Eric Kohn

While it’s less than the sum of its parts, those parts know how to deliver.

Abbasi grounds the narrative in an emotional foundation even as it flies off the rails.

Though salvaged in parts by Lindon’s impassioned performance and a few perceptive asides that hint at a better version of the events, At War is mostly a redundant portrait of working-class struggles that does more to belittle the efforts of its subjects than position them in galvanizing terms.

Hamaguchi finds ways of crystallizing the movie’s themes, lingering on contemplative moments that position the entire story as a metaphor for the contrast between the fantasies and realities of relationships, as well as the messy negotiation required to navigate those extremes.

Burning keeps twisting back on itself, charting the path of a man waking up to the world, only to find that it won’t stop messing with him.

It’s fascinating to watch Mitchell grasp for a bigger picture with the wild ambition of his scruffy protagonist.

The House That Jack Built is an often-horrifying, sadistic dive into a psychotic internal monologue, with intellectual detours about the nature of art in the world today, and puts considerable effort into stimulating discomfort at key moments. If you meet the work on those terms, or at least accept the challenge of wrestling with impeccable filmmaking that dances across moral barriers, it’s also possibly brilliant.

While it never reaches the psychedelic heights of Guerra’s previous effort and relies on a more conventional pattern of events, Birds of Passage delivers another fascinating tone poem about Colombia’s fractured identity.

Even as Three Faces staggers along, it maintains the unique blend of introspection and intrigue that defines this singular director’s talent.

Gaspar Noé’s remarkable psychedelic ride is his most focused achievement, a concise package of sizzling dance sequences and jolting developments that play like a slick mashup of the “Step Up” franchise and “Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” not to mention the disorienting cinematic trickery of Noé’s own provocative credits.

It’s a taut setup that risks veering into soapy territory, but Farhadi reveals just enough involving details to pause at individual moments and rest on more intimate observations.

Racer and the Jailbird speeds along at an engaging clip, but never overcomes the fundamental simplicity of its plot.

After 85 minutes of mediocrity, The Week Of finally lands on one inspired bit, and then there’s another half hour to go.

Less cohesive documentary than feature-length red flag, The Bleeding Edge assembles a range of talking heads and upsetting case studies to target several key villains.

The movie amounts to a tame, forgettable doodle, as if designed to imitate the scruffy Duplass movies that Naima worships; for Shawcat, however, it’s a promising step in a new direction that suggests a far more confident artist than the one she plays onscreen.

As a virtuoso juggling act, Infinity War has no real parallel in popular culture; as a movie, it’s an impressive montage of greatest hits until the gut punch of a finale.

The movie stumbles through its shaggy comedy aesthetic with mixed results.

Even though it doesn’t aim for outright comedy, Dumont doesn’t deny the material some levity.

Broken Tower feels stationary, repeating the same motifs and attitudes ad infinitum until the credits finally roll.

Unfolding as a series of tests in 1958 as NASA prepared for Project Mercury, the experiments on the eponymous 13 women have received far less exposure than the stories surrounding the NASA excursions themselves, but this straightforward, informative documentary provides an efficient historical revision, arguing that the bracing stories of the first men to enter space aren’t complete without an acknowledgement of the women stuck on Earth.

While Sweet Country snakes along to an inevitable outcome, Thornton retains a sharp control over the movie’s ravishing visuals, assembling them with a rhythmic quality that transcends any specific time and place.

Allah has loaded Black Mother with so many remarkable faces and observations that viewers can hover in its details with ghostly ubiquity, and he only breaks the spell with the recurring image of a nude woman holding a coconut to ground us in some kind of structural trajectory.

The drama, as it were, tends to blur together — baby penguins dodge watchful birds of prey, the dad wanders for ages before finding food — but Jacquet has ample footage to ensure the material sustains a hypnotic quality.

In Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the touching and insightful survey of Rogers’ decades-spanning career from Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville (“Twenty Feet From Stardom”), the filmmaker highlights Rogers’ capacity to explore complex themes through the lens of a kid’s program that took a dead-serious approach to his young viewers’ needs.

