Slow, emotionless and boasting fairly mediocre production values, this misguided kid movie turns Jack London’s classic tale about the natural world into something barely recognizable as part of that world.

Despite its feel-good title, The Kindness of Strangers is a rather bleak movie, one so tied to the miseries of its characters that it’s difficult to see the point of it at all.

If you hired an independent filmmaker to create a perfume ad, and then turned that ad into a full-length movie, you’d probably get something that looks a lot like Dimitri de Clercq’s directorial debut, “You Go to My Head.”

If this new movie — referred to in some circles as Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island — were a pilot for a TV reboot, it would come off as overwrought and underwritten but still possibly on the right track for a revived anthology series. As a movie, those flaws are magnified to the size of the silver screen, and its contrivances and coincidences come off as even less convincing.

Not even the most miniscule production design element is left to chance in such a tangible and meticulously conceived technique like stop-motion. Details matter, and comedy often emerges from them combined with great timing. “Farmageddon” is a non-verbal narrative that tells jokes directly to our curious eyes.

Come As You Are is best when it’s not trying so hard to be the next great sex comedy and actually focuses on building the relationships among the male friends and their own existential crises, which gives the film so much pathos as it explores their vulnerabilities and frustrations.

The real problem is that no one involved seems to realize that their heroine is, in fact, an antiheroine. Had the movie gone all-in on Peg’s amorality, we might have had a more interesting project.

Though it’s an intoxicating blend of modern and vintage romance, The Photograph, while flawed, is most intriguing when it peels back the layers between a mother and daughter who never really knew each other in life, but whose stories eventually intertwine in ways they could have never imagined.

Sonic the Hedgehog might not become a kid-movie classic, but it makes for a great little getaway to enjoy with the whole family. That, in itself, earns a golden ring.

The Times of Bill Cunningham is more frustrating than Cunningham’s memoir and the earlier movie about him because it feels like he might want to talk somewhat more directly about his life experience, but the old-time prison of the closet is allowed to win out in the end, and what we’re left with here is choppy and insubstantial.

Ultimately, Ordinary Love is a celebration not just of this functional, delightfully average relationship, but also of life itself, risking and wrestling with loss not in spite of the fact it’s shared with others, but precisely because of that fact.

It’s a frustratingly superficial, judgmental, surface-level thriller that undermines all its scariest moments by getting distracted at all the wrong times.

Though we leave Earth feeling overwhelmed, we’re also more aware than ever that he’s only shown us the tiniest fraction of our impact.

The film’s various elements work in wonderful concert to keep the momentum brisk but still grounded in a stylized version of human empathy, from Jay Cassidy and Evan Schiff’s whiz-bang editing to Daniel Pemberton’s consciously grandiose score. The cast makes each moment count.

Come to Daddy has twists galore, not to mention a heavy dose of gore, but the further it drifts from its initial understated dynamic, the less each successive development seems to matter.

Mr. Woodhouse’s daughter may be a case study in the perils of playing God with others’ hearts, but Emma. is proof that bringing a timeless book and fresh talent together is still a worthy kind of artistic matchmaking.

Advocacy meets suspense in Welcome to Chechnya, a chilling examination of both the brutality that the Chechen LGBT community is forced to face on a daily basis and the difficulty of leaving the country for peace and safety.

The Nowhere Inn . . . is a collection of comedic and musical sketches that are not funny, weird or thoughtful enough to sell its creators’ insistent, but mostly trite and undeveloped, ideas about the performative nature of self-fashioning and creative authenticity.

Falling is a finely drawn character drama, as you might expect from much of Mortensen’s acting career, and a film that pays attention to small details that bring these people to life.

As a fantasy, Gretel & Hansel is a delectably smart concoction, thoughtfully reevaluating the original tale, adding all-new layers of the ominous, and yet also keeping the story rooted in an amorphous, fairy tale past. As a horror movie, Perkins’ movie relies more on disquietude than external threat, and demands a thoughtful audience’s mental energies instead of a rowdy audience’s popcorn-spilling flinches.

Precisely written and deliberately shot, José, a Guatemala-set LGBTQ character examination from Chinese-born director Li Cheng, is a movie preoccupied with the private tragedy of unfulfilled impulses and aspirations as a result of widespread homophobia and emotional blackmail.

The Rhythm Section takes well-worn genre material and removes all the substance and ingenuity, leaving behind only an undeveloped plot, a blank main character, and a sense of gravitas that is entirely unearned.

López Estrada and company not only subvert lazy assumptions about their misunderstood metropolis and who lives and thrives there, but they also entirely shift the focus to the unheard and unseen for a wonderful reinvention. You’ll never see L.A. the same again and that’s for the better.

Minari beams with subtle wonder.

Thanks to Mulligan’s electric performance and Fennell’s packed script, the movie never feels as if it lags, but it doesn’t go far enough to smooth over the choppy changes between the film’s witty moments and its stomach-churning dramatic scenes. However, there’s still a lot of promise in Fennell’s film, both in its message, its rape-revenge-influenced riff, and the boundaries it wants to push.

Although Kajillionaire fails to fully engage in the same manner as July’s previous dramedies, it’s not entirely unsuccessful as it still compels us to see the people in front of us — not with rushed judgment, but with curiosity for the burdens or joys that have made them who they are. And it makes us chuckle while at it.

It does have an intimacy that is rare for Swift, from the opening scene of her playing piano while one of her cats walks across the keyboard to several revealing glimpses of her writing songs in the studio.