Gregory Nussen

It would be an understatement to say that Dead Lover is unusual. It may be more accurate to call it entirely novel.

Sender is not the easiest watch. An anxiety-driven nightmare, Goldman's film doesn't just examine surveillance habits and the cycle of supply and demand, but our relationship to these things and the comfortable embrace of addiction. This is where Julia Day (Severance's Britt Lower) lives, and to help us understand what it's like to be inside her head, Goldman and editor Marco Rosas cut with dizzying alacrity, snapping space and time like a folded belt.

Wheatley is such a strong technician that the film easily rises above its, well, normalcy, to become something much more distinct.

Einbinder, who is about to enter into the last season of Hacks, for which she has won an Emmy award, turns in a magnificently dialed-in, heart-forward and honest performance. Theroux has rarely been this funny and he somehow makes what could be a cartoonish character feel believable and sympathetic. Reynolds and Gluck equally bring forth gravitas to two roles which are tricky for any actor in that neither character is particularly open with who they are, nor where they want to go. And yet their lives feel written all over their faces. It's one of the best ensemble performances of the SXSW festival.

From top to bottom, Brian just really works. It knows what game it's playing and does it with grounded honesty and the kind of blistering comedy that can only emanate from a truly genuine place.

This may well be Fanning's best performance to date, an intricately laced characterization of someone who is as filled with determination and dignity as she is by indecision. As Wendy, Fanning has a special way of presenting someone that can be both open and closed in equal measure: smiling through difficulty, forceful and righteous when angry, light and airy when experiencing joy.

Power Ballad continues Carney's long run of success with yet another charmer. Of course, it's easy to charm when you have Paul Rudd as your center.

It is, ultimately, a film completely uninterested in subtlety. That's both to its credit and to its detriment.

Lord & Miller's film is a remarkable achievement.

Despite its outward sullenness, The Projectionist is so well observed in its smaller moments that it contains within it an unusual kind of hope.

It's a deliriously perfect, laugh-a-second satire.

If Heated Rivalry could help with queer representation in sports, perhaps Youngblood could help crack the foundation of racism in hockey.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's second feature is an explosive representation of social disruption. A screaming cry of a film, The Bride! utilizes its literary and filmic influences - Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Bartleby, Bonnie & Clyde - to belt a clarion call against upper-crust hedonism, police complicity, violence against women, and the patriarchal system that binds them all.

Daniel Chong's film isn't perfect, but it reaches such a strange fever pitch of hilarity and political prescience that it demands respect.

The Napa Boys is best enjoyed like a California wine road trip: you can be vaguely aware of the territory, but it's more fun to just ride along its peaks and valleys. When the film hits, it really hits.

It's a beautiful film that entertains in as much measure as it deconstructs an often untouchable icon, making him seem more human, and thus, more impressive.

Ghost Elephants is an almost diaristic documentary, eschewing normal pathways for a more esoteric exploration of survival, science, intuition and mortality.

The Bluff is a rollicking throwback to the swashbuckling action of old. It is brutal and inventive enough to wash over its derivative narrative.

Sometimes the central metaphors of the film are so cleanly didactic they risk becoming preachy, but, more often than not, the film tilts in such inventive ways that recognition only breeds appreciation.

It's an underdog story — sorry, under-goat story — for a new generation that is ready for a new, more inclusive kind of game.

What's most fascinating about The Friend's House is Here is that it makes its protest heard through a story that remains adamantly vivacious for nearly its entire runtime.

Brought to life by yet another astounding performance by Olivia Colman and exquisitely shot and designed, Wicker's treasure is in its hopeless romanticism that insists that pure love and adamant individuality can create irrevocable progress through osmosis.

A soft and gentle hug of a film, one that reifies life's most sacred values while retaining the essential mystery behind our most pressing questions.

A clarion call from across space and time, like a message in a bottle, its very existence is a wild gift.

An essential doc that reveals the origins of her singular voice with exceeding warmth and vulnerability.

Carousel is a moving romance in all the ways it isn't romantic.

What makes The Invite ultimately so special is its unabashed honesty, even when it means doom.

The Incomer is a sweet and charming adult fairy tale whose primary characteristic, a twee and cheeky sense of humor, is both its appeal and its achilles' heel.