Justin Chang

Saavedra is riveting as a servant whose unblinking focus on her routine masks a profound loneliness.

Shults’s approach craftily favors observation over exposition, and he proves as attentive to Krisha’s surroundings as he is to her inner life.

Till is more understatedly effective, and Deadwyler’s performance at its most powerful, when Chukwu resists and even undermines the template of the prestige biographical drama she only appears to be making.

Although informed by the busy workings of history, politics and personal affairs, Neruda proceeds like a light-footed chase thriller filtered through an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” by the end of which the audience is lost in a crazily spiraling meta-narrative. Who exactly is the star and author of that narrative is one of the film’s more enticing mysteries.

The brilliance of Beanpole is that it begins as the story of a collective horror, then becomes utterly, fascinatingly specific.

Maestro holds its contradictions in balance; it sees the complexity and the tragedy of Lenny and Felicia’s romance, and also its undeniable tenderness and passion.

George A. Romero shows 'em how it's done in Land of the Dead, resurrecting his legendary franchise with top-flight visuals, terrific genre smarts and tantalizing layers of implication.

Bleak, naturalistic and flawlessly acted, Graduation distills the mood and moral decay of a place whose gray skies and nondescript housing blocks feel like permanent reminders of its dark history.

It is hardly the fault of this breathless, incisive and thoroughly infuriating movie that it already feels a touch out of date. How could it not?

The geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically in the last few months since this sleek, smartly assembled and almost indecently entertaining movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (where it won two audience awards), and as a result, it can feel timely and outdated, relevant and redundant, disturbing and escapist all at once.

The invasion in this movie is neither an assault nor a threat; it’s an invitation to open doors and let fresh inspiration in.

Kawamura and Hirase seem to have perceived the immersive limitations of the movie medium—and, rather than fighting those limitations, adapted their story accordingly. What they’ve emerged with is the rare picture that feels at once true to and ultimately subversive of its source.

Perhaps it’s best to appreciate Demon not for what it implies but for what it simply and unmistakably is: A bravura testament to a talent silenced far too soon.

The individual stories that make up One Child Nation, the worthy winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s grand jury prize for U.S. documentaries, illuminate an entire history of institutional corruption, medical brutality and pervasive misogyny — a history that was both masked and advanced by a national propaganda campaign of near-Orwellian absurdity.

Mostly, Audiard leans assuredly on his actors, gently pushing each one toward a simple, ordinary, never-irrelevant question — what does your character want? — and coaxing forth an utterly unique answer.

The incisiveness of Hamaguchi’s ecological critique is matched by the vividness of his characters; you’ll remember the talking points, but also the faces of the people making them.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is an immaculate vision: coldly efficient, aesthetically faultless, splendidly acted. I do wish it had a bit more blood in it.

The beauty of Bening’s performance lies in those marvelously suggestive layers — all the delicate, tendril-like emotional possibilities that she manages to tuck into the margins of any given moment.

Writer-director Robert Eggers’ impressive debut feature walks a tricky line between disquieting ambiguity and full-bore supernatural horror, but leaves no doubt about the dangerously oppressive hold that Christianity exerted on some dark corners of the Puritan psyche.

Familiar Touch, its title perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of how well-worn this terrain is, illuminates its protagonist’s condition with uncommon concision and grace, and with few of the formal and narrative strategies we’ve come to expect.

This is a lyrical ode to the glories of summer and the collaborative joys of filmmaking, suffused with the hope that we will never be deprived of either for long.

Luca is about the thrill and the difficulty of living transparently — and the consolations that friendship, kindness and decency can provide against the forces of ignorance and violence.

Its achievement is predicated not on novelty, but on modesty — the way it manages, using little more than a terrific cast and a few shadowy, sparsely furnished rooms, to populate your mind’s eye with ominous visions.

Its title a sly reference to what distinguishes men from beasts, Staying Vertical hinges on the tension between primal instincts and socially proscribed behavior. Guiraudie isn’t just trying to decimate sexual taboos; he is also taking gently comic aim at the overly rigid roles into which people tend to lock themselves.

At a little over 90 minutes, Support the Girls has the brash trappings, if not the longevity, of a “Cheers”-style sitcom, and its generous humor is always in productive play with a tough, flinty realism.

In lieu of poetry, [Ozon] has composed an exemplary piece of prose: clear, direct and quietly illuminating. At the same time, you would hardly describe this movie as neutral or devoid of anger. On the contrary, its moral outrage is all the more pronounced for being so controlled.

A visually arresting, politically forceful melodrama from Pakistan.

La Flor, as sweeping and addictive as much of it is, doesn’t have the structural predictability that a more conventional serialized narrative does. It’s too freewheeling, too experimental, too eager to carve out fresh avenues of meaning. At a time when duration is no guarantee of depth, it’s the definition of a must-see.