It’s surely not without emotionally satisfying moments and it does a persuasive job of emphasizing the importance of Reading Rainbow and of star LeVar Burton, but the documentary is slight in its artistic and thematic ambition.

If the film’s strength lies in its affection for its title heroine, its greatest flaw is a comparative lack of attention toward the characters surrounding her — yielding a film that, for all its likable beats, feels flimsier than it should.

Power exposes the myth of good policing for what it is: one of the most expensive and calculated PR campaigns in history. And by extension, the film dismantles the idea of America as the land of the free, emphasizing that freedom only belongs to those with enough power and social capital to avoid the oppressive boot of law enforcement.

The result is a finely observed study of modern manners and mores on a micro-budget that’s nevertheless rich in feeling, especially the cringeiness one might experience from watching other people bicker or hearing people have sex through thin walls.

There’s just a lot of media landscape stuff that Rather either can’t or doesn’t want to do justice — which returns me to my initial point that if you come from a perspective of youth this will be illuminating, but if you lived through it you’ll hardly get anything fresh at all.

Something You Said Last Night testifies to its director’s dexterity with constructing subtly meaningful moments, but without more insight into its protagonist, the film can feel unintentionally impenetrable at times.

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.

Snyder provides an ample display of the visual flair and skill for action that have endeared him to legions of fans who exhibit so much dedication that they’re willing to sit through numerous versions of his films.

Breathlessly paced and filled with the sort of black humor that makes it as much a comedy as a horror film, Abigail is wildly entertaining for most of its running time, although it becomes overly burdened with baroque narrative flourishes.

Ultimately, what keeps Nowhere Special from being nothing special is the film’s delicacy, its unfussy simplicity, its perceptiveness. The empathy it brings to one man’s crushing decision makes this an affecting portrait of parental devotion.

Combining comedy, action, drama and an impressive number of different animation styles, The People’s Joker is a self-conscious, intentional cult film, crafted with genuine love for everything in the margins.

Chronicling a covert World War II mission manned by a band of renegades, the movie is diverting but remains awkwardly stuck between a larkish caper and a more gripping combat action thriller.

Baloji has constructed four fascinating characters, played persuasively by these performers, but trying to figure out where their arcs overlap, even faintly, too often distracts from the beauty before us.

Smart, seductive and bristling with sexual tension, Challengers is arguably Luca Guadagnino’s most purely pleasurable film to date; it’s certainly his lightest and most playful.

At its strongest, In Flames teases out how the patriarchy — a large, unruly force — fractures the relationship between mother and daughter.

That the film proves as affecting as it does is largely due to Knoxville’s understated, terrific performance that makes his character fully sympathetic despite his many flaws.

If some of the jokes can be broad and childish (the film probably plays best for the 10-and-under set), the overall tone is so tender that you can’t help but be moved by Linda’s nonstop adventures.

Indeed, the film’s main strength is not its overly familiar if convoluted plotting but rather the strong performances all around.

Fine performances and powerful visuals only partially compensate for the inevitable air of familiarity that accompanies Marco Perego’s debut feature.

As loving a portrait as this film is, it’s not entirely hagiographic either and I don’t think Ray and Saliers would ever let it be anyway. Throughout the one-on-one interviews, you get the sense that these people are their own biggest critics.

After its darkly comic set-up, the mild proceedings seem generally undercooked, lacking the subversiveness that could have given the remake a reason for being. It coasts along mainly on the charms of Jones, who displays considerable comic chops as the beleaguered Tanya.

Back to Black is, like its heroine, flawed and fallible but frequently very affecting.

What’s fascinating about Martin Brown’s keenly observed and amusing debut is the twist it offers on the famous Big Apple adage that, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners (Domakinstvo za pocetnici) is a fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family.

While the events in the first Omen seemed to be taking place in a real world that just happened to include demonic figures, this film seems more like a fever dream, its outlandish storyline taking a back seat to a nightmarish vision that’s more about mood than narrative coherence.

By the time the mainstream world came to embrace MoviePass, we all already knew it was doomed, and I wish the documentary had illustrated what the alternative might have been.

The result is a film that takes the idea of beauty seriously and works, with deceptive ease, to show us the tiny pleasures that make up life in Cabrini-Green.

Ultimately, the characters’ motivations, like their titular instinct, are weakly delineated, but viewers are well-advised not to worry their pretty little heads about any of that and just concentrate on the pantsuits.