This sentimental slog about the relationship between a friendly golden retriever and the growing family of a race car driver is, under director Simon Curtis’ no-nonsense stewardship, about as box-checked and rubber-stamped as mainstream entertainment gets.

If you knew Yechiun, or even if you just knew his films, it’s a sad and sweet catalog of his brief, inspirational life. If you didn’t know him, you’ll eventually feel like you did, and you’ll cry the kindest tears by the end, as you realize just how much he meant to the people who were in his orbit all along.

It’s a movie that viewers might find difficult to love but slow to forget.

The director’s control over the material is such that, even when this all feels like a bit of a joke, it’s one you’re happy to be in on.

Everything about La Flor — that financiers agreed to bankroll it, Llinás and his team were able to complete it, and festivals, distributors, and exhibitors are now screening it — is a marvel. Anyone with a disdain for the studio system’s endless parade of franchises (and with 14 hours) to spare would do well to give it their undivided attention.

You’ve got to appreciate a movie that doesn’t take itself seriously. And, man, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is definitely about as ridiculous as a movie can be, for better or worse.

“Raise Hell” reminds us of the never-ending importance of those skilled observers with the ability to speak truth to power. And if, like Ivins, they can make us laugh while doing so, then they’re all the more essential.

The tone and the plot take some time to settle, but once they’ve hit their stride (and adults decide to surrender their senses and go along for the ride), the bird and pig unit become almost affable in their daftness.

The biggest challenge of an actor in any live-action update of an animated character is to make an audience that is already loyal to the original fall in love with a newer rendition. And that’s exactly what Moner does; her Dora has the DNA of everything that made the original so special while offering a fresh take for newer generations experiencing the character for the first time.

Despite its trappings, Relive is a family drama with a slight supernatural twist, and had Estes explored that, perhaps the film would feel more whole. Instead, Relive winds up being a thriller without any actual thrills.

Once Alverson has ensured that his subtext has been absorbed, he seems uncertain about where to go next.

As eye-opening and propulsive as the movie is, Amer and Noujaim don’t always keep the thread of their multi-faceted narrative, which was going to be a daunting task for any well-meaning filmmaker trying to give you arresting personalities while parsing complex aspects of the digital world.

What Ray & Liz offers is the opposite of exploitive or vengeful enumeration of parental failure. Billingham finds grace for his ruined family, even if he refuses to save them, and it feels like an act of forgiveness.

The cultural subtleties Wang inserts purposefully elevate The Farewell to have not only emotional impact but also revelatory social significance.

Out-pranking the prankster, [Berman] turns a documentary about an unpredictable subject into a meditation on what it means to make a documentary about an unpredictable subject.

In description, A Faithful Man sounds like quite a rich brew, but it is actually more of an exercise than anything else, a chance to play a kind of cinematic shell game with four main characters who are never quite what they seem.

The single-minded simplicity of its plotting can at times be an asset rather than a hindrance; in a summer even more bogged down by needless sequels and remakes than most, Crawl is, at the very least, a lean thriller that isn’t based on an existing property.

With a title that’s almost as lazy as its script, Stuber is a lackadaisical attempt at a “woke” buddy-cop comedy that just can’t figure out how to fuse together its story with the message it is trying to promote.

As with all of Shelton’s improv-inspired movies, the plot offers plenty of interest but the personalities provide the purpose.

The contrast between the impossible events happening on-screen and the hyper-realism of the imagery doesn’t always work in the the movie’s favor.

There is intriguing subtext buried within Armstrong about who we designate as our heroes at a time of great divide, but Fairhead succeeds at paying tribute to a man who, were he still alive today, probably would have balked at this kind of memorial.