Gregory Nussen

Through the amazing array of talking heads Hanks assembles to share their relationship to Candy, we are left with the distinct impression that there just wasn't anyone else like John. A grand man indeed, in a grand documentary to suit him.

Underneath its story of the sudden animation of household products is a layered critique of late-stage capitalism, a plea for the humanity of queer folks, a rebuke of the erasure of history and of memory, and a challenge against traditionalism which holds back a people from necessarily breaking free, to the next stage of life.

While the film may thematically point to real-world struggles in the United States, The Twits is mostly an accessible story about the power of empathy in the face of naked evil, all to the tune of about a thousand fart jokes.

Through the period and genre trappings of a 1970s heist film, Reichardt explores the inherent isolation of staying neutral at a time of ballooning cultural and political unrest.

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.

To put it in a kinder way, Little Amélie is a delicate testament to the power of solidarity and the ability of children to heal wounds across space and time.

In its gorgeous animation and stylization of motion blur, Arco pleads us to return to a time when we dreamt about the future as hidden through fluffy clouds and resplendent rainbows.

This uncommon image of survival accentuates the devastation of loss. Fatma is just one victim; what other worlds have we lost with each new death?

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The film instinctively and lucidly shows how sometimes a coming of age can be thrust upon a person against their will.

In this film of clammy anxiety, the potential of male violence is made to feel as scary as the actual article.

Throughout Power, Yance Ford draws a startlingly clear line from the origins of modern policing as a slave patrol to its present-day iteration.

The innocent, it turns out, isn’t a single character but the person inside us all, playing at the version of ourselves we’d rather be.

Through her use of recreation, Asmae El Moudir suggests that the act of documentary filmmaking can turn historical truths into fiction, in which everyone becomes an active participant.

Air is shot through with an infectious energy, but it’s more poignant for the way that it rhymes the histories of its actors in the public eye with all that Nike’s creatives were struggling to reconcile when they were chasing after Jordan.

June Zero is a tender, if sometimes cynical, portrait of a new country on old land struggling through the growing pains of establishing its presence both to the international community and its own people.

Though Egoist can sometimes feel overly tidy, there’s something refreshing about its straightforward approach. Consistent with its style, which is so free of ornament, it pursues its themes with a welcome directness.

The film is a meditative, slow crescendo of wounded feelings and quiet epiphanies.

This is a theatrical story told in a purposefully and self-consciously theatrical manner.

Rugano Nyoni’s critique of her native country’s gender-based discrimination is as acerbic as it is unforgiving.

There’s an alive-ness that emanates from the characters, in large part due to all those visible fingerprints and indentations on their skins—a tactile counterbalance to a story about humanity’s over-reliance on technology.

The Breaking Ice is fixated on intense in-between states that work to separate people from each other and from themselves, as if to say self-acceptance and love aren’t destinations so much as journeys, at once formidable and worthwhile.