It’s less a social history than a commercial for alternative healing.

Free to Run prefers nothing more than an easy jog down memory lane.

Maybe expecting a horror film to have a point is expecting too much. In any case, the two actresses give committed performances on the way to a veiled ending.

The documentary Can We Take a Joke?, a one-sided look at a multisided issue, does a fine job of defending a comic’s right to perform incendiary material. It would be better if it also at least acknowledged the possibility that some jokes ought not be told.

Slow and sincere, The Debt bites off more plot than it can dramatically chew, its characters — especially the go-between played by the excellent Argentine actor Alberto Ammann — diluted by political maneuvering.

The wooden dialogue gives Liam Neeson little to do beyond bite on his corncob pipe and berate subordinates who dare question him. Still, in perhaps the only instance when this is a compliment, he’s no Olivier.

[A] competent but slight thriller.

For the Plasma is a film with no shortage of ambition, taste (Maine looks great in 16-millimeter) or ideas. It’s a shame those ideas are so incoherent.

[McConaughey's] wild, abrasive and improbably delicate performance is what makes Gold watchable, even if the rest of the movie doesn’t supply sufficient reason to keep watching.

If Mr. Fields’s contributions to pop music deserve more fame, the movie plays like an overcorrection, a spirited but repetitive testament to one man’s excellent taste.

Ms. Burdge — all quicksilver emotion and exposed nerve endings — is an endlessly watchable focal point. Her character’s vulnerability, uncertainty and growing self-acceptance lend the movie a necessary gravity.

A benign adventure saga that has attractive stars, elaborate gimmicks and nice production values -- everything it needs except a personality of its own.

What’s odd here is how closely the new movie follows the original’s arc without ever capturing its bliss or tapping into its touching delicacy of feeling.

The director, Marc Forster (who wrote the script with Sean Conway), fashions such a languid, tipsy aesthetic around the seemingly happy marriage of Gina and James (Blake Lively and Jason Clarke) that it’s easy to keep watching.

The carnage pushes you away (and wears you down), even as the genre, industrious cast, beautiful landscapes and stark, often striking visuals pull you in.

Though thematically vague, thinly plotted and without a reliably sympathetic soul to cling to, the movie has a mutinous energy and an absurd, knockabout charm.

The scenes that leave Ms. Mara and Mr. Mendelsohn alone are, tellingly, the most interesting and effective ones. Their performances are tightly focused and unflinching; too bad they are surrounded by a lot of heavy-handed, poorly aimed cinematic showing off.

Directed by Rob Reiner from Joey Hartstone’s script, LBJ is a frustratingly underdeveloped vehicle for Mr. Harrelson’s talents as well as an unfortunate missed opportunity.

Tidiness isn’t crucial, but watching Planetarium often feels like making contact with fragments of a great three-hour movie.

Birth of the Dragon is ambitious: it wants to be a character study, an explication of martial arts philosophy and an action picture.... But the film never really gets fully juiced until the climax.

The issues presented in When Two Worlds Collide are so crucial that it feels churlish to characterize it as a dutiful, and ultimately pedestrian, documentary. There is something evasive about it as well.

Good-hearted stuff, to be sure, but mainly of interest to lovers of cinematic comfort food.

Mr. Matthiesen seems as if he might have been trying to make an indictment of sexism and exploitation in the fashion world, but if so he doesn’t hit the theme nearly hard enough.

Ferdinand, the new computer-animated adaptation from Carlos Saldanha (the “Ice Age” movies), speaks to its own time in a different way, dutifully adhering to the template for contemporary children’s films while avoiding much personality or distinction

In Dancer, Mr. Polunin’s suffering may be on display, but too little of his artistry.

Tharlo instead opts for fleeting charm and shaggy humanism, until the narrative takes a grim turn that’s both trite and sexist. The bottom drops out of the movie, leaving its interest almost exclusively ethnographic.

Much of the laughter Mr. Brooks inspires is hopeful, before-the-gag laughter, which can be terribly tiring...Blazing Saddles has no dominant personality, and it looks as if it includes every gag thought up in every story conference. Whether good, bad, or mild, nothing was thrown out.

Blue doesn't seduce the viewer into its very complex, musically formal arrangements. The narrative is too precious and absurd. The interpretation it demands seems dilettantish.

The Double Life of Veronique doesn't end. About three-quarters of the way through, it starts to dissolve, like mist, so that by the time it is actually over the screen seems to have been blank for some time.

Partly because Miss Sloane is more a character study than a coherent political drama, it fumbles the issue it purports to address, and it eventually runs aground in a preposterous ending.

The Uruguayan director Federico Veiroj’s leisurely comedy-drama The Apostate has its charms, though the story (and its hero) could benefit from a tarter approach.

Just when you think you’ve got the movie pegged, it pulls a daring switch of perspective. While the thrill of that little coup is short-lived, it suggests that Mr. Williams may come up with something more substantial with his next feature.

