The result is an unabashedly violent B-movie throwback, the sort director John Carpenter used to make, with moments that resonate with real life.

Although Whitney follows a familiar structure, Macdonald infuses it with artful editorial choices, marking the chapters of Houston’s life with brief but vivid montages of the times in which she lived.

Leave No Trace is not a sociological treatise. It has nothing grandiose to say about homelessness or PTSD. It does, however, deliver an effective (and deeply affecting) allegory of the inevitable leave-taking that all of us — housed or unhoused, happy or half mad — must undergo with our loved ones.

Its NBA all-star cast — well hidden under layers of makeup — has a winning chemistry making them easy to root for.

Despite the hot-button subject matter, there is no sense of currency, or even controversy, here. The drama seems less personal or political than one calculated for shock value. One late, violent plot twist is so preposterous as to defy the level of credulity one normally reserves for a horror film.

In Damsel, sibling filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner have created the perfect western for the #MeToo era, delightfully twisting and torquing the traditional woman-in-jeopardy narrative to create a clever, comical and uncannily relevant allegory.

As “Guardians” and, later, “Deadpool” doubled down on the snark, “Ant-Man” kept things light, its playfulness made all the more endearing by the boyish, twinkle-eyed persona of its star, Paul Rudd.

Plummer is particularly good, delivering every line of dialogue as if it’s improvised, and with an astringent snort that only partially hides the fact that Jack really does care about people. Farmiga, for her part, never strays into histrionics, although she comes close after allowing herself to be seduced by her caddish ex.

The mopey, midwinter atmosphere of Nancy becomes increasingly and oppressively bleak, leavened only by Smith-Cameron’s spot-on portrayal of her character’s trembling, painfully fragile optimism.

This handsomely staged production plays like a soothingly thoughtful balm.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom finds another way to grow: by making its plot much, much bulkier. In doing so, it commits the worst possible sin: It makes dinosaurs boring.

Portman, a vegan, is the main tour guide to this challenging excursion to the world of slaughterhouses and CAFOs, which one commentator likens to petri dishes for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Ironically, the film is conspicuous not for its brio but its blandness.

The best way to appreciate this fitfully funny collection of japes and jests is to treat it like any teenage boy in your midst: Focus on the positives and know that even its worst is only a phase.

Did the original “Super Fly” need to be remade? Not really. The new film is a decent example of the barrage of reboots storming theaters lately, but that’s all it is: decent.

Benefits from a sensitive, even-tempered tone, as well as terrific supporting performances from Spencer, Ann Dowd (as Alex’s status-obsessed mom) and a scene-stealing Amy Landecker, who plays an ambivalent therapy client of Greg’s.

Its smallness is its strength — as is its silence. That’s the odd and evocative resonance of Hearts Beat Loud. For a movie that is so rock-and-roll, it turns out to be less about making noise than about listening to the message that can only be heard in the stillness that comes after the song.

It’s been a long time coming for Incredibles 2, but the punchline is worth the setup.

American Animals, while an entertaining version of a heist film at times, is no “Ocean’s 8.” Its signature moment occurs not during the reenactment of the inept crime, or its planning and antic aftermath. Rather, it comes in the middle of one of Lipka’s interview scenes.

Creepy, creepy, creepy. Writer-director Ari Aster makes an impressively unnerving debut with Hereditary, a meticulously crafted horror thriller.

Neville has created a film that operates both as a dewy-eyed nostalgia trip and stirring appeal for civility.

Too many subplots make the story feel cluttered and no more intelligent.

Like the gender-flipped “Ghostbusters” before it, this new movie neither reinvents not dishonors its inspiration, instead adding a modicum of zip — if less than turbocharged horsepower — to a vehicle that runs you through the staging of a crime by, ironically, obeying all the traffic laws.

Litte Pink House feels like it’s only ever checking off the requisite moments of civic outrage, while failing to connect with viewers on a level that’s deeper than the average made-for-TV issue-of-the-week movie.

Setting the film in the punk heyday underscores the film’s themes of personal freedom and defying authority. And there are heartwarming touches, despite a plot that is muddied by sci-fi mumbo-jumbo about cannibalism.

