Kenneth Turan

Difficult to experience though its finale may be, Peterloo very much gives off the sense that watching is essential. This fight for democracy is our story too, and the end has yet to be written.

Well-behaved and genteel from the get-go, it has its pleasures, but being wild and crazy is not one of them.

When you add in the tip-top tension created by the legendary break itself, not to mention the verisimilitude of shooting in a recently decommissioned prison, you end up with a small film with an impressive impact. Those who take a chance on Maze will not be disappointed.

Cinéma vérité all the way, a classic fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows Bannon for about a year as he flies hither and yon on private jets, taking meetings, bolstering supporters and attempting to turn his brand of fervent nationalism into a global movement.

Whether this iteration of Dumbo is a good experience for you will depend on your tolerance for the familiar and the sentimental, and the joy you take in what is visually striking and beautiful.

A short-film director making his feature debut, Maras has settled on a strategy that combines harrowing re-creations with largely conventional character development to good effect.

Fascinating and frequently compelling, The Mustang is a hybrid, the unlikely combination of genres you wouldn’t think go together but are able to coexist thanks to an exceptional leading performance.

Triple Frontier is a solid, engrossing genre item with designs on being something more. It doesn’t quite get there but it does well enough along the way to make the journey worth taking.

Watching Danvers’ story play out, complete with boggling plot twists and a scene-stealing friendly feline, is hugely entertaining, and it can’t be over-emphasized how central Larson, about to become the most recognized woman on the planet, is to the enterprise.

One of the unexpected but welcome things Apollo 11 accomplishes is restoring a sense of how insanely complex the lunar mission was, and how audacious.

Just as sports mirror society, so do the best sports films not only take us inside games and those who play them but also provide insight into our world and how it works. “Wrestle,” a superb sports documentary, does exactly that.

Self-aware, funny and articulate, blessed with a first-class temperament, Ferencz is front and center telling his own tale, which includes being the key player in what’s been called the biggest murder trial in history.

With a masterful melding of the serious, the comic, the ridiculous and the musical, Woman at War is joyful to experience though difficult to sum up.

Birds of Passage tells a story of a traditional culture fighting for its life against incursions from the outside world, of how insidiously clan ways and spiritual values can be compromised, and it certainly has familiar elements. But the electric filmmaking, sense of tragedy and cultural specificity are far from usual.

If you’re in the mood for a movie like “Alita,” “Alita” is the movie you’re in the mood for.

The body count goes up, but our interest level doesn’t rise with it.

What makes High Flying Bird so welcome and unexpected is its combination of immediacy and drama, its provocative creation of here and now energy and smart dialogue around the unlikely subject of professional sports in general and pro basketball in particular.

Tito and the Birds is a small marvel. Only 73 minutes long, it marries an adventurous visual imagination with a darkly provocative political parable. Its heroes may be children, but its themes are definitely adult.

Though its form is complex, including archival scenes that include concentration camp-type footage, the film’s emotional through line is clear and direct.

Fyre makes sure not to lose sight of the hard-working Bahamians who tried hard to make things work and paid a considerable financial price.

Landais has made a version of Aspern that is too often uncertain and unconvincing despite the good work of his female stars. And when the actresses leave the screen and the film ventures into ill-advised flashback territory, things get shakier still.

Communion is a heartbreaking example of a classic documentary genre — the immersive, observational film that takes a bold leap and embeds itself with a small group of people.

Destroyer is simultaneously impressive and stand-offish. Persuasively directed by Kusama and convincingly acted by Kidman and expert costars like Toby Kebbell and Sebastian Stan though it is, its determination to live exclusively at the darkest end of the street pays disagreeable dividends.

Brainy, audacious, opinionated and fun, Vice is a tonic for troubled times. As smart as it is partisan, and it is plenty partisan, this savage satire is scared of only one thing, and that is being dull.

Passionate, tempestuous, haunting and assured, this latest from writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski explores, as did his Oscar-winning “Ida,” Poland’s recent past, resulting in a potent emotional story with political overtones that plays impeccably today.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a tribute paid by the present to the past, and what a gorgeous gift it turns out to be.

