“Sidemen” is about more than just legacy. Blessed with extensive interviews with their buoyant subjects (all three of whom died in 2011 within months of one another), Mr. Rosenbaum and his producer Jasin Cadic shape a narrative of professional insecurity and personal resilience.

Each time the movie edges into mannerism Mr. Harewood and Ms. Dickerson pull you close enough to make it hurt.

Mr. Argento's methods make potentially stomach-turning material more interesting than it ought to be. Shooting on bold, very fake-looking sets, he uses bright primary colors and stark lines to create a campy, surreal atmosphere, and his distorted camera angles and crazy lighting turn out to be much more memorable than the carnage.

Mr. Hunter has an extraordinarily clear understanding of teen-age characters, especially those who must find their own paths without much parental supervision. Though its Midwestern locale and lower socioeconomic stratum give it a different setting, River's Edge shares something with Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, a novel that is also full of directionless, drug-taking teen-age characters who are without moral moorings and left entirely to their own devices. This is as chilling to witness as it is difficult to dramatize, if only because at their centers these lives are already so empty.

Mr. Howard brings a real sweetness to his subject, as does the film's fine cast of veteran stars; he has also given Cocoon the bright, expansive look of a hot-weather hit. And even when the film begins to falter, as it does in its latter sections, Mr. Howard's touch remains reasonably steady.

The Object of Beauty might have been practically perfect escapist entertainment if the screenplay had been as smooth as the cast. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg has written some attractive characters and a lot of bright lines, but he needs a script doctor. He has let the plot confuse things.

Like a “Black Mirror” episode combined with a philosophy seminar, Realive has plenty of brains. Yet it has a heart, too, and that adds a surprising amount of emotion to this above-average science-fiction film.

Based on a novel by Fannie Flagg, the comedian, and directed by Jon Avnet, Fried Green Tomatoes has some good performances and a measure of homespun appeal, some of which can be credited to Elizabeth McBride's gently evocative costumes and Barbara Ling's detailed production design.

A sweet and affecting story, one that forgoes the awkward moments of teenage romance and offers the possibility of reliving a bit of our youthful amor — if just for the film’s 90-minute running time.

While it’s possible that the director and cinematographer Chris Moukarbel is good at withholding unflattering material, Gaga comes off well, and credibly so: intelligent, an accomplished craftswoman, a well-mannered collaborator and boss.

Ms. Maurery has great fun with the character, a tricky part because Maria nearly always maintains a kindhearted veneer, even at her most venal.

Even when its plot starts to sag, Walking Out remains beautiful to watch.

Once again, the proceedings have been directed with high energy and rapid pace by Bob Clark, and the results are slicker and more sophisticated than before. Refined sensibilities may understandably recoil from all this: high art is not among the aspirations of Porky's II. But lots of lowdown fun? Well, that's another matter.

As directed by Irwin Winkler, Night and the City is colorfully acted and refreshingly free of all the moody cliches such a story might be expected to thrive on. But it is also saddled with overly busy direction that sometimes interferes with the dialogue, making Mr. Price's long, perversely elegant conversational riffs hard to hear.

An entertaining movie that, like a video game once played, tends to disappear from one's memory bank as soon as it's finished.

Designed for everybody who still hasn't had his or her fill of break dancing, or who doesn't yet understand that break dancing, rap singing and graffiti are legitimate expressions of the urban artistic impulse.

The material here is slick and entertaining, and Mr. Sandrich settles for comic simplicity without reaching for anything more. He coaxes the film along at a cheerfully breakneck rhythm. Zany, zany but nice.

Time Bandits is a cheerfully irreverent lark - part fairy tale, part science fiction and part comedy. It's a fantastic though wobbly flight through history and legend in the company of a small boy named Kevin and six dwarfs named Randall, Fidgit, Wally, Og, Stutter and Vermin.

