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At first, “Havoc” sounds like just another one of those generic, one-word titles Hollywood slaps on action movies to convey a terse, efficient shoot-’em-up. Why give such projects a long-winded name like “A Clear and Present Danger” or “Every Which Way but Loose” when you can find something punchy like “Taken,” “Crank” or “Drive”? Look it up in the dictionary, however, and “havoc” doesn’t simply mean “devastation” (of which there is plenty in “The Raid” director Gareth Evans’ excessively violent Netflix outing), but also some mix of confusion, mayhem and all-around disorder (which spoils whatever fun a couple over-the-top set-pieces deliver).

Looking worse for wear than Bruce Willis’ tank top at the end of “Die Hard,” Tom Hardy fully commits to the walking stereotype that is Walker, the least bad cop working Christmas Eve in a city that a) doesn’t exist, b) seems to be modeled on...

There’s a beautiful scene in Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film The World in which the protagonist, Tao, crosses paths with an industrial worker nicknamed Little Sister on the rooftop of an unfinished building. They chat aimlessly beneath towering spires of exposed rebar until a massive plane soars overhead, drowning out their voices. “Tao, who flies on those planes?” he asks, to which she responds, “Who knows…I don’t know anybody who’s ever been on a plane.”

It’s this precise contrast of stasis and flux, of the sublime and the quotidian, of simple personal dreams swallowed up by massive national ambitions, that characterizes Liu Jian’s newest feature, Art College 1994. Jia also lends his voice to one of its characters: Gu Yongqing, a “roving artist abroad” who speaks of “the mysterious power of art” during a visiting lecture at the titular art college. This is Liu’s third animated feature film,...