Mortal Engines is bursting with everything you’d want except compelling emotional intelligence.

Though the feeling sneaks up on you, The Mule has an unexpected emotional kick. That’s because in subject and execution it plays as personal as anything the filmmaker has done.

Starting as a dirge and ending as an ode to joy, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki provides a privileged glimpse into the creative processes of one of the greatest animators who ever lived.

Notwithstanding the inevitable formulaic dialogue and a superabundance of boilerplate superhero action sequences, Aquaman turns out to be, almost despite itself, an engaging undersea extravaganza.

Bright and charismatic though Mary was, she was, in effect, born under a bad sign, fated, despite all her advantages, not to have anything like the happily ever after that royals have in fairy tales and Disney movies. In a similar way, despite numerous advantages (including splendid cinematography by John Mathieson), the film with her name on it has promise it does not fully deliver on. But when those queens are on the screen, all bets are off.

The result is a compelling but chilling film, one that is inevitably disheartening and disturbing as it details both how Ailes came to understand the nature and power of fear and how he honed his craft until he could sell fear to his fellow citizens like it was going out of style.

Though all these technological trappings are newer than new, the human needs for happiness, applause and emotional connection are classic. The ability of People’s Republic of Desire to show these familiar desires playing out in futuristic surroundings is invariably surprising and never less than compelling.

Master Japanese animator Mamoru Hosoda makes family films, but not in the way you think. It’s not that his films are suitable for all ages, though they mostly are. And it’s not even that the family unit is central to his work, though it is. Rather it’s that Hosoda’s films stretch the boundaries of both style and content within the family film rubric.

This wise and insightful film is delicate, poignant and unexpectedly powerful.

These four, like so many others, opened up to Claude Lanzmann, and the results speak eloquently for themselves.

Though it takes the risk of appearing too quiet too long, Roma and its melding of the personal with a glimpse of a society veering toward collapse is incontestably persuasive, a film whose like we are not likely to see again.

How this all played out in terms of the Austrian election will surprise no one, but seeing how much the situation came to prefigure the contemporary house of mirrors in Europe as well as America still comes as something of a shock.

The Last Race is a high art film about a blue-collar subject, and that unlooked-for ability to see beauty in the everyday is what makes it both a surprise and a success.

Green Book is a savvy and super effective piece of popular entertainment.

Dafoe’s work, the look in his searching, despairing eyes, feels beyond conventional acting, using intuition as well as technique to go deeply into the character, putting us in Van Gogh’s presence.

Inevitably violent (though a disemboweling still seems excessive), as edited by Jake Roberts Outlaw King now moves along at a satisfyingly brisk pace. While we likely have not seen the end of Robert the Bruce on film, this for sure is a worthy addition to the canon.

Using their great ability with comic dialogue (the film won the best screenplay award at Venice), the Coens exaggerate and subvert familiar western tropes to gleeful comic effect.

Despite the potential for rancorous finger-pointing, one of the remarkable things about “The Front Runner” is its determination to be even-handed, to encourage viewers to make up their own minds (at least up to a point) about what happened 30 years ago and what it means for today.

The result is surprisingly companionable and enjoyable, an unhurried look at a location that is in no kind of rush, a place that is concerned most of all with preserving the way it’s always been.

The visual allure of this production is undeniable, but having the nerve to be simple and nice all the way through is, even for Disney, verging on being a lost art.

It’s not just that Pike changed the timbre of her voice, the way she walks and even her posture to accurately reflect Colvin physically (though she has). It’s that this fierce, lived-in performance, complete down to the drawn face and go-for-it personality, is so convincing that people who knew Colvin were shaken at the resemblance.

While Maria By Callas is short on facts and biographical detail, it expertly presents an emotional essence of this performer, leaving you both shaken and stirred by the extent of her gifts and the way they connected to both audiences and her tumultuous life.

Viper Club is an attempt at a very difficult balancing act. It doesn’t quite succeed, but it deploys enough persuasive elements to make the attempt involving.

On Her Shoulders is an intimate, empathetic documentary, made with discretion and power.

