Eric Kohn

At a time when calls for diverse media dominate the industry, Hidden Figures hedges its bets with a family-friendly commercial solution: warm and fuzzy storytelling that’s both progressive and safe.

The experimental approach takes some time to settle in and doesn’t always click, but at its best, The Infiltrators manages to personalize the undocumented struggle by transforming it into an unlikely blend of activism and suspense that makes a compelling case for the abolishment of ICE.

Rather than proposing solutions or envisioning a tight happy ending, Sand Storm lingers in the crevices of a fascinating cultural challenge.

An earnest, sometimes bland and unsophisticated look at Corinne's undulating relationship to spirituality in general and Christian dogma in particular. But it's also a surprisingly well-made character study outside of its specific theme.

Over time, Holland's approach pushes beyond despair and turns into a pure exercise in grim atmosphere, shifting from a story of staying alive to a closeup of a private hell.

In constructing its gripping overview, After Tiller maintains a generally straightforward roundup of talking heads, but its unassuming construction gradually generates an authoritative voice. Only once the arguments have been plainly established does the emotion truly take hold.

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.

With Tom Hanks appropriately cast as good-natured Sully, Eastwood delivers an earnest, straightforward look at the way the captain’s professionalism saved the day. But while that aspect of the movie hits more than a few obvious notes, the crash is the real star of the show.

Brainy and exciting at the same time, Interstellar invalidates the need for mindless Hollywood product. No matter its shortcomings, the movie achieves an impressive balancing act. It turns the mysteries of the universe into a cinematic playground, but for every profound or visually arresting moment, it also encourages you to to think.

The conflict in The Attack is less about the reasoning behind immoral behavior than the problems involved in any cursory understanding of it.

The movie walks a jagged line between conflicting sources, and overplays some of the more outrageous claims to the detriment of the trenchant investigation at its core. However, Kennebeck still musters a fascinating and provocative study of today’s misinformation age simply by adopting its elusive terms.

Brimming with constant new ideas and visual innovation, Shaw’s work captures the flurry of thought and motion at the center of dangerous times, and even dares to make them fun.

A loud, visually assaultive assemblage of genre tropes as technically accomplished as it is difficult to watch, "The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears" has plenty to impress while simultaneously offering so little.

This modest recollection is a quiet act of defiance and course correction. “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” may not be worth anyone’s time, but The Ghost of Peter Sellers is another story — and a much better one.

As a director, he finally shows a willingness to work on the same wavelength of the material instead of adding distracting bells and whistles that overstate his characters' grievances.

The most intense look at a social media-obsessed loner since “Eighth Grade,” Swedish director Von Horn’s Polish-language feature finds its character wrestling with the nature of her popularity, until she’s forced to confront the disconnect between her public and personal existence in vivid detail.

The story retains an inscrutable tone that sometimes makes its emotional qualities feel remote, but it still delivers a powerful message about the challenge of self-diagnosis by rooting it in universal experience

It’s often hilarious, confounding and downright strange; if not the director’s most polished work, it nevertheless delivers a demented philosophical puzzle that’s fun to scrutinize in all of its baffling uncertainties.

Showcases Jones' ability to provide ample entertainment value with sharply drawn characters in a minimalist setting.

If Joe marks a new beginning for some of its characters, the same description applies to its director and star.

One of European cinema’s most unclassifiable auteurs has delivered the bitter pill we deserve.

Barker's screenplay demonstrates a conviction that its genre can command great importance, allowing it to transcend the easy shocks associated with the exploitation movie experience and create an entirely fresh rhythm.

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.

Matsoukas’ fast and furious filmmaking doesn’t always click, but it always crackles with purpose, refashioning the lovers-on-the-lam trope into an emotional black-lives-matter lament, and it deserves to be met on those terms.

Oppenheim relishes in the strange beauty of their lives with Rockwellian precision, and the bigger picture remains elusive throughout. Look closer, however, and the movie makes a sobering point, whether or not Oppenheim intended it — that the biggest threat to American identity isn’t confronting the nature of the society so much as the people who prefer to escape it altogether, ending their lives in solipsistic bliss.

The movie’s disquieting tone unfolds with a familiar kind of naturalism — devoid of soundtrack, it develops an engrossing reality filled with pregnant pauses and fragmented exchanges. There’s a palpable despair to this scenario rooted in the authenticity of its environment.

While its main characters are tough-minded, Rust and Bone is itself pure heart.

Though at times almost too peculiar for its own good, The Lobster brings Lanthimos' distinct blend of morbid, deadpan humor and surrealism to a broader canvas without compromising his ability to deliver another thematically rich provocation.