Carlos Aguilar

A movie destined for a cult following and subsequent midnight showings, “Divinity” does commit the sin of placing style over substance, but there’s enough of the latter to keep one’s mind spinning along with it, even if it’s all a jumble

Partly a tribute to the routine occurrences that collectively make a place feel like one belongs, Monica Sorelle’s delicately galvanizing slice-of-life debut “Mountains,” set in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, overflows with such details.

Measured in its pacing but never stagnant, The Chambermaid quietly fleshes out Eve’s subconscious with actions rather than words.

The remarkable debut from writer-director Michelle Garza Cervera is as effectively blood-curdling as it is intellectually incisive.

Though Schwarz’s finished film provides unmissable and infuriating insight, it’s also disappointing that he never mentions the ongoing violence that the Israeli state commits against residents in the current Palestinian territories, including numerous documented human rights violations.

Thanks to its terrific stars and Liu’s patient direction, which luxuriates in the smallest of gestures, “Preparation” transcends its most predictable beats.

Shouting in all-caps about unions and shortages of food, Călinescu symbolizes the power of individuals that dare to discern from their own personal trenches, regardless of how insignificant they may seem.

With sun-kissed cinematography by Paul Guilhaume and the construction of the story in miraculously intimate closeups of touching moments, “Little Girl” plays almost as if it were an aesthetically verité, yet scripted fiction film from the Dardenne brothers. It’s only the handful of interviews where the family speaks to the camera that breaks the spell.

Chaotically arranged, like a feverish dance between mind-altering nightmares and pieces of reality, this ambitious mixed-media thesis operates under idiosyncratic rules to provoke a feeling of subconscious entrapment.

As straightforward in its conception as its unfussy title, Mitre’s latest can be described as an effectively utilitarian piece of cinema that exists to preserve the historical memory of his homeland and to pay tribute to some of the people who ensured that for once, the arc of history, as insufficient and belated as it usually is, did bend towards justice.

Steeped in both unfaltering and pleasant humanity, Vargas’ characters are what some might deem “problematic.” But they ultimately depict complicated mentalities, with shades of true-to-life negative and redeeming traits.

Arrebato invokes cinema as an otherworldly entity that possesses, just as addictive and destructive as mind-altering substances injected into the bloodstream.

End of the Century is a sublimely haunting experience that will make you sigh in recognition of the what-ifs in your own life.

If the director’s spell has taken hold as presumably intended, by the time the most outlandish touches appear, one has already surrendered to its visceral, chaotic allure.

After the youthful splendor of last year’s The Souvenir Part II, Hogg returns with a magnificent achievement of a more inconspicuous kind: a striking phantasm of affection, regrets, and remembered accounts that might be factually inaccurate but emotionally unfeigned.

Its unflinching depiction of the brutal genocide of the Selk’nam people intermingles with pointed contempt for the egotistical yet pathetic colonists.

Moratto’s concise firecracker of a movie is straightforward in its soul-crushing blows and an essential piece of social-realist cinema for our times.

No doubt comparisons to “Saltburn,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” or “The Talented Mr. Ripley” will abound, but what Lin conceived is far more subcutaneous, with a sobering tone and disinterested in building up to a grand plot twist — though the resolution is unexpected.

The moody drama speaks of the inextricable links between Africa and the Caribbean without ever discussing it in academic terms but, instead, illustrating the bond with everyday exchanges between the unexpected visitor from abroad and the locals.

The Box lacks the sort of ardor that made From Afar so memorable. Here, not all the major beats amount to substantial commentary on this relationship or the context. However, there are choices and plot elements that confirm the director’s narrative sagacity.

One of the most necessary and scorching pieces of nonfiction storytelling in recent memory, “The Falling Sky” offers no comfort and points fingers with a ferocious righteousness as we stare into the abyss of the inescapable environmental catastrophe so-called “developed nations” have wrought.

Through the eyes of its delightfully brave, yet utterly relatable subject (also the de facto cinematographer), this terrifying, revelatory and poignant exposé offers an unseen human angle on an ongoing conflict that’s continues to be widely addressed in documentary cinema.

Caro’s ability to localize what might feel broad shines through, even though he is operating within set storytelling boundaries.

You can get the facts about these migrants anywhere, but Garrone knows the tool of cinema is more effective. By presenting these adolescents in all their fragility and strength, he comes as close as is possible to getting us to feel how they felt. Io Capitano is as unflinching as it is robust with empathy.

