David Rooney

It’s perverse, juicy fun of a kind we don’t get much of anymore.

The strong cast and distinctive approach to a widely trafficked subgenre make it a soulful rumination on loss.

Franco allows nothing to distract from his actors, observing their characters’ behavior with a forensic detail both transfixing and disturbing.

It's the integrity of the performances by Hovig and Skarsgard that keeps the classy drama so engrossing, with the director making neither character entirely saint or sinner but giving them both infinite shadings in between.

Creepy, suspenseful and sustained, this skillfully made lo-fi horror movie plays knowingly with genre tropes and yet never winks at the audience, giving it a refreshing face-value earnestness that makes it all the more gripping.

Much of this might have been formulaic in less artful hands, but Kore-eda has an unfaltering lightness of touch, a way of injecting emotional veracity and spontaneity into every moment.

Making a unique police drama in itself is a considerable achievement. Red, White and Blue earns that distinction partly through its skilled avoidance of the standard beats of stories about rookie cops chafing against the establishment. But it's also a direct result of Logan's remarkable qualities as a real-life protagonist that enable it to transcend conventional bio-drama.

Exhaustively tracking the five-year battle to overthrow California’s ban on same-sex marriage, they distill the dense legal process into a lucid narrative while illuminating the human drama of the plaintiffs, and by extension, the countless gay men and lesbians they represent.

This is a work of unfailing restraint, which makes its stealth emotional heft all the more remarkable.

While Woods' brash vitality is the movie's motor, it's in the moments when Goldie drops her bravado and reveals her vulnerability that the story becomes more than a reckless adventure.

In Mayer’s assured hands, a drama that could easily have become schematic instead pulses with urgency, longing and raw feeling, morphing smoothly in its final third into a lean thriller.

An immersive plunge into the chasm separating the servant class from the rich in contemporary India, the drama observes corruption at the highest and lowest levels with its tale of innocence lost and tables turned. If there's simply too much novelistic incident stuffed into the overlong film's Dickensian sprawl, the three leads' magnetic performances and the surprising twists of the story keep you engrossed.

While it veers heavily toward pretentiousness, this striking metaphysical mystery is intensely compelling, conjuring a mood between European high-arthouse and the unsettling psychological horror of "Rosemary's Baby."

The Iceman is a vivid evocation of a remorseless sociopath sustaining a double life as a contract killer and devoted family man. Gritty, gripping and unrelentingly intense, Ariel Vromen’s film boasts richly detailed character work from an ideal cast.

Even if Da 5 Bloods at times seems to be morphing into an entirely different movie, its playfulness, as much as its raw power, keeps you glued.

The film is anchored by incisive characterizations rich in integrity and heart, and by an urgent simplicity in its storytelling that's surprisingly powerful.

The impeccable selection of closing clips allows us to reimagine him as a man not just idolized as a star but accepted for the entirety of who he was.

After its slow start, Minyan becomes progressively more absorbing, its gritty visuals conveying soulful intimacy, accented with occasional understated touches of wry humor.

A stunningly crafted work from first-time feature director Nicole Kassell.

A powerful account of self-actualization spanning 20 formative years, Liesl Tommy’s biopic is also an intimate gift of love, rich in complexity, spirituality, Black pride and feminist grit rooted not in didactic speeches but in authentic experience. The ageless music, of course, is the galvanizing force, but it’s the personal struggle behind it that makes the story so affecting.

There's a good reason behind every technical choice — closeups and moments of stillness intensify the intimacy of the more introspective songs; nimble camerawork juices up the contentious cabinet battles; wide shots and stunning overheads add to the scope of momentous scenes like the fatal duels that punctuate the story.

There’s no escaping the fact that Eric Larue is a downer, but it’s a work of thoughtful intelligence and restraint, elegantly shot and graced by a striking score from Jonathan Mastro full of dissonant strings that often evoke a sense of nerves about to shatter. Most of all, it’s beautifully acted.

There’s a modesty about You Hurt My Feelings that makes it seem in some ways as simple and straightforward as its title. But Holofcener is such a gifted writer that it becomes a mosaic of mildly absurd minutiae, mixed in with legitimate feelings.

It's full of wry observations about the confusion of relationships — female friendships in particular — along with droll insights about a writer's inspiration and whether drawing from real life constitutes a license or a betrayal. In addition to wonderful performances from an ace cast, especially Bergen in divinely flinty form, the production is a technical jewel.

