Carlos Aguilar

The codirectors, unconcerned with visual ornamentation, disseminate facts clearly in an undertaking that’s scholarly adept yet disappoints artistically.

Corny to its core but with enough charisma to avert total insufferableness, it’s a bubbly counteraction of a movie boasting a progressive conclusion.

As crushing as it is stirring, the gritty fable co-written for the screen by Clapin and Laurant (“Amélie,” “A Very Long Engagement”) finds an ideal visual medium in the filmmaker’s evocative animation.

Awfully bewildering till the end, a final bombshell catapults the persistently nonsensical plot onto a level of implausibility that defies basic logic and ethics.

Blending dreamlike locations found in the real world with a dollop of visual effects, Waddington reaches the desired effect of a universe where technology and fantasy interact. Her cocktail of ideas yields a magical sci-fi thriller with an empowering edge, which, though imperfect due to its ambitions, puts women in charge of their own destinies.

Some distance between the source and the story would have benefited the themes at play, which end up buried beneath punches, slurs and bestial masculinity.

Ozon manages to instill a measured touch into every argument, outburst, and testimony, matching the naturalistic cinematography (by Manuel Dacosse, “Let the Corpses Tan”) and bestowing on us the most important and assured movie on this treacherous topic made this decade.

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

Cultural distinctiveness, in tandem with stylistic boldness, renders it an unprecedented feat. Thankfully, the proficient English-language dub aids in our ability to register the plot’s intricacies.

Ideal as follow-up to a meditation session, McKenna’s feature turns less gratifying as the sharp light of reality trickles into its philosophical cracks.

A mostly hackneyed lesson on racial biases desperately stumbling to appear provocative. It does, however, occasionally raise inquiries worthy of pensive consideration.

Strong casting keeps the film thriving through its many winding subplots.

A timely, undeniably compassionate but ultimately underwhelming production reflecting on a profoundly American issue.

Dassler’s personification of the real-life infamous and misogynistic character — his walk, his speech patterns — consistently startles.

Overwrought but nonetheless thoughtfully creepy, The Lake Vampire emerges as a new and formidable calling card for genre cinema in Venezuela and for Zitelmann as a creator.

Its imaginative fantasies and enchanting acting won’t solve our ageless woes of the heart, but will certainly trigger a smile for their relatable absurdity.

It has an intriguingly radical and gung-ho core concept, but shallow implementation.

On-the-nose in its use of music cues for emotional effect, this showcase of subpar filmmaking unabashedly regurgitates clichés in a story that shows little concern for the history of the location it is exploiting.

Invoking genre narrative devices, the entrancingly evocative La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) walks between fact and myth to engender a shrewdly frightening piece of political horror.

A towering filmic achievement, Monos pulsates like an inescapable vivid trance, cosmic and terrestrial at once, fantastical and violently stark, about victims and victimizers. Like all dualities, those in this excursion are two bends that belong to the same river.

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

A master class in endless narrative inventiveness and an ode to the resourceful and collaborative spirit of hands-on filmmaking, One Cut of the Dead amounts to an explosively hilarious rarity.

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.

Killerman lacks personality both stylistically and in its overall story construction.

What’s never visible, through the monologues and hackneyed one-on-one chats, is a desire to use lighting beyond flat luminosity. Visual delivery matches the insipidness of the material.

The resulting film is tenderly provocative and markedly vital.

In animation, Simó finds the ideal canvas, one that allows him to recount the most gruesome instances of strenuous filmmaking in more palatable form while also ingeniously enlivening the surreal sequences with glorious hand-drawn work.

End of the Century is a sublimely haunting experience that will make you sigh in recognition of the what-ifs in your own life.