Christian Zilko

At its best, The Scout captures the contradictory experience of having a job closer to your dreams than many people ever get, but still far from where you want to be.

The vast majority of The Uprising is a competent, straightforward recreation of a landmark historical event. A talented team of below-the-line artists recreate the drab poverty of feudal England with impressive detail, and there shouldn’t be any complaints about Greengrass’ staging of the battle sequences. The parallels to today’s world are clearly on display, but the script stops just short of hitting audiences over the head too hard.

Those already on board with its message about America’s past sins will undoubtedly enjoy the protagonists’ quest for justice, and the riveting packaging might also introduce its historical subject matter to a few of the uninitiated.

While you can find quite a few other films of comparable storytelling quality on any streaming service, few of them boast this much star power. De Niro, Monaghan, and Scott all add a bit of heart to their otherwise two dimensional characters, and the best actor in the film is the one we’re not allowed to write about.

Just like his characters, the filmmaker is clearly growing, and we’re all the better for it.

Even if you haven’t seen the prior films in the trilogy, The Bend in the River is worth seeking out as an anthropological exercise. There’s enough footage from the prior films to get you up to speed quickly, and none of the individual story arcs matter nearly as much as the larger sense that each season of human life is worthy of its own naturalistic exploration.

For all its impressive attention to culturally-specific details, you don’t need to be Hispanic, from New Mexico, or a child of the ’80s to appreciate the film. All you need is some cringe-inducing memories of your early teenage years. In other words, Olmo is truly universal.

Comedy movies are a rarity these days, and the mere fact that these friends got a chance to make something together is probably worth something. They appear to be having fun, and their most devoted fans probably will, too. But if you’re on the fence about “Super Troopers 3,” your memories of the original are almost certainly better than what you can see at the theater this weekend.

Ryuya Suzuki’s masterful anime, which spans the century-long life of a J-Pop star, makes it impossible to ignore how little it shows you.

The film isn’t so bold as to suggest that it’s never too late to find fortune and fame in the entertainment industry. But it replaces those fantasies of overnight success with something richer, and its conviction in the power of songwriting as something that doesn’t have to be connected to record sales and stadium shows makes it a charming entry in a filmography that has never tried to be anything it’s not.