Subtly sensorial more than conventionally narrative, The Fever inhabits an ethereal plane that centers Indigenous beliefs and cultural practices not as primitive but valid modes of engagement.

The fury of Osborne’s performance, nonetheless, keeps “Mārama” a worthy anti-colonialist statement that harnesses the symbolic virtues of genre cinema for its understandably virulent tone.

It may go against its ethos to deem del Toro's Pinocchio an impeccable masterpiece, even if that's an adequate description, but know that if the art of making movies resembles magic, this is one of its greatest incantations.

Invoking genre narrative devices, the entrancingly evocative La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) walks between fact and myth to engender a shrewdly frightening piece of political horror.

Underneath the lowbrow fart jokes and images of caribou mating, the Scrivers’ Endless Cookie honors the legacy others left behind through their experiences so that it can help each new generation piece together their understanding of the embattled present.

Not even the most miniscule production design element is left to chance in such a tangible and meticulously conceived technique like stop-motion. Details matter, and comedy often emerges from them combined with great timing. “Farmageddon” is a non-verbal narrative that tells jokes directly to our curious eyes.

A shrewdly constructed, heartrending dramedy.

Mahdavian’s nonfiction proposes something distinct: a subtle portrayal of non-sensational humanity.

While the clues of impending horror emerge long before this episode of camaraderie—signaled by Sune Kølster’s unnerving orchestral score from the opening frames—nothing can fully prepare you for the appalling dark places “Speak No Evil” is headed to.

Concise, yet affecting, Chile ‘76 assuredly occupies the post as one of the finest Latin American productions to open stateside this year.

Although Kajillionaire fails to fully engage in the same manner as July’s previous dramedies, it’s not entirely unsuccessful as it still compels us to see the people in front of us — not with rushed judgment, but with curiosity for the burdens or joys that have made them who they are. And it makes us chuckle while at it.

A work of tremendous lyrical potency, even more intricate in meaning and scope than the pair’s earlier stunner, Sujo thunderously demonstrates why Valdez and Rondero stand among those soon to be regarded as the new masters of Mexican cinema.

McCarthy and editor Brian Philip Davis deploy high-voltage moments with expert timing, using the dark to their favor in refreshing fashion.

Sun-drenched Luzzu is an unaffected triumph with a simmering power, the type of deceivingly familiar film that helps us sail into a place and a lifestyle most of us ignore but that are made vividly compelling in the hand of a new storyteller with classically honed sensibilities.

A towering filmic achievement, Monos pulsates like an inescapable vivid trance, cosmic and terrestrial at once, fantastical and violently stark, about victims and victimizers. Like all dualities, those in this excursion are two bends that belong to the same river.

Though it ignores the many situations that could go wrong in the ever-evolving universe of virtual reality, this fascinating ode to touchless connection proves beyond doubt that the intense emotions born in the skin of their avatars transcend into their flesh-and-blood hearts.

Though Sehiri’s third feature offers a seemingly minor concept, it’s certainly bountiful in its power to unearth the unspoken codes that reign over this community, where some men demand reverence from women solely for their gender-based status in the social hierarchy, where the notion of absolute loyalty to one’s extended family guides every decision, and where romantic companionship remains mostly transactional.

Santambrogio’s extraordinary cast of non-professional actors convey a lived-in, personal, and impossible to fake connection to the pleasures, struggles and intricacies of life in Cuba.

Oren Gerner’s emotional and narrative aptness to direct his father in such an effectively subdued performance gives one reason to not dwell on the film’s anticlimactic resolution, as it lacks a substantial evolution for the character.

Walker-Silverman exhibits the sensibilities of a master storyteller, capable of making his splendid writing seem effortless in its construction and then molding it into warm magic via the cast’s remarkable talent. He’s an absolute revelation among emerging voices.

At the Ready plays like a frightening but necessary exposé of state-sanctioned copaganda targeting young people from marginalized backgrounds to groom them into instruments of their very oppressor.

An indispensable watch, Banua-Simon’s first feature focuses on the island of Kauaʻi and the history of its exploitation as a colony, which endures under the guise of statehood.

Schoenbrun, a native speaker of the language of the internet, has uploaded into the cinematic landscape one of the most thoughtful depictions of self-discovery in the digital age. Through Casey’s plight of suburban isolation, the artist reaches out to us from a corner of the web’s endless abyss with an unmissable invitation, quite literally demonstrating the transcendental prowess of storytelling.

Not one to shy away from sincerity, Desplechin brings his beloved Paul Dédalus full circle in a satisfying project about the grandeur of the force that unifies the fictional character with the real man.