Filmworker is a tribute to the unsung artisans, assistants, best boys and girl Fridays whose indelible contributions make movies not just possible, but magical.

At its best, The Gospel According to Andre gives viewers the rare chance to get to know someone who, until now, has mostly been known as that impeccably turned-out gentleman who seems to know everybody at the annual Costume Institute gala.

If this vaguely cyberpunk, occasionally comic Australian flick were named after its own qualities, it would have been called “Knockoff.”

At once ruminative and shocking, godwardly inclined and repellently graphic, First Reformed is indisputably the finest film Schrader has directed since his sensitive adaptation of Russell Banks’s novel “Affliction.”

On Chesil Beach can feel like observing a deli worker slice a small piece of rancid cured meat, in increasingly transparent slivers of prosciutto-like thinness, and then holding them up to the light for inspection.

It transfixes, not with artifice or cheap sentiment, but with a strange alchemy of gloom and light.

Grown-ups might not roll over for Show Dogs, but children almost surely will. With its fart jokes and smart-alecky canines, this talking-animal comedy is aimed at a young audience anyway. For dog-loving adults, well, it’s just engaging enough to make them prick up their ears.

In this stirring portrait, it’s possible to see evangelism not in hectoring words or holier-than-thou bromides, but in loving action. Who wouldn’t say amen to that?

It has brio, rueful humor and celebratory verve that is nearly impossible to resist.

Beast sounds like a straightforward erotic mystery thriller, but that atmosphere is at times overshadowed by Pearce’s exploration of British classism, bullying and bigotry.

There is also something over-intellectualized and bloodless about this version.

Solo: A Star Wars Story gets the job done with little fuss, but also with precious little finesse. It might arguably succeed in teeing up the cinematic narrative that would change movies forever. But in both substance and execution, it bears but a whisper of the revolution to come.

Far from lazy, it is a fairly brilliant sendup of comic-book action movies, as well as also being an excellent example of one.

It’s when the dream of “Annihilation” collides so felicitously with lived reality that the film coalesces and takes hold. It may be broken eventually, but for a while the spell is a powerful one, and nearly irresistible.

A largely laugh-free exercise in cliche.

Although Measure of a Man is less gut-wrenching than director Jim Loach’s only previous theatrical film, “Oranges and Sunshine” — about the cruel fate of unwanted children shipped from England to Australia during the United Kingdom’s mid-20th-century “child migrant” program — the British filmmaker shows himself to have an affinity for tales of the abuse of power.

Let the Sunshine In doesn’t offer a consistently pretty picture. Where some viewers might view Isabelle as a hopelessly stunted victim of self-deception, others will see an avatar of empowerment and autonomy.

A diverting bagatelle that could have been tougher, a pastiche that could have probed deeper. Tant pis, as Godard himself might have said: Too bad.

The Judge presents a rare Western view of the Middle East that doesn’t frame Palestinians’ lives in reference to Israel, which is barely mentioned. It also offers a robust counternarrative to stereotypes of Arab and Muslim women as powerless.

Things are never exactly what they seem here — but there’s a deeper, more authentic story Reitman and Cody are interested in telling, even when — maybe especially when — the film veers toward fantasy. If Tully is a movie that cheats, even lies to us a little bit, it’s to get at a more real and recognizable truth.

Taking its cues from the religious severity of the community in which it’s set — and the London weather — Lelio’s latest film is austere, deliberate and rather chilly.

Despite her biting legal writing, she comes across, on camera, as unfailingly mild-mannered, decorous and polite, especially when the film explores her rather unlikely friendship, based on a shared love of opera, with her late conservative colleague Antonin Scalia.

After Auschwitz also addresses more mundane subjects as well: making a wedding dress from leftover parachute silk, emigrating to America, finding jobs, buying cars, registering to vote. The smallest things become imbued with an importance out of proportion to their significance to the rest of us.

Infinity War is big, blustery and brave, taking viewers to places that they may not be used to going.

These ghost stories, if that’s what they are, aren’t terribly original, or even especially scary — at least, not by the standards of the genre.

Filmed with widescreen grandeur on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, The Rider reinvigorates tropes from the western genre of men, horses, honor codes and vast expanses of nature with a refreshing lack of sentimentality, without sacrificing their inherent lyricism and poetry.

