A movie with more potential directions than its globe-trotting-assassin heroine has wigs, “Ava” offers moments that suggest it might have succeeded as an action thriller, a dysfunctional family drama, or a character study. Since it commits fully to none of these, the results are the sort of bland bang-bang-pow that keep Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis afloat in between movies that critics actually like, or even see.

It’s a consistently powerful ensemble, with Wright reminding us yet again that she has that indefinable something that makes a character actress a movie star.

Whether or not you think Crowley’s very of-its-moment piece still has something to say to audiences of the 21st century, it’s a play that deserves better than this waxwork karaoke.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 moves beyond Sorkin the writer of dialogue, or Sorkin the supplier of scripts to the likes of Rob Reiner, David Fincher and Danny Boyle, to Sorkin the filmmaker.

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.

Jones and Murray (who previously teamed on Coppola’s “A Very Murray Christmas” special) achieve the kind of effortless rapport that spawns “I want them to go solve mysteries” memes, and the key ingredient of that chemistry is that Jones never allows Murray to steal the show.

Vinterberg and Lindholm take a substantive look at substance abuse, placing it in character context and avoiding dramatic hysterics. Another Round is a film of more quiet desperation and a more thoughtful morality, and it goes down with a kick.

An open-hearted, unapologetically emotional story of a man struggling to come to terms with what happened to his son and with his own complicity in it, “Good Joe Bell” makes good use of the Everyman appeal of Mark Wahlberg; if it doesn’t feel like a landmark the way Ossana and McMurtry’s “Brokeback Mountain” or McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment” were, it’s a quietly affecting road trip that gets to where it wants to go and may prompt a few tears along the way.

If it may be a return to familiar pleasures rather than an excursion into anything new, that’s hardly a problem when those familiar pleasures include Herzog dropping bon mots.

It’s a civics lesson that’s subtly delivered within some thoroughly exciting documentary filmmaking.

If good intentions or even pragmatism aren’t enough to make the wealthy and powerful think about income inequality, New Order suggests, there’s always fear.

The many lessons that Wolfwalkers has to share, whether they’re about the relationships between children and parents or between people and nature, are ones you can never be too old to learn.

McQueen and co-writer Courttia Newland, working with a talented cast and crew, bring us in so close that we can smell the smoke and the sweat, and swoon over the sensuality of slow dancing.

It’s hard to watch Notturno at times, but to the director’s credit it’s also impossible to look away.

What grates about director Yuval Adler and his co-writer Ryan Covington pilfering so obviously from Dorfman’s work is that they haven’t done anything particularly interesting with it.

I Care a Lot may have delusions about being a cautionary tale of elder abuse and the perils of court-appointed guardianship, but let’s be honest: It takes way too much delight in despicable people doing despicable things to really care a lot, or even much at all, about the larger social issues.

Concrete Cowboy is an urban drama, but it’s also a glimpse of a world most of us never knew, and a richly evocative introduction to a strange new world that has been right under our noses all along.

Even as a doomy voice coming from the shadows, Orson Welles is a formidable presence, and Dennis Hopper a provocative, beguiling one. Their filmed conversation may be more of a curiosity than anything else, but it’s a challenging and occasionally intoxicating curiosity.

Enemies of the State is a chilling watch, both for what it contemplates and for the internal path that each viewer will take while experiencing it. That some will come away from the film unwilling to accept its conclusions merely proves the film’s point.

The Way I See It is a marvelous portrait of Souza and of two administrations that not coincidentally also works as a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump. It is decidedly not a film for Trump fans, but others may well find themselves moved and saddened by the contrasts between then and now.

For Zhao, who began her career carving out an intimate and affecting style of filmmaking that didn’t really make or need room for movie stars, Nomadland is both a move in a bolder direction and an affirmation that she’s been on the right road all along.

Ammonite is spare and hushed. Its pleasures are subtle, but they linger.

For as prolific a filmmaker as Ozon continues to be, his occasional misses are far outweighed by his offbeat and insightful forays, particularly in the realm of sexuality — the best parts and the crazy-making parts. For audiences equally interested in his insights about loss and about love, there’s plenty to ponder in Summer of ’85.

One Night in Miami shows King to be a filmmaker who’s clearly interested in balancing a variety of literal and figurative textures.

Like all of Byrne’s work, it is sly performance art masquerading as rock ‘n’ roll, or maybe it’s sly rock ‘n’ roll masquerading as performance art; definitions are elusive but the impact is both cerebral and visceral, just the way Byrne likes it.

For documentary fans, it’s a haphazardly paced and awkwardly structured film that struggles to organically incorporate each facet of the tragic “Ren & Stimpy” story, ultimately giving too short a shrift to the greatest tragedy of all.

It’s hard to say that any WWII film can feel fresh after decades of documentation, but Apocalypse ’45 finds a way to trade in the typical war-doc toolkit for something more personal and more striking.

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