At once an affecting celebration of a truly peerless icon and a critique of the industry that almost broke her, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It has the enormous responsibility of synthesizing the grandeur of a life well lived, bumps and all, and the unbreakable, giving spirit that took to get her to the pinnacle of respect and recognition.

Through the increasingly ghastly parade of grotesqueries, Barker sharply comments on poisonous relationships.

Though philosophically unsatisfying in the sum of its parts—it’s a murky mirror—“Nope” remains thoroughly exhilarating as further proof of Peele’s affinity for pushing the increasingly narrow limits of commercial cinema. It’s imperfectly refreshing.

A vibrant and transfixing revelation, You Will Die at 20 is as novel a vision as we may see this year. From its meaningful ideas on the here and the hereafter, its lesson for Muzamil is that after perishing a rebirth may follow.

Guzzoni’s directorial hand chooses to move with restraint where others would exploit the despair on display for melodramatic manipulation. His focus is on the moral grays.

Caught between exalting the glory of his titanic accomplishments and their indelible mark on Black American culture, and figuring him out with only the available pieces of his intimate puzzle, Ailey does succeed at painting him as a complex figure.

This is more than just a career-best for Collins — it’s a career-redefining performance. His talent for profundity was always there but previously untapped to this extent. Now the hope is that this won’t be a zenith for him, but instead a revitalizing rebirth.

The spontaneity with which the majority of the events seem to occur renders Left-Handed Girl all the more impressive.

A mostly hackneyed lesson on racial biases desperately stumbling to appear provocative. It does, however, occasionally raise inquiries worthy of pensive consideration.

Even if one considers Apples part of the so-called Greek Weird Wave, such a subtly thoughtful and soothing approach to probe at existential concerns, rather than being predictably cynical or violent, makes it stand out.

Subtlety has never been one of Jeunet’s tools, and the comedy in Bigbug is enjoyably over-the-top, occasionally a bit too mannered, and often laugh-out-loud funny.

Think of Promare as a vast feast with too many flavorful offerings to taste in one seating, and where all the intricate details of how everything was put where it is are less important than the overall sensory overload you’ll experience.

Bursting with unruly energy that practically escapes the confines of the screen, Kneecap is a riotous, drug-laced triumph in the name of freedom that bridges political substance and crowd-pleasing entertainment.

While the on-the-nose title suggests each individual is an isolated entity...the character construction and how their respective desires intersect with one another, in tandem with an effectively dizzying atmosphere, render it more original than expected.

Far from being copraganda, A Cop Movie, the new feature from director Alonso Ruizpalacios (“Güeros,” “Museo”), is a formally daring and incisive deep dive into their performance of authority.

This disjointed, though consistently tense retelling dives full force into ostentatious pathos more often than it opts for narrative prudence.

Although fascinatingly hilarious, Hail Satan? is a conventional non-fiction effort on the technical front, but Lane does spike her frames with an offbeat score by Brian McOmber (“Little Woods”) that reaffirms the quirky tone of the piece with circus-like melodies.

Mucho Mucho Amor is a tribute as inspired and jubilant as its majestic subject, a true original, who “used to be a star and now is a constellation.”

As it traverses the sacred and the factual, the film intently portrays the liminal space anyone who’s ever left home knows well. It’s the threshold between the person you were, who you’ve become, and how the two halves are at odds mutating into a unique color, a new prism-like worldview.

Something in the Dirt functions as a disturbing and acerbically comedic riddle of a movie where finding the answers is a secondary, mostly unfruitful goal. What we are after is understanding the personal voids that push some of us to look for them in the first place.

Tito and the Birds is extraordinary proof that universality comes from specificity. Sometimes there is nothing more globally relevant than a hand-crafted Portuguese-language animated indie.

It’s a magnificently unflinching film from a master director in the making, whose thunderous strength will surely make waves in Bustamante’s Central American homeland and abroad.

Glowing with García Bernal’s magnetism, “Cassandro” balances the triumphant exaltation of Arbendáriz’s singular evolution as a trailblazer who didn’t set out to become one, with the obvious, still not entirely eliminated bigotry that made his trajectory so significant and groundbreaking in the first place.

With every added account of shameful contrition, the realization that this issue exists very much in the present tense weighs heavy on the viewer.

Decker is a superbly imaginative director, which leaves one wishing her creative powers had pushed the film even further away from the constraints of reality. But that’s a downside that comes with working from material written by another artist.

