Writer-director Radu Jude’s fascinating, cynical dramedy “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” careens between lowbrow humor and highbrow philosophy, resulting in a film that is as frustrating as life itself; it’s a perfect mirror of our times.

As an attempt to expose college athletics for what it is — a laughably lucrative hierarchy that relies on free labor by student-athletes to line the pockets of coaches, commissioners and other bigwigs — National Champions gets a notch in the win column.

Not content with simply stoking rage and self-righteous superiority, McKay dares to infuse Don’t Look Up with an authentic, unironic sense of grief.

There is so much going on here, yet the director handles the film’s constellation of themes and sweeping emotion with impeccable assurance and an at-times breathtaking sense of the poetic.

Spielberg and Kaminski have enjoyed a fruitful collaboration for decades, but their work on West Side Story brings the partnership to breathtakingly poetic expressive heights.

Imagine a 10-episode podcast about the making of a single episode of the 1950s marital sitcom “I Love Lucy” — a podcast dense with behind-the-scenes details about the show’s real-life husband-and-wife stars, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, who played wildly caricatured versions of themselves on the hit show for six seasons. Imagine a trove of inside-baseball trivia about the early days of television, as well as details about the stars’ real lives, including Ball’s 1952 pregnancy, which Arnaz — a TV pioneer who popularized the three-camera setup — wanted to weave into the show’s plot. Then imagine dumping all that material, like a box full of marbles, into a two-hour movie.

For all its beauty and poignancy, The Hand of God suffers from a strange paradox: It goes on too long but somehow doesn’t go far enough.

Fortunately, Ahmed (an Oscar nominee for last year’s Sound of Metal and more recently seen in the niche Mogul Mowgli) delivers another one of his reliably watchable performances.

Being oneself is (or, again, seems to be) the theme of Wolf, which at times plays like a clumsy allegory about, say, the challenges faced by trans youth — there’s a poster on the wall of the clinic about “species dysphoria” — yet most of the time is simply a more generalized fable about finding your groove, your bliss, your true, inner self — and running with it (naked, if need be, and on all fours). If it’s an allegory, it trivializes whatever it’s allegorizing.

In this mesmerizing, revelatory and deeply compassionate film, viewers are left with an indelible impression of girlhood at its most precarious and indomitable.

It’s a creative, fresh take on a story that is much more complex than your standard fairy tale.

Like The Father last year, The Humans makes the set a character in itself: Karam has concocted a diabolically creaky duplex whose wonky corners and jury-rigged improvements take on an increasingly sinister patina as the meal progresses.

Johnny’s tentative dip into family life artfully captures the tedium, terror and confounding ecstasy of parenthood, but it more eloquently conveys the pain and discovery involved in simply trying to do one’s best.

None of which would be a problem, if “Gucci” were half as much fun as I’m afraid about to make it sound. After all, who doesn’t love a good, tawdry scandal?

Whenever a sometimes-marginalized community gets the chance to tell its story on screen, expectations can be high. India Sweets and Spices, which looks at an Indian American family, takes that expectation and turns it on its head, giving us a more nuanced, complicated, and problematic look at the people it’s about.

Once again demonstrating her own strong, clear vision — not to mention superb control of her craft — Campion proves her ability to illuminate hidden truths and let us see what was hiding in plain sight all along.

Will Smith delivers a ferocious, all-consuming performance in King Richard, a thoroughly entertaining portrait of Richard Williams — better known as Venus and Serena’s father.

It’s great fun to watch people who knew and loved her reminisce, but mostly it’s a pleasure to spend a little time in the company of the woman who saved America from Jell-O salad.

The First Wave feels simultaneously hard to watch and vital, tragic and uplifting, like a backward glimpse over our shoulder at a period of conflict and struggle — in more ways than one — that we’re not quite done living through yet.

Shamelessly catering to fans of the original film, while giving them nothing new, its story and humor are also inexplicably calibrated for a much younger demographic than those old enough to have seen the first film when it came out.

For its frequently painful contours, there’s an abundance of pleasures to be had in Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s irresistible memoir about growing up amid the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

This is a story about people first, but also about the way we see. And the visual hodgepodge of JR’s images reveals very different perspectives that affect the way we treat each other.

