What really lingers after The Sheep Detectives is its tone: earnest, uncomplicated sweetness, rooted in the love that we — whether human or sheep — have for those with whom we share our lives, and a gentle acceptance of loss as part of that love.

Like the shadows dancing on their home, the film is overwhelmingly beautiful and agonizingly incomplete, a refraction of a refraction of a time that has now long since passed. It’s a work of rich layers that offers something new each time you watch.

It’s faithful to the book without being overly devout, asking a multitude of deeper, more probing questions while reflecting on the same unsettling and existentialist ones that the book did. By the time it closes with its unexpectedly mournful yet gently searing final frames, reinterpreting and expanding on the enduring source material one final time, it names all that Camus did not.

Yes, this is a standard rom-com, in all the best of ways — both playing with the genre’s well-trodden tropes, and letting us enjoy how much fun they can be.

It makes for an entertaining watch in which the attention to detail in every technical element helps smooth over the scattered and superficial story’s many residual shortcomings.

The prime attraction of this movie, and its predecessor, is that it envelopes the audience in the Mario world. Every square inch of the screen, from top to bottom, corner to corner, is packed with images derived from the game. Easter eggs abound. Watching it is akin being inside the 2007 Super Mario Galaxy game itself. Which is why it needs to be seen on the big screen. Seeing it on a phone or a laptop wouldn’t do it justice.

Both Weaving and Newton do great horror-comedy work, by turns beleaguered and enraged, and share some genuinely sweet, funny moments as they repair their relationship.

Byrne, a recent Oscar nominee for “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” holds it together.

By the time the film turns into this unusual buddy adventure, it is an absolute joy, the pair putting their big brains to the task at hand and playfully ribbing each other as they go.

In channeling his creative resources toward the sound of “Undertone,” Tuason conjures a lot out of a simple concept — a girl in a house. The marriage of this sound design to thoughtful, carefully placed camera movements makes for a horror film that’s a suspenseful slow burn.

What keeps Hoppers from drifting into Pollyanna-ish sensibility is its charming spikiness, and embrace of the weird, wacky and witty as it unfurls a high-tech action thriller about a strange, if brief, merging of the human and animal worlds.

More coming-of-age than love story, “Pillion” finds joy in Colin’s journey of learning who he truly is. His road there is a little bumpy — like riding on the back of a motorcycle — and it may be a path less traveled, but it’s a worthwhile one all the same.

This Wuthering Heights is a mess, but an occasionally irresistible one.

The Moment works best when examining the creative tensions between people with different agendas, the small passive-aggressive tensions and second-guessing generating the ripples of conflict. But perhaps Zamiri felt those stakes were too small.

Critically, the film’s many revelations aren’t neat and tidy, but they are revealing in all the ways that matter.

A Private Life is a murder mystery only on its surface; at its heart, it’s an exploration of a lonely woman’s extremely active mind, and an unexpectedly moving story of becoming more present in one’s real life, rather than one’s imaginary one.

Raimi can’t resist letting things get wildly over the top at times (there’s a lot of blood and vomit in this movie), but ultimately Send Help is a fascinating study of what happens when a power dynamic suddenly shifts — and when a skilled and charismatic actor is given space to try something entirely new.

DaCosta takes some big stylistic swings — particularly with the soundtrack — that sometimes makes you feel as if you’re watching a comedy rather than a horror film. It’s a welcome, offbeat balm to the more intense moments sprinkled throughout and reflects the movie’s more pondering approach to a story that questions who the real monsters are.

The film may have begun with a joke on one man, but with the cutthroat world we’re increasingly building for ourselves, it may soon be on all of us.

There’s actually quite a bit to enjoy here, not least of which is Black and Rudd’s funny chemistry, some amusing sight gags involving that enormous CGI snake (who has a diva’s sense of timing), the term “snake funeral” and a rather sweet message about following your dreams. It’s all very, very silly.

Josh is flying solo this time, but Marty Supreme shows he’s capable of achieving a greatness that’s all his own. While brief plot elements weigh the film down, Safide defies gravity even as Marty cannot.

Feig, who’s made a specialty of stories featuring unlikely female duos, knows exactly what he’s doing here in the classy-B-movie genre, and “The Housemaid” ticks along like oatmeal-toned clockwork — a little scary, a little silly and very popcorn-appropriate.

Everybody involved seems to be having a blast making this latest “SpongeBob” a funny, fast-paced pleasure.

The action is fierce, kinetic and basically nonstop in “Fire and Ash.” The ending sequence goes on a bit too long (as does the movie in general, at 195 minutes), but it’s all generally entertaining, if you forgive the fact that the spectacle replaces the story for the most part.

If Brooks could have mustered up a screenplay half as good as “Broadcast News,” this movie would have been a delight; instead, it disappears into agreeable blandness and earnest platitudes. It’s not at all unpleasant spending two hours with Ella and her family and colleagues, but it leaves you feeling a little nostalgic for what it could have been.

Fackham Hall is a pleasantly silly diversion for “Downton Abbey” fans with a tolerance for raunchy sight gags and bad puns.

It’s the trio that gives this story liftoff, thanks to spectacular performances from Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez as friends who have seen each other through their best and worst moments.

The last moments of Hamnet are transcendent, and perhaps the most moving thing I’ve seen on screen this year.