Carlos Aguilar

Its narrative clarity makes its fable seem timeless, while innovating and expanding the visual immersion of its medium.

Pimpinero grazes the chance of becoming a great film but repeatedly lets it slip from its grasp, settling for being just slightly above average.

With the concise, but still singularly haunting Rule of Two Walls, Ukrainian American director David Gutnik has assembled a collection of portraits highlighting the experiences of artists from across the country who’ve found shelter in the city of Lviv, including some of the people behind the making of this very documentary.

Dahomey is at its most blazingly confrontational when Diop includes footage of a panel session in which students discuss the issues at hand.

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.

Cooley’s film remains very much a mainstream product entrenched in the build-it-as-we-go mythology of these sentient machines, but there’s an attention to the motivations and desires of its characters missing in many Hollywood cash grabs. Animation can be a transformative, liberating force, even for stories that have been told ad nauseam.

Both a restaurant makeover journey and the portrait of a child who grew up to have enough cash to purchase his personal Disneyland, this amusing documentary bears witness to Parker’s at-all-costs mentality, even when the more advisable choice would be to abandon the project.

Destined to fade into obscurity in the presence of the other two films about Reality Winner, Fogel’s version should at least indicate to other filmmakers that they must leave this story alone and move on to other preoccupations.

The contrived third act notwithstanding, expect audiences in movie theaters to engage with The Front Room in audible gasps, one nauseating stunt at a time.

Using a style of elegant lyricism, which enshrines tiny moments into glisteningly miraculous turning points, Erice lets the exchanges between the people he’s conceived play out without the need to advance the plot.

Ramchandani’s baffling screenplay contains the most obvious, stock archetypes of people recurrent in Hollywood’s uninteresting depictions of Latino communities. Yet, its dialogue, which ranges from the laughably stereotypical to the downright absurd in the context of a sweatshop, stands out as the most unforgivable affront.

The sum of all these components results in a film that’s delightful to look at, though not as compelling narratively.

Crowded with shallow characters (particularly Jinzhen’s loved ones: his wife and adoptive family) there to forcefully inject emotion, overlong and technically pristine while devoid of cinematic personality, “Decoded” is pleasant to look at but difficult to feel much toward.

Partly a tribute to the routine occurrences that collectively make a place feel like one belongs, Monica Sorelle’s delicately galvanizing slice-of-life debut “Mountains,” set in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, overflows with such details.

An insipid mishmash of trite genre tropes, Borderlands is devoid of any real edge.

Sing Sing gathers a collection of heartfelt, nuanced performances in an unmissable drama about the life-altering effects of a real-life rehabilitation-through-theater program at the titular prison.

The evocative visuals here sing in unison with the characters’ yearning to fulfill the promise of their lifelong dreams. They are chasing a glimmer of light before twilight.

There’s just enough of an interesting theme and strong production value (it’s impossible not to succumb to the breathtakingly imposing landscapes) to earn The Convert some grace.

A single frame of “The Imaginary” can outshine the mass-produced, visually uninspired animation in some of the American offers targeting the same demographic.

With its image folding onto itself like a wave in unstoppable motion, “The Human Surge 3” envelops the senses until the very end.

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.

Not one to shy away from sincerity, Desplechin brings his beloved Paul Dédalus full circle in a satisfying project about the grandeur of the force that unifies the fictional character with the real man.

It’s a Garfield movie for audiences who have never heard of Garfield, which reads as an attempt at erasing history and reintroducing him in this high-octane, overly stimulated form for a generation with reduced attention spans.

Thelma the Unicorn avoids being rendered completely unoriginal by its overly familiar premise thanks to consistent splashes of acid humor and a plethora of wacky supporting characters.

A gripping, heady and refreshing 2D animated take on the perils of man and machine coexisting, Périn’s first feature as a director inserts the necessary exposition in a mostly natural manner so we incrementally become aware of how this reality functions.

This tale of parents and poultry more than earns the exclamation point in its title. It sweeps you into a whirlwind of ingenuity, bite after animated bite.

McCarthy and editor Brian Philip Davis deploy high-voltage moments with expert timing, using the dark to their favor in refreshing fashion.

While “Absence of Eden” lacks narrative originality, it often dazzles visually.