Carlos Aguilar

Davis’ story seems ripe for a sensational, multi-episode streaming event à la "Tiger King," but in Bahrani’s thorough and tactful hands, it yields a fascinating, infuriating but eventually touching piece of non-fiction storytelling.

Sweeping and flawlessly produced, Ashe’s epic works as an inherently refreshing entry in the canon of a genre designed to make us sigh with knowing elation or tear up in misery thinking about our own bygone rendezvous.

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.

To watch Cryptozoo is to open a Disneyland-size kingdom of ideas that never cease to astound.

A humble marvel, Omaha introduces a filmmaker with a privileged sensibility to translate these opposing forces into a tapestry of scenes imbued with loving compassion for the characters experiencing them.

For all its otherworldly beauty, “Utama” could benefit from slightly more robust dramatic beats to complement the hyper-sensorial experience that imbues in the spectator, especially in addressing the displacement of Indigenous communities across the Americas and beyond.

Mostly compelling but unfocused, Wild Indian dips its narrative feet in a slew of themes, all worthwhile, and doesn’t commit to any of them as its guiding star in the murky sky of its ambition. As the filmmaker tries to bind all of the moving parts, the whole turns scattered-brained and structurally disjointed.

An inspired antiwar epic that recently won the Goya Award (Spain’s equivalent to an Oscar) for animated film, Vazquez’s sophomore nightmarish fairy tale culminates with frighteningly revelatory imagery signaling the pattern of destruction that has characterized human history.

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

As Colewell sinks in, it reveals itself as the cinematic equivalent of a deep exhale after having attained peace within.

Amid the trauma that the co-leads undergo, Wang examines the rips and repairs in the connecting tissue between us and the people who, through their action or inaction, mold us into who we are.

The strength of the performances and the filmmaker’s smart handling of ambiguity (is there or is there not an actual monster at play here?) do enough to keep one engaged.

As proven in Ondi Timoner’s unbelievably personal, profoundly bittersweet, and occasionally disquieting documentary “Last Flight Home,” having agency over one’s final departure isn’t exclusively reserved for those existing in conflict with the status quo.

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

Formidable from a technical standpoint, The Platform thrives on effectively grotesque production design and ghastly special effects that shock and disgust with purpose.

There are many heavy hitters still to come, but Hoppers feels like the first great animated movie of the year. At a time when our right to protest is under siege, this sci-fi yarn exalts the way an individual’s conviction can plant seeds of change, leading to a stronger sense of community.

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.

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.

A tribute to those children of immigrants, especially those in families divided across borders, pulling for their own aspirations while carrying on their backs their parents’ hopes for a life without fear, “Mija” beams with the knowledge that in its specificity it speaks to millions. That this documentary soon becomes a rock in an avalanche and not an isolated bright star of representation is the hope.

Favored with copious amounts of footage shot during the voyage, as well as Genovés’ collected data and writings, Lindeen forged a riveting and illuminating study of the unscrupulous endeavor.

Ordinary but sufficiently effective in its execution, the film’s most resonant segments are those where the upstanding son reflects on his torn family and a rotten system in which paroling alleged offenders even after so much time is seen as an affront to the toxic institutional loyalty to police.

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.

Though affecting and humbly breathtaking, Sun Children doesn’t bargain in condescending pity.

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

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

Fire Will Come is a pithy and devastating masterstroke from an auteur astute in his calibration of subdued emotional impact. Its discourse on forgiveness simmers in one’s mind inextinguishably.

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.

With its low-fi pleasures of see-through ghosts and TV screens as portals, the film reaffirms how ingenious the medium can be in the grasp of the right artist. From one segment to the next, the mechanics of this adventure repeatedly astound us.

Like the fiery folklore entity that lends it its name, Will-o’-the-Wisp burns bright with idiosyncratic ambition. Few cineastes out there are making deliciously defiant art like Rodrigues, and this entry in his catalog is a concentrated shot of his sardonic mastery.

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.

The sort of film that urges one to tell everyone about it so that they too can bask in its wondrous pleasures, “DJ Ahmet” is a revelation in that it seamlessly straddles the line between laugh-out-loud crowd-pleaser and art-house gem with affecting gravitas.

Co-directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt exalt the professional and personal life of Jazz musician Billy Tipton in No Ordinary Man, and avoid simplification of the trans masculine experience.

As irresistibly romantic as it is awe-inspiringly gorgeous, Weathering With You on the whole satisfies the craving for more of what “Your Name” ignited in viewers, yet with slightly less impact.

Treading topical waters with an incisive flair, de Jong offers no didactic salvation or pessimistic prospects. Goldie’s sole assurance is to trudge one rocky step at a time, and that’s all any of us can do.

Elio boasts dazzling animation – and even more striking emotional depth.

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.”

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

This wickedly funny, blood-soaked portrait of a decaying tyrant hits streaming on the week of the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s coup against President Allende. Larraín offers no false hopes about eradicating the ideologies that allowed it to happen and last. Instead, he warns that evil never truly perishes—it just transforms to poison new minds.

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

All My Life is too passionless to earn even a begrudged sniffle. It’s all paint-by-numbers, from the requisite “screaming inside a car” shot expressing a character’s frustrations to the store-bought spontaneity of a couple jumping into a fountain fully clothed.

Though not all its gyrating parts and magical realist flourishes congeal, this feverish visual parlance rouses.

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.

There’s no definitive verdict on pot’s attributes here, but Waldo on Weed offers reasonable hope with discerning caveats.

