Jordan Raup

It’s a warm, patient film culminating in a quietly powerful, reflective finale, though its sum is greater than its parts when the first two sections register a touch underdeveloped.

It’s a film of overwhelming empathy and playfulness as loneliness turns into gratification and desires are slowly manifested into reality.

Joseph’s mesmerizing debut feels like a living, breathing dispatch from a time beyond ours, ushering in new possibilities for the form.

Hittman has provided an essential, specific look at just one person’s struggle to have control over her own body. By doing so with such a delicate, considered perspective, she’s giving a voice to millions of women going through the same experience. And it’s time to listen.

Hogg’s earlier films are striking in their picturesque abstractness as we sit in on conversations from a distance, but the ambition and warmth on display in The Souvenir makes this her greatest achievement.

A thematically rich and acutely moving update for both a new generation and certainly many more to follow.

A directorial debut of unfiltered frankness in both its tragedy and comedy, Sorry, Baby is a singular feat of storytelling.

The Tale is a soul-excavating reckoning with the suppression of trauma and a testament to the courage required for a victim to confront the most damaging moments of their lives.

One of the most subtly striking decisions in Minari is to not focus on the major moments in their path towards the American Dream, but rather memorable interactions within this tight-knit family, however minor they may be.

Unfolding with a specific eye for grandeur in every space, the images resonate long after the credits roll.

Providing levity and comfort to ideas of mortality, Kirsten Johnson has illuminated the sweet embrace of death.

As we hear the actual recordings of the astronauts communicating with the designated capsule communicator (aka CAPCOM), it gives Apollo 11 an underlying, powerful thread of humanity.

While there’s no denying the film’s empathetic, tear-inducing impact, one wonders if a tighter structural grip would allow it to have been even more effective.

With remarkably immediate cinematography and an intimate understanding of its subjects, Descendant becomes an essential ideal of how to tell a community’s story: not through distant talking heads, but capturing moving bodies through land and history, giving a voice to those that can often feel powerless.

Aster displays proficient skill in eerie tone-setting, elaborate production design, and the type of scares that will leave a pervasive imprint on the mind, even if the underlying mythology gets over-complicated by the finale.

For relying on the barest narrative threads, watching All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is more an experience of transformative renewal than gleaning specific details of Mack’s story.

Good One is an acutely felt portrait of impending womanhood and a remarkable debut for India Donaldson.

A conspiracy thriller as euphorically entertaining as it is devastatingly bleak.

Through his exquisite vision, Mascaro tells a curious tale of spiritual commitment, marital strife, and the blurred separation of church and state, leading to an ultimately surprising, powerful conclusion.

In Araújo’s vigorous directorial vision, a heightened sense of anxiety courses through, hinging on the precise ways a girl in mental free-fall, rightfully lacking the words or life experience to find a footing, will react to each daunting new situation.

In capturing the trans experience with language that only cinema can convey, Schoenbrun has crafted one of the most original, evocative, adventurous films of this decade.

Thoroughly engrossing ... The way the directors are able to provide a portrait of empathy on all sides is astounding.

Crip Camp is both an inspiring historical document of a grass-roots movement but also an urgent call to action for those on the sidelines of ongoing political and societal battles.

One of Eighth Grade‘s greatest strengths is its specificity related to the current generation.

This Un Certain Regard jury prize winner is a darkly humorous, cautionary character study in letting one’s long-lost creative dreams drive every decision––one in which Soto, more often than not, finds empathy as his protagonist circles the drain.

Filled with scenes both broad and understated, Mudbound may take some time to find an engaging rhythm and poignant depth, but once it does, the powerful last act will not be soon forgotten.

Seeing how Soderbergh and Koepp can expertly stack the deck to always be one step before the viewer is an exhilarating thrill to behold.

Although just under 100 minutes isn’t enough time to capture every nuance of 10 years with multiple subjects, One in a Million is an ambitious, affecting declaration that a complete sense of freedom will only arrive when personal independence is fulfilled.