It’s a minor work for the director and its emotional heft feels softer than usual, but even his lesser films can be compelling, and Beer is never less than transfixing.

Made with the same laser-cut precision as his previous work, but with a greater emphasis on procedure than before, Moll’s new thriller puts the viewer in an uneasy place — between law and order, good cop and bad cop, protester and rioter — raising questions for which there are no easy answers.

It can impress with its utter originality and technical know-how, but there’s so much going on for so long that many viewers will be exhausted by the midway point, if not earlier.

Ironically, Sirat gets muddled near the end. Although the last act is in many ways the liveliest — viewers will be jolted by a series of bleak twists — it’s also where Laxe relinquishes narrative coherence in the service of making his metaphors more literal.

The director is in the role of the flashy, panache-y showman here, and he plays it to perfection, delivering a big, highly polished chunk of movie that’s pure enjoyment.

Urchin would be nothing without a gifted, vanity-free actor (the lead is the son of Stephen Dillane) who has clearly dug deep into the milieu of addiction and homelessness and is willing to go anywhere the script takes his character — from rapturous highs to desperate lows and all their consequent indignities.

It’s a major achievement, and for my money, sure to be one of the best films of the year.

Director Sean Byrne doesn’t lean hard enough into the trashy pleasures for maximum fun, unlike some of the more preposterous recent shark movies. (Give me The Shallows, Under Paris, The Meg.) But he dishes up plenty of lurid chum and puts a kickass heroine in peril.

There’s a beguiling dichotomy in Kristen Stewart’s accomplished first feature as writer-director — between the dreamlike haze and fragmentation of memory and the raw wound of trauma so vivid it will always be with you.

The Phoenician Scheme tethers the filmmaker’s existential interests (the unfettered power of the billionaire class, unchecked greed and environmentalism) to the kind of poignant humanistic narrative that’s been missing from his latest offerings.

It’s a cinephile’s film through and through — a making-of that won’t make much sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the original movie. But it’s also breezy and relatively entertaining, never taking itself too seriously while highlighting an extremely serious moment in film history.

Ramsay’s film is hard to love, but that beautiful visual casts such an intense glow it pulls the whole unwieldy thing together.

The musical interludes — which include gorgeous versions of such songs as “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “Vertigo,” “Desire” and “Beautiful Day,” among others — provide a welcome contrast to the film’s inevitable talkiness. Ditto the kinetic cinematography and editing, which give the proceedings an arresting cinematic quality.

It’s bloated, self-indulgent, rambling, crazily ambitious and commendably odd, but so overstuffed it becomes a lethal combination of baffling and boring.

Bell (Kinda Pregnant, Brittany Runs a Marathon), who co-wrote the film with Jules Byrne and Liz Nico, has constructed a familiar film that checks the boxes of classic teen comedies. Summer of 69 presents a charming protagonist, her reluctant co-conspirator and a gallery of characters who support their antics and propel the drama.

Schilinski doesn’t spare us all their pain and suffering, nor does she hide the joy and wonder they sometimes experience. Her brave girls carry their forebearers within them from one generation to the next, surging toward the future both damaged and victorious.

Performances are also key to reinforcing Bring Her Back’s creepy tenor, from Hawkins’ increasingly distressed portrait of a woman undone by loss to Wren Phillips’ engrossing portrayal as Oliver. Barratt and Wong have a tender, natural chemistry that makes their sibling bond easy to invest in.

This is the sort of movie in which even the opening credits, which continue until nearly the half-hour mark, are unbearably pretentious.

If it’s going to be the last we see of one of the most consistently entertaining franchises to come out of Hollywood in the past few decades — a subject about which Cruise and McQuarrie have remained vague — it’s a disappointing farewell with a handful of high points courtesy of the indefatigable lead actor.

The charisma-endowed Washington and Sy do all they can to make the proceedings engrossing but even they are hard-pressed to make it interesting.

Final Destination Bloodlines gives its audiences exactly what they expect. Namely, a series of ingeniously designed, diabolical Rube Goldberg-style fatalities that are mostly so within the realm of possibility that you’ll find yourself crossing the street very carefully after you leave the theater.

Although I think there are gaps that DiMarco and Guggenheim could have filled in, the documentary is elevated by its exceptional quartet of central heroes and by its effort to tailor the storytelling and aesthetic approach to the unique aspects of this movement.

The comedy lacks the stakes to engage more than passing interest. And while there are plenty of sole-related puns, the film is so frenetic in focus that most of them don’t really land.

No subtext goes unexplained, and at times the score underlines what we already know. But the actors always find the grace notes, and there are sparks in the way everyday exchanges turn sharp with compassion. There are welcome laughs too, particularly in Bracco’s grump-meister line readings.

Somewhere in Kesari Chapter 2 is the riveting story of a man who stood against an empire, but it comes alive only intermittently.

[Hartnett's] charisma and surprising flair for physical comedy elevate this B-movie into something approaching A-level status, even if it’s ultimately undercut by its low-budget limitations and awkward tonal shifts.

While the film doesn’t chart any particularly new territory, it benefits greatly from Franklin’s subtle screenplay and performances infusing it with emotional power that sneaks up on you.

This is distilled Mamet, peeling back psychological layers and building characters exclusively through chiseled dialogue.