It’s a well made and, at times, innovative film about the fame and fortune beckoning ordinary people in China’s live-streaming culture, but it plays like a scary science-fiction story come to life.

“The Kill Team” is both a tense moral thriller and a disheartening account of our country’s actions abroad.

Most elements of Samba sound mockable, and are. Yet it does have oodles of charm, plus a cast of characters that feels like an impromptu family circle.

The result is touching precisely because Boylan does not aggressively ask for sympathy for her character. She earns it by being fair, sensitive and honest as a performer but especially as a writer.

A curious little meditation on the extent to which humans will go to make connections, and on the commodification of everything up to and including love, it is a fascinating film that will never be confused with one of Herzog’s major works. But it nonetheless has moments of subtle and quintessentially Herzogian rhapsody.

After Maria is an affective, personal film that humanizes a persistent national tragedy.

Whose Streets? vitally offers — despite its birth in sorrow and its many war-zone-like stretches — is a tale of alertness and awakening.

Nearly free of gore, the film taps into the deep and always welcome vein of the opulently bizarre things that rich, emotionally stunted people get into when they’ve got too much money. Stacey Menear’s script is careful and clever about revealing what Brahms really is, for he’s certainly got a mind and will of his own.

A movie that, if never exactly a cathartic experience, carries you along in its clenched grip with an undeniable power. It’s sad and funny and real.

It’s a wealth of information The Ivory Game vitally offers, and action it means to incite. That may well be enough to get audiences involved.

Waves isn’t an easy film to digest, and it’s not without its flaws — Emily’s narrative at the end makes it a bit disjointed, and Tyler’s story never feels resolved — but it stays with you mostly because of its shattering performances that bolster Shults’ story.

Logan is more interested in psychological horror than in the typical slice-and-dice of slasher movies, and in several scenes here he achieves a remarkable intensity.

No one’s going to accuse Goodbye Christopher Robin of subtlety or of rewriting the biopic rules, but it does dare to go darker than most films like it.

It’s made with campfire-spooky care rather than an abiding need to impress you with his gifts.

Though the strong performances of Nélisse and Wiggins are key to convince you that they not only care for each other but are capable of thinking on their feet, it’s Paxton who must deliver sufficient menace to propel the story — and he’s terrifying.

The movie is not going to make anyone forget “Jaws,” but it delivers the kind of breathless tension that justifies its existence.

Soul is perhaps the most existentially ambitious film ever attempted by Disney and yet it pops with colorful visuals and gentle wisdom while the story clips along despite the dizzying height of the concept. Only in the final stages do the knots of plot complexity get the better of the characters, but audiences will have been well won over by then.

With everything a little bigger and the film significantly more beautiful — the wonderful Robert Richardson (‘Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood,’ ‘Casino’) behind the camera — the stakes feel worthy of their larger-than-life star.

Kahiu gives the film a brightness and vibrancy that works to counterbalance the perilous waters into which Kena and Ziki are venturing.

Masterminds is kinder to its characters than most comedies about the bumbling and under-educated, and that’s Hess’s strength.

Larson excels at determined despair, simultaneously evincing vulnerability and fearlessness. It’s an exciting, tour-de-force performance by an actress who announces herself as one of the best of her generation. If only the film around her were as bold.

Braverman’s approach, in which he mostly relies on Kaufman to tell his own story through extensive and deftly edited vintage footage, is the right one.

Whether he’s expounding upon his fear of wild animals or recounting how he sweated his way through his first experience trying to order something at Starbucks, Hart is a natural raconteur, alternately arrogant and self-deprecating, worldly and juvenile.

You can love “Gloria” and still think that Gloria Bell is an admirable reimagining that stands on its own while paying tribute to the original.

At a breezy 90 minutes, Copa 71 makes its case succinctly, dropping interesting tidbits while letting the event itself serve as a revelation.

Earl and Hayward developed these characters first as a live stand-up show and then in a short film, and natural chemistry and cheeky rapport make “Brian and Charles” a laugh-out-loud comedy.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets might well represent the apotheosis of Besson’s singularly loony brand of filmmaking. It’s bonkers and gorgeous and confusing and thrilling and tiring and overflowing with ideas.

The filmmakers know that one drops into fare like Extraction 2 not for feelings and tears but for the fast-on-its-feet action, one they deliver in heaps.