Nothing too grand or grave is at stake here. No special cultural or historical importance can be derived from the Borg-McEnroe battle, but sports don’t always carry that kind of significance. Borg vs. McEnroe is a modest, tactful movie about two guys who, at their peak, were neither.

Farhadi’s choreography of the shift from rowdy celebration to frantic desperation is the most effective part of the movie, and he keeps the suspense going on several fronts.

Their narcissism is repellent yet riveting, and Mr. Côté comes at his subjects with an artful, exploratory obliqueness that’s endearingly curious, as if discovering a whole new species.

The best and funniest Clint Eastwood movie in quite a while.

Mr. Reynolds's third and best directorial effort - the first two were Gator and The End - is an unexpectedly accomplished cop thriller. There is, as is often the case with movies of that genre, less here than meets the eye: the plot has its unreasonable spots, and the story doesn't come to much in the end. But one measure of the success of Sharky's Machine is that it's too fast and exciting for those considerations to count until after the movie is over.

The screenplay, by Jerry Belson and Brock Yates, is not so surreally funny as the one for the first film, but funny lines are not what the picture is about. Smokey and the Bandit II is about movement, action, frustration and destruction, and Mr. Needham, one of Hollywood's most successful stunt artists before he became a director, is very good at this sort of thing. Smokey and the Bandit is entertaining in a brainless way.

There is something undeniably exhilarating about the film’s honest assessment of the never-ending conflict between decency and cruelty that rages in every nation, neighborhood and heart.

It’s undeniable that Manhunt delivers first-rate cinematic technique while skimping on substantial emotional investment. It’s still a great deal of fun.

This account is plausible and moving, at once a defense of genre fiction and of female creativity. But at times the differences between male and female writers can seem a bit schematic, in a way that undermines Mary’s intellectual autonomy.

Mr. Tyrnauer surreptitiously hoses away the layers of dirt to reveal the fragility of his subject’s anything-goes hedonism.

The Eiger Sanction is a long, foolish but never boring suspense melodrama about a college art professor named Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood), who has a passion for French Impressionists and mountain climbing and an underground reputation as the best assassin in the international spy business.

Escape From Alcatraz is not a great film or an especially memorable one, but there is more evident skill and knowledge of movie making in any one frame of it than there are in most other American films around at the moment. I should also add that it's terrifically exciting.

Chris Perkel’s reverent documentary Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives is a valedictory for Mr. Davis.

The spell Mr. Yonebayashi casts is effective, but also ephemeral. It’s minor magic.

Several scenes have a warm, rosy tinge to them, even during the sisters’ meanest blowups, as if to assure the audience that, for these two, there will always be a reconciliation.

It shares a side of Mr. Vedder his fans will enjoy: the baseball aficionado who fills out a scorecard and treats Wrigley sod as holy ground.

As a straight, sentimental melodrama, Youth works well. While there are a lot of conventional tropes, the cast enacts them with such fresh, tenderhearted sincerity that they regain some power.

The twisting and cracking of the British class system is always fascinating to observe, and The Little Stranger traces the details of its chosen moment of social change with precision and subtlety, and with its own layers of somewhat dubious nostalgia.

The film’s sensitivity, though it is an ethical strength, is also a dramatic limitation.

Marcus Vetter and Karin Steinberger’s sprawling documentary probably dives into the weeds too quickly and could have used a tighter edit. Still, drawing on a wealth of courtroom video, the film lays out a persuasive argument for reasonable doubt.

The men refused to be deterred by institutional rigidity, political apathy or a skeptical scientific community. Their perseverance is cheering, giving the movie a brightly buoyant tone that belies the suffering at its center and renders the sometimes distracting musical score largely unnecessary.

Blaze has been beautifully photographed by Haskell Wexler in the soft, lulling colors of the Louisiana countryside, against which Ms. Davidovich's amusingly garish costumes stand out as markedly as they're meant to. The costumes, by Ruth Myers, are particularly good, with ice-cream-colored suits for Mr. Newman that allow him to dominate the film visually just as surely as he dominates it dramatically.