The unselfconscious naturalness of the nonprofessional cast yields no shortage of sharply observed moments.

Themes of courage, patriotism, faith and unwavering adherence to personal beliefs have been a constant through Gibson's directing projects, as has a fascination with bloodshed and gore. Those qualities serve this powerful true story of heroism without violence extremely well, overcoming its occasional cliched battle-movie tropes to provide stirring drama.

This is Manville’s film, a too-rare star vehicle in which one of England’s most invaluable actors carries us effortlessly on the wings of Mrs. Harris’ dream of egalitarian elegance.

The movie remains the work of a master craftsman with his own idiosyncratic storytelling signature, though the pathos and suspense of a hardworking family man driven by desperation to murder get short-changed in favor of wacky humor.

The unapologetic sentimentality doesn’t make this bittersweet comedy-drama any less touching or insightful in its observation of spiky family interactions when end-of-life issues and questions of inheritance cause sparks.

With Hardy in fine form at the wheel, Havoc knows what its audience wants. It also looks great.

At a little over two hours, Red Rocket suffers mildly from prolix stretches, and just like The Florida Project, it could have used some tightening. But it’s a pleasure to put yourself in Baker’s capable hands as he ambles through his loose story with its affectionate, slyly humorous character observations and immersive sense of place.

The individual personalities that emerge in interviews both from back in 1981 and now, with the actors in their 50s, are often delightful, both funny and rueful.

It’s an unassuming comic drama that sneaks up on you, its emotional honesty fueled by gorgeous performances of unimpeachable naturalness from Will Arnett and Laura Dern.

This glowering study in crime and punishment is meticulously crafted, vividly inhabited storytelling with a coherent, thought-through vision, and that makes for muscular entertainment.

The Fits is a lovely character portrait, abstract and yet highly evocative, given an other-worldly feel by deft use of slow-mo, sinuous tracking sequences and music that ranges from ambient drones to discordant strings and the percussive claps, clicks and stomps of the drill routines.

An engrossing, unfailingly lucid account of a momentous political breakthrough that interrupted a decades-long impasse. Few will be unmoved by its sorrowful timeliness.

As each new wrinkle comes to light, Soderbergh keeps the action wound tight, zigging and zagging like a well-oiled machine.

A haunting lead performance from Marco Pigossi, steeped in melancholy and raw pain but also in moments of openness, optimism and even joy, helps make High Tide an affecting portrait of untethered gay men seeking meaningful connections.

This rip-roaring tribute to a maverick artist trips along like a surreal odyssey, punctuated by lively reminiscences, choice clips and superb photographic material. The whole enterprise seems remarkably true to the spirit of an anarchic life often driven by booze, blow, women and guns.

While Anora could stand to lose 10-15 minutes, it’s a very satisfying watch; the director continues firmly staking out his niche as a chronicler of the messy lives of an often invisible American underclass.

It’s impossible for Wakanda Forever to match the breakthrough impact of its predecessor, but in terms of continuing the saga while paving the way for future installments, it’s amply satisfying.

Duplass and Strassner’s script traces the one-step-forward, two-steps-back progress of the main characters’ connection over the course of the night with delicacy, never stretching the boundaries of credibility.

A richly textured drama with an angry poetic edge that gets inside the obsessive subculture of New York graffiti artists, Bomb the System signals the arrival of a talented filmmaker in NYU film graduate Adam Bhala Lough.

A touching, old-fashioned charmer that ultimately satisfies.

While the payoff could have used some extra punch, the teasing path that leads there is bewitching, with Lola Kirke serving as an enigmatic guide.

The film’s quiet pleasures creep up on you.

It’s a wispy yet insightful and emotionally satisfying film.

Running just 81 minutes, Fallen Leaves is slight compared to many of Kaurismäki’s more complex narratives, but its well of feeling creeps up on you and it delivers a good share of laugh-out-loud lines with droll aplomb. Besides, who are we to quibble about any gift from one of world cinema’s greatest treasures?

The sophomore writer-director adapts to the requirements of the genre, expertly sustaining tension, peppering big scares throughout and earning our emotional investment in the key characters. Plus a cat.

