The performances are impeccable, and the film’s structural elements are deftly handled across the board.

[A] fleet, gripping documentary.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone watching Life Upside Down out of anything other than abject desperation.

By putting a mirror to Gia and placing us in her feet, shoes or not, Leaf beckons viewers to contemplate how contemporary society fails its Gias every single day, to face how this cycle of poverty continues, and to understand that Gia and women like her can’t conquer it alone.

Flora and Son feels more like a scrappy demo tape than a polished album.

Despite its A-list cast, can’t escape its shoddy writing and worse filmmaking.

It’s both a tour de force for a cast led by Thomasin McKenzie and a sign that Oldroyd hasn’t lost his unsettling touch in the seven years since his last film.

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.

Jackson is the epitome of a filmmaker whose gaze truly makes everything seem previously unseen. By walking alongside her characters, indeed the salt of the earth, we experience what was always there with brand new wisdom.

Past Lives is an exquisitely wistful drama that speaks with an honesty so affectingly crisp it will turn your conceptions of love, identity and fate on their head.

There’s an austerity to the film, but also a sense that this interesting couple in this interesting environment is going over the same territory with only minor changes.

Parmet’s strong script and surety behind the camera navigate the audience through this complicated story of religion and sexuality, patriarchy and power, brought to eerily accurate life by the ensemble of excellent actors.

Kim’s Video is so delightful because Redmon and Sabin have taken a subject that might have led to wistful dead ends and follow it through to such an extent that they wound up with a gold mine of material and a documentary that plays like a bold narrative feature.

It is not artful. It is urgent and ruthless and horrifying, and it shows the unspeakable.

It is a bold, stylish and dynamic adaptation that makes big choices that may have one puzzling through both the characters’ and filmmakers’ intentions — or maybe not. It is a mirror after all, and the moral of the story is left up to us, which is perhaps the most daring move of all.

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.

This is a polished, straightforward account of harrowing events, told with empathy and relative objectivity. If you’re looking for an entrée into one of the most bizarre, complex chapters of human history, look no further.

The film always has Majors on its side, pulling us back in right as we are ready to step away from the intense barrage of rage. Anchored in his greatness, Magazine Dreams can get away with most of its flaws.

This is a triumph for Bernal and for Williams and all his collaborators, a film that takes on very fresh territory and suffuses all of its frames with love for all of the people in it.

By showing the tangled relationship between a mother and her dysphoric child, L’Immensità writes a love letter to the lonely.

There are certainly any number of inroads to creating a contemporary comedy about interracial relationships, but You People winds up playing as merely outdated and mediocre, with Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus caught in the cobwebs.

Unfortunately, though, the leads — both of whom radiate individual charisma — are entirely lacking in chemistry. And it’s not just them. There is little connection between anyone, or even any event, in a project that takes all its assets for granted.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Scarlet Bond mostly lacks the animating unpredictability and sugar-rush energy of its source material.

The sandbox of “The Seven Faces of Jane” might have been fun for these filmmakers to play in for a while, but the results are drab and uninteresting. If there’s a winner in this particular exquisite corpse game, it’s certainly not the audience.

Hyams’ film doesn’t make the most of its concept but, although it’s not a particularly interesting slasher, it is an efficient one. Fans of the genre will no doubt have a little fun with it. The fun just isn’t infectious.

It’s all great fun, even if there’s no central performance as riveting as Cho’s in “Searching.” Then again, acting in movies like this is an admittedly uphill battle, one that Reid is better at when not having to rely on the occasionally tinny dialogue. Long, Leung and de Almeida, meanwhile, fill the tapestry of intrigue efficiently and appealingly.

Most of this new House Party is relatively uninspired, a modest and mediocre comedy that relies more on its high-concept plot to capture the audience’s attention than on interesting characters or, you know, jokes.

It’s an exciting picture, a smart picture, a fascinating picture, and a wonderfully weird picture.