Barry Hertz

Waves is unmistakably and defiantly its own thing – and when its ideas and aesthetics coalesce, it is a wonder to behold.

The film is filthy with nuanced moments of fierce, sweaty intimacy, all shot with a precise eye for detail. At the very least, it will make you rethink your next rodeo.

Exceptionally overlong, crammed with miscast performers putting in half the effort they should, and so overly pleased with its various (and rather middling) twists that it leaps from “clever” to “pompous” in one fell swoop, Wake Up Dead Man represents a hard and rough fall from grace.

Seyfried, who has already cemented her status as one of today’s most beguiling and unpredictable performers – any other actress would get whiplash going from playing tech-schemer Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout to a betrayed opera virtuoso in Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils to the sudsy theatrics of last week’s The Housemaid to this – is simply phenomenal.

What we’re instead left with are two diametrically opposed performances: Williams goes small and intimate as the distressed Isabel, while Moore opts for a more operatic, less successful tenor that results in what might be the actress’s most unhinged moment ever (and not in a good way).

There is real emotion and purpose pumped into the tiny picture – it has a heart as big as its title character is small.

As is the case with much of Reichardt’s work, The Mastermind is a genre movie that zeroes in on a formula only to meticulously scrawl over it in jet-black ink.

As unflinching as it is empathetic, Four Daughters is the best and slipperiest kind of film, whether you want to label it a documentary or not.

Big, annoying, and mostly pointless.

The new film is easily’s Gray’s most ambitious, bare-your-soul work, and one of the finest films of the year, too.

This material might make for a sly, subversive take on the genre, but writer-director Tyson Caron positions Dash as the hero of his story, a fatal flaw.

It’s bold, captivating cinema, with a soundtrack that threatens to never leave your head.

Nearly every performance here is excellent, a beautiful balance of nerves and neuroses.

When Malick reaches the end of Jaggerstatter’s story, A Hidden Life does reach something profound. Relief, maybe, that the film was over. But also a distinct pang that some filmmakers never change.

Working mostly with non-professional actors, Zagar also wrings some heartbreaking performances out of his young cast, especially Rosado, whose Jonah seems teetering at the edge of something he may never understand.

We’re watching Buckley electrify the screen today. May her voice rattle in your head for the rest of the year.

Classical and ultramodern – Bonello closes things off with a QR code, of all things – The Beast is an experience both bold and rich.

Hanks is, not surprisingly, excellently cast, but it’s Heller’s direction and inventive aesthetic instinct – everything is washed out browns, with the exception of a moving blue-lit finale – that sell the work so well.

Anne is such a startling and overwhelming work that the act of discussing it can feel unapproachable and crippling.

Audrey is the best kind of inscrutable hero, as precise in her obsession as she is enigmatic in every other aspect of her life. For moviegoers starving for something new who, like Audrey, have nearly given up the ghost, Measures for a Funeral is a symphony, full and rich.

Firecrackers is not as casually joyful as its title suggests – but it is absolutely as incendiary.

The resulting drama, while perhaps predictable in an American Movie meets Cocoon kind of way, is still awfully sweet and warmhearted.

The director simply trusts that his performers and sun-dappled visuals will carry the film forward. And he’s right – there’s little narrative propulsion to Too Late to Die Young, yet it hums along with a vibrant humanity all the same.

Jackman is such a finessed force of nature that he’s as good as you might expect, but Hudson – who never quite landed as juicy a part as in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, which is now more than a quarter-century old – matches her co-star beat for beat, bar for bar. Good times, they never seemed so good.

The story is captivating, the characters are magnificently fleshed out, and the emotional stakes are entirely, utterly believable.

The White Fortress is a startling, hypnotizing, but above all haunting work destined to linger.

The film’s many tiny dramas add up to a thoughtful, though sometimes shaggy, study of hopes and regrets, aspirations and reality. It is not groundbreaking, but it is funny and sad and completely relatable.

Mank is, overwhelmingly, so very interesting. But it is also something of a half-masterpiece mess: thematically scattered, awkwardly paced, overlong and curiously uninterested in the inner life of its title character.