Rather than exploiting her sorrow-fueled mission for a “Taken”-like revenge spectacle, the verité social drama understands Cielo’s determination to find answers not as mere courageousness, but a tragic, nothing-left-to-lose lack of concern for her own safety.

Leo and María — and, judging from their on-screen rapport, Amalia and Ale as well — spin on a wavelength where their irrational lifestyle and coping mechanisms are logical to their comprehension; we are only lucky to be invited to visit this two-people planet for a short while.

Opening the doors to a land and people most Westerners know little about, the director crafts a crowd-pleaser in stunning, mostly unseen locations whose charms weather even its most idealistically patriotic and overly saccharine notes.

Simultaneously rousing and unnerving, “Pipeline” strays from despair. It doesn’t complicate the story with the loss of human life the way “Night Moves” does, and in that sense it can seem too neatly wrapped-up. Still, its pointed timeliness enthralls.

A gripping, heady and refreshing 2D animated take on the perils of man and machine coexisting, Périn’s first feature as a director inserts the necessary exposition in a mostly natural manner so we incrementally become aware of how this reality functions.

Buoyed by Scott’s level-headed turn — he doesn’t transform into a scream king — Hokum is a proficient horror exploit, which hinges on atmosphere instead of gore, even if its many frightening threads feel disjointed, like rooms in distinctly different hotels.

Enchant it does, in ebbs and flows, mostly when relatable human ache peaks through the razzle-dazzle.

More contained than “Strawberry Mansion” but with similarly expansive ideas, “Obex” feels opportune for the modern era.

It merits being counted as one of the decade’s best and most wildly original animated triumphs and one of this awards season’s most unforgivable snubs.

My Little Sister is frank and poignant. With a distinctive angle and the rawness of the cast’s first-rate performances, Chuat and Reymond elevate a premise that could have, in other hands, veered into the realm of the uninspired.

Precisely written and deliberately shot, José, a Guatemala-set LGBTQ character examination from Chinese-born director Li Cheng, is a movie preoccupied with the private tragedy of unfulfilled impulses and aspirations as a result of widespread homophobia and emotional blackmail.

Cultural distinctiveness, in tandem with stylistic boldness, renders it an unprecedented feat. Thankfully, the proficient English-language dub aids in our ability to register the plot’s intricacies.

Elegantly intoxicating in its atmospheric construction, “Fever Dream” maintains its incantation to its very final twist. Even as clues inch us closer to a logical explanation for the collective malaise, the mystical undercurrent Llosa sets in place fosters our doubt.

As much as Bekmambetov is able to maintain a sense of impending doom, the revelations are predictable, even if the means through which we learn them are clever.

Even if a wonder feels minor, it reminds us that everything that Cartoon Saloon invests their talents in results in open-hearted, warm, and affecting art that’s never saccharine but thematically matured in essential drops of wisdom.

Pike, giving the kind of transformative performance that puts her squarely in the awards-season conversation, manifests Colvin’s brazen outspokenness with candor, and her irreparable brokenness via a cocktail of rage and subdued anxiety.

Ozon manages to instill a measured touch into every argument, outburst, and testimony, matching the naturalistic cinematography (by Manuel Dacosse, “Let the Corpses Tan”) and bestowing on us the most important and assured movie on this treacherous topic made this decade.

Even those already familiar with the trajectory of Kahlo’s existence may find the delivery here raw, vulnerable, and refreshing.

Mayor doesn’t feature an impassioned speech detailing the Palestinian people’s ardent plight for freedom because it doesn’t need one. Watching the confrontation in near real time, with lives on the line—a testimony to Hadid’s utmost commitment and hands-on leadership—conveys a forthright message.

There’s plenty to flinch (or even gag) at when directors Danny and Michael Philippou spill some blood , and Sally Hawkins and young Jonah Wren Phillips commit to the intensity of their roles, but the decidedly unanswered questions posed by the plot contribute to some dissatisfaction

DuVernay transcends the academic nature of the material via imaginative swings of fancy that immerse us in Wilkerson mournful mindset.

For its lucid interpretation of the current global moment without surrendering to paralyzing despair, “Happyend” settles among the most unmissable films to hit U.S. theaters this year.

Subtly moving, Adam is a beautiful expression of untainted sorority.

Strawberry Mansion is one of the most unique American independent films to open its doors in recent memory. Only time will tell if it can attain the cult status that its charming idiosyncrasy most definitely merits.

On the Count of Three is a rousing tragicomedy that straddles a line between incredibly calibrated gallows humor and a devastating discourse on the burden of existence.