The comic drama Krystal, marking William H. Macy’s third time out as a feature director, is so baffling that it must be appreciated at least for its ability to defy all logic.

Spiritual and earthy, forged in curiosity yet fortified with empathy, The Rider is why we go to the cinema, and it affirms Chloe Zhao as one of the most gifted new movie artists of our time.

Rampage is a movie that gets buried in its own top-heavy plot, collapsing itself under that weight just like the Chicago-area buildings do on screen.

The premise of Truth or Dare is needlessly convoluted, and it is overloaded with information and side characters.

Beirut contains all the elements of a fun, snappy, pre-summer jaunt. And yet the film is actively in competition with itself. The tone is grim and honest when it wants to be, but not necessarily when it needs to be.

For all of its meticulous construction and often masterful craft, the film remains something to coldly admire rather than easily embrace, often playing more as a collection of accomplished filmmaking moments than as a fully enthralling whole.

Chappaquiddick may or may not be what actually happened, but it gets at enough piercing truths.

That we watch the ticking moments of Where Is Kyra? with so much concern is a testament to the filmmakers and cast determined to elevate her unnoticed life.

Where Miyazaki’s wisdom kept his prodigious imagination in the service of intimacy, “Big Fish” is daringly, if haphazardly, epic with its vision and feelings. The urge to awe may feel self-conscious at times, but it’s rarely not heartfelt, even when it’s skirting the edge of incomprehensible.

Ultimately, The Miracle Season mistakes an inspiring true story for one that needs or deserves to be told cinematically; it isn’t awful, but it’s not a film, it’s a tribute, and unfortunately, one to the memory of a young woman who would be better honored by people actually “living like Line” than watching a formulaic, fictionalized retelling of her community learning what that means.

Threaded throughout the peril is a simple but effective message about familial love, communication, and sacrifice, and there are just enough small moments — for the cast to convey with their faces between major frights — that serve to deepen things ever so slightly.

While Tyler Perry’s Acrimony doesn’t quite live up to its stylish trailer — that water-torture sound design promises a floodgate that will burst at any moment — it’s the kind of “women’s picture” that used to be Joan Crawford’s bread and butter, the sort that allows its star to glamorously lose her grip in a succession of great outfits.

Mo’s story feels rare, relevant and real. But we’re stuck on the outside looking in.

Needless to say, this kind of thing wouldn’t work if its leads didn’t have chemistry, and Duplass and Falco do a wonderful job keeping up our hopes for them as we fear the slightest dip in the outlook for their lives, whether together or apart.

As handsomely mounted, TV-movie-quality cinema goes, “Light in Darkness” is at once the best looking, most coherent, and least histrionic of the franchise.

Overall, the movie left me feeling bombarded with images, bored by the lack of an interesting story, and irritated with my own cultural past.

Without a strong guiding hand we’re left with a finely acted, but only adequate biopic, which brushes against greatness and then paints over it.

This is filmmaking that demands to be noticed, if not always trusted.

Mawkish, bland and banal, this dreary love story — and it’s no “Love Story” — seems to think it can throw together dying girl and handsome prince, and that’s all there is to it.

It’s a speedy adventure with diverse action set pieces and a mystery that boasts at least one halfway decent twist.

Ultimately, the overstuffed, under-dramatized film fails to fully develop the stakes at hand, but it features more thoughtful world-building than most faith-based films, as well as a bracing honesty about the difficulty of reconciling idealistic credos with a harsh and unforgiving world.

It’s a mostly enjoyably overstuffed model kit of adventure ingredients: talking dog heroes, an intrepid boy aviator, an outspoken girl reporter, garbage playgrounds, mechanical worlds, robot peril and mischievous humor. It’s even, for this director, tantalizingly political, venturing into dark territory about such utopia-bursting ills as bigotry and authoritarianism.

Whether shot on an iPhone or just screened on one, Unsane effortlessly flexes Soderbergh’s skill as a storyteller and a technician, injecting the atmosphere and mechanics of a creepy scenario with a substance that deepens and elevates it to the stuff of a harrowing, intimate reality.

If you don’t believe in this stuff, then the film is exploiting a young woman with mental issues. And if you do believe, it’s hard not to question the devil’s strategy.

Pacific Rim Uprising has zero emotional pull.

A well-acted, inspiring story of female empowerment, the captivating “Roxanne Roxanne” is as much about survival and the bonds of family as it is about busting rhymes.

Though the film occasionally assumes the airs of a slow-burning thriller, the overall product remains a firmly intellectual exercise.

The movie has too much on its plate in selling its paint-by-numbers uplift.