Carlos Aguilar

For a movie that appears to stop and start as it shifts its focus a few times too many, denying us longer introspection into its most magnetic man-to-man rapport, The Power of the Dog thrives on having actors so submerged in the fiction that they are creating a reality. Their subcutaneous labor translates what’s unsaid into fleeting but telling gestures.

In 499, a truly brilliant accomplishment of unconventional storytelling, form and theme coalesce to open a portal where textbook history becomes an active entity and clashes with the present for a forward-thinking exploration.

True to formula, the neatly wrapped ending is telegraphed from continents away. But even under those rules, Harwood’s already rarefied quality and Butterell’s adept choices in his film directorial debut — his familiarity with material yields a positive transfiguration from stage to screen — color Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, a high-heeled and glossy romp that’s radical in its loving optimism.

White as Snow doesn’t go far enough into strangeness, but neither is this an adaptation aiming for realism. Only Huppert is on that skewed mindset, while everyone else plays it straight.

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.

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

Narrative bumps and all, The Evening Hour gives Ettinger a full stage to parade his unassuming virtuosity.

Even if the film is premeditatedly oblique and too precisely constructed in its cerebral machinations to engage with beyond an intellectual level, the ideas wrapped in its coldness are thought-provoking.

Less inventive that it gives itself credit for, Free Guy qualifies as a summer blockbuster with something mildly compelling to say; not the most articulate or substantial in its exploration of its most interesting ideas, to be sure, but enjoyable nonetheless

As a journalistic depiction of the rescue operations as they happen, Sabaya brims with heart-pounding tension and immediacy. But given the access obtained and Hirori’s connection to the people and the land where this grim chapter in modern history is unfolding, the superficial handling of pivotal aspects of the story is disappointing.

Told in sumptuously gritty imagery, this epic feat of bold imagination, unconcerned with mitigating its creative force for the sake of unadventurous audiences, has an unconventional film grammar and irregular structure that peers into the different possible outcomes of the would-be paladin’s trek.

The tone rarely hits its target for dark levity, often making one wonder, “Was that meant to be funny?”

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.

Seen then as radical, her views are in fact rather reasonable and still applicable. That said, the dense paragraphs in silent title cards prove strenuous. Since her inferences are immensely relevant, one can only wish that the format were more accessible.

A hefty order of longing served with a side of crime thrills, Pig is flavorful, fascinating and fancy, crafted by someone who knows how to create a dish that’s accessible yet undeniably gourmet in its complexity.

A masterwork of self-introspection through the canvas of cinema, The Souvenir: Part II is a meta epic of delicate proportions that constantly folds into itself and reveals the murky waters that border fiction and the reality that inspires it, sometimes, like in this case, more directly than others.

While Zeman’s enthusiasm is occasionally infectious, his conjectures, explained in voiceover, are riddled with platitudes and self-centered sound bites that say more about an egotistical need to be the first at something, to be the one who found 52, than about our connection with our large swimming counterparts.

Family Business offers an array of half-baked conflicts, all crying out to be noticed, while the creators are apparently unsure of which requires the most urgent attention.

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

But in spite of its form not being as compelling as its subjects, Rebel Hearts is still an inspired and inspirational recounting of a historical moment and the women at the center of it.

Despite trying to be forcefully meta (McGee explicitly says he hates biopics), the platitude-plagued script and mostly mundane filmmaking underscore how ultimately unadventurous Creation Stories is.

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.

The balance between the humanistic and academic is way off.

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.

Wholesome in the most “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” brand of mythical Americanism, 12 Mighty Orphans is engineered to rouse emotions with uncritical pride, never reaching the less immaculate corners of the historical period it employs as canvas.

“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.

The film, unfortunately, is poorly acted and offers Hallmark Channel-level craftsmanship.

The problem isn't that this concept has been reworked to death, but that Quintana and co-writer Chris Dowling (the scribe behind Christian dramas such as Run the Race and Priceless) fail to mold it into a winning catch.

What it lacks in uniqueness of concept, it makes up for in evocative implementation of the medium.

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.

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.

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

An offbeat and life-affirming triumph, “Limbo” is the kind of original work of art that moves the needle on an issue by interrogating the human factor rather than hanging out on the impersonal surface. A movie born of our times but destined to outlive them, it deserves to cross the threshold from festival darling to audience favorite.

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.

Gunda dispenses with all explanations and emotional scheming tactics for a thoroughly pictorial experience.

Even if some segments are invigoratingly thought-provoking in the same manner that a young student feels engaging with classical thinkers for the first time, the format’s lack of stimuli beyond cutting between speakers soon turns tedious. In scenes conceived as static frames, Puiu plays with depth of field for slightly more visually layered results.

This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is a searing epitaph for Mary Twala, a veteran performer at the peak of her absorbing presence. And it is a radical international breakthrough for Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, a filmmaker who uses potential philosophical expressions to ask tough questions about the ravaged history of Africa.

Derived from the novel Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri, this film iteration bargains in vague platitudes as it unsuccessfully tries to piece together a collage of factors threatening the viability of this one-of-a-kind place.

Afineevsky’s by-the-numbers, for-hire production feels unnecessary. Even if one can’t argue with its distilled message of loving thy neighbor, Francesco just serves to remind us of all the horrors unfolding simultaneously.

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.

Swinton manifests, with magnificently nuanced modulation, an emotional tangle; at times, it is raw with a cathartic force, while enmeshed with meekly conciliatory moments of codependence. Wielding a hatchet with violent purpose or begging for a final rendezvous, Swinton’s every scorching word cuts deep.

