It’s Crowe who’s the film’s MVP.

What it doesn’t provide, unfortunately, is a persuasive prescription for how we’re going to prevent our country from descending from democracy to theocracy.

It’s subtle but resonant, intimate but emotionally expansive and at every step crisply unsentimental.

The film is not good, but it is singular — and absolutely chaotic.

I had quibbles about the consistency of the documentary’s narrative approach — but not its bracing message about the challenges of political idealism and the wide-ranging consequences of democracy in peril.

It is an airless and stilted endeavor driven by a mechanical screenplay (written by Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker & Clarkson). Its lack of imagination would be astounding if it wasn’t so expected.

[Ben-Adir] wholly conjures Marley’s charisma while also teasing the musician’s sense of isolation, stemming from a childhood marked by abandonment. His compelling performance enlivens a film that otherwise feels like it’s perpetually struggling to take off.

Newton, Sprouse and the delightful Soberano are all more appealing than the sloppy package and undercooked characters deserve.

Bursting with passion, sly humor, satirical swipes and the inescapable heartbeat of insurgency — most of the film was shot in 1968 San Francisco — it’s the life-loving tale of a wise innocent abroad, and the not exactly warm reception he receives

Sure, it’s entirely possible that the film will find a constituency who will love its mirthless, shouty performances, its tortured random plot twists and its appallingly shonky-looking CGI. But there is also a distinct possibility audiences will turn up their noses at this like it’s a fresh litter box deposit.

It tries to stretch the bounds of the narrative form, to upend convention and encourage us to rethink our relationship to storytelling. It aims to do all this with style — Begert’s direction is slick and capable — and absorbing performances from most of the cast. But Little Death can’t fulfill the ambitions of its intellectual exercise, resulting in a bifurcated film that doesn’t find its footing until the end.

Talati’s film offers a sensitive and distinctive take on the fraught dynamics between mothers and daughters.

There’s a great deal of beauty in Porcelain War and there’s a potent artistry behind it, but I’ve never watched a documentary with so many running visual metaphors and so little faith that the audience will be able to grasp them. It’s a bit stunning and a bit insulting all at once.

Hilariously and movingly tapping into typical childhood anxieties, it’s infused with ample wit of both the visual and verbal variety for adults.

The powerhouse voice cast is another plus; besides the aforementioned, it includes Lucy Liu, Bowen Yang, comedian Jo Koy and Greta Lee (Past Lives), among others. Director Raman Hui, making his feature debut, keeps the proceedings moving at a suitably brisk pace, with the colorful CGI animation providing one diverting image after another.

Will & Harper charms as a portrayal of deep, sustaining and supportive friendship.

Sugarcane’s sensitivity to the ongoing pain of its subjects is one of the film’s principal achievements. NoiseCat and Kassie offer an affecting portrait of a community that endures in spite of colonial genocide.

All the nervy cutting, the pirouetting pans and off-kilter angles, the dexterous split-screen and the bombardment of eclectic music cues — many of them dropped in with archly emphatic force — can only distract from the lack of depth for so long.

It’s a documentary about the fight, one that takes the necessity of the fight as a given. That’s amply inspiring

Valadez and Rondero again mix grit and lyricism, this time to trace the coming of age of a boy growing up in a climate of lurking cartel violence. The new feature doesn’t match its predecessor’s distinctive spell or cumulative power, but its undertow of menace is expertly sustained, and its dread buffered by hope.

It’s a reminder that you don’t need sensationalism to deliver something that’s honest and emotionally resonant.

That Skywalkers: A Love Story maintains its grip on your attention despite some of director Jeff Zimbalist’s florid aesthetic choices testifies to the strength of the documentary’s central narrative.

An assured nonfiction storyteller, Smith works with editor Joey Scoma to weave together a nonstop, inventive collage of ephemera around concert footage, music videos, pre-existing and new interviews and a generous sampling of Mark’s graphic arts contributions, often spinning into animation.

Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s Daughters targets viewers squarely and simultaneously in the head and the heart, succeeding much more effectively at the latter, presumably with the hope that the former will follow.

While Dìdi treats Chris’ feelings without sugarcoating or condescension, taking seriously his sense that he’s totally lost amid life-or-death stakes, it’s also blessed with the perspective of grown-up wisdom.

The feature is a visual poem, an enveloping four-stanza ode to experiences shared by a man and his daughters.

One of the aspects that makes Super/Man so satisfying is that for a biographical film in which tragedy and loss play such a central part, it’s rich in evidence of hope and kindness, gratitude and the resilience of the human spirit.

Taking the inspirational sports movie template, then infusing it with so much weed and foul language that it deserves its own MPAA rating, The Underdoggs is a good example of what happens when Snoop Dogg steps into an otherwise familiar tween-age comedy to wreak havoc.