematic fascinations and to watch him tiptoe around which personal tales he’s comfortable rehashing and which are better left in forms previously written.

By the end of Sly, the star proves to be a good enough explainer of his legacy that the documentary finds effective insight and poignancy — despite however much he’s an overly protective custodian of that legacy, and however hesitant Zimny is to shake him off of his preferred course.

The film, which feels overlong at 145 minutes, suffers both from repetition and an over-reliance on melodramatic plot devices. But it nonetheless delivers a compelling portrait of a heroine whose story is too little-known.

Finally Dawn is uneven, and at 2 hours and 20 minutes indulgently long, but it is also full of texture, wit and a few done-to-perfection set pieces.