An awkward merger of wide-eyed innocence and political unrest, Derrick Borte’s sweet, almost sugary picture wants to rock but never finds the gumption.

The film wants to spur individual changes in behavior, but there’s a fair amount in it that might discourage you from even trying.

In 2015, Bel Powley stole Sundance with her performance in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” Carrie Pilby poses a tougher test. Might she single-handedly redeem 90 minutes of contrived nonsense?

There’s some intriguing social commentary in the Chinese comedic melodrama I Am Not Madame Bovary.... But appreciating it, and the other points of interest in the movie, requires a perhaps unusual amount of patience, or even indulgence.

Paradise is a strikingly shot Holocaust drama that ultimately seems confused about whose story it’s telling or to what end.

The film, scrupulously faithful to its source, is decidedly literary, but not in an especially satisfying way.

Despite its best efforts, Tanna drifts into a mode of exoticism that renders it an ultimately frustrating experience.

By the jaw-dropping climax (an argument over a family portrait), and the film’s not-entirely unpredictable denouement, you aren’t sure whether you are witnessing an investigative family chronicle or an act of revenge.

Narrated, rather annoyingly, by the Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, Huntwatch feels dismayingly one-sided. Yet as we hear of animals being skinned alive and see a bludgeoned pup linger in agony, any pro-hunt argument seems emphatically beside the point.

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day is usually pretty appealing when he dabbles in acting, and he’s appealing again in Ordinary World. But after a promising start the script lets him down, and the film turns into a predictable midlife-crisis yarn.

Even seasoned defenders of cryptic formalism may find it amorphous. The characters are never named, the camera work is static, and little that’s conceptually interesting materializes.

For a movie about proud outcasts, Slash is a little square.

The movie, written and directed by Neeraj Pandey, is not hagiographic or overly obvious. Instead, it’s something of a quiet muddle, with too many squandered or dramatically blurry scenes.

Directed by Matthew Hausle and Steven C. Barber, “Never Surrender” frustrates with its lack of focus.

As the suspense slackens and blood starts spilling nearly to the point of self-parody, it almost seems designed as a test of mettle — for both the filmmakers and the audience.

The combined skills of the director, Gonzalo López-Gallego, and his cinematographer, José David Montero, can’t surmount a story that gives us no one to invest in.

There are some grotesquely stylish and scary moments in Phantasm II, the sequel to a 1979 film that Don Coscarelli made as a precocious 25-year-old. Unfortunately, these episdoes seem to take as long to arrive as the sequel did.

The novel is at its most trenchantly funny when depicting the exhausting nature of virtual social life, and it’s in this area, too, that the movie gets its very few knowing laughs. But it’s plain, not much more than 15 minutes in, that without the story’s paranoid aspects you’re left with a conceptual framework that’s been lapped three times over.

Some of the frights work reasonably well; and Ms. Ferland is convincing. But there aren’t enough surprises or innovations to make this one stand out in the sea of horror fare that comes along this time of year.

Without the benefit of theatrical devices that might clarify the order of events, its time warps undermine the plot.

Much of this is funny and even perceptive about the nooks and crannies of adult sexual relationships. It’s also very well acted.... But something feels off.

The pace is patient, the acting solid and the special effects emphasize craft over flash as the characters rejigger our perceptions from one scene to the next.

It’s a net broadly cast and woven of implications rather than of indisputable evidence, but — especially given the tobacco industry’s credibility problems — you’ll probably be inclined to think there’s some truth to the film’s allegations.

The best thing about All We Had is Ms. Holmes’s stormy portrayal of a desperate, foolishly trusting woman who rushes from man to man seeking security, only to find herself used and betrayed while her daughter looks on with increasing dismay.

Ms. Chastain’s watchful, layered performance helps keep the film on an even keel, but it is not enough to prevent The Zookeeper’s Wife, with its reassuringly cuddly critters, from feeling like a Disney version of the Holocaust.

It’s heartening to see Mr. Chan, who plays the avuncular leader of the guerrillas, demonstrating that he’s still game, but you wish his energy were being expended in more consistently enjoyable pictures.

There is something eerily disconnected about Heaven Can Wait. It may be because in a time of comparative peace, immortality — at least in its life-after-death form — doesn't hold the fascination for us that it does when there's a war going on, as there was in 1941 when Here Comes Mr. Jordan was released and became such a hit. Or perhaps we are somewhat more sophisticated today (though I doubt it) and comedies about heavenly messengers and what is, in effect, a very casual kind of transubstantiation seem essentially silly.

While “Videofilia” is tough to absorb in one viewing, it is hard to escape the sense that Mr. Molero has employed his relentless formal invention in service of some fairly banal moralizing about the dangers of strangers and the internet — a warning that seems late for the here and now.

For all of the film’s attention to the contradictory emotional aftermath of loss, its Mongolian escape valve feels strangely obligatory — not a reason to get away from mourning, but a gimmick around which a film about bereavement was built.

