A lean, mean, fighting machine of a movie, The Inspection takes writer/director Elegance Bratton’s experiences as a gay homeless Black man going through Marines boot camp and turns it into hard-nosed, inspirational cinema. Featuring a star-making turn from Jeremy Pope (Hollywood; One Night in Miami…) as Bratton cypher Ellis French, the film is packed with powerful complementary performances that keep tensions high and the story churning forward.

Channeling her inner Mo’Nique in Precious, Gabrielle Union makes for a convincing monster playing French’s correctional officer mother Inez, but Bokeem Woodbine nearly steals the show as Marine trainer Laws, a sadistic CO seemingly intent on seeing French fail. As the adage goes, “write what you know,” and though the autobiographical route results in a few clunky moments, Bratton seems poised to only grow and improve in the wake of this impressive feature debut.

Grade: B-plus. Rated R. Screens again Oct. 23 at 4:30 p.m. at Silverspot

Once the plot kicks in on Belgian co-writer/director Lukas Dhont’s Close, the film hits its stride. But for the first 20-plus minutes, the slice-of-life scenes between inseparable 13-year-old best friends Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are equal parts liberating and frustrating. Though the circumstances that break their bond could be developed more thoroughly, the tightly scripted fallout and ripple effects of grief that come from it are expertly enacted by the young men and Remi’s mother, Sophie (Émilie Dequenne, Brotherhood of the Wolf). Stick with it past the meandering beginning and a memorable gut-punch of a film awaits.

Grade: B. Rated PG-13. Screens again Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Silverspot

Throughout writer/director Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, it’s difficult to be sure what the filmmaker is going for. Shot with the sparseness of a Dogme 95 film yet sprinkled with stunning photography of natural backdrops and historic locations, her fictional account of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread) and the monarch’s tumultuous, midlife-crisis-driven 1878 barely has a pulse. And yet, all of a sudden, a quirky moment will arise in line with the royal absurdities of The Favourite, or someone will play a Rolling Stones song on a harp, hinting at a far stranger and more interesting film than the one at hand. Kreutzer, however, isn’t willing to commit to these joyously odd moments, leaving them at odds with the dry storytelling and resulting in an overall project in the midst of a perplexing identity crisis.

Grade: C. Rated R

(Photo: A24)