Ann Hornaday

Intriguing, marvelously inventive documentary.

Equal parts celebration and self-congratulation.

With its clean staging and coolly mannered style, Selah and the Spades reaches back to Wes Anderson, Whit Stillman and even Stanley Kubrick; this is a film in which nearly every image looks worked over and carefully polished, with no detail left unconsidered.

Does the world need another Bill Cunningham documentary? Yes, it turns out. More than ever.

With empathy and outrage that cut equally deeply, Hittman reminds us: This is a girl’s life in a man’s world.

In this unsparing but deeply compassionate film, viewers get a chance to see the fatigue, stress and bewilderment of modern life for what they are: not the regrettable side effects of market-driven progress, but the results of cynicism and greed, and the unfathomable human cost of wanting what we want, right now.

A clever slice of regional noir that carries a gale-force punch beneath its modest, soft-spoken trappings.

Bennett claims her own form of autonomy with the movie itself, which could be read as an actress’s decision to stop hoping for good scripts to arrive over the transom and make her own luck.

We might go into a Kelly Reichardt movie thinking we’ll be told a story, but we emerge with our consciousness subtly and radically altered.

A movie straining so hard to be edgily of-the-moment that it can’t help but be utterly irrelevant, strives to impress viewers with sadistic killings, oozing viscera and extravagant gushers of blood. But its most dramatic spectacle might be the sight of a facile, lazy enterprise being hoist on its own cynical petard.

A handsome-looking if occasionally dull affair.

What ensues in Corpus Christi, Jan Komasa’s absorbing and spiritually attuned drama, turns out to be a fascinating exercise in fake-it-till-you-make-it, with a hefty dose of fatalism and small-town hypocrisy thrown in for maximum provocation.

A delicious slow-burn of a movie, the kind of coming-of-age tale that looks familiar on the surface only to reveal hidden depths of beauty and meaning.

Once Were Brothers is enormously valuable, if only as a reminder of what an extraordinary run this extraordinary convergence of talents enjoyed until their final show on Thanksgiving Day in 1976 (meticulously captured by Scorsese in the magnificent documentary “The Last Waltz”).

In Akin’s capable hands, And Then We Danced becomes an affecting testament to heartbreak, resilience and emotional expression at its most liberated and life-affirming.

What She Said pays fitting homage, not just to a great writer but to a vanished age.

True to its title, Portrait of a Lady on Fire generates more than its share of heat, even if it never truly becomes an engulfing flame.

With Les Misérables, Ly delivers a passionate protest on behalf of an entire generation, whose future has largely been foreclosed. His, on the other hand, is astonishingly bright.

In the judicious hands of director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton, it feels not new exactly, but fresh and urgent and more timely than ever.

A Hidden Life is indisputably the finest work Malick has produced in eight years, as an examination of faith, conviction and sacrifice, but also as proof of concept for his own idiosyncratic style. It marks an exhilarating return to form but also, more crucially, content.

In Gerwig’s capable hands, though, even the most familiar contours of Little Women feel new, not because she has the temerity to redefine Alcott’s masterpiece, but because she subtly reframes it.

For its part, Bombshell tells a crucial chapter of that larger tale with coolheaded style and heated indignation. Its aim might be narrow, but it hits the target.

1917 is impressive but oddly distancing; ultimately stirring but too often gimmicky.

This is one of the most exciting breakout films of the year, introducing Attanasio as a vibrant new voice in American cinema. More, please.

This lively, intriguing and insistently humanistic flight of fancy — imagined conversations between hard-line conservative Pope Benedict XVI and his more progressive successor, Pope Francis — brims with wit, warmth and some tantalizing what-ifs. Whether the fact that it’s mostly pure speculation will get in the way of the audience’s enjoyment will depend on each viewer’s threshold for artistic license.

The fun here — and there is a lot of it — is to be had simply in allowing an ensemble of game, generous-spirited actors to give their all in service to the fine art of misdirection and mayhem.

At its best, Queen & Slim isn’t just a crime drama but a nuanced portrayal of family, legacy and self-preservation — how they’re distorted by trauma and history, and how they thrive despite the near-constant threat of annihilation.

In an era that seems fatally mired in fear, anger and mistrust, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood arrives as something more than a movie. It feels like an answered prayer.