Sometimes a movie comes along that, devoid of a noisy publicity push or festival buzz, quietly ambushes the unsuspecting viewer with an absorbing, skillfully executed, meaningful and thoroughly entertaining experience. Ladies and gentlemen, Borg vs. McEnroe is just that kind of film.

A lowbrow comedy so irreverent it could almost be considered a subversive indictment of law enforcement, not to mention lowbrow humor. Almost, that is, if it were remotely funny.

I Feel Pretty suffers from a fatal flaw: its premise.

The new movie — a sci-fi freakout that, like “Spring,” includes an “it,” but one that’s far less easy to define — is spooky, funny, touching and very, very well made.

This shrewdly observed story asks another question: Is civilization possible in a nation where discrimination has such deep roots? In Sweet Country, the answer arrives with a tough fatalism.

Love After Love meanders through richly observed and sometimes startlingly funny scenes, never attempting to force the drama. The richly drawn characters stumble toward healing in ways that are refreshingly honest.

The privileged protagonists of Truth or Dare are neither interesting nor likable. They don’t even seem worthy of the academic degrees they’re getting.

At times, Rampage almost hides its problems. It’s just funny enough, just exciting enough and just visually impressive enough. What it never is, though, is anything more than just enough.

As beautiful and compelling as Ramsay’s filmmaking and Phoenix’s central performance are, the degree to which viewers will buy You Were Never Really Here depends on the degree to which they accept yet another display of febrile vigilante brutality motivated by sexual violence perpetrated against young girls. One person’s trope, after all, is another’s shopworn cliche.

At just over 1 ½ hours, the film feels painfully long, paralyzed by a numbing bleakness. That’s not only the result of the protagonist’s downward trajectory, but also of cinematographer Bradford Young’s long, plodding shots, which only call attention to the visually hollow landscape.

It is not exactly a thriller, yet its plausibility will inspire very real anxiety.

Given its pedigree, Sgt. Stubby takes fewer liberties than some fact-based war movies. Bolstered by an irresistible protagonist, the tear-jerking script by Lanni and Mike Stokey makes up for shortcomings in animation.

At the center of this oddly riveting little picaresque is a performance of such quiet power by Plummer — as an antihero both rash and precociously resourceful — that it’s easy to overlook the film’s flaws.

Beirut is an engaging, well-crafted thriller, offering a showcase not just for Hamm but for Rosamund Pike (playing his levelheaded handler) and an ensemble of terrific character actors, including Dean Norris, Shea Whigham and Larry Pine.

It becomes clear that the situation is exactly as we imagine it to be, and that the sense of mystery that Shoaf has spent so much energy weaving is a red herring.

Secrets, lies and vast array of medical emergencies beset the game cast (which includes Kathy Bates and Felicity Huffman, Macy’s real-life wife) before the story goes fully off the rails.

The real problem isn’t an overabundance of potential killers. Rather, it’s the fact that the film, from writer-director Aaron Katz (“Land Ho!”), does so little to make you care about the crime, or its victim, that the whole thing feels like an academic exercise.

The rest of the film has a cozy TV-commercial vibe, pumped by tunes from Katy Perry and the inevitable Neil Diamond. It’s no champion, but it’s still a reasonably good cry.

As a celebration of the physical expressiveness and visual storytelling of silent cinema, A Quiet Place speaks volumes without a word being uttered.

Blockers suffers from ungainly, choppy pacing. It feels like a slapdash collection of scenes rather than a balloon sent smoothly aloft, with jokes often falling as flat as Cena’s buzz cut (a running gag centers on his tough-guy character’s propensity for crying, a go-to bit that ages fast).

Rather than probe Giacometti and Lord’s curiously arms-length relationship, Final Portrait is at its best simply watching the artist work — the “artist,” in this case, meaning both Giacometti and Rush.

By the end, the outcome is still unclear, leaving viewers hanging. Such ambiguity might work for pure fiction, but given that there’s a real-life incident behind the story, the lack of closure is unsatisfying.

Director Richard Loncraine (“5 Flights Up”) wisely gets out of the way, for the most part, letting his cast breathe life into the limp cliches that have been woven by screenwriters Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft.

