Carlos Aguilar

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.