In Dolemite Is My Name, Eddie Murphy takes a good idea and runs with it, soars with it, and turns it into a great, if wildly erratic, twofer tribute — to a singular legend of black entertainment culture, and to the transformative power of raunchy, outrageous humor.

Think of Joker as both dental drill and Novocain. This origin story of the famously depraved smiler deals in pain from start to finish — pain that the hero, Arthur Fleck, first suffers, then inflicts — and Joaquin Phoenix plays the title role with piercing intensity. Yet the film, directed by Todd Phillips, leaves you numb. And glum. Days after the screening I was still under its stultifying spell.

An animated fable set in contemporary China and voiced in colloquial English, this Chinese-American co-production is so distinctive pictorially, and so manifestly good-hearted, that it’s easy to forgive if not quite forget the ragged quality of its storyline.

The movie, directed by Rupert Goold, is a conventional but perfectly serviceable showcase for its star, who sets the whole thing on fire every time she launches into a Garland classic in her own voice.

Entertaining but highly conventional documentary.

Mr. Fellowes, being something of a genius at briskly established plotlines and characterizations, clearly knew that a regal visit would be an ideal way to show off the best and worst of each Downton habitué.

To lavish too much praise on Mr. Pitt’s performance would be to somehow suggest he isn’t already among the best actors on screen. He is. Between this film and the current “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” he could and should be a double Oscar nominee next year. If he’s not, it doesn’t mean his performance in Ad Astra isn’t an epic one.

Art is supposed to help us see the world in novel ways. The Sound of Silence, in its quietly exhilarating manner, may make us hear it differently, too.

Moonlight Sonata is not a children’s film, of course. What it deals in, regardless of how buoyant its characters, are the most serious issues imaginable. Not that there aren’t moments of pure mirth. “Did Beethoven ever play it?” Jonas asks of the sonata, “and is it on YouTube?” Even the formidable Ms. Connolly is given pause by that.

While there’s not exactly a lot of plot in The Goldfinch there is a lot of stuff, too much for even a 2 1/2 -hour movie.

If Mr. Fessenden had a gospel to preach it would be about the virtues of low-budget, intellectually rigorous, topical, mayhem-rich movies. Of which Depraved is a perfect example.

Mr. Nelson’s movie is a gossipy and very musical primer on Davis, who is, needless to say (though it is said and said), among the giants of jazz.

As played by Keira Knightley, Katharine is sympathetic, as is the cause of an unabashedly political movie that is, essentially, a procedural, but also a very sophisticated, ornate, complex and convincing thriller.

One can understand the draw of The Fanatic for someone like Mr. Travolta: It calls for full immersion, mentally and physically. And he pulls it off.

The extraordinary thing about this film by Rodney Evans is how well it conveys the complexity. Vision is precious, it reminds us frequently. At the same time we’re brought to understand that blindness, far from being the end of the world, constitutes another mode of living in it.

It is by turns harrowing, affecting, unexpectedly funny, truly scary and fantastical. (The cinematographer was Juan Jose Saravia.) The fantasy grows overlush from time to time, but Ms. López has created an original work of art in genre disguise.

It’s all B-movie stuff, though sporadically entertaining and occasionally witty on the intertwined subjects of bedevilment and in-laws.

A work of singular beauty and a significant technical achievement, the film makes water audible — the thumps and groans of calving glaciers sound like the planet coming apart — and almost palpable; heaving mountains of blue-black waves in an Atlantic storm convey stupendous mass and titanic energy as in no motion picture I’ve seen before.

The trip is entertaining and even instructive — not about the facts of the case, which go from murky to opaque, but about the slip-slidingly elusive nature of truth.

As you watch Blinded by the Light, don’t let its earnest trappings blind you to the beauty of its core. Gurinder Chadha ’s coming-of-age drama transmutes the raw feeling of Bruce Springsteen ’s music into another kind of feeling, no less raw but leavened by giddy excitement that culminates in joy.

Shocking as it may be, One Child Nation needs to be seen. It’s a document that deepens our understanding of the totalitarian state that China was, not that long ago, of the enormity of the inhumanity that the central government visited on its most vulnerable citizens.

Maybe there’s no such thing as an innately bad dog — or, who knows, maybe there is. But there are inherently bad ideas for dog movies, and one of them has just manifested itself in The Art of Racing in the Rain.

This lovely debut feature by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz trafficks in the pleasure of watching intriguing people working through outlandish problems in unlikely ways. Go in expecting the best and you’ll come out smiling.

The narrative, framed as a psychological mystery, labors under more layers of significance than it can handle without falling into contrivance and argumentation. Still, the dramatic core is strong, an exceptional young man struggling to find, and become, whoever he really is.

The action is impressive and the stars are personally as well as gladiatorially appealing, but the filmmakers seem to have shot the treatment instead of the script, or never bothered with a script.

Avi Belkin’s documentary offers fascinating insights into what made its subject tick.

As one might expect from Mr. Tarantino’s previous films, his new one is violent — extravagant violence is visited on men and women alike at several points — as well as tender, plus terrifically funny. Yet this virtuoso piece of storytelling also offers intricate instruction on the pervasiveness of violence in popular culture.

The heart of the film, though, lies in what remains closest to Mr. Crosby’s heart—not the bum one with the eight stents but the musical one that has been churning out new songs and albums with improbable, unquenchable zest. True to its subject, who has been true to his muse, David Crosby: Remember My Name is about music in a revelatory way.