Adrian Horton

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.

The film’s spareness has lasting power – as Skylar and Autumn boarded the bus home, I realized I had been clenching my jaw the whole movie. It’s a testament to Hittman’s portrayal of fear and frustration in navigating American reproductive healthcare as a teen. I just wish her characters had more to say about it.

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.

At its best, writer/director Clint Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar have crafted a gorgeous and poignant film of quiet, bruised life in a fragile place, anchored by a magnificently sensitive and restrained performance from the still-underrated Edgerton.

Chasing Summer at least outruns the charge of being boring, though at what cost.

It may not always land and gets lost in itself on the way there, but Jackson has crafted a beautiful experiment indicative of ambitious vision, one whose magic outweighs its weaknesses.

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.

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

A Real Pain is occasionally insightful on the subject of suffering, sometimes funny, a bit endearing, a little pretentious, often dry.

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.

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.

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.

Given His Three Daughters’ fidelity to the cold facts of dying, the final minutes makes a bold and uneasy logic leap that pulls on the heartstrings but feels too neat for a drama this lived in, for sibling bonds this spiky.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are many things working well in Rockwell’s debut, Taylor’s performance chief among them, but the end result doesn’t match her character’s formidable strength.

Written by Colby Day, In the Blink of an Eye attempts no less than the sweep of life from big bang to unknown verdant planets, with the emotional depth of a tide pool and the complexity of a cave painting.

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?

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.

A Different Man is a slog, made worse by the fact that it seems to mistake darkness for insight.

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

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.

The Starling Girl, anchored by a bristling performance from the always solid Scanlen, is at its best when it hews to the combustible suspense of a teenage girl glimpsing her own instincts – for honesty, for autonomy, and most threateningly for pleasure.

It is as noble an execution of tragic historical record as one could hope for within the limits of a biopic – neither confirmation of doubters nor enough justification to relive it.