The Souvenir Part II may bring an end to the introduction of a marvelous filmmaker to a wider world. But far more promisingly, it suggests what, with luck, will be an exhilarating next chapter.

Sure, maybe Clifford doesn’t take the cinematic art form to a new level. All the same, it’s funny and sweet. This old dog may not have many new tricks, but sometimes being a good boy will do.

Zhao might have her eye on the nuances, but ultimately even a filmmaker with her sensitivity and vision can’t bend the Great Marvel Imperative to her will.

For better and for worse, Spencer conveys one thing quite powerfully: the feeling of living in a rarefied, indifferent world that doesn’t seem to value independent women, much less people.

The narrative moves toward its foregone conclusion with the low energy of a slow-moving locomotive on train tracks leading to a broken bridge.

Antlers obeys the rules of horror — many of which are familiar, even at times cliche — while also bending them. It’s a creature feature at heart, yes, but its footing is grounded in the tragedies we hear about in the news every day.

There’s lots to like about Soho’s constituent parts, but not much time to genuinely savor any of them.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain tells its story with sympathy, but too many quirks and try-hard flourishes. In the welter and spin of tics, voice-overs, set pieces, images, flashbacks and dream states, the man himself gets as lost as a kitten in the rain.

Cousteau is a thorough if somewhat by-the-book profile of a pioneer in the field of marine ecology and an activist for better environmental stewardship.

There’s attentive scrutiny here, and a surfeit of playful style, but precious little genuine curiosity or interest.

There is no narration. There are no interviews. Just rote, monotonous activity — a recipe for repetitive stress injury — and the occasional fly-on-the -wall conversation on which we are allowed to briefly eavesdrop between several representatives of what Ascension suggests is as a nation of strivers, with hearts set on achieving what might be called the new Chinese Dream: wealth and success, in the world’s second largest economy.

There’s a lot going on here — a quasi-biblical space opera, part Lawrence of Arabia and part mobster movie — and spreading it out over two movies has allowed [Villaneuve] to take his time with the story and tell it richly, and without rushing

The debut feature from British studio Locksmith Animation, Ron’s Gone Wrong has plenty of slapstick and potty humor for kids. But adults will also be intrigued by its frequently scathing (albeit somewhat conflicted) critique of consumerism.

The Last Duel is an entertaining movie, even an intriguing one. But audiences might be forgiven for thinking, upon leaving the theater, that they’ve just been very nobly and very honorably mansplained.

At its core, Mass exerts the power of ritual at its most reflective and galvanizing, reveling in human connection at its most arduous, persistent and sublime.

There’s a lot of baloney — along with bodies — sliced up by the end, with Laurie bloviating about how Michael has come to “transcend” something or other. But there’s nothing transcendent, let alone new in Halloween Kills.

Bergman Island is a compelling, enchanting film that works both as a relationship drama and as a conversation between one generation of directors and another. It’s almost as though Mia Hansen-Love were teaching Ingmar Bergman how to get down.

The Rescue isn’t just a movie about cave divers, or a recap of a well-reported humanitarian operation. It’s ultimately a film about the triumph of altruism, ingenuity and perseverance in the face of almost impossible odds, by the very people you might initially have dismissed as not up to the task.

Lamb is weird and disturbing, even by the standards of the movie’s indie distributor, A24, which is known for its eclectic and times unsettling content. But it’s also strangely beautiful.

Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as the secret MI6 superagent James Bond is also a fittingly complicated and ultimately perversely satisfying send-off for the actor, whose character as the film gets underway isn’t even Agent 007 any more, but a retiree (as Craig is about to become, from this franchise).

What it lacks in originality it makes up for with a streamlined story, a sharp pace — there isn’t a superfluous moment or a wasted scene — and quips galore.

Alternately claustrophobic and epic compositions can’t make up for the myriad story lines (including one frustrating red herring) and pacing issues that periodically lose sight of the stakes at hand.

With Titane, Ducournau joins the crowded realm of elevated horror, to increasingly outlandish and alienating effect.

For its eventual lurid machinations and hyped-up emotionalism, the film winds up being a handsomely efficient one-man show. Like the man Gyllenhaal so convincingly embodies, it gets the job done, even if it inevitably goes over the top.

The most ghastly thing about the whole movie? The mainstreaming of these most outsider-y of outsiders.

