Carlos Aguilar

In this existentialist delight, whimsical and profound, the mundane gains new enlightenment.

A trenchant conversation piece from a promising new director, Test Pattern provides ample room for one’s biases and privilege to shape our interpretation of what’s on screen.

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

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.

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.

This definitive doc about Selena feels comprehensive and illuminating, thanks to candid family interactions found in home movies from their earliest performances at their restaurant, recordings of local Texas TV station appearances, and eventually images captured on the road while traveling in a makeshift tour bus.

For Mwangi, Softie serves as testament of the domesticity he’s been absent from to satisfy the demands of his thankless vocation. But for the rest of us, it stands as a portrait of the kind of selfless, unifying and much-needed patriotism, from both Mwangi and Njeri, that could enact improvement if more subscribed to it wholeheartedly.

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.

Ilker Çatak, a German writer-director of Turkish descent, has shrewdly crafted a taut and tight examination of the concept of justice folded into an absorbing character study.

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

A remarkable truthfulness shepherds Benjamin Gilmour’s tightly written and conscientiously produced drama Jirga as it renders an image of Afghanistan not as a ravaged battleground but as an arrestingly rich land.

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

The filmmakers materialize a fascinating cinematic language that interrogates itself about matters of spontaneity and manipulation, man-made products and earth-given treasures, simplicity and sophistication, and how these all intersect.

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.

With the concise, but still singularly haunting Rule of Two Walls, Ukrainian American director David Gutnik has assembled a collection of portraits highlighting the experiences of artists from across the country who’ve found shelter in the city of Lviv, including some of the people behind the making of this very documentary.

The evocative visuals here sing in unison with the characters’ yearning to fulfill the promise of their lifelong dreams. They are chasing a glimmer of light before twilight.

Though it leaves one wanting for more hard-hitting, confrontational exchanges with Payá, “Night Is Not Eternal” evinces the road to change as winding, perilous, and far from immaculate.

Rather than simplistically lionizing the frikis, the directors honor their plight by portraying them as an example of how the human spirit perseveres even when nearly crushed.

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.

The evocative, if narratively slight, doomed romance is charged with otherworldly intensity.

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.

Rojo is a sophisticatedly entertaining reminder of our propensity for malevolent apathy.

A shockingly alarming investigation produced with the sensibilities of a social realist drama, Sarbil and Jones’ nonfiction warning should petrify U.S. viewers immeasurably.

Alvarado’s doc is standard in construction but lively in tone, reflecting his subject’s engagement with the sociopolitical challenges faced by Chicanos in the 20th century.

The writing by the director and co-scribe Thayná Mantesso is deft and pithy, and there’s a rawness of spirit in both the stellar central performance and the film’s social realist aesthetic.

All in all, this electrifying and thought-provoking ride works as it chooses the searing over the subtle, a tough call when approaching a subject that warrants in-your-face urgency.

The solution, the filmmaker argues, is a spiritual communion with the unknown, because there’s healing in surrendering to one’s perfect insignificance as part of something bigger.

For some, Nikou’s deliberate intent to portray a subtly warped reality may read as forced. But there’s an endearing bizarreness to “Fingernails,” his first film in English, that allows him to grasp at some of the intricacies of the human condition, steeped in silences as much as heartfelt analysis.

Reminiscent of Hollywood cop movies from the ’80s, when masculinity came only in a macho shade, but propelled by the fresh winds of inclusion, El Chicano stands as a solidly acted and technically accomplished spectacle, the latter likely the result of Hernandez Bray’s time delivering stunt magic behind the scenes as a stunt coordinator.

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.

As much as Amanda may seem like an irredeemable antihero, you come to appreciate her unspoken dream of finding fulfillment in the company of at least one other person on her crooked wavelength.

While the events that transpire are minimal, the poignancy of “Montana Story” resides in watching these two strangers, once inseparable, reconnect now as different people but with the same scars.

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

Intellectually intoxicating and stylistically sumptuous, this romantic oddity about the passage of time (for an individual and for a country) evokes the grand elegance of a Wong Kar-wai epic infused with mature droplets akin to anime like “Belladonna of Sadness” or “Millennium Actress.”

While free-floating and airy in its construction, the film’s deceiving familiarity slowly erodes, morphing into an unsettling, formally astute brain-tickler observing the placid domesticity of an affluent Texas family in their natural habitat.

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.

