Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

It’s a transcendent love story, and a work of overwhelming empathy.

The film exudes pure humanity in every frame, in all of its messiness and splendor and tragedy, and much of that raw emotion is owed to the performances.

The Souvenir‘s power is deceptive, in a way; it’s only at the film’s end, at the moment of its bracing final image, that its ideas and genre subversions come fully into focus.

This is despairing filmmaking, but also the kind that arrests the eye from its first moments. Lee has made something rare here: a portrait of poverty that treats its subjects not as victims or as aggressors, but simply as pawns of a far grander social scheme than any of them can possibly comprehend.

At times, László Nemes’ film induces the sensation of drowning, slowly. Not the kind where you’re pulled under by the riptide, but the kind where you’ve been treading water for so long that the body starts to betray you in tiny increments, and any life preserver must be met with utter desperation.

It’s at once subtle and outlandish, sensual and thoughtful, outrageously unconventional and yet one of its director’s most confidently assembled features.

There’s not an ounce of wasted motion to be found throughout Cold War. Pawlikowski moves at a fleet pace, trusting in his audience to fill in the gaps that the film’s understated storytelling leaves along the way.

Kogonada matches the inquisitive eye of his two leads, finding the splendor in the everyday, the unusual in the unlikeliest places, and the need for connection that runs beneath all things.

Three Billboards may be a film chiefly concerned with rage, and pain, but it’s also one of the best dark comedies of recent vintage, and one of the better dramas as well. While some of McDonagh’s narrative threads do time out in unexpected and even unresolved ways, the film’s highs are exemplary.

A Star is Born isn’t a new love story, or even an especially unique one. But it’s a traditional love story told supremely well, and sometimes that’s exactly what audiences go to the movies to see.

It’s about how reality invades our dreams, and how the people we trust teach us to be less trusting as we get older. Tan plays these themes out with a rare emotional honesty, never allowing the fact that it’s a deeply personal work to prevent her from indicting herself alongside any of the other key players involved.

There’s talent in every corner of the film, and it elevates Black Panther beyond so many of its superhero contemporaries even as it exhibits some formulaic tendencies. It’s a sterling example of formula done exceedingly well, however, particularly in the ways it uses the familiarity of that formula to tell a new kind of story.

Apollo 11 is a great documentary, and its greatness can largely be attributed to the stunning archival scenes compiled within it. It’s impossible for anybody who wasn’t there to truly understand what it felt like to see Apollo 11 complete its travels, but for at least 93 endlessly arresting minutes, Apollo 11 does its very best to put you right there.

There’s a breathless sense of discovery and play that makes the film seem new, even as it’s tap-dancing through the imprints of so many sci-fi stories throughout the years. Simply put, superhero movies don’t often carry this sense of possibility anymore.

There’s a lot of depth to Rushmore, but lingering in those depths for too long does a disservice to how consistently funny it also is.

It’s a perfect marriage of direction, performances, and writing, the kind of comedy that people eagerly wait for. Its solutions aren’t easy, and its paths unusual, but it’s a love story that completely earns its emotional peaks, and the kind of comedy that makes you wish every single one of them were this great.

City of Ghosts is far less about the region’s troubled history than about the now, the daily abuses that continue to grow in severity as politics are talked elsewhere.

Peele is a talented director of action as well as horror, and Get Out is always far from boring even in its more familiar scenes.

Support the Girls is the kind of film that sneaks up on you as it’s going along.

What’s perhaps most remarkable about Mudbound is its emotional honesty, Rees rarely sidestepping the inner lives of her characters and never diminishing their own battles to live in an unlivable time, however wrongheaded they might be.

It’s a simple story of children who have to figure out, at too young an age, what kind of people they’ll be. And in its pervasive sense of hope, Barras seems to suggest that they can be anybody they want. There’s always still time, as long as love remains in the world.

The Handmaiden is film at its most exhilarating by a director at the height of his powers, and it’s the kind of singular rarity that must be savored when it comes around.

The Lure somehow manages to seamlessly assemble a film equal parts hilarious, affecting, and grisly while trading and warping aesthetics and tones by the scene.

It’s odd to see Elliott in a performance that involves him appearing so adrift, but the actor mines Lee’s insecurities for a naked honesty that makes his arguments and apologies alike ring with a lifetime of remorse.

A simple story told well can still be effective if the emotional resonance underneath it comes through. In Kubo, it absolutely does, thanks to the uniformly excellent voice performances.

You Were Never Really Here is a masterpiece of form and performance, but somehow, its accomplishments in sound and aural texture manage to dwarf even those other accolades.

A Ghost Story is filmmaking that challenges and exhilarates, a potent reminder of how many new places film can still be taken even after a century of people working in the medium.

Mandy is destined to live forever as a cult favorite, but what’s going to set it apart from so many others is the way in which Cosmatos sustains the emotional stakes of Red’s quest through the entire film.