The emotional resonance may be surprising given the movie’s relentless gloss, but it’s real. The spectacularly charming cast, led by the young Nick Robinson in the title role (who brings a knowing touch of 1980s Matthew Broderick to some of his line readings), puts it all across, including a genuinely crowd-pleasing ending.

As with a dream, you can parse what you’ve watched for meaning or just savor what you’ve seen. For this compassionate film, either way works fine.

Considering all that’s been written and said over the last year, there’s not much new to learn from 11/8/16. But the film remains engaging for its stories, and is likely to be more instructive in the future, when passions have cooled. Judging by most people here, that won’t be soon.

The film is perhaps overly repetitive in emphasizing Shula’s inability to escape exploitation, but the story is put across with formal confidence and real originality.

Jason Wise’s documentary, which relies on re-enactments and backstage footage with sparing use of performances, is a love letter to the performer but not the business, in which she managed to achieve a measure of fame for nine decades, while still being overlooked. Her single-minded focus on work is presented as admirable but also something of a curse.

Absorbing and finely wrought, 1945 is not perfect.

No Dress Code Required chronicles the grudging advance of cultural change.

Ms. Ferguson’s film does not seem to have a particular organizing principle at first. These survivors do not necessarily know one another. But their stories, intercut with archival footage over a brisk and frequently harrowing 81 minutes, build to a pitch of horror and sadness that eventually allows for a note or two of hope to sound.

The cinematography isn’t the greatest, and the structure is hit or miss, but so what? In a movie this good natured, the heart is everything. The performances are hilarious, but the dancing is no joke.

It’s possible to fully, and vehemently, disagree with Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taaki yet still see their points. That can make The New Radical unsettling. It also makes it a film worth watching.

What gives the film a chilly authenticity is the creepy performance of Arno Frisch in the title role. Cool and unsmiling, with a dark inscrutable gaze, his Benny is the apotheosis of what the author George W. S. Trow has called the cold child, or an unfeeling young person whose detachment and short attention span have been molded by television.

The Nelmses don’t make enough of their more intriguing ideas (Mike’s familial history) and end up right where you expect they would, bang bang. But Mr. Hawkes keeps you tethered, whether he’s navigating the movie’s uneven tones or peeling down one of cinema’s lonely highways in a muscle car so lovingly shot it deserves a co-star credit.

A German Life is likely to be the last new movie of its kind: a documentary that presents contemporary testimony from someone who witnessed the inner workings of the Nazi high command.

My Fellow Americans, doesn't get to the heart of any issue, constitutional, legislative or otherwise. But it has a fine time imagining our leaders as bumbling, thin-skinned, ultimately likable misfits who are as lost on the American highway as everybody else.

The camera offers no protection; it only provides a witness. Fortunately for audiences, it’s more pleasurable to witness anarchy than it is to experience it.

Mr. Soderbergh’s quick-and-dirty approach works here better as a conceptual gambit than as an entertainment. What keeps you watching even as the story becomes more off-putting are the actors and Mr. Soderbergh’s filmmaking.

Take a healthy helping of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a dollop of The Bridge on the River Kwai, a dash of any Tarzan movie, a soupcon of Casablanca, a whiff of The Wizard of Oz and a stunt or two from a favorite Saturday serial, stir frenetically, and if you're lucky enough to have snappy dialogue by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, you may end up with as funny a movie as Volunteers.

The film's beauty is dazzling. It stands with—or perhaps a little ahead of—Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Roman Polanski's Tess, but it also must be conceded, quickly and without too stern a reproach, that there is less to The French Lieutenant's Woman than meets the dazzled eye.

If unwise remarks at a dinner can cast a pall over a longstanding relationship, then a great ending can redeem and even force reconsideration of an otherwise middling film.

