The movie’s secret sauce is humanity through action, what Watts’ Pam in all her heart, knowledge, grit, solitude, caring, irritation, and worry shows us when she’s in her element: what losing and finding looks like in real time.

Collet-Serra’s fourth team-up with Neeson, The Commuter, represents neither man’s finest work, but at its best, it suggests the snap and fun they’ve brought us before.

Franco’s fantastic here. He gives a fieriness to Michael as a gay advocate, then seamlessly slides into borderline madness as he starts accepting that the “voice” he hears is God’s. Michael’s confusion is palpable and intense.

Scarlet' might be [Mamoru Hosoda]'s most narratively ambitious work to date, adapting and warping one of the most famous tales ever told, adding new layers of complexity, and centuries of new, invaluable context.

Wine Country shows that women in their 50s are in one of the best phases of their lives, a time to be celebrated, welcomed, and enjoyed with good friends and good wine.

It’s What’s Inside understands the concept of sympathy, but with people like this, the movie advises against it.

As Alpha’s family becomes increasingly isolated, the film’s ambition widens. Though the rhythms of this can take some getting used to, the resulting emotional payoff is more than worth your patience.

Escobar: Paradise Lost plays more like Greek tragedy than the kind of drug-war tale we’d get in a broader, bigger film, and that is no small part of the many reasons it works.

There’s a choppiness in the overall dramatic pull that — despite the surface appeal of the stars and Kormákur’s and cinematographer Robert Richardson’s visuals — keeps Adrift from making true waves.

It’s a well-intentioned comedy with funny performances and a handful of great humorous set pieces. If it feels as though it’s three or four different movies fighting each other for dominance, then at least those movies are all, in their own separate ways, relatively entertaining and amusing.

The director’s comfort with the more placid rhythms of arthouse animation results in some appealing detours whenever the frenetic narrative stops to feel the breeze.

For the diehards and the curious, it should hold some intrigue, because in its exploration of pop longevity and band dynamics, it’s more a cousin of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster . . . than the typically image-conscious, preserve-the-legacy music doc.

This “based on a true story” underdog tale is infectiously determined to make you fall in love with it, like a mangy dog that plops its head in your lap and gazes adoringly at you until you scratch it behind the ears. Eventually, you give in and scratch. And then you wash your hands.

For all its provocations, After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is rote and tedious. The body horror and gross-outs get repetitive, and none of it ever means much of anything.

In Cretton’s hands, this fact-based tale of an oddball, destitute upbringing rings false. It’s based on a woman’s complicated personal recollections of her traumatic childhood, and yet it feels like a cloying, one-note Hollywood tale, the beastly trauma all tied up with a pretty bow and de-fanged.

This is a movie that shows the Curies’ work changing the world, but then has Marie say, “I can feel our work … changing the world.”

The Jesse Owens to cheer on here is, sure, the fastest man in the world, but also the canny would-be celebrity who knew exactly how to bet on himself in a world that had little use for his dignity and intellect. If that’s not an inspirational story, I don’t know what is.

One of the year’s most thought-provoking and spellbinding releases, Our Time is calibrated for patience and observation with ideas as concrete as such an ambiguous storyteller like Reygadas can offer.

There are some good nuggets here — the leads, the look, the always-scene-stealing Dasha Nekrasova. When Englert goes behind the camera again hopefully she can coalesce her many enthusiasms into one walloping whole.

It may not always come alive in the way Heller, or us, would entirely hope for, but one can still be glad “Nightbitch” exists, especially with Adams there to lead the way. In every facet of her performance, she paints a full portrait of a character herself figuring out who she now is.

Isn’t so much a movie as it is a corporate merger with stabbings and wiener jokes. A shameless piece of self-congratulation, fueled by self-cannibalism.

Like a perfect cocktail mixes the sour with the sweet and the bright with the boozy, Focus combines seamless, superbly-crafted filmmaking with the fizz and fun created by its leads.

The Wizard of the Kremlin is a loud, bold film that is held together by the quiet performance at its center.

As slick and contrived as the plotting may be from time to time, the writers and director Jake Schreier (“Robot & Frank”) throw in enough charming character moments and literal forward motion (this is a road movie, after all) to avoid getting bogged down in whiny teen solipsism. You might not believe that any of these kids exist, but you’ll enjoy hanging out with them.

Tom of Finland is a film about a man who was famous for very dirty drawings, but it is unfortunately restricted by a dehydrated kind of good taste from ever being very dirty or very sexy.

There is only one inventive action sequence here.

While not as anarchic or outrageously hilarious as “Teen Titans GO! to the Movies,” this latest all-ages animated adventure from DC Comics and Warner Bros. nonetheless has — and offers — lots of fun with the four-legged counterparts of a Justice League that’s more “Super Friends” than Snyder Cut.

Storks continually surprises with characters who are more complicated than we might expect in a kid’s animated movie, and a refusal to hit every single pre-programmed plot beat.