Jake Coyle

Collective is not a walk in the park. But it’s admirably awake to the cause-and-effect tragedies that can follow seemingly slight or obscure governmental decisions.

Part of the fun of Amazing Grace is watching not just those in the thrall of Franklin (Mick Jagger can be seen bopping in the back of the church) but witnessing the awe Franklin evokes.

The film is shot by Florian Hoffmeister with a cool, almost documentary-like perspective. It’s in these chilly, highbrow environs that Lydia operates with exquisite intellect and ruthless cunning — and Blanchett gives a colossal tour-de-force performance that may be the finest of her career, a career as decorated as Lydia’s.

Like Haemi’s melancholy dance in the half-light, Lee has beautifully, wrenchingly summoned an unshakeable sense of disquiet.

By breaking down some of the old mythology, Johnson has staked out new territory. For the first time in a long time, a “Star Wars” film feels forward-moving.

For a film about death, Lila Avilés’ “Tótem” is extraordinarily lived in.

It’s a grand culmination of both Miyazaki’s extraordinary body of work and of a film that gathers, like a flock, or a symphony, so many of his trademark obsessions.

Much of The Favourite is caustically clever but it’s Colman who elevates it to something magnificent.

When we talk about “movie magic,” the first thing that comes to mind is often something like the bikes achieving liftoff in “E.T.” But it applies no less to Alice Rohrwacher’s wondrous “La Chimera,” a grubbily transcendent folk tale of a film that finds its enchantment buried in the ground.

It’s the performances of Haim and Hoffman that most lend “Licorice Pizza” its authenticity. Neither has acted in a film before and their fresh-faced presences electrify the film.

The joys of First Cow are many. The thoughtful, unshowy textures of its clothes and surroundings. The fabulous chemistry of its two leads. The softly stirring guitar of William Tyler’s score. All of these details add up to a wholly original western, one with its own rhythms, ideas and iconography.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a kinetic thing of dark, imposing beauty that quakes with the disquieting tremors of a forever rupture in the course of human history.

It’s Pawlikowski second-straight masterwork, only one with a critical if seldom-seen error. His movie is too short.

In this remarkably fully formed debut, the moments that matter are the funny and tender ones that persist amid crueler experiences.

Gunda ultimately falls somewhere between banal and profound. Maybe it’s both.

The Power of the Dog may in the end be more a twisty psychological thriller than a transcendent frontier epic. But the film’s shape-shifting transformation is also part of its ruthless finesse.

I’m sure for Johnson, Dick Johnson Is Dead will one day be a heaven-sent reservoir for remembering her father. But its larger gift is in spurring us all to meet mortality with humor and honesty, and appreciate loved ones while they’re here.

Bairead’s sensitive and heartfelt film, which is debuting in many theaters Friday, is a stirring testament to what’s possible on a modest scale with a few well-chosen words.

The Death of Stalin may be both Iannucci’s darkest and most timely satire yet. More than anything he’s done before, Iannucci has narrowed the distance between slapstick and savagery, prompting us to contemplate — even as we’re cackling — their uncomfortable proximity.

There’s a profound, unresolvable melancholy to “About Dry Grasses” that’s hard to shake.

A clever concept, not a profound film. Terrifically acted and finely crafted though it is, it’s a brilliant but hollow exercise in perspective that calls more attention to its artful orchestration than it does life or loss.

Here is a sweeping historical tapestry — no one does it better today than Scott — with a damning, almost satirical portrait at its center. That mix — Scott’s spectacle and Phoenix’s the-emperor-has-no-clothes performance — makes Napoleon a rivetingly off-kilter experience.

Unlike many of its more hollow predecessors, Black Panther has real, honest-to-goodness stakes. As the most earnest and big-budget attempt yet of a black superhero film, Black Panther is assured of being an overdue cinematic landmark. But it's also simply ravishing, grand-scale filmmaking.

Apollo 11 might not tell you anything you don’t already know about the moon landing. But it will make you feel it, and see it, anew.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? sings best — or rather, grumbles spectacularly — when McCarthy and Grant are together. They are kindred misfits and malcontents happy for each other’s company.

To a remarkable degree, “Robot Dreams” has fully imbibed all the melancholy and joy of Earth, Wind & Fire’s disco classic. Just as the song asks “Do you remember?” so too does “Robot Dreams,” a sweetly wistful little movie that, like a good pop song, expresses something profound without wasting a word.

There is a searching, ruminative dialogue running throughout the film. Brown and editors Michael Bloch and Geoffrey Richman beautifully weave together disparate voices into a meditative chorus.

Aster, who also wrote the film, fills his movie with foreshadowing clues that give the gruesome events to come a cruel note of inevitability. There’s a curse on this family, whether by ghost or DNA.