If the setting of The Guilty couldn’t be simpler, its immaculate execution by first-time director Gustav Möller couldn’t be more gripping and involving.

The Great Buster briskly takes us through the stations of Keaton’s eventful life and career, mostly going the expected chronological route with one key exception.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? demands not our love for this supremely difficult person but rather our respect for her defiance of an unsympathetic world. With such an impeccable presentation of such an intransigent personality, it is hard to deny her that.

Chalamet is so good it’s worth seeing Beautiful Boy for his work alone.

What unnecessary imprisonment does to families is often written about in abstract terms, but to see what it did to one specific family runs an emotional gamut that the patience of this heroically committed filmmaker does full justice to.

Working closely with master editor William Goldenberg, Greengrass has given 22 July a relentless, remorseless quality, insisting on a matter-of-fact style that allows no escape from reality even while refusing to push anything too hard.

More disturbing than you expect, its story of innocence lost and perspective gained holds us and will not let go.

Both a fine introduction for those who don’t know the work and a thoughtful examination of the issues surrounding him for those who do.

The result is a show business rush so pure it would be illegal if it were a drug. Though the film’s peek behind the celebrity-curtain love story inevitably falters a bit in the second half, the emotional waves it has already created manage to carry us over the rough spots.

Candid, insightful and unpredictable, Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joan Plowright and Dame Maggie Smith are not only acting legends but also great friends. And a treat to hang out with.

Both intimate and expansive, Free Solo is a documentary beautifully calculated to literally take your breath away. And it does.

It’s a puckish film with a wistful quality, a gently comic end-of-the-line adventure about doing what you love, the passage of time and the things that might have been.

This infectious and exuberant film wins you over by focusing on the enthusiasm and enviable good spirits of the smart and engaging young people who compete in “the Olympics of science fairs.”

Hale County This Morning, This Evening, is a poetic documentary with a gift for making enrapturing imagery out of what sound like ordinary, everyday events.

Though Holofcener's films invariably make us laugh in rueful recognition of the inane complexities of lives that manage to echo our own, "Steady Habits" also conveys a melancholy darkness, a more somber cast than usual. Everything seems amusing until suddenly it is not.

Hal deals with each of the director's films in a smart, engaging manner. As befits a former editor, director Scott has an ear for the great quote and the skill to make it all flow beautifully, to both entertain and help us understand who Ashby was and what he wanted to do.

Nyoni, working in English and the local language of Nyanja, has an unforced way of dealing with themes like exploitation, oppression and superstition, showing how easy it can be for nonsense to pass itself off as sense.

Ambitious and well-executed, The Apparition is a kind of ecclesiastical thriller. An involving and intelligent entertainment, if it ends up somewhat less than the sum of its parts, it's not for lack of attempting something different.

An idiosyncratic, metaphysical meditation on tennis, cinema, human behavior, maybe even life itself, "Perfection" at times risks being too pleased with itself for its own good, but its one-of-a-kind credentials are never in doubt.

The efforts of an international cast including stars Oscar Isaac, Melanie Laurent and Nick Kroll notwithstanding, Operation Finale sounds more involving than it actually plays, ending up earnest and acceptable more than compelling.

Israeli journalist Amos Elon once wrote that the demands for justice presented by the Israeli-Palestinian impasse exceed the human capacity to administer it. The dramatic, involving The Oslo Diaries details the closest these adversaries have come to proving Elon wrong, a story that is heartening and heartbreaking by turn.

Crime + Punishment is a quiet documentary but a potent one. Though its approach is low key, its passion, drama and concern for exposing wrongdoing is unmistakable.

A charming film of an engaging, adult nature about two very different people trying to press reset in their lives, it is comic, heartfelt and smart as they come — a rare combination these days.

When Close and her costars command the screen, we can forgive problems and simply enjoy the proceedings.

Surprising and deeply satisfying.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an old-school, old-fashioned entertainment, a romantic drama bursting with scenic vistas and earnest charm that contains just enough mystery to keep us involved.

