For Dupieux, there seems to be no moral here at all, other than perhaps that life is a trajectory of mishaps and easiest for people who don’t linger over the fallout of their actions. This isn’t necessarily surprising for a filmmaker who once wrote and directed a movie about a sentient tire that commits serial murder.

Unlike many previous films and TV shows that ponder the possibility of life on Mars, “Settlers” is thoughtful and nuanced, with Rockefeller posing extremely difficult (and resonant) questions about entitlement and even the future of human existence.

The filmmaker’s diminishing capacity for recognizing naturalistic human behavior once again presents a problem when the time comes for audiences to relate to, much less care about, characters put through the paces of another elevator pitch that he never develops into a compelling story.

Jolt won’t be the talk of awards season, but it knows how to entertain, offering the enjoyable spectacle of watching one woman taking down everything and everyone in her way, using what the world has told her (and so many other women) to get rid of — her feelings and her demand to be heard.

The drama is muddled, the action is murky, and the storyline can’t help but get goofier and goofier until, by the end, every attempt this movie makes to ground the “G.I. Joe” series gets blown up. It’s hardly the worst film the “G.I. Joe” series has delivered, but it’s certainly the least interesting.

It’s one of those films that badly tests the patience as each storyline waits to tie itself up neatly and resolve — after two bursts of “Five Years Later” captions — into a honey pot of Italian optimism.

With its uncommonly human touch and restless, unflinching visual aesthetic, Vortex might well be Noe’s finest and most thoughtful work.

The film is a dark slice of neorealism with a palpable sense of claustrophobia that Ada feels in her life and in her family. But her relationship to what is essentially imprisonment is odd and complex; she seems desperate to get out and exercise some control of her life, but there are strange cracks in that desperation, signs that she’s terrified of what even a modicum of freedom and control might bring.

Like pouring yourself a warm glass of milk or slipping into a hot bath, the languid and visually sumptuous romance lulls you into a sleepy sense of calm, never asking for more than gentle aesthetic appreciation for its impeccable craft.

Both actors are riveting in this sad duet, and Lafosse isn’t much interested in giving them a facile reconciliation. Everything is hard in The Restless, a potent drama that never quite succumbs to dread but always keeps it close at hand.

Make no mistake, Petrov’s Flu is a formidable piece of filmmaking; it is also an exercise in style that uses its own virtuoso technique as a blunt-force tool against the audience.

The episodic nature means that, despite the frequent physical comings together on screen, it never quite comes together as a drama.

The implications — ethical and otherwise — that the film raises are too vast to be papered over with a closing plea for tighter gun control. The sentiment is fair and true and absolutely valid. But delivered as sober end titles at the end of “Nitram,” one can’t help but notice a certain irony in such small white letters barely hiding a much darker abyss.

It is cinema that, if you let it, can check our heartbeats, frustrate our minds and connect with our very souls.

The film isn’t a total wash. Seydoux finds ways to move and emote through her Noh mask, and Dumont finds interesting avenues to explore, tracking the uneasy dance between compassion and commodification when dealing with hot-button stories. Only it’s all too much, too long, too repetitive, too one-note, too contemptuous of the very idea of cinematic pleasure to really land.

Appraising her country’s various ills with a healthy dose of Gallic gallows humor, the filmmaker has delivered a kind of screwball comedy full of physical gags, rat-a-tat dialogue and intricate choreography that veers towards a weightier third act while offering plenty of belly laughs along the way.

Casablanca Beats argues that the power of personal expression can turn the world on its head. And for a good spell, the film does just that.

The melodrama can be effective at times, and there’s an admirable urgency with which it tackles significant issues in U.S. immigration policy.

Between Two Worlds is highly self-aware, at some points simply playing up the odd dissonance of seeing as glamorous a figure as Juliette Binoche scrubbing toilets, and at other points making more caustic commentary on the impossible task the book and adaptation set out to accomplish.

A fascinating deconstruction of history, culture, and identity, No Ordinary Man raises so many crucial questions — and answers them so thoughtfully — that it moves beyond entertainment into the realm of essential text. It belongs, equally, in theaters, streaming queues, and classrooms.

A hefty order of longing served with a side of crime thrills, Pig is flavorful, fascinating and fancy, crafted by someone who knows how to create a dish that’s accessible yet undeniably gourmet in its complexity.

As Mama Weed makes deliciously apparent, where its iconic star goes, we will gladly follow.

While Red Rocket very ably explores the headspace and mechanisms of the 100% beef-fed all-American huckster, it loses a step or two when it does so as a kind of morality tale assessing the damage and human toll Mikey leaves in his wake.

Viewers who, for whatever reason, love the first “Space Jam” may well find themselves delighted all over again, but as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to plunge a beloved sports figure into a century’s worth of pop culture iconography, “A New Legacy” is a big fat airball.

Make no mistake: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions may be fun, it’s also incredibly stupid. The premise makes no sense. The mechanics make no sense. The plot makes no sense. Look elsewhere for storytelling sanity. Look here if you want to see confident, creepy absurdity, with a ghoulish imagination and showmanship to spare.

"The Story of Film" is long (though not by Cousins’ standards), it’s infuriating at times (entirely by design) and it overstates its case with defiant glee (again, it meant to do that), but you can’t love movies and not love a good chunk of what Cousins puts on the screen.

Shot with precision, written with elegance and unfolding at a thriller-like pace, A Hero should perform very well around the world after this bow.

Ducournau’s follow-up to “Raw” is more than comfortable in its genre trappings, offering grab bag nods to past masters and positively delighting in sex, violence and grisly prosthetics as it chants “Long live the new flesh” from the film world’s toniest perch, inviting all gathered to join along.