Bilge Ebiri

Disclosure Day can be messy, but much of its beauty lies in that messiness. It’s an astoundingly personal film, and we can sense Spielberg trying to feel his way through the conflicting aspects of his vision.

Most of its gags require not surprise but surrender. Because while some dumb jokes are (as noted) funny the first time and never again, on the opposite end of spectrum lie those bits that are funny only after the fifth or sixth or 11th time, at which point the comedy comes not from any inherent wit but from the doggedness of the teller. We laugh because we’re defeated.

For the most part, the film is a model of narrative economy and clear character development, all grounded and enhanced by Scott’s delicate performance.

Few recent movies better embody the vibe that in a spiritual vacuum all that matters is momentary sensation, a dry quickening of the pulse to counteract the emptiness of what we might still choose to call “existence.”

Drab and stone-faced to a fault, The Mandalorian and Grogu struggles to capture the inventive vitality of the better Star Wars movies with action scenes that feel frustratingly pro forma and lifeless performances that seem determined to lull us to sleep.

There’s probably a smart, chilling film to be made about the terrors of smothering and relentless adoration — one imagines what Rod Serling would have done with something like this — but this isn’t really that film.

In his latest, In the Grey, Ritchie takes this compulsive, hyperanalytical love of preparation to comical levels. Intentionally, but maybe not productively: As the screen fills up with lists and the narrative overloads on data, we may find our attention drifting.

Built around silences and the steady accumulation of human and natural detail, the story feels at times as if it’s being told by the tree itself: omniscient, unflinching, yet shot through with an almost alien tenderness. Its perspective is not so much Olympian as it is pointillist.

Maybe this frivolous little movie reflects our own world back to us in more ways than we might wish to admit.

Karia’s film is uneven, but, as with its aforementioned staging of “To be or not to be,” it tosses enough new ideas around to keep us watching.