Working with longtime editor Barry Alexander Brown, the director casually but fearlessly stirs things up, balancing brutal satiric comedy, unapologetic social commentary, convincing jeopardy, even appealing romance.

Dyrholm, an actress of formidable presence who expertly handles her own singing as well as the acting, gives a strong, truthful, unflinching performance that powers the film the way Christa's energy powered the bands she was in those late days.

Like its determined heroine, Night Comes On burns with a smoldering fire, a heat that is no less intense, no less effective, for remaining largely beneath the surface.

Kore-eda is too polished a filmmaker for The Third Murder not to be of interest, but its focus is finally too fuzzy to compel the way the best of the director's work does.

Macdonald has never starred in a film until Puzzle, and her delicate but deeply felt performance, along with the work of top Indian actor and costar Irrfan Khan and the rest of the cast, make this gentle, thoughtful yet pointed film the undeniable success it is.

No one has to see a documentary to understand that large sums of untraceable political campaign contributions are a bad thing. But Dark Money does need to be seen because it reveals with fascinating specificity how that crooked system works and details how one state decided to take it on.

38 years after his death, Beaton's name is not so much on everyone's lips, and one of the pleasures of this film is to revisit his gifts beyond his best known work, the Oscar-winning production design and costumes for "My Fair Lady."

Not everything in Equalizer 2 is successful, including a subplot about a Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivor played by Orson Bean that misses the mark. But the film is effective where it needs to be, and if there is an "Equalizer 3," in line to see it is where you'll find me.

Even if the dramas and dictates of couturiers and catwalks mean little to you, it is hard to resist the propulsive energy that director Ian Bonhote and co-director and writer Peter Ettedgui bring to the story of a designer whose background, beliefs and gifts were not what one would expect.

This is a film that wants you to live in the moment, to enjoy what is on screen when it is there in front of you and not worry how it fits into a plot that can be confusing but clears up in time for the inevitably rousing conclusion.

Despite its pro-forma nature, the setup for Siberia — a lone hero in over his head in an unfamiliar world — actually starts out well but refuses to play out in satisfying ways.

Custody can be difficult, even wrenching to watch, but it always plays fair with the audience, and the experience, worth every minute expended, is impossible to forget.

The main reason to see Whitney is the way it explores the baffling conundrums of her life.

Screenwriters Sigurdsson and Breidfjord are fiendishly good at imagining the complimentary ways things spiral out of control, and the actors are expert at making us believe in what the director accurately calls “a war film where home is the battlefield.” On another level, however, with situations so grotesque it is often an effort to laugh.

As directed by Thomas Piper, a filmmaker who specializes in arts-related docs, "Five Seasons" does two things with grace and skill, starting with immersing us in what Oudolf's work looks like.

Culturally specific to its joint Berlin/Jerusalem setting but with themes that are universal, it joins an exploration of sexual fluidity and the nature of love and relationships with a strong plot that keeps you involved and guessing until the very end.

Fiercely involving in a way we're not used to, made with sensitivity and honesty by director/co-writer Debra Granik, it tells its emotional story of a father and daughter living dangerously off the grid in a way that is unnerving and uncompromising yet completely satisfying.

It is the charm of Lorna Tucker's film that, her subject's reluctance notwithstanding, it provides a fascinating, involving glimpse of both who Westwood was back in the day and who she is at this particular moment in time, so much so that we genuinely miss her once the credits begin to roll.

As we hang on the film’s plot twists, we also quietly absorb its points about the power of community and the purposeful determination of immigrants to create better lives for their families, not as special pleading but as something powerful and convincing.

Though it would be unrealistic to expect "Incredibles 2" to have quite the genre-busting surprise of the original, it is as good as it can be without that shock of the new — delivering comedy, adventure and all too human moments with a generous hand.

Saving Brinton is an endearing, affectionate documentary, an examination not so much of film exhibition pioneer Frank Brinton and how his life's work was saved but of the genial and humane eccentric who did the saving.

Energized by Offerman and Clemons, the effectiveness of the music and the emotional freshness of "Hearts Beat Loud" are finally triumphant. Sometimes wearing your heart on your sleeve is the only way to go.