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.