A film of fitting energy and complexity, it’s a stirring account of an astonishing life.

The film is much too long—the first couple of acts feel like an overture to the reunion of Sam, Scarlet and the lethal librarians. It is also, occasionally, hilarious.

It tests your tolerance for ambiguity as well as your visual acuity. Yet the spell it casts justifies the intense anxiety it creates by depicting a black-and-white society in which men have worth and women don’t.

The flashbacking narrative addresses, with surprising subtlety, buoyant wit and fearless theatricality, several matters that superhero sagas aren’t supposed to trouble themselves about.

However you look at it—as concert footage enriched by cultural history or cultural history raised up by glorious music—Summer of Soul is a thrilling documentary and a remarkable feature debut.

It’s another Soderbergh film whose allure is sure to endure.

One of the funny things about America: The Motion Picture—not all of which is screamingly funny—is that the more you know about America’s past, the more amusing it probably is (the past and the film).

Mr. Gaines occasionally loses confidence in his audience—the parallels that can be drawn between Gregory’s times and now are pretty obvious and don’t really need the punctuation. Most of the time, though, The One and Only Dick Gregory is a memorable portrait, of someone whose story deserves to be better remembered.

F9 makes a mockery of itself before anyone else can—it’s a gleefully shoddy goof on a pseudo-epic scale.

The production, which grew out of the filmmaker’s friendship with the two men, Iván and Gerardo, is so heartfelt, and the material so intrinsically powerful, that I Carry You With Me slowly catches up with itself, and lights a fire fueled by food and love. That’s a winning combination in this story, just as it is in real life.

The issues in the film add up to a rat’s nest of athletic, economic and gender questions. But they’re given only superficial scrutiny in a production that’s essentially propaganda, powered by pumped-up music and pumped-up players.

The sometimes hilarious Good on Paper is actually an anti-romantic comedy.

This delightful and useful documentary by Mariem Pérez Riera catches its subject at a piquant point in her career

As pleasing as the film is, some of it feels arbitrary, underdeveloped, possibly rushed.

Mr. Bulger does a fine enough job defending his own legacy, being, at age 87, a still-charismatic figure and one who refuses to condemn his brother, or even concede that the family knew everything about its black sheep’s nefarious career.

Infinite was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who like this film is always very busy without any particular destination.

It’s a gentle, often funny meditation on advancing age and the fragile joys of youth.

The energy feels authentic, and endlessly renewable. The cultural matrix is specific, yet the passions are universal. This grand and welcoming entertainment is exactly what’s needed to bring movie audiences back into the fold.

Fatigue has caught up with the Warrens, and the question about the franchise is not where it can go from here, but how much longer it can be sustained by humdrum deviltry.

Undine isn’t a conventional romance, or a readily accessible one, but open yourself to this special film and you’re liable to be hooked.

Every joke is leaned on, as if it were some Shavian gem; every pregnant pause eventually aborts.

This follow-up offers the solid satisfactions of suspense and intensity without the delight of discovery.

The material is often intimate, often heartbreaking.

The new film, playing in theaters, devotes itself more obviously to making us feel good, but it succeeds.

Watching the film is such an intense experience that most of its flaws fall away and its red herrings serve only to enhance the local color.

Many movies are about only one thing, just as many performers display only one emotion at a time. Mr. Jensen’s film is about so many things, and varies its tone so fearlessly, that watching it gives you whiplash: I for one loved the whipping.

A comedy afflicted with terminal unfunniness, Here Today, which is playing in theaters, may well be gone tomorrow.

Some films make do with stories that present an interesting surface and little more. In “The Boy From Medellín” undercurrents run constantly. Depression and anxiety provide two of them, but the most dramatic one—the source of the film’s genuine suspense—flows from politics.