Leslie Felperin

Although Coup! has a small cast and unfolds mostly in a secluded mansion during the 1918 influenza pandemic, it packs a lot of flavor, suspense and droll comedy into its slim 97-minute running time, making it fun enough to deserve an exclamation point in its title.

Reprising the kind of musical performances, campus hijinks, stinging humor and sassy sisterhood put in place by its eminently likeable predecessor, Pitch Perfect 2 remixes the elements and comes up with something even slicker and sharper.

Harvest stands strong and tall, a work solid as an oak. Full of a sensual love of nature and a distinctive vibe, it’s tangy like a home-brewed ale.

The script crackles with such bleak little jokes like this, relieving the tension in a work that could otherwise prove overwhelmingly depressing and borderline melodramatic.

The film gets across the weird weight of lockdown, a time of tension and anxiety but also an opportunity for creative growth none of us saw coming.

Unsurprisingly, it all builds to a bleak conclusion, and the film as a whole is a powerful statement that lingers in the mind long after the final credits roll.

Prayer dwells with almost swooning rapture on the bodies of young men as they mete out brutal violence on one another, and features a cast composed mostly of unknowns, impressively coached in order to deliver arresting turns onscreen.

It’s a work suffused with emotional tones and shades, surprisingly not all of them sad even though the subject knew at the time of filming he had mere weeks left before he’d die of cancer.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore does offer an engaging, exuberant portrait of the relentlessly likeable Matlin.

Half the Picture is a vital, comprehensive documentary on a subject that's so fundamental to the industry it's about, you have to wonder why dozens of movies on this scale or bigger haven't already been made.

One of the singular aspects of Fox's script is that it honors the messiness of real-life events, even if that means the film itself sometimes feels messy.

Davies is in fine form here, with luminous performances, especially from Rachel Weisz, rounding out a classy package whose only major problem is it may be a bit too true to its period sensibility and legit origins.

Perhaps the most remarkable moment comes at the end when the elderly Aurora reflects that she doesn’t want revenge, she just wants those connected to the genocide to be made accountable for it: “sat in the chair” of justice.

Intimate in every sense, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande represents an affirming, immensely likable British comedy-drama.

This documentary by Morgan Neville reveals that he really was just what he seemed to be at first innocent sight: a kind-hearted, square but saintly man who genuinely loved and understood children.

While the cast’s dancing is very good, on the whole, the acting suggests less training. But that fits the semi-professional vibe even better, creating a work that feels light, quick and quite dirty in every sense.

Let’s just say that morally, The Killer is all over the place, which may alienate some viewers. Others may delight in both the protagonist and the film’s puckish, zero-fucks-given attitude, one that seems entirely, atheistically uninhibited by fear of a punitive deity or higher moral purpose.

If nothing else, Armadillo proves just how well "The Hurt Locker" captured the mixture of boredom, fear, brutality and locker-room machismo that makes up the day-to-day routine of a frontline soldier.

The film has its own specific vibe, thanks in part to the writer-directors’ unique, immersive sense of the milieu and the leads’ tender chemistry.

A friend who watched this with me said that it’s the kind of film she’d like to see again when she’s dying. That pretty much nails its meditative, melancholy tone and suits the kind of work Goldsworthy does, which is all about the ephemeral and the enduring; time and the tactile qualities of the instant.

Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners (Domakinstvo za pocetnici) is a fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family.

Thanks to the director’s magisterial knack with actors (especially non-professionals such as terrific adolescent discovery Nykiya Adams, who, as the protagonist, is in nearly every frame of the film), the result is quite entrancing.

Simply designed animation, modeled on the look of cool cartoons of the time such as Daria, adds an extra comic jauntiness. You could say, to use a popular slang term from the 90s, this puts the “mental” back in experimental, but in a good way.

A gloriously off-the-charts study in perversity.

The big treat is seeing Jett herself talk and watching her still-strong bond with producer and best friend Kenny Laguna: two leather-clad old mates, constantly bickering but inseparable.

It’s a proper animation buff’s piece of work, and admittedly a little slow to get its yarn ripping, but mesmerising and moving in the later stretches.

At last, just what world cinema really needs right now: an exquisitely made film about street dogs in Istanbul, satiating that universal desire to see distant lands, coo over beautiful, noble animals, and satisfy the audience’s need to feel guilty about the misfortune of poorer, unluckier people.

I can think of few documentaries that are more honest, self-scrutinising and revelatory about ageing, familial love and its limits, and the whole tragicomic process of dying.