For all the commendable directorial moves Benaim makes, it’s the miraculous casting of first-time actor De Casta that propels Plaza Catedral into exceptional territory.

While the film loses some of its mesmerizing potency in the climax and subsequent wrap-up, it's still a beautiful and acute rendering of what could be if some of the most implausible lies we tell ourselves were in fact true.

Many of the mile-per-minute quips and hilariously biting remarks in Theater Camp will surely enter the collective consciousness once the general public has access to them.

Sundown doesn’t subvert what we’ve come to expect from Franco’s work, but it is still a distinctively cerebral rumination.

It Is in Us All, a hyper-visceral portrayal of manhood in its purest unrestrained form, is anchored by the force-of-nature turn from its superlative star Cosmo Jarvis. Intoxicating to the senses, this film boasts an indomitable vitality, a zest for life so uncontainable it brims with mortal danger.

Watching “Emilia Pérez” is akin to tasting a combination of substances that haven’t previously been put together, at first being taken aback by the bizarre taste but still going in for another sip.

Even those unfamiliar with one or both materials can detect the cyclical parable del Toro establishes through his understanding and repurposing of noir tropes, both visual and thematic. His “Nightmare Alley” is a movie of psychological tunnels and downward spirals.

Although Rotting in the Sun isn’t revelatory about how little those in the higher echelons of society think about the tribulations of average people, the movie’s forceful way of expressing it achieves its presumed goal: to punch up and mock the fools.

In the end, the neatly wrapped resolution amounts to a sense of incompleteness, like a concert that leaves you waiting for an encore.

López Estrada and company not only subvert lazy assumptions about their misunderstood metropolis and who lives and thrives there, but they also entirely shift the focus to the unheard and unseen for a wonderful reinvention. You’ll never see L.A. the same again and that’s for the better.

Radical can’t escape a formulaic construction with scenes that pack a predictably saccharine punch (see: kids rushing to hug their beloved teacher once he has proven himself an ally). And yet, as unsubtle as the story beats tend to march on, the backdrop of poverty and hopelessness make the light that Derbez’s character brings into the classroom, and in turn into the youths’ lives, earned.

Porous enough in their philosophical intent though as not to impose a strict meaning, and yet sufficiently potent to make us reassess our priorities, the array of interpersonal conflicts floating in the idiosyncratic “Blind Willow” feel like elegantly animated lucid dreams full of poetic imagery: far from realistic but viscerally truthful.

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.

Laden with bittersweet sentiment, the film packs a muted but lasting emotional wallop.

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.

An argument can be had about what will end up being the “best” animated feature released in 2026 — it’s early — but there’s little chance another film can dethrone Decorado as the most mind-bending.

Convincingly creepy while also slightly thought-provoking, it warns about deceiving facades, because what hides underneath masks is possibly much worse.

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.

Through Balvín’s plights, Heineman invites us to consider how entertainers have become commodified and disassociated from their humanity in our eyes. That’s not a cry for pity or compassion, but to investigate our expectations of them as people and not solely as distant figures.

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.

Strikingly bold in its dramatic construction, and adept at folding the macro issues into the lives of everyday residents of a tumultuous area of the world, “Huda’s Salon” is contained inside an expertly paced plot that seems ready to combust at any second.

"Blood Brothers” is worthwhile for the introspective investigation of lives so often, in the public eye, devoid of the tangled humanity that all interpersonal relationships carry.

Thankfully, Zuleta conjures enough effervescence to make us invested in their search for a place in the universe, even if the path is well-trod.

Avoiding the sophomore slump, Raiff’s delightfully sigh-worthy Cha Char Real Smooth is the type of sincere enterprise that could easily be spoiled with hackneyed platitudes or simplistically rose-colored plot points, yet here it sings with a wondrous candor and an unforced dramatic rhythm that turns it mightily irresistible.

A goosebumps-inducing affair, The Night is at its most effectively unsettling when the focus is to evoke fear as opposed to when it physically shows what’s haunting the characters trapped in their respective secret tragedies. Their unseen demons spook harder.

Despite its plot contrivances, the dramatic arc of Mutt delivers a changed individual on the other side of its many tribulations.

Misshapen parts and all, “Fortune Favors” fulfills its purpose as a joyfully eccentric tribute to personal authenticity.

Solemn in tone and indispensable in significance, the latest from an artist with a track record for surveying marginalized Americans is structured like a collage of incendiary and heart-wrenching moments that toe dip into social justice issues without staying long with any one idea.

With its numerous supporting characters, many unfortunately embodied through mannered acting, Steel’s picture spins around Levine’s superb turn of tender sensuality and suppressed rage seeking catharsis in the body of another.

Buoyant first-time actor, Levan Gelbakhiani goes from unknown to galvanizing star in a unique role. His presence is one of stunning physicality, proving there’s strength in what others see as a weakness in his character.

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.

While Homeroom is far more contained in length and scope than a Frederick Wiseman opus, the way editors Rebecca Adorno and Kristina Motwani construct a narrative from a seemingly free-flowing assembly produces a similarly immersive viewing experience, as if one was wandering the school shrouded in an invisibility cloak.

Heavy-handed acting from the young cast and Needell’s hackneyed dialogue further unmask the movie’s lack of visual wonder and narrative cohesiveness.

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

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

Even if mildly convoluted, The Deer King, a welcomed mature animated feature, nurtures enough admirable ideas and visual panache to command our attention.