After a terrific first hour that crescendos in an extended sequence of quiet yet potent white-knuckle suspense, the film loses some traction in the more challengingly paced second half. But it remains an engrossing reflection on radical violence and its fallout.

The film has a different though no less riveting intensity, thanks to Rooney Mara's emotionally naked performance in the title role, and unflinching support from Ben Mendelsohn.

A model of poise and restraint, the film flows in a way that is deliberately undramatic, but made no less involving by the dreamy gentleness of its approach.

Through all this, Byrne’s high-wire act remains riveting, scrutinized for long stretches of the film in DP Christopher Messina’s probing closeups. It’s a bruising performance, digging deep into the intense pressure and isolation that can sometimes accompany motherhood.

This melancholy, insightfully scripted coming-of-age drama is moving without being manipulative and makes an assured calling card for writer-director Karen Moncrieff.

Few are going to rate The Christophers as top-tier Soderbergh, but it bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.

Rippling with psychological complexity and sneaky humor, this is a rich character study that takes constantly surprising turns.

M3GAN might be too frequently funny to be terrifying, but it’s never too silly to deliver tension and vicious thrills. It seems a safe bet that the killer doll will return, not to mention become an in-demand costume next Halloween.

The film spans several years in her life and that of her family, covering moments both important and relatively inconsequential. It’s a credit to Hers’ contemplative, never intrusive observational style that by the end of the two-hour running time we know them intimately.

The doc's beautiful final sequence rips your heart out.

In the film’s exquisite handling of death as the ultimate – or in some cases the only – conduit for love, it arrives at an unmistakable final note of hope and renewal.

The film at times is more playful than illuminating, but it's also a handsomely crafted and boldly idiosyncratic contemplation of a great artist for whom political compromise was anathema.

Other attributes carried over from Liu’s nonfiction work are his restraint and avoidance of sentimentality in a slow-burn, heavily observational drama whose unhurried pacing requires patience. But there’s a haunting quality to the melancholy story that stays with you, and despite what often seems like a bleak outlook, it finds resonant notes of hope.

This taut adaptation of Brad Land's 2004 memoir is less a dramatized depiction of headline-grabbing hazing tragedies than a penetrating consideration of the psychology of violence and its role in defining manhood.

As dour as it often seems with its reek of stale booze and cigarette smoke, there’s joy here for patient audiences willing to find it, and to forego the easy consolations of a more conventional outcome.

It’s Phoenix who keeps you glued even through the film’s sometimes challenging longueurs, in a performance as fully, insanely committed as any he’s ever given. If the character invites more cringing pity than emotional investment, that’s more to do with the distancing effect of Aster’s surreal approach than anything lacking in Phoenix’s raw, gaping wound of a characterization.

While hope is a quality not readily associated with the Mexican auteur’s work, it keeps surfacing here to extend a lifeline, even as we wait for the other shoe to drop. In that regard, Franco’s latest represents a slight departure, without surrendering the director’s signature austerity and intensity. He’s helped considerably by Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, two riveting leads who hold nothing back.

The fact that the outcome is wide open to different interpretations makes Men a more ambiguous work than Garland’s sci-fi horror hybrids, Ex Machina and Annihilation. It’s also more menacing and viscerally creepy.

The tireless volley of ideas and inventions make this a delight that should connect with kids and adults in both dubbed and original-language versions.

An entertaining, deeply respectful assessment of the directors and actors who rode the countercultural wave of the 1970s.

An original, unexpectedly affecting tribute to two distinctive comic performers.

Writer-director Osgood Perkins’ serial killer chiller fully acknowledges a debt to The Silence of the Lambs in its chronicle of a young female rookie agent pulled into the FBI manhunt for a killer wiping out entire families. But the movie is also its own freaky trip, a darkly disturbing experience pulsing with an evil that’s unrelenting in its subcutaneous creepiness.

Delves far more deeply into grisly physical manifestation than psychological motivation, making it seem something of an actorish vanity piece. But the drama is directed with arresting spareness and control.

Keeping exposition spare, Edmands’ storytelling displays a pleasing economy of means, and an empathetic handle on characters all flawed in one way or another, existing in self-imposed solitude.

Lent distinguishing heft by its roster of screen veterans, this gripping drama provides an absorbing reflection on the courage and cost of dissent.