Support the Girls is a humble, restrained movie, at times aimless as it moves along, but never devoid of keen observations.

While it remains a fascinating character study driven by Cummings’ striking delivery, it also falls back on conventional twists. The resulting drama showcases a remarkably strong vision in the confines of more familiar story beats, but it’s a testament to Cummings’ maniacal performance that he manages to keep us engaged.

Potrykus’ movies are fixated on the self-destruction inherent to all capitalist systems, and there may be no better avatar for this concern than a brain-dead dude playing video games until the end of time.

Despite some obvious budgetary constraints and irksome plot holes, the movie strives to provide an alternative vision of the superhero narrative tied to the genuine experiences of people learning to come out of their shells and confront a new future for blackness, motherhood, and women taking charge.

Family is funny in bits and pieces, but so obvious in terms of its eventual direction that it might have been better served by less plot and more clowning around.

The closing minutes are a completely original sort of survival drama, one that defies precise explanation even as it delivers significant payoff.

Boundaries breaks no fresh ground and sags into conventional story beats on autopilot, but it’s rewarding enough to hang with these characters and roll with their mudslinging.

It runs too long and drags a bunch in its final third, but make no mistake: This is Spielberg’s biggest crowdpleaser in years, a CGI ride that wields the technology with an eye for payoff.

There’s an innocence to this premise that lends freshness to every vulgar turn.

The script lacks bite, save some wry meta-commentary on the movie’s existence (including a passing reference to “horror transmedia”). Nevertheless, Susco follows the well-worn path of using the horror/thriller genre to explore the eerie ambiguities of modern times.

Utilizing the pure physicality of a cast you can count on one hand, the movie maintains a minimalist dread throughout, with every footstep or sudden move carrying the potential for instant death.

They Remain, the new thriller from director Philip Gelatt (“The Bleeding House”) hews closely to some predictable beats, but it’s an engrossing exercise in boiling familiar ingredients down to pure, unbridled creepiness.

Mute is ludicrous, but within the confines of its referential logic, also pretty cool.

The movie casts an unmistakable spell out of Pfeiffer’s ability to imbue Kyra with a profound sense of sorrow.

At once a gripping jungle survival thriller and an alluring sci-fi puzzle, Garland’s heady gambit confirms he’s one of the genre’s best working filmmakers.

Somewhere in this material is the potential for tense exploration of private desires afflicting people enmeshed in extreme psychological disarray, but this sleepy drama never approaches the sophistication (or pulpy fun) that would allow it to succeed on that mission.

The elegance of Francis Lawrence’s direction, cinematographer Jo Willems’ measured camerawork, and James Newton Howard’s ominous score adheres to a familiar set of beats, but it’s the rare big Hollywood mood piece and mostly satisfying on those terms.

Shelton’s work is understated, but elevates seemingly forgettable scenarios with a wise, humane approach that makes even a lesser work like Outside In a cut above the market standard.

Eastwood remains a deeply purposeful filmmaker, and The 15:17 to Paris clearly has a plan — it builds to a riveting showdown, with a unique kind of payoff enhanced by the authenticity of its design. It’s a fascinating gamble even when it doesn’t hold together.

The movie falls short of deep insights, but its most prominent qualities — scrappy, ephemeral, a little bit lewd — mirror the chief attributes of Callahan’s endearing work.

With Shaye’s performance as its anchor, the movie is often a perceptive character study, at least until it’s hijacked by the same bland trickery that so often fogs up horror movies with more to offer.

As an experiment in filmmaking trickery, All the Money in the World is an extraordinary viewing experience; without that, it’s a compulsively watchable rumination on the worst of the one percent.

Under the fastidious guidance of writer-director Johnson, The Last Jedi turns the commercial restrictions of this behemoth into a Trojan horse for rapid-fire filmmaking trickery and narrative finesse. The result is the most satisfying entry in this bumpy franchise since “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980.

The director’s most outwardly accessible movie in ages, Phantom Thread is at once an evocative period drama and a magical fable about lonely, solipsistic people finding solace in their mutual sense of alienation.

