Lindsey Bahr

So many films are described as love letters — to places, to time, to people, to even the idea of cinema — that the phrase has almost been rendered meaningless. But Belfast really is the quintessential cinematic love letter.

Isn’t It Romantic stays pretty surface level, which makes for a fine and pleasurable viewing experience, but doesn’t exactly do anything to show that rom-coms would be better if the best friends had more of an inner life, for example. In fact, it just kind of redeems the formula in some ways.

This story is about two older white men fighting about a contract, sure, but Betts and Wright expand its scope with sensitivity and nuance. Like many good courtroom dramas before it, this case is bigger than just these two guys.

Raya is undoubtedly a visual feast. It’s also the best kind of feminist film in that it’s one that doesn’t clobber you with the message. Raya is allowed to be awesome without the script shouting about it all the time and it’s better for it.

There’s something comforting about the fact that Jarmusch is still doing his thing, exactly how he wants to, and that so many great actors are lining up to be part of it. He’s a singular voice in a landscape that’s always in danger of flattening.

I’m still not entirely sure what it all adds up to, but it is provocative, difficult and bleak and leaves you with a very precise feeling of despair and aloneness — just like the best of the space independents do.

While there is a case to be made for the final fight to, let’s just say, go a different way than it does, Creed III is still a knockout.

It’s a true triumph of storytelling and performance and a reminder that films don’t need to be flashy or big to be great.

The film is exactly what you need it to be: An exciting and emotionally true spectacle that required a heck of a fight to simply exist.

It doesn’t always work, but the writing is sharp, the performers top-notch and the set designs achingly beautiful.

A powerful, shapeshifting teenage girl and a disgraced knight-in-training suspected of killing a beloved queen are at the heart of Nimona, a vibrant and irreverent animated adventure set in a futuristic fantasy kingdom.

It’s not a perfect film, it lags at times and at over two hours it is far too long, but Theron and Rogen have a natural chemistry that makes spending a couple hours with them, even in the dullish moments, a joy.

Filmmaker Raoul Peck uses George Orwell’s writings to weave together a biographical portrait of the author and a dispiriting picture of power and truth in the modern world in “Orwell: 2+2=5.”

It is deeply personal and imbued with the kind of tenderness that is extremely difficult to see or appreciate in the moment.

Nature provides much of the soundtrack to All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, a poised and occasionally transcendent debut from writer-director Raven Jackson.

It’s both captivating and bleak, with a series of sexual encounters that can only be described as feral — “Wuthering Heights” wishes it could have hit the ravenous peaks of Fernando and Jennifer together.

I Carry You with Me couldn’t be any more specific about the trials of an undocumented gay couple trying to carve out a place for themselves, but it’s that specificity that makes its themes and emotions all the more universal.

A Kid Like Jake might not be especially cinematic, but it is profound in its simplicity and truthfulness about what real fights sound like and what real lives look like.

It feels strange to want a movie to be longer, but in the case of Last Breath I was both desperate for it to end, for anxiety reasons, and also wanting more.

The broader history is there for those who are curious and on its own terms this is a story that will keep you engaged. Much of that has to do with Ridley.

It’s both a compliment and a criticism to say that “On the Record” left me wanting much more.

Fire is in the air this summer, literally, and at the movies. Though the flames in German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s Afire aren’t of the nuclear variety, the smoke from his tension-filled chamber piece about a few young adults at a vacation house near the Baltic Sea certainly gets in your eyes.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie feels very easy and lived in thanks at least in part to the fact that its vocal cast has been doing this for over 200 episodes.

It’s Vega’s extraordinary performance, full of grace and depth, that keeps A Fantastic Woman in check from becoming something either too campy or too sanctimonious. It’s one that has the power to make an audience really understand and internalize why it is an act of bravery to simply live life as herself, and perhaps even change some minds in the process.

The film is immensely watchable, staged without flash or pretention, that relies on its sharp script and talented and charismatic actors to carry the audience through. Wright is particularly delightful at the center of it all as he navigates a new relationship as well as the consequences of his lie and how far he’s willing to go with it.

Miller gets to play in a wide array of cultures as the djinn skips through time, all with their own shimmering palettes and fairy tale hyperrealism.

East of Wall is a promising start for a burgeoning filmmaker and a worthy portrait of an insular world that many of us will never know.

A Secret Love is guaranteed to pull at your heartstrings. It might be the quarantine or it might just be effective storytelling, but a scene near the end of the family coming together — not even a sad scene — left this reviewer in tears and I’m willing to bet I won’t be the only one.