Abigail is a hilariously gory romp that banks on a memorable ensemble cast and a witty screenplay that invigorates vampire tropes with a refreshing drollness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Though the humor and acting in “Concrete Utopia” can occasionally feel broad, Lee’s viscerally monstrous performance grounds a high-stakes drama.

Armed with a perceptive ensemble cast, Del Paso formulates an intellectually rich critique on a thorny subject for a country still reluctant to face its entrenched moral vices.

While occasionally heavy on exposition, memorable dialogue thrives via the actors’ convincingly comfortable banter.

Bustamante remains a narratively resourceful and exciting artist. If not a flat-out consummation of his talents, Rita certainly expands his scope into more intricate tonal and stylistic experimentation, as he completely frees himself from the chains of straightforward realism.

The filmmakers let the story slither at its own rhythm, so that the magnitude of the psychological control can be fully exposed. To accomplish that, their superb cast guides the film through a poisonous doctrine taken not from the pages of imagination but from real American folklore.

Though the ending leaves most narrative loose ends untied, there’s a nurturing wisdom Link acquires from those he meets over the course of the ever-spontaneous journey. Plenty remains unsolved, but he knows himself as a person more than ever before.

A heartrending survivalist saga positioned in the proximity of Debra Granik’s indie darling “Leave No Trace” and Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic novel “The Road.”

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.

“The Devil Made Me Do It” opens with a disturbing sequence, set in 1981, that stands as the scariest part of the supernatural saga to date. That’s not to say that the nearly two hours that ensue are devoid of tension and well-paced jump scares, but the sheer chaos and malevolence on display right out of the gate are unmatched elsewhere.

Song for Cesar manifests as the scrappy but meaningful results of people coming together to document a chapter of America’s recent past still not as visible as it should be.

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.

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.

Dynamic in a Hollywood-friendly manner, the film has a deliberately broad tone, but by no means does that detract from its thematic acumen.

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.

Disconcerting in its justified bluntness, Myers’ brisk film is more monologue than movie, but undeniably essential in jolting everyone out of the collective complacency induced by the false perception of progress for all in this country.

Arco looks at once fantastical and recognizable, removed just enough from what we know in our present, but grounded on familiar, childlike amazement.

What’s remarkable is that even if one fails at grasping in full the plot and its many conflicts, Ne Zha 2 has the power to flood the senses and convince anyone who watches it that they have just witnessed an animated production that holds absolutely nothing back.

After several haphazard attempts with the Frozen and Moana franchises, Zootopia 2 can take the title as Disney’s most effective animated sequel yet.

The Infiltrators is eye-opening on both sides: It delivers an encouraging example of the power of a united people, and it opens a window into the abuses and inhumane separations that are carried out under the guise of protecting the nation.

Ghastly humor coated in serrated-edged commentary on corrosive power creeps in through Jordan’s yearnings for a world before online accountability.

For all the grief that the leads undergo in Chung’s most recent work, the result yields a life-affirming reminder to look across the room and see the other.

Calibrated with rare edge-of-your-seat pragmatism, Scott Z. Burns’ must-see procedural The Report diligently abides by the logical proposition that no end justifies premeditated immoral means as it scrutinizes how the CIA succumbed to post-9/11 paranoia and authorized sadistic abuses in the name of freedom.

The riveting and superbly acted Iranian drama, based on a real variety show, poses a moral crucible born out of a theocratic system that disfavors women amid the heightened tension of the on-camera spectacle.

Distinctively incisive on an emotional level, the film applauds the bravery of its participants to relive a painful shared trauma and create a permanent testament of what they endured.

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.

Precisely because of how ravishingly constructed some of the set pieces turned out, it’s more of shame to see the storytelling’s structural lack of cohesiveness and subplot saturation clutter the view.

As it explores the intersection between the occult and mankind’s brutal cruelty in relation to women, The World Is Full of Secrets grips us with its minimalist, calibrated and cerebral scare tactics.

Feel-good yet not cloying, Language Lessons wraps its comforting graciousness around you and says, “No estás solo / You are not alone.”

Bones and All plays out as a can’t-look-away, riveting experience for most of its running time. It’s easy to get entranced by its modestly sumptuous imagery, the believable chemistry of the volatile couple, and even the rattling bluntness of the graphic sequences.

If you feel like you know where it’s headed, you are probably correct. But while Chen’s refusal to subvert commonplace elements is disappointing, there’s a sharp note of sorrowful, aching understanding running through the protagonists’ shared ordeal.

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.