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.

Running on Empty works best when it plays upon emotions generated by the Popes' unique predicament, something that it often does rather shamelessly. It helps that Sidney Lumet has directed the film in a crisp, handsome style that diminishes the maudlin or unlikely aspects of its story, even when they threaten to intrude.

They Remain, directed, edited and scripted by Philip Gelatt, from a short story by Laird Barron, shows that it’s possible to a make an engrossing genre piece on limited resources.

The screenplay, by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and Daniel Pyne, is occasionally sharp-tongued but more often pleasantly knee-deep in rustic corn. Mr. Fox also seems a shade more substantial this time, possibly because he is seen making life-or-death decisions when not fielding comic lines.

Toy Soldiers is a crisp, suspenseful thriller well tailored to the tastes of teen-age audiences, who will doubtless appreciate such touches as the equivalent microchips found in one student's radio-controlled airplane and the chief terrorist's detonator, which is rigged to blow up the entire school.