Kyle Smith

Amrum is a stirring example of how childhood reminiscence can stand for so much more.

The Christophers is zingy fun. Whichever world Mr. Soderbergh decides to visit, he invariably makes the trip worthwhile.

For those who half-remember the novella from school (as I did) and didn’t especially enjoy it (as I didn’t), Mr. Ozon both honors his material and reinvigorates it.

As a love story, Fantasy Life isn’t particularly original, but the low-key way Mr. Shear realizes some familiar situations is warm and human, with comic aspects and sad ones kept in an appealing balance.

The film may not propose a solution to any of our maladies, but it’s a bitterly convincing diagnosis.

Combining the best aspects of “Interstellar” and “The Martian,” but more satisfying in the end than either, this 2 1/2-hour epic Christian allegory recreates the same mix as the best Steven Spielberg fantasies—wonder, adventure, humor, warmth and pathos, all infused with a child’s sensibility.

The lean, athletic Mr. Herzog, 83 years old, seems as spry and eager as ever, and his global enthusiasm remains a force of nature in itself. Ghost Elephants takes its place as yet another of the director’s essential forays into the wild and unknown.

Mr. Luhrmann successfully makes Presley’s concerts fresh again.

Approaching the glum realities of aging with an often deft and even lightly comical tone, the Spanish-language film Calle Málaga is a pleasing character study of an elderly lady who is more resourceful than she appears.

Quirky touches, dry wit and first-rate characterizations make “The Bone Temple” a rare treat and one of the finest zombie movies I’ve seen, not to mention a major improvement from last summer’s third entry in the series.

The attraction is in the haunting texture of the picture, its delicate, breathy wonder.

Mr. Birney’s exotically low-fi imagination makes for a freaky and feverish trip.

You’d be unwise to look to the movies for economic insight—this one amounts to an extended fatuous argument that an individual who behaved like a corporate restructuring would be a psychopath. But among contemporary socio-economic parables, Mr. Park’s latest is an amusingly cutting one.

For those who complain that movies are too pat and formulaic, “Marty Supreme” is mostly a bracing tonic—pungent, wild and weird.

The determination to find greatness in the ordinary gives Song Sung Blue a magical, unforced luminescence that much more immodest films usually lack.

The Housemaid is a delightful hall of mirrors in which reality turns out to be subject to infinite modification.

The film honors maturity and all its weighty deliberations without putting a sheen of sentimentality on the condition.

If it’s an extravagant demand of time it’s an even more extravagant pleasure, the rare film worth a trip out to the cinema for full immersion.

Rich, evocative, crafty and exciting, it’s one of the few standout movies of the year.

Though the oddness of the situation yields the same kinds of lightly funny observational moments that gave Lost in Translation some of its charm, Rental Family is, like Sofia Coppola’s movie, above all else a sweet drama about the difficulty of connections. Which makes it an unusually mature and considered experience at the movies.

Mr. Chu knows exactly how to bring this story emphatically home, and as we’ve heard before, there’s no place like it.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s funniest and finest movie in many years is perfection all the way through: the perfect casting choice, the perfect balance of comedy and pathos, the perfect wacky route to the perfect ending.

In the title role, Sydney Sweeney must be relieved to be giving people a reason to discuss her acting. She’s excellent in the role, small and vulnerable yet tough and fierce, a pink-clad dynamo who is nevertheless beholden to others.

In an odd way, Predator: Badlands is a date-night movie posing as merely a sci-fi killing jamboree. All of those lovable lummoxes out there with their hyper-verbal lady friends will learn a little about cooperation.

Sentimental Value is an affecting look into a fractured family. Art and domestic life intertwine with each other, inform each other and perhaps support each other more than is at first apparent, leading to an ending that provides a satisfying union of the two realms.

Just as early youth means the endless fascination of new encounters, it also brings sudden, bewildering losses. “Little Amélie” brims with feeling for every precious moment of it.

Sly, wry, adorable and deplorable, Guillaume Marbeck is priceless as the endlessly irritating and yet frustratingly charismatic Godard in one of the year’s brightest pictures, a rare standout in a sea of multiplex mediocrity.

Bugonia isn’t merely dark; it’s a black hole. But Mr. Lanthimos’s vision is sternly compelling, and Bugonia is that exceptional movie that’s extremely hard to forget.