There’s an air of “High Noon” to Török’s drama, which features an intrusive sound design, including Tibor Szemzö’s jarringly contemporary score and sound effects that include the ringing of a clock tower, buzzing flies, rumbling thunder and noisy birds — which transition from pleasant tweets to ominous caws of crows by the climax.

Unfortunately, Desplechin stuffs too many subplots into the film, diminishing the power of his central conceit — that our most persistent ghosts are the living whom we’ve failed.

As a form of life-coaching, this documentary is, in fact, kind of a dud.

Director Alison Chernick profiles the violin virtuoso, through his performance, of course, but she also reveals a personality as expressive as his musicianship.

The Kennedy dynasty has its share of admirers and critics alike, and — to the film’s credit — director John Curran and his screenwriters do not appease either camp. The result is a challenging character study, punctuated by moments of uneasy suspense and dark humor.

This taut, emotionally wrenching snapshot of both the mythologies and grim realities of war possesses useful reminders about self-deception and abuse of power, especially at a time when bellicose rhetoric and war cabinets seem to be the order of the day.

It’s a mildly engrossing if wonky exercise in what could be called a kind of selfish activism.

The film’s central metaphor — life is like wine — is an overripe one.

If Ready Player One is tedious at times, it’s also oodles of fun at others.

Clearly well timed with Lenten reflections on sacrifice, service, suffering and responsibility. But it offers an equally relevant — and inspiring — portrayal of principled steadfastness and spiritual integrity in the face of a petty, corrupt and tyrannical leader.

Uprising is loud, packed with impressive effects and propulsive — or as propulsive as a car with no brakes going downhill — but it lacks the heart of del Toro’s original.

Autism aside, writer-director Rachel Israel’s debut film is a fairly typical, low-budget New York romance, complete with an excursion to Coney Island. What distinguishes it are Israel’s empathetic characterizations — she’s known Polansky for 15 years — and the winning performances, not only by the leads but also by the supporting players.

In its own messy, slightly ungovernable way, this digressive bagatelle feels looser than some of Anderson’s most tightly controlled mis-en-scenes. But the story, for all its busyness, is negligible. The script feels less like an organic whole than an effort to keep building up a scrawny central premise until it felt like a movie.

A straightforward, B-movie horror flick — “The Snake Pit” without the prestige — complete with intentional overdosing, electroshock torture and patients threatening each other with a sharpened spoons, when they’re not either screaming or catatonic. It also is very, very bad.

The veteran English actress, 72, a onetime femme fatale who has matured into a peerless performer, gives a first-rate lesson in the art of acting, as a woman crumbling under duress after her husband is incarcerated. And yet the Belgian-set drama, by Italian director Andrea Pallaoro, could also be called self-indulgent, plodding and minimalist, in a big way.

Although Ramen Heads is an interesting glance at the craft of ramen, it ends up feeling lukewarm.

Flower can’t quite nail the necessary tone, aiming for dark, but missing the comedy.

Well-made and likable, without any major missteps. It’s also just a little bland.

The dance itself makes a much more powerful, and ultimately poetic, point. On the most superficial level, it serves as a blunt metaphor for the elaborate choreography of the rescue operation, which entailed its own intense rehearsals, undertaken in a scale mock-up of the Entebbe airport that had been re-created back in Israel.

Graced by superb performances, especially from Ashkenazi and Adler, this gentle but devastating portrait bursts with integrity and tough honesty, even in its most lighthearted moments.

Gorgeously photographed, and with a minimalist score by Fred Frith, Leaning Into the Wind offers viewers a welcome chance to consider the work of an artist who defies the recent commodification cult to embrace the ephemeral and the nominally “worthless.”

Norwegian director Roar Uthaug has had past success with nail-biting suspense, as in his well-received 2015 disaster movie “The Wave.” He can’t quite replicate that same tension here, however. Watching a tiny-but-tough woman survive one danger after another tests not only our credulity, but our patience.

It is not a story of justice, but of a kind of standoff between good and evil. Initially, there seems precious little of the former.

While Iannucci whips up a fever-pitch frenzy, his film, based on a 2017 graphic novel, is not a farce, but a tragicomedy. The dark elements are too corrosive to be tempered by laughter.