David Fear

Even those who think Die My Love courts indulgence and incoherence to its own detriment — there are times when the movie itself threatens to fall apart and blow up the devices projecting it as collateral damage — will gape in awe at how Lawrence makes them feel this person coming apart at the seams. This mother makes what the star did in the equally provocative Mother seem like child’s play. She’s completely unhinged and loving it.

You can add Sean Wang’s Dìdi to the short list of films that fine-tune the personal into the universal, and turn a magic-mirror reflection of its creator into a shared wavelength.

Deadwyler is what makes 40 Acres feel like there’s something special happening here. The script has brains. Her Hailey has heart and soul. She gives us the postapocalyptic hero we deserve.

This sequel knows that when you leave childish things behind, you risk leaving key parts of the child’s personality and personal growth as well. It also recognizes that young adulthood is a different game altogether.

There are some breathtakingly gorgeous images the movie throws at you — the townsfolk silently waving white handkerchiefs during a funeral — among the few giddily grotesque visuals that you can’t shake. (Pedro Sotero’s cinematography is as stunning as a painting and as psychotropic as the drugs the villagers take before the finale.)

It’s a trial run that puts many of his peers’ masterpieces to shame.

It’s a demonstration of directorial chops that somehow never devolves into a look-mamushka-no-hands display, and a textbook example of how to use handheld camerawork (courtesy of cinematographer Kseniya Sereda) and splashes of red, green, and goldenrod effectively without being garish or grandiloquent.

An oral history of a once-broken, brainwashed nation, Final Account is the end result of Holland’s efforts to collect testimonies on the unthinkable before those who were there are gone.

You leave this movie knowing exactly why it never should have happened in the first place.

It’s the star himself who, even more than the decor and the change of cultural scenery, lifts Living out of the realm of a remake and into something far more profound. It becomes another story of a man at long last learning how to embrace the world, yet one that is completely substantial and shattering and, yeah, even life-affirming on its own.

There’s a sensitivity in even the most grand-gesture flourishes Polley and her editors Christopher Donaldson and Roslyn Kalloo throw in, but you also know there’s a voice behind this camera. And it belongs to an artist who definitely has something to say.

The Tillman Story balances cynical and inspirational aspects in equal measure. Pat's demise-and the media debacle around it-seems that much more tragic and enraging.

A truly impressive portrait of self-destructive, smooth-talking alpha males, and a testament to an actor who waltzes across that Peter Pan–syndrome tightrope with the greatest of sleaze.

For all of the painstaking work that went into making this intricate animated feature feel not just handmade but heartfelt, Marcel is a wisp of a wistful film, whether it’s being existentially deep or essentially silly. Most of all, it just feels like a salve.

The sisterhood who have made this an art form mostly remain unsung heroes, as it were, of the hit parade. Their collective bow is long overdue.

In one grease-monkey swoop, Glodell proves that he's a subversive talent worth following. Let a thousand of his future projects bloom.

It’s an exhilarating and profoundly sorrowful work.

Apollo 10 1/2 starts off as a fantasy, a family comedy and a loosey-goosey flashback. It exits as a tribute to imagination, which — like so many of Linklater’s best movies — uses something personal as a jumping-off point for something poignant, funny, expansive, and ultimately moving.

Do not come to Conclave in search of some divine messages about power, corruption and lies percolating within a sacred space. Just embrace it for being the type of gobsmacking, pope-up-the-jams entertainment that will have you genuflecting with gratitude over its over-the-top ridiculousness.

The importance of Tiesel’s performance here can’t be overstated, and even during what is easily the most excruciating birthday-party scene involving cock ribbons ever, the actor lends an incredibly profound sense of sorrow to the film’s pitilessness.

All ye searching for Primal Fear redux, abandon hope. The character-driven drama he (Curran) offers viewers instead is something far more complex, cracked and unique for an American movie boasting big-name stars: an unblinking glare into the abyss.

Say what you will about this grand gesture at filtering Edward Gibbon’s history lessons through a lens darkly, it is exactly the movie that Coppola set out to make — uncompromising, uniquely intellectual, unabashedly romantic (upper-case and lower-case R), broadly satirical yet remarkably sincere about wanting not just brave new worlds but better ones.

The real strength of Cohen’s occasionally didactic drama, though, is in the way the film redirects your focus to the periphery and reminds you of the richness that resides there. It was an achievement Bruegel mastered early on. And it’s what makes Museum Hours its own work of art.

How much self-inquiry Park himself has put into Shortcomings is pure speculation, but you can’t deny he’s put his soul into bringing his vision of a movie that explores everyday identity politics — but isn’t just about identity politics — to life.

Like Crazy proves it's still possible to make a love story that's both genuinely sweet and bittersweet.

It’s a fast, not as cheap, and much better than decent cover version of another song, one that knows very well that it’s a cover version.

Somehow, The Beach Bum is even nuttier, less logical, more visually beautiful and down-in-the-gutter uglier than the film you just imagined from that description.

In a perfect world, viewers would get college credit after watching Lynch/Oz. You may not walk away any closer to a degree, unfortunately, but you will definitely land over this rainbow with an entirely different view of a maverick filmmaker’s work, as filtered through Hollywood canon fodder.