The resulting 119-minute pileup of showdowns and one-liners is an undeniably tighter, more engaging experience. It’s also a tired, conventional attempt to play by the rules, with “hold for laughs” moments shoehorned between rapid-fire action — a begrudging concession that the Marvel formula works, and a shameless attempt to replicate it.

Even as the high-concept premise wears thin, Palka manages to generate an unexpected degree of sympathy for the floundering couple, and the wordless finale allows for a complete transformation that extends beyond Jill’s bizarre condition.

The New Radical magnifies an emerging desire for major changes to the global marketplace and makes a compelling argument for how those sentiments have gained traction.

Whereas “Creep” suggested that the annoying man-child is scarier than you think, Creep 2 shows just how much scarier he gets with age.

Its atmospheric sophistication holds strong throughout, channeling a wonder for the natural world reminiscent of Terrence Malick with an air of existential dread straight out of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t break fresh ground by Marvel standards, but it livens up the proceedings just enough to grease up the wheels of this franchise behemoth as it careens along.

Winslet delivers her most powerful, emotionally resonant performance in more than a decade.

The plight of the alienated monkey is at turns absurd and genuinely bittersweet, not to mention a whole lot better than its premise might suggest.

Alfredson’s direction proves yawnsomely methodical, ticking off surviving plot points as though filling in some I-Spy Book of Scandinavian Crime Cliches.

The movie is so cautious about avoiding disaster movie tropes that you can practically sense the resistance to arriving at the tragic finale. The result is a tasteful, well-acted bore, but so out of sync with traditional studio filmmaking it deserves some kudos anyway.

Director Denis Villeneuve goes beyond the call of duty, with a lush, often mind-blowing refurbishing of the original sci-fi aesthetic that delves into its complex epistemological themes just as much as it resurrects an enduring spectacle.

Above all, Last Flag Flying illustrates a fascinating link between Ashby and Linklater, two filmmakers from different eras who both explore American society’s capacity to alienate the same people contributing to its identity. That gloomy proposition finds a fresh tone in Linklater’s hands, where angry, disillusioned people still manage to find room to laugh.

Director Chris Perkel, who also edited, hasn’t made a movie so much as a prolonged tribute reel with ample material to fuel a dozen lifetime achievement award ceremonies.

Gugino and Greenwood deliver first-rate performances enriched by their characters’ ambiguous qualities.

While nothing groundbreaking, the story mines a degree of profundity out of the traditional supernatural thriller tropes at its core.

Unrest works particularly well once Brea looks beyond the limitations of her own bedridden experiences to document other cases worldwide, providing a stirring collage of stories to illustrate the destructive impact of the disease and why it remains widely neglected by the medical community.

No surprises here, folks; just half-hearted punchlines and unadventurous sentimentality readymade for marketplace consumption.

Rather than developing Roman’s conundrum, Roman J. Israel, Esq. settles for a prosaic character study laid out in painfully obvious terms, with a tacked-on twist in the third act just so that the story can find some way to end.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 unleashes a fascinating gamble, blending the grimy aesthetic of a one-note action movie with undercurrents of blue-collar frustration. It doesn’t quite succeed at fusing those two elements, but it’s further proof of a filmmaking sensibility willing to push beyond the presumed barriers of formula.

It’s a gorgeous, romantic drama that earns its emotional resonance without venturing beyond the most familiar beats.

The result is relentless and involving even when it stumbles. Jolie may not be a full-fledged auteur yet, but she unquestionably possesses a singular aesthetic that courses through her work and exists completely apart from her high-profile acting career.

Even as Brad’s Status doesn’t overextend its reach, Stiller gives the material a touching, soulful core.

Lady Bird is both snarky and sincere — a touching, markedly feminine ode to growing up that never takes its familiarity for granted. Gerwig earns the ability to make this rite-of-passage saga her own.

At times, the movie excels at portraying the dread of children forced to confront a world indifferent to their concerns. But no matter how many times Pennywise leaps out from unexpected places, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that we’ve been here many times before.