By scaling back the script’s laughs and excising four songs (plus countless reprises), the film at times lands in an uncanny valley between the heightened musical at its core and the weightier young adult drama Chbosky seems to have envisioned.

It’s a heady dramedy, albeit without terribly many tears or laughs, except those that arise, perhaps unintentionally, from the incongruity of Stevens being repellent.

My Name is Pauli Murray delivers a lively, revelatory litany of all the things Murray got right first, in a career that was driven by equal parts intellectual curiosity and call to service.

Blue Bayou strikes a nerve, of that there is no doubt. But then it keeps poking at it, pointlessly.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye gives viewers an absorbing, amusing and provocative chance to rethink yet another train wreck who turned out to be, of all things, human.

Maybe it’s true that it’s never too late to find a new home. But in some ways, it feels like “Cry Macho” has missed the bus. Perhaps Eastwood should have kept his hand on the reins of this pet project while letting someone else sit in the saddle.

Though there’s no reinvention of the genre here, Louder’s mesmerizing mouse proves more than a match for the assembled tomcats — all exuding machismo — with whom she must deal.

There is a revealing narrative here: a conflict, a climax and a denouement that you may not expect. The Alpinist has built-in drama, simply by virtue of who and what it sets out to document.

With The Card Counter, Schrader has reverted to form, but he’s remade it anew at the same time. He’s done it again, with crafty, haunting power.

In the tradition of such bracing musicals as Kinky Boots, Billy Elliot and Prom, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has exuberance to burn, high spirits galore and a brand of message-driven escapism that’s as insistent as it is worthy. Resistance, in other words, is futile.

With a tone that shifts as much as a profile picture, Who You Think I Am is a nail-biting ride through social media anxiety.

The Year of the Everlasting Storm doesn’t end with catharsis, but even insects may have something to teach humanity: to endure the best way we can, however minuscule we may feel in the face of an incomprehensible world.

A good story lurks somewhere in Queenpins, but Gaudet and Pullapilly take the easy way out at every plot point and with nearly every joke.

Cinderella, the latest of countless adaptations of the centuries-old rags-to-riches story, is far less interested in enchantment than in dismantling the entire sexist, classist racket.

In the end, He’s All That is not all that — not even a little bit of that.

Even at its most glancing and superficial, Together offers a diverting attempt at capturing recent history, in all its maddening contradictions and compromises, recriminations and rages. It reflects a time when all we had was each other, for better or — way too often — for worse.

As a director, Penn knows how to create arresting tableaus that draw the eye and spark the viewer’s own sensory past. As an actor, no one is better at finding honesty in the moment. Like the antihero at its center, the essence of Flag Day remains tantalizingly elusive, potently evoked but never fully realized.

Candyman can’t seem to decide whether it wants to scare you or make you think.

Rather than a meditation on desire, Ma Belle, My Beauty becomes a portrait of how people simultaneously crave intimacy and keep each other at bay. Viewers may wish there were more to it, but what’s there is teasingly intriguing.

It remembers to have fun. It’s a kick to watch — often literally — and the kind of popcorn movie summer is made for.

The Protege may not rise to the level of art, but like Anna herself, it does demonstrate a mastery of a certain set of skills, however limited.

Di Girólamo delivers a performance that is, like the combustible fuel inside the tank strapped to her back here and there throughout the film, intense, hot, destructive — and hard to look away from.

“Reminiscence” has all the ingredients for electrifying summer entertainment. But despite its considerable star power and impressive set pieces, the sprawling meditation on memory is simply an attractive mess.

Warts and all, The Night House is, in the truest sense of the word, kind of haunting.

The ultimate strength of The Lost Leonardo is its inspection of how society reveres and seeks out capital, the real driving force behind the pushes and pulls acted upon the Salvator Mundi.

There’s no rude humor, no sarcasm, no sharp edges — just a warm cuddle of a movie that does exactly what it sets out to do.

Respect is nominally a movie about a woman finding her voice, but more accurately it’s about her taking full possession of it.

You’ll laugh, all right. You’ll cry. You’ll do both at the same time. CODA is just that kind of movie. And thank goodness for it.

