Carlos Aguilar

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.

Though some elements read forcedly wedged in for thematic potency, “Plainclothes” feels seductively alive when Lucas and Andrew are alone together—either under the warm lights of the movie theater, where their shadows betray them, or as their hands touch the other’s body inside a lonely greenhouse.

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.

A shrewdly constructed, heartrending dramedy.

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

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.

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.

Through some of the screenplay’s slight formulaic stumbles, it’s Gallo’s charmingly fierce performance that anchors all the loose pieces.

An extraordinary first feature and one of the best films of 2025 so far, Sorry, Baby pulls off astounding feats of storytelling.

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

It’s through the alchemy of cinema that the Davies brothers have carried out a resurrection of a soul now frozen intact on the screen.

Less vibrant and proficiently pleasant, the new “Lilo & Stitch” only serves as a reminder to revisit the superior hand-drawn version.

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

All of Mendonça Filho’s aesthetic, genre proclivities, and ideological concerns coalesce in this larger period canvas.

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

Nonnas repeatedly drives home its point about the unifying force of a homecooked meal as an embodiment of community, and even as it overcrowds its narrative pot with too many unnecessary condiments that get lost in the mix, the result is ultimately palatable.

Said maintains plausibility throughout, never plotting far-fetched tribulations, but just outrageous enough to cause the viewer to cringe nervously.

That spirit-crushing feeling of powerlessness is what director Nabulsi aims to fend off, admittedly through not always effective narrative means, but with emotional sincerity nonetheless.

The King of Kings is a serviceable if uninspired take on a story told countless times in just as varied formats.

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.

Taut yet thoroughly laced with levity, Black Bag plays like the filmic equivalent of a skillfully executed espionage mission in how tight and exact it feels.

This sophomore directorial effort proves Clapin’s adept hand for soulful, existentialist tales with an offbeat touch, regardless of the medium he’s creating in.

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.

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.

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

With The Things You Kill Khatami turns in an absorbing and twisty take on introspection.

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

“Ochi” oozes wonder shot after shot, in part from the eye-popping environments produced through a combination of Evan Prosofsky’s lambent cinematography and the use of matte paintings.