This is the kind of robust entertainment — wholesome though not at all toothless, alternately joyful and heart-wrenching — that doesn’t get made much anymore. . . It’s a family movie in the best sense of the term, a crowd-pleaser with a ton of heart.

As a penetrating study of character and milieu, it’s the work of a mature and enormously talented filmmaker not afraid to take chances.

The real strength of Bozek's film is how much of Cunningham's own voice it gives us.

What makes this gripping graphic novel adaptation so distinctive is the trust it places in its audience to stay glued through the quiet, character-building interludes threaded among excitingly varied fight scenes that crescendo in an expertly choreographed showdown.

Delivers continuous pinpricks of irreverent humor and subversive cultural commentary.

It's both a relief and a pleasure to report that this high-gloss rom-com — based on the bestselling novel of a Singaporean author, directed by an Asian-American and featuring an all-Asian cast — is such a thoroughly captivating exploration of the rarefied question of whether true love can conquer head-spinning wealth.

Even when accessing the situation remotely via camera operators and citizen journalists on the ground, Wang deftly balances factoids with first-hand experiences to show the emotional cost, both for people unable to say goodbye to their loved ones and front-line health care workers and funeral home staff, absorbing the trauma of unrelenting losses.

The Northman is certainly a lot of movie, and while its hysterical intensity at times veers into overwrought silliness, it’s both unstinting and exhilarating in its depiction of a culture ruled by the cycles of violence. The cohesion of Eggers’ vision commands admiration, as does the commitment of his collaborators, both in front of and behind the camera.

A darkly textured, powerfully suspenseful genre piece.

Given DuVall's background as an actor it's unsurprising she draws such engaging work from her cast, with tasty individual characterizations, but more importantly, a group dynamic that's both lively and believable.

This is a gentle, reflective portrait that seldom gets personal and yet somehow feels quite candid.

The first-time director's grasp of pacing could be improved and the overlong movie can't quite sustain the energy and charm of its sensational start. But this is a durable tale of romance, heady fame and crushing tragedy, retold for a new generation with heart and grit.

An eloquent expression of both unorthodox romance and bitter disillusionment with the hypocritical institutions of family and society.

This is distilled Mamet, peeling back psychological layers and building characters exclusively through chiseled dialogue.

In a role that calls for much of her turbulence to be internalized, Savard, who is nearing the end of her own professional swimming career, is magnetic. You feel her unease, and both the weight and the release of her decision, at every turn.

Peter von Kant is perhaps a bit too rarefied an endeavor to significantly expand Ozon’s following, and some LGBTQ audiences might conceivably flinch at its protagonist’s self-flagellation, much as they did with Fassbinder’s. But its skewering of celebrity is mischievously enjoyable and its declaration of love for a queer-cinema forefather disarmingly sincere.

Stone and Plemons are both in top form, clearly vibing with the director’s idiosyncratic sensibility and upping each other’s game. And newcomer Delbis is a sad-sack delight, a sweet-natured naïf caught in Teddy and Michelle’s ferocious battle of wits.

It's a harrowing watch, but a cathartic one, with each of the four superb principal actors delivering scenes of wrenching release.

This is Phoenix's film, and he inhabits it with an insanity by turns pitiful and fearsome in an out-there performance that's no laughing matter. Not to discredit the imaginative vision of the writer-director, his co-scripter and invaluable tech and design teams, but Phoenix is the prime force that makes Joker such a distinctively edgy entry in the Hollywood comics industrial complex.

There’s a beguiling dichotomy in Kristen Stewart’s accomplished first feature as writer-director — between the dreamlike haze and fragmentation of memory and the raw wound of trauma so vivid it will always be with you.

Consummately crafted and stunningly shot in magnificent locations deep in Brazil's remote northeastern badlands, the film unapologetically courts the commercial curve of the international arthouse arena with its rustic exotica and sensory overload of poetic imagery, giving it something of a grandiose air.

Zhao’s face is one of the most transfixingly expressive in modern cinema, and her long collaboration with her husband Jia stands among the screen’s greatest actress-director unions.

Director Michael Tyburski and co-writer Ben Nabors' lyrical character study ... deftly balances the cerebral with the soulful in a story of transfixing originality.

The Ballad of Wallis Island breaks no new ground, but it’s an unexpectedly pleasurable, funny-sad watch, full of sweet, soothing music.