Roberts wraps his audience around his finger and then points us in the direction of gruesome, darkly humorous devilry.

Pieces of a Woman is grounded and intensely personal. Much of that is due to the towering and heartbreaking performance by Kirby.

It is, most importantly, amusing and creative. It may not follow its storylines to the most logical conclusions, and it may not reinvent the action movie as we know it. It’s still an enjoyable blockbuster sequel that tries to infuse the original idea with a couple new ideas, while setting the stage for more exciting adventures to come.

The Eggers Brothers have a canny way of balancing those wildly different tones. We’re frightened for each character, even when we point and giggle at them. It’s a twisted film.

The result is hugely impressive and awfully scattershot, a wry piece of art that is always entertaining but also so excruciatingly detailed that you wonder if it will connect the way the more emotional, more fully drawn stories of “Grand Budapest,” “Moonrise Kingdom” or “The Royal Tenenbaums” did.

There are times when the narrative approach of “Still” — throwing a barrage of film clips at his bio — can become distracting rather than entertaining, but it’s always a kick.

There are no small parts in a Michael Showalter movie. Every actor is a star when they’re on camera.

The film is a dark slice of neorealism with a palpable sense of claustrophobia that Ada feels in her life and in her family. But her relationship to what is essentially imprisonment is odd and complex; she seems desperate to get out and exercise some control of her life, but there are strange cracks in that desperation, signs that she’s terrified of what even a modicum of freedom and control might bring.

Whenever the filmmaker’s emphasis is on the sinful humanity of these men of God, reducing them to Machiavellian backstabbers, it’s a satisfying and absorbing yarn. When it tries to say something profound — while refusing to acknowledge the many elephants who populate the Vatican’s many rooms — it makes cardinal errors.

A sadistic delight, just like its predecessor.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is such an absorbing airplane novel of a movie that you half expect to walk out of the theater and into O’Hare International. Your flight was on time, and the turbulence was totally badass.

Kusijanovic isn’t interested in tipping her hand as this coming-of-age story turns into one more cinematic journey by a young woman through an inhospitable world.

If you strip away the things that make this such an unusual release in such an unusual year, you’ll find a pretty good movie and one that approaches this story with heart and with fresh eyes.

While the film sometimes struggles with disparate tones, it’s a solid, subtle drama that opts in most cases for restraint over excess.

The director is more interested in quietly telling the story of two specific women, and letting the audience grasp the big picture without much prodding.

Although it might promptly be added to your holiday movie rotation as a new staple, The Holdovers doesn’t exactly feel like a new classic—it feels too familiar for that. Still, it does something tried-and-true so well and affectionally.

Greutert’s film brings back the core elements that made these movies work. It’s an uncomplicated, effective horror thriller, even though it’s trapped itself in the past with nowhere else to go.

The new documentary is a colorful force of nature underscored by the fierce soundtrack of life, embodying the best parts of its subject in the name of nostalgic exploration. After all, music can tell beautiful stories, and this journey is no exception.

Alpha comes close to greatness, specifically that rare kind of greatness that we reserve for timeless epics, or at least gorgeous Frank Frazetta illustrations. The story and protagonist aren’t quite rich enough to take it to the next level.

It’s a film about a bleak and cruel universe that is unkind to victims and eager to ignore reasonable pleas, a world that has a conscious and subconscious vendetta against women in general. It’s also a film that thinks it’s entirely possible to destroy that world, as terrifying as it is, and ultimately, it’s the movie’s principled strength that endures.

At times the storytelling may make the story look and feel more interesting than it is, particularly in an ending that feels as if it rushes to find a bit of forced redemption. But Poe is an assured first-time director who has created a high-school movie that feels distinct from all the high-school movies that preceded it.

Wife of a Spy doesn’t necessarily change its tone when the stakes are raised so much as shift its concerns from what’s on the surface to what courses underneath in a time of war.

Clerks III is serious to a minor fault and breezy to a minor fault. It’s got all the same laid-back, chill vibes cinema that Smith is well-known for, and the same immature approach to genuine maturity that he’s also known for, with a new sense of emotional severity that makes it harder to laugh than it probably should be.

This is a story about power, but it’s also a story about place. More than that, you’ve really got to see it to believe it.

Whether the love story completely works or not, ChaO is such a visual wonder that it hardly matters.

You can go to Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles for the delectable excess, but you’ll stick around for the quiet, cautionary notes between bites.

It’s gorgeous, it’s distinctive, it’s quirky, it’s definitely about mermaids, and it might just make you question your sanity.