Equal parts journalistic investigation and family portrait, Ford’s delicate project transforms the source of his frustrations into an absorbing cinematic elegy.

Wirkola, who’s best known for his two “Dead Snow” zombie movies, struggles to tackle a more serious-minded tone this time around.

Even when the the music swells and people talk through their problems to reach unremarkable conclusions, there’s an undercurrent of emotional authenticity.

Offers a wry snapshot of self-involved New York lesbians that’s both enjoyably smarmy and unsettling in equal doses.

Enhanced by a number of notable comedic actors entering uncharted terrain, it’s the kind of movie that makes you laugh and flinch in equal measures, and despite some messier twists, never ceases to move in surprising directions.

Fortunately, you don’t need to wish for better versions of the movie experience Wish Upon calls to mind; they exist, and deserve repeat viewings far more than Wish Upon deserves one.

With War for the Planet of the Apes, technological wizardry and first-rate storytelling combine into a bracing action-adventure that concludes the best science fiction trilogy since the original trio of “Star Wars” movies.

It’s an unabashed freewheeling mess of CGI explosions, fast-talking strategies and shiny metal monstrosities clashing in epic battles. And it’s actually kind of fun, in an infuriating sort of way, to watch the most ridiculous Hollywood movie of the year do its thing.

Once the movie arrives at its brilliant climax, the cumulative effects of passing details lead to sweeping payoff.

It’s intermittently funny, mopey, and tense, sometimes totally off-base but certainly ambitious in its approach.

Considering that it’s a second sequel in a less-than-revered franchise, it’s a minor miracle that Cars 3 hits the finish line with a fresh sense of purpose.

Mitchell transforms Neil Gaiman’s sci-fi short story into a vibrant, edgy and at times outright goofy statement on tough antiestablishment rebels and freewheeling hippy vibes, suggesting that they’re not really all that that different.

At its best, the movie is a freewheeling gambit, hurtling in multiple directions at once, and it’s thrilling to watch Desplechin try juggle them all. [Cannes Version]

It’s an enticing challenge for the writer-director to develop a stylish mood piece out this flimsy material, adapted from a Jonathan Ames novella as a series of textured moments. The movie is an elegant homage to a mold of scrappy detective stories that often collapses into a concise pileup of stylish possibilities.

Light and inoffensive, it trades the intellectual rigor of Godard’s work for fluffy sentiments, but never gets crass. Above all else, it succeeds at transforming cinephile trivia into a genuine crowdpleaser.

Rather than smothering the material in bad vibes, the filmmaker uses them to gradually reveal a fascinating world in which anger and resentment becomes the only weapon any of these people know how to wield.

While not the same league as “Leviathan,” Zyvagintsev’s latest slow-burn look at anguished people tortured by problems beyond their control displays his mastery of the form.

Assembling the story out of small moments and gripping exchanges, Campillo grounds this earnest drama in a sense of purpose.

The director excels at generating a nervous energy around his character’s mounting desperation, and the movie’s intermittently engaging for that reason alone.

By positioning Shakespeare within a chatty tale of young adulthood — and giving it a feminist slant — Piñeiro proves the vitality of the material without becoming subservient to it.

After such powerful momentum, the brothers don’t quite stick the landing, but it’s a thrill to watch them try.

The Florida Project further cements Baker’s status as one of the most innovative American directors working today, but he’s also an essential advocate for the stories this country often doesn’t get to see.

The movie veers from the broad doomsday satire of the “Dr. Strangelove” variety to a more subtle portrait of institutional failure, and doesn’t always succeed at modulating its tones, but it’s nevertheless a searing critique.

The pair blends storybook visuals with a stream of clever gags and oodles of pathos to deliver an infectious romance almost too eager to please at every turn.

As with Snowpiercer, this is a story almost too eager to fire in multiple directions, sometimes with messy results, veering from broad satire to softer exchanges with little regard for finding balance between the two.

Just as this series focuses on survival instincts, it seems that Scott has found a way to exercise his own, keeping the “Alien” series relevant by resurrecting the same old scares.