The Mighty Quinn is an entertaining, touristy sort of movie that manages to be lighthearted without being soft in the head.

James Foley's After Dark, My Sweet is a brisk, entertaining contemporary melodrama about the kind of sleazy characters who populated California crime literature 35 years ago. That's no surprise, since the screenplay, adapted by Robert Redlin and Mr. Foley, is based on Jim Thompson's novel, published in 1955.

A tough and cleareyed look at how things are, rather than how we want them to be.

An ordinary, not wonderful, but highly enjoyable movie.

There's no great show of wit or tunefulness here, and the ingenious cross-generational touches are fairly rare. But there is a lively kiddie version of the Dickens tale, one that very young viewers ought to understand.

Three Men and a Baby follows the French film as faithfully as it possibly can, and it too revolves around one lone idea: that there's humor in the spectacle of a grown man, heretofore ignorant of his own gentler nature, discovering that he can indeed administer formula and change diapers. The hilarity inherent in this has its limits, but it's a premise with enough timeliness and warmth to account for the first film's success. And in terms of success, this glossier, more effervescent remake will undoubtedly outstrip the original.

Only late in the game do they make an unforgivable mistake. Blue Chips falls apart when the film makers, figuratively speaking, haul their soapbox right onto the court. Most of the time, Blue Chips is too energetic to sound self-righteous.

In Mr. Holland's Opus, Mr. Dreyfuss gives a warm and really touching performance. He's firmly in control of the film's comic moments and just as comfortable delivering the film's calculatingly Capraesque payoff: a good cry.

If the film's easygoing, catch-it-while-you-can approach yields some unexpected nuggets, it also makes for lopsided storytelling. But when Nenette et Boni is studying the faces and following the moods of its likable if terribly confused title characters, it captures the stubborn spirit of youth itself.

The Big Picture, the first theatrical film to be directed by the talented Christopher Guest (a co-writer and a star of ''This Is Spinal Tap), is a consistently genial, intermittently funny send-up of the current Hollywood scene as demonstrated by the rise and fall of an award-winning film student.

The Long Walk Home offers a careful, dispassionate, finally moving evocation of its setting. In attempting to present segregated Southern society matter-of-factly, it avoids shrillness and keeps its potential for preachiness more or less at bay.

Even if you don’t need Beuys justified or explained to you, the movie is an exhilarating portrait of a unique truth-teller.

As a chronicle of how San Francisco has changed over the years — and as a salute to the city’s role as a back lot for masters like Erich von Stroheim and Howard Hawks — The Green Fog is a wonder of excavation and urban history. What it says about Hitchcock is more ambiguous.

While Marcus Hinchey’s screenplay is occasionally too blunt, Come Sunday accords sympathetic moments to all its characters — a strategy that gives this chronicle of religious convictions a conviction of its own.

Ms. McKinnon is too inventive to make the character a standard, zany rom-com sidekick. There is no real precedent for her highly disciplined comic anarchy, but Ms. McKinnon reminds me a little of Peter Sellers in her command of voice, face and body and her ability to turn every scene into a popcorn popper of verbal and physical surprise.

By rights, Never Goin’ Back should be a chore to sit through. The jokes are dated, the behavior tasteless and the setups tired. Yet the movie has a ramshackle charm that’s due entirely to its vivacious leads, whose mutual devotion and easy, unlabeled sexuality feels endearingly innocent.

It’s an amusing tale for young audiences, ending with the expected messages about friendship and courage. But there are delights for adults as well, particularly in the first half, with sendups of various comic book series (some aimed at DC’s own arch-nemesis, Marvel) and an extra-large supply of spoofs on other movies.

Without betraying any overt nostalgia, Crazy Rich Asians casts a fond eye backward as well as Eastward, conjuring a world defined by hierarchies and prescribed roles in a way that evokes classic novels and films.

