Flow is a joy to experience but also a deeply affecting story, the work of a unique talent who deserves to be ranked among the world’s great animation artists.

If it’s lucky, Emmanuelle might find an afterlife as a kind of Showgirls for its generation, a great-bad movie that’s undeniably craptacular yet strangely endearing, a shameful pleasure in every sense.

Capturing that transitional moment when seemingly permanent adolescent ties suddenly appear uncertain, this is a melancholy drama laced with notes of anger and disquiet, but also resilience.

It’s not so much a prequel as it is a parallel story that continues underscoring the limited autonomy of women. Restrictive social mores trap both Rosemary and Terry, albeit in different ways.

Director/co-screenwriter Uberto Pasolini (Still Life, Nowhere Special) strips the tale to its bare essentials, resulting in a stark, solemnly paced experience that viewers will find either enervating or thrilling.

The film is exceedingly funny, even in translation, right up to the point where the tone shifts dramatically. Deeply endearing on every level, from its anti-authoritarian politics to its body positivity to general joie de vivre, this is a crowdpleaser through and through (unless the crowd happens to be made up of moral policemen and dogmatic clerics).

On an intellectual and reporting level, Separated is sturdy and persuasive. Morris is angry, and if you’re watching this movie, chances are good that after 90ish minutes, you’ll be angry, too. What Separated needs, though, is a little touch of the old Errol Morris.

Fun is banished from Aja’s latest, which starts out mildly intriguing and chalks up a few bracing jump scares before running out of juice.

Wilson’s direction is similarly uneven, especially toward the middle of the film, which packs in convenient plot points to distract from narrative thinness. The result is off-kilter pacing that threatens to undo the film’s more successful parts.

A gleefully discomfiting portrait of male bonding that delivers some of the year’s biggest laughs.

Harvest stands strong and tall, a work solid as an oak. Full of a sensual love of nature and a distinctive vibe, it’s tangy like a home-brewed ale.

On Swift Horses is about the shapes love can take, the varied lives we live and the many different ways one can make a home. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking and demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Here’s hoping it brings the romantic epic back into fashion.

The portrait of a nearly vanished rural way of life remains compelling, and the melodrama engaging enough to suggest this might have been improved by being spread thinner as a TV series.

The long, unbroken rhythm of Wang’s filmmaking somehow casts a spell, and he certainly has a good eye for characters. That’s a blessing considering how slow and considered the takes are here, watching with equally intense absorption whether the subjects are sleeping on a train or constructing seams or making food. But overall, the lack of differentiation can be wearisome.

The best parts of Relay harness the details of Ash’s brokerage. Mackenzie’s direction is never tighter than when he’s focused on message relays, burner phones and the bureaucracy of the post office.

Had all those assets been funneled into a movie with some tonal consistency and a script that built credible relationships, the result might have been a nasty bit of fun. Instead, it wobbles awkwardly between creeping mob menace and scrappy sitcom, inching toward a violent climax that still doesn’t acquire cohesion.

As its restless protagonist navigates the road to ultimate personal victory, director Morrison is right there with her, maintaining a propulsive momentum accentuated by editor Harry Yoon’s rhythmic cuts and composer Tamar-Kali’s elegant, percolating score. And so are we.

Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.

Given the craziness of the concept, it is surprising that several of the scenes work as well as they do.

At its best, The Assessment smartly taps into and maintains its focus on the near universal anxiety about parenting in a world made increasingly uninhabitable by overconsumption and climate change. But the film loses its way when it widens its scope and tries to incorporate eleventh-hour world-building.

The special sauce here, however, is the bond of love and support through tough times between Anthony and his mother Judy, stirringly portrayed by Jharrel Jerome and Jennifer Lopez.

It’s all about as familiar-feeling as it sounds, but it goes down easily thanks to McG’s skillful, fast-paced direction, the imaginatively lavish CGI-enhanced visuals, and King’s impressive performance.

That the film works to the extent that it does is largely due to the unique charms of its muscular leading man and the well staged, extremely brutal fight sequences featuring enough gore to test the boundaries of an R rating.

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.