Memorable acting, striking cinematography, and a provocative examination of the nexus between entertainment and media and politics — that’s part of what’s kept the legend of “Citizen Kane” alive for decades, and it’s enough to make Mank necessary, if not entirely fulfilling, viewing for film lovers.

Like a gorgeously decorated tree with a few too many presents stuffed under it, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is excessive but never unwelcome.

Let Him Go is a tense genre piece that finds room to build out its characters, and their flaws, between bursts of action and suspense; it’s a tricky combination, but Bezucha manages the balance with real skill.

Lister-Jones is clearly focused on character, and less so on genre conventions, so “The Craft: Legacy” could turn off some of the first movie’s fan base while simultaneously bringing new fans into the fold. As far as franchise revivals go, this one’s got the right elements.

An elegant chamber piece that deals with big issues – life, death, family, guilt, grief – in a beautifully austere way, Coming Home Again rarely raises its voice, but it cuts deeply.

This sequel might (in, one hopes, a happier future) be hilarious in retrospect, but at the moment, it’s a mostly cringe-worthy experience.

This kiddie horror comedy will bring a bracing dollop of creepiness to your Halloween.

This is a film with an agenda in mind, granted, but it’s too witty and too heartfelt to be dismissed as a mere public service announcement. Audiences may get a message out of this message movie, but they’ll also get a movie.

It’s an exciting ride, but with a wallop of genuine feeling underneath that makes it one of this year’s best films.

A meditation that measures social failings in the toll they take on individuals, Time builds to scenes that are almost shocking in their intimacy. It stays away from polemic but hits all the harder for its restraint.

French Exit walks an uneasy line between darkness and light, elegance and eccentricity, delicious humor and disturbing tragedy. These are not normal people, and this is not a normal film. But Pfeiffer makes it an odd, enjoyably twisty ride.

If it starts out to be a biography of Belushi the performer, it ends up as the cautionary tale of Belushi the human being.

This new Rebecca has its own sense of style, and it’s not above fully embracing the pulpy delights of du Maurier’s book, but unlike the unnamed second Mrs. de Winter, it can’t quite break free of the inevitable expectations placed upon it.

As “solidly senior Liam Neeson kicks ass” vehicles go, Honest Thief falls firmly in the middle, nowhere near the heights of “Taken” but well above the depths of “Taken 3.”

It’s great to have an animated female lead that does for science what Belle in “Beauty and the Beast” did for reading, but ultimately, Over the Moon wanes more than it waxes.

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.

Even with such an underwritten character, Noblezada finds grace notes and moments of specificity to Rose; it’s got to be a challenge for a stage star to portray a performer with nervousness about crowds, but she conveys the character’s stage fright (and the degrees to which she eventually overcomes it) in a way that feels honest.

There are some random chuckles along the way . . . . For the most part, though, The War with Grandpa seems like the sort of brightly-lit disposable family comedy that fills the Disney Channel schedule, only with an insanely overqualified cast.

This is a documentary that feels confident and intentional at every turn. It’s a story we need to know now, and it’s an essential warning for future generations.

It’s a slower burn than those other two “Small Axe” entries, but it builds to a final scene between Boyega and Toussaint that’s quiet but shattering.

For all its clear-eyed representation of the fears and horrors of aging, Dick Johnson Is Dead is nonetheless an ultimately joyous experience.

What truly anchors Save Yourselves! is the specificity of the two leads and the sharpness with which Mani and Reynolds perform the roles.

It’s a mannered and muddled take on an exciting subject, and even Taymor’s trademark flights of fantasy are fairly hit and miss.

This small package stands alongside the exemplary feature-length work in one of this generation’s foremost filmographies.

A movie with more potential directions than its globe-trotting-assassin heroine has wigs, “Ava” offers moments that suggest it might have succeeded as an action thriller, a dysfunctional family drama, or a character study. Since it commits fully to none of these, the results are the sort of bland bang-bang-pow that keep Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis afloat in between movies that critics actually like, or even see.

It’s a consistently powerful ensemble, with Wright reminding us yet again that she has that indefinable something that makes a character actress a movie star.

Whether or not you think Crowley’s very of-its-moment piece still has something to say to audiences of the 21st century, it’s a play that deserves better than this waxwork karaoke.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 moves beyond Sorkin the writer of dialogue, or Sorkin the supplier of scripts to the likes of Rob Reiner, David Fincher and Danny Boyle, to Sorkin the filmmaker.