Maybe it was too much to have expected something fresher than the totally 80s feel-good vibe that Drivers’ Ed is content to deliver, but considering the source, the comedy can’t help but feel unmotivated. It’s what the kids today would call mid.

It is a frightening and galvanizing vision, Anderson putting away his complicated nostalgia for old (and more easily understood) days to confront, with disarmingly noble purpose, the here and now.

With many strong elements, it’s frustrating when The Astronaut fumbles in the final stretch.

For all I know, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey actually takes place on the Holodeck of the Starship Enterprise, so phony is everything contained within it.

There’s a story worth telling here, a snapshot within a sprawling tragedy, but Avrich can’t make a bigger statement that doesn’t feel oversimplified.

Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quotidian foibles, in a film that explores our mysterious relationship with both the green world and one another.

The film is a mess, opaque in its argument and tiring in its effortful weirdness, and yet in its best moments has a hypnotic pull.

A ghostly story that’s not exactly a ghost story, Rose of Nevada is a typically imaginative film from the director Mark Jenkin.

Mann, Hoffman and Feldman are clearly having a good time, and their comedic chemistry carries the film. But for the most part, Poetic License feels just as aimless as Liz, wandering from scene to scene without much of a vision.

The assessment of Candy’s life and legacy provides ample cause for laughter while also provoking plenty of tears.

Karia’s attempts to make the play cinematic work well at times.

The film prizes style, but has no higher ambition than to entertain, with an economy of means and no fussy pretension. That’s a noble mission, especially in this time of auteur worship, when so many genre movies seem determined to be something more.

The difference here is how explicitly that tragedy appears, whereas the director built much of her best work on nuance and suggestion — on the viewer experiencing events rather than fully grasping them. The Fence features some of that moody allusiveness as well, but ultimately plays like the minor work of a still major filmmaker.

Only once we’ve gotten the full picture, near the end of the movie, does Charlie Harper finally start to come into its own. The film’s last scenes are its finest.

It all feels like the film is setting up for nested tales within tales, but instead the layers don’t go that deep. Nor does the film offer up much in the way of thematic substance beyond love (between women) is grand, men are mostly bad, and matriarchal societies are better than patriarchies.

Overall, though, Lost in the Jungle is a solid telling of a story that’s hard to make anything other than compelling.

While the Hulu release ultimately adopts a tone of triumph, its themes of empowerment ring hollow coming from such a thinly written script. It’s most persuasive as a portrait of the frequently toxic culture surrounding those apps to begin with.

Moments of humor and rare quiet are essential to relieve the manic chaos that more often reigns in this unflinching but compassionate slice of social realism.

Hedda is a delightful, sexy ride made that reminds us that Thompson is a star and DaCosta has many more tricks up her sleeve. It’s good to hear her unique narrative voice again.

The humor is very droll and deadpan but, as the above examples indicate, more chuckle-inducing than hysterically funny. As with so many belated follow-ups, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues mainly coasts on nostalgia and affection for the original.

Most romantic dramas go from meet-cute to hooking up to some kind of major dilemma, but The Sun Rises on Us All heads more or less in the opposite direction.

Few are going to rate The Christophers as top-tier Soderbergh, but it bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.

Vanderbilt’s commanding Nuremberg couldn’t have arrived at a more consequential time.

The premise is so cute it’s surprising a movie hasn’t done it already. Eternity mines its compelling conceit for both peppery comedy and bleary sentiment.

Few documentary subgenres have been more burgeoning in the past couple of years than the sports doc, with Yogi Berra and Willie Mays getting very solid standalone films. If you’re a devotee, you can add Clemente to the ranks of the good ones.

Guided by the beauty of the landscape and the nostalgia of childhood, Okuyama constructs a quiet narrative buoyed by an understated charm.

The end result is a nifty ethical puzzle about balancing the needs of individuals versus those of the community. Still, it’s best not to take the plot too seriously given the wild implausibilities that come into play in the third act.

This is the kind of disarming crowd-pleaser for which cringe-inducing clichés like “it will sneak up and steal your heart” were invented. What’s refreshing about Roofman is that it’s never too aggressive about it. It’s sentimental but sincere.