Strang plays him as someone who’s almost crippled by a life lived in fear. It’s a moving performance, rendering a character who, even when the sun is out, can’t quite bring himself to emerge from the shadows.

This sweet, affectionate (and unapologetically slight) comedy is an all-too-rare homage to harmless, hilarious incompetence, at a time when there is plenty of the more hurtful kind to go around. If it isn’t quite up to the standards of “Ed Wood,” Tim Burton’s 1994 tribute to the auteur of such misbegotten fruits of moviemaking as “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” it is nonetheless a much-needed distraction.

With its jazz-funk score and trust-no-one scenario, The Swindlers is an entertaining if mostly routine con-game thriller.

The movie still holds power, mostly thanks to Leuenberger’s arresting, self-contained performance as Nora. She plays the character as an enigma, the last person you’d expect to lead a cause.

Whether Thelma is the victim of malign forces beyond her control or the Scandinavian equivalent of horror heroine Carrie, is the central question in this superbly controlled, if derivative, variation on a familiar theme.

One of the great strengths of Roman J. Israel, Esq. is that no one is any one thing.

Visually captivating even when it’s narratively uneven.

As the man who would inspire the character of Scrooge — first spied at night in a cemetery attending a threadbare burial for his business partner, while uttering, “Bah, humbug!” — Christopher Plummer is well chosen.

Not only is it a wholly original story, but it also honors a culture that’s so often overlooked by the movie industry. That alone might have made it a hit, but Coco has so much more to offer.

An absorbing and entertaining portrait, of both the science evangelist and the guy behind him.

Campillo’s style is usually naturalistic, and the superb ensemble cast’s performances are entirely unaffected.

This is a big movie, about big emotions and ideas, which Rees evokes and explores through an extraordinarily rich tapestry of atmosphere, physical setting, visual detail and sensitive, subtle performances.

In some ways, My Friend Dahmer is a typical coming-of-age movie about an awkward teen. What distinguishes this particular case of adolescent angst is that it’s the true story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

The movie is sincerely Christian in its outlook, while also a slapstick animal ’toon. It’s a mix that works only intermittently. But when it doesn’t pop, it thuds.

Most of the brights spots in Justice League involve Miller’s Flash — literally.

His (Martin McDonagh) movie fuses naturalism and hysterically pitched theatricality with sometimes uneasy, but bracing results.

Wonder does occasionally suffer from kid-movie pitfalls, straining to be cute or mining humor from ridiculously precocious little ones. But mostly it succeeds in telling not one complicated story, but many, and giving the experience of being a confused or lonely or scared youngster the space it deserves.

It’s not often one can have a genuinely spiritual experience watching a movie. But that’s precisely what’s on offer with The Departure, Lana Wilson’s quietly galvanizing portrait of life, death and the thin places in between in modern-day Japan.

No Greater Love gets at the camaraderie — and the contradictions — of military service in a way that few films ever have.

A movie of enormous humanity and heart.

Lady Bird is a triumph of style, sensibility and spirit. The girl at its center may not be a heavyweight, but her movie is epic.

“Murder” may lack urgency, but it does have style. The sets, the costumes and the vistas are stunning.

Betts has put together a talented acting ensemble, and the performances are, for the most part, uniformly good and subtle, particularly among the actresses who play the young novices.

The film’s young slashers are irredeemably smug and obnoxious, and their bloodthirsty craving for social media likes, represented by heart icons that float out of their cellphones after each murder that they document — without implicating themselves — fuels a vicious satire.

I suspect that none of these actors had as much fun bringing to life the cagey and colorful political vulgarian as his fellow Texan, Woody Harrelson, seems to be having in LBJ, crudely and rudely drawling his lines behind a wall of latex makeup, plus-size prosthetic ears and horn-rimmed glasses that obscure his own facial features.

Blade goes for the carotid while offering a classic look and a comic-book story. It’s part Kurosawa, part “X-Men,” part “Ichi the Killer.”

The Square may be one of the most timely films of this season, but it squanders its own relevancy by shooting fish in the world’s most shallow, painfully obvious barrel.

A good idea and a stellar cast lost inside a sloppy script that mostly retreads last year’s laughs.