It’s hard not to imagine that there could have a better version of this movie’s premise: one that upped the cultural satire, while still having fun tossing low-key, cheeky references at the audience. In the end though, disappointingly, Free Guy only plays itself.

Nine Days is, in the end, meant as a wake-up call: a bracing splash of fake seawater in the face that somehow, against all logic, feels like the real thing.

What drags this “Squad” down to the dreary level of Ayer’s vision is the tone of Gunn’s film, which is more violent and less lighthearted than his “Guardians” movies.

As absorbing and illuminating as Sabaya is — and as courageous as it is as an act of filmmaking — the viewer can’t escape the fact that it’s men who have taken these women hostage, men who are rescuing them and men to whom they are returning, as long as they obey their conditions and patriarchal codes.

The film brings a more human understanding of a figure so noteworthy he has earned mononym status for the title. Though we only see him in still images and old performance videos in Ailey, he seems much closer.

For audiences who prefer their movies to be as weird and even off-putting as possible, Annette comes fully wrapped as a pretentious, arty, occasionally breathtaking, ultimately misbegotten midsummer gift.

The yarn that Lowery spins is rich with incident, but ultimately simple. Its enjoyment lies less in the story, but in the marvelous mystification of its telling.

As in life, what drives most of the drama in this overstuffed but often thought-provoking movie is a failure to communicate.

This is an untaxing, big-budget summer popcorn movie for the whole family. Like the ride itself, it requires no more mental engagement than you would devote to any theme park visit (excluding the thrill rides, which actually raise a pulse.)

Like his other films, this one takes an admittedly slender thread of an idea — one that would make a perfectly good premise for a four-minute comic sketch — and stretches it to almost the breaking point, and sometimes beyond, twisting and intertwining it with other nonsense along the way, just for the heck of it.

Although Miller is excellent as the doomed teen, Wahlberg seems out of his league here, except in the actor’s rendering of Joe’s acute discomfort with public speaking and confrontation — which is odd in a movie that wears its heart, and its lessons, on its sleeve.

If this is corporate synergy fired up to a terrifying new level, there’s still enough heart at the movie’s center to keep it from becoming all business.

Like the character at the heart of Pig — who is not, as it turns out, a pig at all, even metaphorically — it is smoldering and gentle.

Billed as a spoken-word musical, but only occasionally utilizing the visual idioms of song and/or dance — and only rarely harnessing the two together — the film is nevertheless an exuberant hodgepodge of everyday joy and frustration (and the occasional mild trauma).

Morgan Neville’s nervy, impressionistic film, which over the course of two hours quietly peels back the layers of an onion that sweetened almost everything it touched and left many of us with tears in our eyes.

The film’s title is apt: Gregory was one of a kind. But despite the film’s argument that its subject’s activism was part and parcel of his comedy, and not an afterthought, it’s the jokes that are given short shrift here. One wishes there might have been room for a few more of them.

Despite its unconventional source material, it turns out to be surprisingly well-crafted, elevated by breathtaking central performances and the stylish, slyly knowing sensibility of director Janicza Bravo.

The movie’s most piercing barbs are left for the tech world and the inevitability that our phones will make zombies of us all. Does that make the Boss Baby franchise a bold cinematic bet? Not exactly. But as a safe play for parents and kids alike, it’s tough to complain about the return on your investment.

There’s a nugget of . . . maybe not wisdom, but something gristly worth chewing on here, if you have the stomach to stick your hand into gaping intestines, pull it out and wipe off the blood. I wouldn’t call it food for thought, but it gives “Forever” a slightly higher nutritional value than some of its predecessors.

Ewing joins a generation of filmmakers who are using every piece of cinematic grammar available to communicate the emotional core of their stories and characters, fusing the impressionistic liberties of drama with more visceral truths to startling and potent effect.

The result is something akin to cinematic hypertext, and thanks to Thompson’s steady hand, the brief but deep dives are richly rewarding.

No Sudden Move could also refer to the snail’s pace of social change. But race is just a subtext — albeit an enriching one — in a piece of entertainment that feels like watching, say, Ocean’s 11, but with a social conscience.

As gratifying as it is that Johansson has finally gotten the movie her character has long deserved — not to mention a worthy and equally watchable foil in Pugh — “Black Widow” simultaneously feels like too much and too little. Do svidaniya, Natasha — we hardly knew ye.