Adrian Horton

This is, against great odds and surely some western expectations, a beguiling hangout film – an invitation to the dinner party, a fascinating window into a group of underground artists who carry on despite the risks, a representation of creativity under surveillance. A snapshot of everyday resistance, the fight for a freedom from the bottom up. And most effectively, a moving portrait of one nutritive, symbiotic friendship in transition.

The road through year 10 may be rocky, but Manners is a confident guide – her film-making is splashy and stylish throughout, shrewdly conveying just how much one can learn, and break, in a year.

Tatum manages to ground the viewer in his abject bewilderment and pain. It’s a instantly memorable performance in a haunting movie, one that I have carried with me in the hours since I’ve seen it. Perhaps that is the best thing I can say about this remarkable feature – for its viewers, as it is for its meticulously rendered subject, the disquiet lingers.

As a standalone film, The History of Concrete is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, compelling and surprising, if 20 minutes too long. And, of course, about much more than just concrete.

White smartly weaves Gibson’s evolution as a poet and performer, commanding stages like a rockstar –“we called them the gay James Dean,” Falley jokes – with their hopes to stage one final show, a celebration of life before their death.

Like a great routine, beneath the jokes lurks something tender, grounded and real.

Brisk, lucid and sweeping, Cover-Up assures that some, at least, will not.

Even as a fan, I am honestly shocked that what basically amounts to a 97-minute ITYSL sketch stays actually funny throughout, though a good 15 or so minutes of that threaten overexposure to the brand.

[Fahy's] dialed-in performance is thankfully matched by an overarching crispness to the proceedings – just enough flourishes, an enjoyable but not unbearable amount of stress, no wasted time, a perfect match of star, script and style.

Riveting, seamless, at points genuinely shocking, Last Breath exemplifies the possibilities of human collaboration – a feat that has stuck with me and, yes, took my breath away.

Mr Nobody Against Putin ultimately stands as both an act of service and a tribute – to a school that once was, to students whose lives were and will be irrevocably changed for the worse by the regime, to a once fruitful job. Talankin has produced a must-watch, indelible document of ideological warfare that echoes far beyond Russia. How’s that for a nobody?

As the years go by and the trauma festers, the film grows into something thornier, surprising, beautifully textured and deeply moving.

Sharply written, smartly structured and well-acted, with a star-making turn from Victor herself, the 93-minute black comedy is not only nimble and consistently funny, but one of the best, most honest renderings of life after sexual assault that I’ve seen.

Sweethearts thankfully avoids full predictability – a welcome relief, particularly in a film that embraces the rampant horniness of 18-year-olds. Even if you’ve suffered through the turkey dump, this one is a treat.

No Other Land, for its many images of despair, still offers a stirring vision for what could be – Israelis and Palestinians working together in the name of justice, collaborating toward a world where both are free.

Clever, heartfelt and frequently stunning, The Wild Robot offers the type of all-ages-welcome animated entertainment that will delight kids and leave a lump in one’s throat.

Middleton’s film makes the case for remembering the Apollo 13 mission in all its mundane, dated, precise details – a real, rare and breathtaking tale of survival and ingenuity, clearly and painstakingly told.

For all the characters’ misery and misfires, Between the Temples is a winsome journey. It’s a little weird, a little sweet and a lot of awkward – a testament not just to the Jewish tradition but the faith we can learn to have in each other.

[A] remarkably unguarded documentary.

It’s all a fizzy, funny, convincingly romantic delight, a tribute to the craft of making big movies with big stunts that is heartfelt in its appreciation without taking itself too seriously.

Its tender blend of emotions is evergreen. Dìdi’s final touching, soft note of growth – so much internalized and overcome already, so much to go – would be moving in any year.

Squibb is as understatedly funny and commanding as you’d expect. Both actor and character remain, despite all societal and personal forces to the contrary, absolutely vital even as the circumstances and potential of life shrink. What a joy to witness it.

The Outrun is the rare two-hour movie that made me forget to check the time. That it does so while avoiding the many cliches of the cinematic memoir adaptation . . . is its own achievement, a testament to the source material and Ronan’s tremendous performance.

The Kupferer-Mallens are Chicago theater stalwarts, having founded their own company, and the affection everyone involved with this project feels for the stage – as an art, therapy and practice – is so evident as to be contagious, even in the film’s most theater-y meta moments.

The film’s chief enjoyment is seeing how motivations transform, and character is forged, through the sliding doors of new people, victories and losses, and the sharpening of the young women’s disparate judgments on the genuinely disappointing differences between boys and girls state.

At its best, the Eras Tour film manages to capture the why of that bond, the shock of her vast stardom against the startling emotional clarity of her songwriting. The Eras tour, she says, has been the most special experience of her life; in this deft rendering, it’s easy to feel the intoxication of being in her temple.

It’s both amiable and original enough to distinguish itself from the slush pile of youth-appealing Netflix content. Couple that with a moving finale on the supreme joys of best friendship, and that’s reason to celebrate.

It persuasively makes the case that Hite, who argued that most women cannot orgasm from penetrative intercourse alone, deserves renewed recognition as a feminist trailblazer, particularly in the still-fraught arena of sexual politics, self-knowledge and liberation.

She Said delivers on the dopamine hits of a journalism movie: proficient pace (the film runs just over two hours but feels shorter), tactile work, the thrill of pavement pounded into revelation.

Rosaline . . . understands what makes a good adaptation: a sense of humor at least on par with if not exceeding the original, lighthearted lines with serious delivery, crackling romantic chemistry. And in the case of Rosaline, an unmissable lead in Kaitlyn Dever as a lovelorn medieval schemer left on read.

Its outsized mean girl ruthlessness with a candy-coated shell, led by Mendes and Hawke’s commanding performances, is a biting, if overlong, good time.

In Dunham’s hands, the throughline of enduring and discovering one’s worth, however historically imagined, is at once a comfort and a lark.

The ending chorus of conclusions wraps up a bit too neatly, though that doesn’t invalidate the enjoyably deranged ride before.

True to its animated predecessors, Super-Pets pulls off what other superhero entries have struggled to summon from the CGI universe: lighthearted fun and self-aware humor woven with real evergreen themes – the fear of change, learning to love friends through transitions, trusting that love will remain through the seasons.

It accomplished what few of its peers have been able to do: make me believe in a teenage romance, actually remember the confusion of growing up and feel satisfied with an ending that points to an open-book future.

Decker infuses Nelson’s screenplay with a potent dose of whimsical fantasy, morphing Lennie’s tortuous bereavement into a lonely house, a romantic musical journey and a garden where other complicated, confusing emotions grow.

If you’re coming in with a blank slate, then Navalny is a feast of evermore unbelievable details and a window into a movement against a state of increasingly boldfaced, demeaning lies.

It’s trite to say a debut performance is a revelation, but the whole film simply does not work without McInerny, who is fully convincing as a girl on an emotional precipice. It’s an astoundingly calibrated turn, one of barely lidded emotions that eventually skitter about

A ride somehow both warm and stressful, and an inviting mashup of familiar beats made fresh by a trio of grounded, endearing performances.

Its strongest element, aside from Eilish herself, is the generosity and empathy afforded to the experience of fandom.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things holds a contained, idealized world – a trove of romcom enjoyment and small treasures I had no problem looping through.