There are some excruciating flashes of accuracy and truth in this film...However, we do wish the young actors, including Mr. Dean, had not been so intent on imitating Marlon Brando in varying degrees. The tendency, possibly typical of the behavior of certain youths, may therefore be a subtle commentary but it grows monotonous.

The screenplay is funny but even better are the sight gags that are a kind of inventory of everything Clouseau has been unable to master in his long, irrelevant career.

Both Mr. Sellers and Mr. Edwards delight in old gags, and part of the joy of The Pink Panther Strikes Again is watching the way they spin out what is essentially a single routine, such as one fellow's trying, unsuccessfully, to help another fellow out of a lake.

If you have the Clouzot habit, as I have, there's very little that Mr. Edwards and Mr. Sellers could do that would make you find the movie disappointing.

The Trail of the Pink Panther is less a conventional comedy than an uproarious retrospective devoted to the particular achievements of the Edwards-Sellers collaboration. Some of the routines seem totally new to me, and others are familiar, but either way, most of them are huge fun, and a couple approach greatness.

Is “What Lies Upstream” persuasive in all respects? No. Will it make you think twice about what’s gone unnoticed in your tap water? Absolutely.

Has moments of slackness and chaos (the book does, too), but for the most part it’s a lively, charming excursion.

This film isn’t always pretty, but its message is necessary.

The movie gains momentum as it indulges in hallucinogenic phantasmagoria. Whatever you make of its intentions, it’s certainly exceptional in its visual distinction.

if Madeline’s Madeline is sometimes unconvincing and frequently unnerving, it is never uninteresting. In its final moments it ascends into heady, almost visionary territory, like a balloon caught in a sudden updraft, and becomes a singular and strange experience.

By framing the movie as a multipronged narrative that eventually culminates in the big event of the fair itself, it risks prosaicness. But the subjects are winning and heartening, and their mission is one you just can’t take issue with.

Turning black-white conflict into a laudably complex wash of gray, Mr. Green (inspired in part by a conversation he had with a police officer about the 2014 death of Eric Garner) favors reason over outrage. The political heat rises but the movie stays cool, its smooth, smart climax in keeping with its levelheaded tone.

Paul Rudd plays Berg with the droll, boyish charm he’s brought to dozens of other roles, but he adds a protective coating. This movie, directed by Ben Lewin from a Robert Rodat script (one adapted from Nicholas Dawidoff’s fascinating 1994 biography of Berg), relishes Berg’s compulsion to remain an enigma even to those closest to him

Directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the film is a jaunty assemblage of interviews, public appearances and archival material, organized to illuminate its subject’s temperament and her accomplishments so far.

The combination of clever concept reflecting the prevalence of screens in everyday life, and the pleasure of watching a typically underused Mr. Cho take on a meaty lead role make Searching a satisfying psychological thriller.

Like a bedtime cup of cocoa, Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle has a soothing familiarity that quiets the mind and settles the spirit.

A documentary that’s remarkably engaging despite treating its rough-and-tumble hero with kid gloves.

Are We Not Cats is a well-put-together film with a lot of striking imagery, but, as you may have already inferred, something of a specialty item.

It's the none too promising assumption of See No Evil, Hear No Evil that one physical disability complements another, and that Wally and Dave are made for each other. Yet, against all odds, the movie goes on to prove it with a lot of good, unlikely humor that is often not in the best of taste.Mr. Pryor and Mr. Wilder have never worked better together, possibly because they are playing characters who, being blind and deaf, are not especially funny to begin with, but who also have a certain amount of intelligence.

Alayan’s light directorial touch can make the storytelling seem overly straightforward. But his tight control over the proceedings becomes clear in a closing shot that elegantly encapsulates the film’s complexities.

Part ghost story, part revenge Western, more than a little silly, and often quite entertaining in a way that may make you wonder if you have lost your good sense. The violence of the film (including a couple of murders by bull-whipping) is continual and explicit. It exalts and delights in a kind of pitiless Old Testament wrath.