Jocelyn Noveck

A film in which everything feels stunningly fresh, raw and new.

Time and again, Song, who both writes and directs here, makes the unflashy, understated choice — and in so doing, darned near breaks our hearts, with a tale that feels universal yet rich in detail, urgent yet unrushed.

This hypnotic film experience is a badly needed shot in the arm for all of us — music lovers, theater lovers, dance lovers, culture lovers, life lovers. It’s also one of the best concert films in recent memory.

It’s obvious that Sandler, the actor, is capable of extraordinary range — not in the traditional, Meryl Streep sense, but a range of incredibly good (“Punch-Drunk Love”) to painfully bad (the horrendous “Jack and Jill”) and incredibly good again, as in Uncut Gems, a frenetic, compulsively watchable, exhausting and exhilarating collaboration with Josh and Benny Safdie.

In his meticulous and harrowing film The Zone of Interest, writer-director Jonathan Glazer has found a way to convey evil without ever depicting the horror itself. But though it escapes our eyes, the horror assaults our senses in other, deeper ways.

Sincerity is what anchors this film — especially Swinton Byrne’s astonishingly sincere performance.

Most crucially, it’s a film so original in approach that one feels only Diop could have made or even conceived of it.

Though not for everyone, it’s a film that can justifiably be described as “epic” in ambition and design. And, wouldn’t you know, ambition and design are precisely what the movie’s about.

[Scorsese] has called his work an offering to the Osage, and to other Native peoples. It also feels like an offering to those who love cinema, allowing us to watch a master of the craft continue to force himself, unlikely as it seems, to stretch and learn. May he keep stretching — himself, and us.

[A] nerve-busting adrenaline jolt of a movie starring a never-better Timothée Chalamet.

The Alto Knights, despite its pedigree, doesn’t rise anywhere near the heights of its glorious predecessors. It is, rather, an enjoyable if choppily paced look at a relationship between two men, where unfortunately we’re arriving pretty late in the game.

At the end, one feels gratitude not only for Stigter’s painstaking work, but to author Kurtz and of course his grandfather, just a man with a camera whose fleeting footage is a powerful response to those who intended to eradicate the existence of these people and millions like them.

Some may find the film too loosely plotted, a series of vignettes more than a single, tight narrative. But they only need to sit back, listen to the beautiful score by Alberto Iglesias, and let Almodovar weave it all together _ from the first meditative shot of Banderas to the satisfying surprise of the ending shot _ as only Almodovar can.

Whatever your level of familiarity, Haynes’ doc — the first for this accomplished director — is so stylistically compelling, it doesn’t really matter what you knew coming in.

Much ink has been spent analyzing this enduring phenomenon called Tom Cruise, and what motivates him, onscreen and off. “I just want to entertain people,” he said recently. That’s one mission he can still nail.

It goes without saying that the performance is brilliant, and yes, electric, but it’s also heroic. If there had to be a final role, what a gift that it was this, an exclamation point to a career that seems ever more momentous.

No matter how cursed or unlucky the so-called “Scottish play” is in theater lore, the stars seem to be aligned here.

Something about the detail and clarity with which Jane Schoenbrun evokes ’90s suburbia in “I Saw the TV Glow” makes you remember growing up there — even if you didn’t.

Perhaps there’s something in this tale of two women — or really, three — that speaks to all who try to pretend that it’s unnatural to sometimes be ambivalent about motherhood. And that motherhood is not, in ways and at times, a struggle for nearly everyone.

It’s quite a journey for one film. All credit to Eisenberg, and his superb co-star, for making the road trip so thought-provoking.

Rarely have the hues of black and white, cinematographically speaking, looked so beautifully lush as in Passing, the hugely impressive directorial debut of actor Rebecca Hall.

How Coogler pulls everything off at once — and makes it cohere, mostly — is a sight to see.

All characters are beautifully cast, but a standout is Hawkins, who has the soulful voice of a young Christopher Jackson (the original Benny, who has a cameo here) and charisma that burns through the screen.

Zhao, co-writing with O’Farrell, goes straight for the tear ducts, with crucial help from a superb cast led by Buckley — who, like her character, seems to have an extraordinary ability to dispense with artifice and access a wildness simmering beneath the surface.

Gosling’s task here is not merely to give dimension to a mythical American hero. He also has to play a man who famously kept his emotions in check. That may not be an asset for a movie character, but sure was an asset for the first human to set foot on another world.

[An] absorbing new documentary.

A Quiet Place may not have the weighty social meaning or piercing comedy of another recent high-profile horror thriller, “Get Out.” But like that movie it is smart, it moves fast, it has a hugely satisfying ending — and it deserves to attract a much broader audience than the usual horror film devotees.

Çatan and co-writer Johannes Duncker, who in fact attended school together, are making the point that even a middle school is a microcosm of society and all its tensions and ills.