Jeannette Catsoulis

In service to a gleefully malicious tone, Mark Mylod’s direction is cool, tight and clipped, the actors slotting neatly into characters so unsympathetic we become willing accessories to their suffering.

Ms. Basinger commits to her disturbed character. But the script (by the director, Anders Morgenthaler) makes Maria’s behavior so reckless — at times, she’s practically begging to be mugged or worse — that we have no chance of sympathizing with her.

This is screenwriting by numbers. Unlike, say, Ken Loach’s marvelous “Bread and Roses,” Under the Same Moon is too busy sanctifying its protagonists and prodding our tear ducts to say anything remotely novel about immigration policies or their helpless victims.

Nuances of faith, politics and sexual identity enrich what initially presents as a classic good son-bad son tale.

Prevenge is a brilliantly conceived meditation on prepartum anxiety and extreme grief.

If we must talk trash, Mr. Irons - assisted by a scientist or two and Vangelis's doomy score - is an inspired choice of guide. Soothing and sensitive, his liquid gaze alighting on oozing landfills and belching incinerators, he moves through the film with a tragic dignity that belies his whimsical neckwear and jaunty hats.

Whether a melodramatic comment on art and anarchy, or a wild experiment in toxic maternalism, the film feels like a fever that just won’t break.

Love + War chooses to go wide rather than deep, resulting in a movie that, while pleasingly dynamic, offers less psychological insight than the photographs she has gambled everything to take. And perhaps that’s as it should be.

Torn between the maternal and the cosmic, the tactile and the unearthly, Proxima feels as unsettled as its heroine.

Delicate and autobiographical (Wang Han was the director’s name when he was a child, and the story is constructed from his boyhood memories), 11 Flowers clings steadfastly to its youthful point of view.

Here, excessive piety and rampant paganism are equally malevolent forces, the film's baleful view of human nature mirrored in Sebastian Edschmid's swampy photography. As is emphasized in a nicely consistent coda, the Lord's side and the right side are not necessarily one and the same.

The movie dives into the black arts with methodical restraint and escalating unease.

It’s all a little silly, but Mr. Mickle’s restrained gravity stifles the impulse to laugh.

A futuristic vomitorium of bosoms and bullets.

Not since "Flashdance" has a lobster dinner been seasoned with so much unspoken emotion.

Nevertheless the fierce loyalty of Mr. Liebling's nearest and dearest is extremely touching, and Last Days Here - despite its stinginess with back story and early performance footage - works hard to reveal the man beneath the four-decade heroin habit.

Blindingly beautiful and meticulously assembled by the award-winning editor Bob Eisenhardt, Meru easily makes you forget that what you are watching is completely bananas.

A frustratingly fragmented yet warmly intimate portrait of an evolving bond that frays but doesn’t sever.

Coarsely merging social-media critique and slasher comedy, this shallow take on the evils of internet addiction is as unoriginal as it is unfunny.

After setting up a potentially powerful study of damage and delusion, Pearce (whose 2018 feature debut, “Beast,” signaled an unusual talent) remains torn between science fiction and psychological fact.

Though in many respects an exemplary piece of filmmaking, “Part II” remains hobbled by a script that resolves two separate crises while leaving the movie itself in limbo. At least until Part III.

His well-rehearsed rhetoric is shockingly persuasive, and since the majority of his premises are verifiable, any weakness in his argument lies in inferences so terrifying that reasonable listeners may find themselves taking his advice and stocking up on organic seeds. (Those with no access to land can, postapocalypse, use them as currency.)

Defiantly amateurish yet never less than engaging, “Sweaty Betty” is a true oddity.

Erik Molberg Hansen’s relaxed camera movements and fuzzy-soft compositions are quite beautiful, and the performances — including the superb Trine Dyrholm as the baby’s Danish foster mother — are pitch-perfect. Best of all is the magnetic August, whose open, mobile features can slide from plain to lovely with just a shift in the light and whose embrace of the character is a joy to watch.

Ms. Purple is a moody, downbeat drama soaked in color and saturated with sadness.

A sedate chronicle of the highs and lows of the environmental movement, Earth Days is less a rousing call to action than a bittersweet stroll down memory lane.

Dancing on the line between funny and menacing, the ingenious script (by Stourton and Tom Palmer) is a tonal tease, a limbo where every joke has a threatening edge and every “Just kidding!” only increases Pete’s unease.

This low-budget debut by Joshua Overbay cooks a surprising amount of tension from the barest minimum of ingredients.