Superbly executed, Quo Vadis, Aida? is a masterful high wire act of tension and devastating humanism.

It’s a modest coming-of-age period piece that incidentally diverges into over-the-top dreamscapes.

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.

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

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

To see him wrestle with his own past, the pressure of a whole country’s dreams, and the relief of making them come true, is occasionally riveting, but it’s also what makes Pelé all the more a missed opportunity for a sharper portrait.

Though curiously charming, Jumbo behaves like love at first sight that doesn’t think about the consequences of the ardent now or the larger, long-term picture.

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.

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.

If pitted against other entertainment aimed at young viewers with much less panache, “Earwig and the Witch” wins, at least in conceptual adventurousness. Even if far from being top-tier Ghibli, it’s not without its fantastical pleasures.

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

Once Wang gets into the murky waters of the hoaxers here, one wishes she could dig deeper and examine the evolution of those fringe factions at length. That unfortunately doesn’t happen — likely given how much ground there is to cover with this story — yet her hard-hitting doc, both explores complex ideological battles and maps how a humanitarian calamity morphed into a political one in both countries.

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.

For all the technique that she demonstrates in Passing, it’s the way Hall mines praiseworthy turns from her cast that will earn her the most acclaim. Mannered in varying degrees, the actresses’ performances strike a delicate balance of emotional nuance and period-specific affectations.

Heartfelt but not cloying, Rocks is a radiant must-see.

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

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.

To its mild detriment, Beginning stays on a cerebral plane even at its most ravaging and emotionally intense. But in its muted havoc lies a potent intellectual laceration.

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.

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.

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.

Some movies wound us so profoundly that once darkness has consumed their final frame we are incapable of shaking off the heartache. That’s the power of Identifying Features, which is as painfully intimate as it is unsparing in its indictment of a country ravaged by a corrosive, entrenched evil.

Imperfect as it is, this often-intuitive piece with a strong observational eye personifies the notion of the calm before the storm.

Rather than speaking to the moment coherently, the movie communicates its message in loud fits of dull screaming.

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.

As long as the very idea that Black lives matter remains controversial, so long as our institutions refuse to reckon with the reality that they’re protecting not an ideal but whiteness itself, a cure to the country’s worst social malaise will remain out of reach. MLK/FBI is a perceptive reminder that this uphill struggle is ongoing and nothing new.

Dreibergs excels with his measured but immersive set pieces—like one that unravels in a snowy landscape at night, best exemplifying his directorial brawn.

With enough enjoyable originality to differentiate it from the numerous takes on the super men and wonder women that so heavily populate film and TV these days, We Can Be Heroes flies Rodriguez back to one of his main areas of interest.

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 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.

A first-time performer without formal training, Betancourt is a true revelation and the most accomplished player in an impressive ensemble of nonactors.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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

With sci-fi touches and sanctimonious eroticism, the incisive satire intently takes on the influence of evangelical Christianity on the state — namely the far-right movement that elected populist Jair Bolsonaro.

A masterpiece of bromantic woes, the movie subdues toxic masculinity and makes a case for men’s often dismissed necessity for platonic companionship.

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.

Earnest fraternal affection is the main attraction in Jungleland, director Max Winkler’s moody road-trip movie by way of a bare-knuckle boxing drama.

For its merits as a dynamic nonfiction piece incisively dealing with a pivotal issue from heartbreakingly human angle, Us Kids is indispensable viewing for anyone who genuinely cares about the future of this country beyond “thoughts and prayers.”

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.

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

Charm City Kings distinguishes itself from similar fare not just through its location and eye-popping bikes but also with the believably imperfect people that populate it.

Not only is Wolfwalkers easily the best animated film of the year, but a stirring masterwork, as stunningly gorgeous as it’s philosophically profound.

A brilliantly unflinching look at a society built on extreme disparities that reads more like an omen than a far-fetched fantasy, New Order repeatedly subverts any hope of redemption. It guts you with the worst of human nature, like Franco often does, but within a larger sociopolitical scale, and for that, it’s utterly unshakable.

One of the most atrocious viewing experiences of the year, “The Tax Collector” relies on a trite visual language built on obvious flashbacks and bland imagery that match the unimaginatively dreadful writing where every Latino in sight is a gangster.

It covers a lot of ground in a skin-deep manner that’s more useful as an intensive overview of the events — if you manage to keep track of who is working for which organization at any given time and why.

Stilted but commendable for its intent, the movie may function as a great conversation-starter if watched with young kids who might be receptive to new material. For fans of international animation, there are sporadic diamonds of craft, but likely not enough to impress viewers accustomed to the quality of the GKIDS catalogue.

Ultimately, Judy & Punch doesn’t hit squarely in the target, but hints at interesting conversations on prejudice, domestic abuse, and powerful individuals lacking integrity. As one watches, and ponders whether to laugh or gasp from one scene to the next, some of these inquiries do emerge strongly from its convoluted haze.

In both concept and execution, The Wolf House will render you awestruck.

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.

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

Heavy-handed messaging that mimics a morally didactic PSA drowns the proficiently shot movie in long tirades more noticeable for their vociferousness than for actually delving into any revealing specifics.

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

Sunsets, cellphone-lit melancholic music shows, and clichéd references to stars and constellations abound.

A mediocre screenplay renders the movie far less thought-provoking than it could be. By-the-numbers jump scares, perplexing speeches and a glaring score further hurt its impact.