We know the achievements and victories of the era Nagy depicts, and yet, because she and her fine cast bring the story to such vivid, immediate life, the final moments of Call Jane are powerful with unanticipated joy.

It’s a restrained rendering of the events, a drama that plays, at times, like a documentary. But if Howard’s decision to spotlight the Thai characters in this harrowing narrative is a sound one, there’s an unfamiliar stiffness and self-consciousness in the director’s approach — an inability to marry the fast-paced, no-nonsense heroics that are his strong suit with more emotionally textured storytelling. The resulting awkwardness prevents the movie, for all the surreal tension and bravery it depicts, from feeling urgent or surprising.

Hall and Brown are a glorious kick to watch, their physicality at times bordering on slapstick.

Though a mixed bag as a piece of storytelling, the film’s greatest value for American viewers in 2022 is the truth it conveys to those hoping to preserve (or, let’s dare to dream, improve) a democracy facing immediate and very grave threats.

[López Gallardo] tends to eschew straightforward storytelling for something so elusive that her film nearly escapes us for its first half, until the pieces gradually fit together and we manage to make some sense of the plot, if not entirely what the director is going for.

Shepard’s reach might exceed her grasp, but there’s no question that she takes risks and is a filmmaker of notable promise.

David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a lot of movies inelegantly squidged into one — a zany screwball comedy, a crime thriller, an earnest salute to pacts of love and friendship, an antifascist history lesson with fictional flourishes. Those competing strands all have their merits, bolstered by entertaining character work from an uncommonly high-wattage ensemble

The film flaunts vivid animation and some pretty striking moments, captured with close-ups and unexpected angles — but similar to Skydance Animation’s debut venture Luck, Spellbound inspires a sense of déjà vu.

In the spirit of its predecessors, Creed III gears audiences up for a fight of the century: The battle between Adonis and Damian is billed as one between an underdog and a man with nothing to lose. But the implications of those categories are murky and unsettling.

The film offers up more mysteries than it solves. Still, riveting work from Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as performance artists whose canvas is internal organ mutations will draw the curious.

Audiences’ staying power for this meandering existential exploration of personal, professional and national identity — as tragicomic as it is rueful — will vary, depending on their interest in the artist or their appetite for the film’s aesthetic beauty.

There’s much to appreciate in Noah Baumbach’s alternately exhilarating and enervating attempt to tame Don DeLillo’s comedy of death, White Noise, not least the daredevil spirit and ambition with which the writer-director and his cast plunge into the tricky material. But little in this episodic freakout hits the target quite so well as the wild end credits sequence.

Though the farce has some lively moments and Pisano’s expressive performance exudes a crude charm, the picture is uneven as a work of entertainment.

It’s a pleasurable enough watch — nicely acted and with a gentle rhythm tuned to the main characters’ searching paths as they drift in and out of each other’s lives over 30 years — though ultimately, it lacks weight.

Even if it takes itself a tad too seriously, it delivers enough nail-biting stress and terror to justify a trip to the multiplex for action-thriller fans.

Léonor Serraille’s film Mother and Son contains moving strokes, but struggles to make a lasting emotional dent.

Quite watchable, even sort of plot-driven — for a Serra film.

Predictable but sweet.

While Paddington in Peru sadly lacks the absurdist wit and decidedly dark edge that elevated the first two Paddington movies, it’s serviceable enough given its limitations.

The team manages to hit most of the right notes with this perky, peculiar adaptation. Or maybe the film has just enough bright shiny objects and tightly synchronized dancing-child chorus lines to stop anyone from caring about all that problematic whatnot. In any case, it mostly works.

What makes his story particularly compelling is that most of it is true.

There’s lots on the menu, and León de Aranoa brings it all together in a smooth manner. But the jokes tend to be too broad, and the themes too tritely handled.

At times disarming, at others plain silly, it takes a few daring leaps without quite avoiding middle-of-the-road sitcom territory.

Neither the establishing dramatic linchpin nor the final conversion of conscience is terribly convincing, leaving this pared-down rendition of the original work diminished in power and meaning as well.

The film makes an extremely powerful, timely and important statement, especially coming from someone whose name carries such symbolic weight. Disney deserves tremendous credit for standing up for what’s right, even if it means biting the family hand that feeds her.

Hamm makes plenty of sense in this role, but Mottola and Zev Borow’s screenplay doesn’t totally convince us the character is series-worthy.

A Jazzman’s Blues is overindulgent, a narrative feast of twists and turns. The formidable work of the cast paces us, helping viewers digest the plot and saving Perry’s screenplay from the collateral damage of its broad scope.

It’s all a bit much, really, and the constant tonal shifts from a sort of demonic Fantasia to bouncy musical numbers proves more than a bit jarring. It doesn’t help that none of the songs are particularly memorable.