De Niro is game throughout, and sometimes amusing in that way he can be. But Walken is the funniest performer here.

Getting retro right is harder than it seems.

The latest animated Despicable Me outing shows signs of wear even as its energy level escalates.

As it drags along, the movie makes you feel trapped in the shoes of someone destined for failure.

The story may not stay with you, but don’t be surprised if you come away with a strong desire to visit Florence.

Embracing a structure that implicitly acknowledges the complexity of the issue, Ms. Marson nevertheless contributes to the film’s general fuzziness by failing to clarify the legal and moral guidelines that govern these kinds of prescriptions.

Falling with a thud between two stools, it has neither the zip nor the zaniness of farce nor the airy vivacity of the best romantic comedies.

Despite frequent flashbacks and Bobby Bukowski’s richly dimensional photography, the movie has a static, stagy look that amplifies the oppressiveness of its increasingly unpleasant exchanges.

It occupies its genre niche — the exuberantly violent Euro-action movie-star paycheck action comedy — without excessive cynicism or annoying pretension.

Van Rooijen’s overreliance on herky-jerky jump scares is a pity, because the movie that exists in the silence is surprisingly satisfying.

Most radically, this is a Poirot with heart. This interpretation is a dumb idea, but Mr. Branagh, an actor of prodigious skills, can at least pull this one half off. It’s not the only dumb idea in this film, which nevertheless bounces along in a way that’s sometimes almost entertaining.

Slick production values can’t disguise the lack of imagination.

Ms. Robinson and Ms. Howell have kitted out their movie handsomely, but there’s not enough story here or enough anything else, namely a persuasive psychological portrait of Claire, to make up for that lack.

We Are the Flesh, its abundance of repellent imagery notwithstanding, has an air of the academic about it.

A lively closing dance sequence, after an earnest, underwhelming climax, pays affectionate tribute to Bollywood production numbers. But you won’t find Mr. Chan’s customary bloopers over the closing credits.

The gently nostalgic mood and sleepy pacing effectively erase the movie’s necessary edge.

Going in Style, a first commercial feature written and directed by Martin Brest, means to be both moving and comic, but though the cast is headed by three fine actors, two of whom, Mr. Burns and Mr. Carney, are also extremely funny men, it never elicits any emotional response more profound than curiosity.

Some tragedies defy conventional representation. Unlike the play it documents, this documentary shows few signs of thinking outside the box.

As a screenwriter, Ms. Morgan is nimble with glib conversation, and she is fearless at playing an often unlikable character. But this movie might only narrowly pass the Bechdel test, and mustering sympathy for Annette’s affluent, insular circle is difficult. The plot resolutions ultimately feel pat, and the conflicts, in retrospect, thin.

The Little Hours is saved from ignominy by two brief standout performances.

The King’s Choice maintains a sense of intrigue when it sticks to the king’s dealings with the government, but the movie drags when it moves outside of back rooms and deviates from setting up the Bräuer-Haakon showdown.

For all the profanity and naughty behavior, it has the timid, ingratiating vibe of a television sitcom, sticking to safe and familiar emotional territory.

It’s a handsome package that never transcends the banality of its ideas, most of which involve how different people, including from Boulder, were affected by the case.

The diffuse filmmaking style muffles the story’s power.

The information here is compelling and frightening, but the movie is ham-handed.

The actors do nice work before things derail.

Although its protagonist is blessed with a gift for engineering the impossible, Wonder Park is a film where faulty execution betrays a healthy imagination.

Over all, the movie, directed by Dan Harris and featuring name actors like Kal Penn and Janeane Garofalo in small roles, has a focus problem that leaves its humorous moments obscured and its intentions hazy.

The filmmakers might have cleared up suspicions about their motivations and ethics had they worked them into the narrative.

A more finely focused treatment would have made a much better summation of, or introduction to, Mr. Naharin’s work.

Arguments over whether the documentary’s existence honors Mr. Vishner’s wishes and spirit — and whether continuing to film was appropriate — lead in circles.

Mr. Fessenden’s ambition is admirable, and there’s more than a little raw skill on display. If this, his first feature, isn’t always worth recommending, his talents are certainly worth encouraging.

With a little more shading and originality, 13 Minutes might have pushed beyond its familiar Nazi tropes to shape something more immediate and infinitely more potent: an ominous portrait of radicalization.

The script is incapable of penetrating the moral thicket that the actors and the cinematographer, Zachary Galler, have so carefully woven.

The finale enlivens an otherwise staid biopic, but whether the film has earned a moment of uplift is unclear.

Much of the movie, from its attempts to capture the confusing exhilaration of youthful experience to its predictable progressive character dynamics, is labored.

[Roberto Sneider's] movie is erratic, jumpy (thanks to a needlessly affected editing style) and not entirely in control of its message.