Matt Fagerholm

Polsky’s skill in mining the darkly humorous shades of disastrous hubris is not all that surprising, considering he produced Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage’s funniest film to date, 2009’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.”

This is one of the year’s best films.

I got more enjoyment from reading Parlow’s exceptional interview in the production notes than I did from any given scene in the movie, some of which are so murky, they border on incoherent.

A well-intentioned documentary that makes the puzzling miscalculation of upstaging the Armenian Genocide with “The Promise.”

If this material were compiled into a book, it would be rightfully deemed great literature. As featured in Heise’s film, however, these insightful words are frequently marred by a style oddly akin to a mournful podcast, one that requires listeners to repeatedly peer at their phone to read the subtitles.

Filmed over the course of three years and clocking in just over 70 minutes (minus credits), When Lambs Become Lions is a triumph of shrewdly economical storytelling on the part of Kasbe and his co-editors Frederick Shanahan and Caitlyn Greene.

Catnip for writers and humorists of all stripes, Wolchok’s film provides delightful breakdowns of various cartoons, examining the comedic rhythm of their design and detail.

God is destined to forever be a complicated subject for most mortals, yet there’s no question this film has made me a believer in the boundless artistic potential of its creator.

In some ways, The Infiltrators is reminiscent of 2018’s under-seen gem “American Animals” in how it blurs the line between narrative and documentary while incorporating genre tropes into the nonfiction medium.

The post-apocalyptic landscapes captured by the courageous lens of cinematographer Artem Ryzhykov are deeply chilling, especially when Alexandrovich stumbles upon a classroom littered with gas masks.

Resembling Maude Apatow in her youth, Rachel is a richly fascinating figure in her own right, and though she originally hadn’t planned on putting herself in the film, she wisely chose to have her face on camera (a la Bing Liu in “Minding the Gap”) when interviewing Josh, which heightens the emotional impact of their scenes together considerably.

Maggio’s film is also deeply moving in how it illustrates the ways in which a single life can have an eternal ripple effect throughout the generations, seamlessly blending Parks’ voice with those of the modern day photographers who carry on his legacy.

Robinson is matter-of-fact, thoughtful and enormously compelling in illustrating hidden chapters of our shared history.

Laughter is an essential fuel when dealing with subject matter as heavy as this, and The Fight does a splendid job of humanizing its heroic lawyers.

There are no thrills in this western yarn, just a mounting series of tragedies that are by turns frustrating and numbing.

Share is a relatively restrained work. Nothing is made explicit aside from the internal agony of its heroine, whose headspace we occupy so fully, we can’t help sharing in every tremulous emotion that ripples across her face.

What resonates most potently are the scenes of the 1972 trial.

Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower is not a great film on the order of Nanfu Wang’s “Hooligan Sparrow” or Alison Klayman’s “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” both essential profiles of muckraking activists whistleblowing against government corruption in China, but it does have an equally great story to tell.

The final four minutes turn what was already a fine picture into an unforgettable one, affirming Morchhale’s status as one of the most exciting figures of the Indian new wave.

The atrocity of Newtown is twofold: the fact that it happened and the fact that the government did absolutely nothing to prevent it from happening again. Snyder and Kramer’s films aren’t politicized because they don’t have to be.

When it comes to conjuring a sense of place, Driver’s film succeeds spectacularly, though it comes up short in other areas.

The vast majority of this picture is extremely well done, which is what makes its sudden misstep into wish fulfillment sentimentality during the final twenty minutes all the more of a letdown.

What’s remarkable is how Alexandra Pelosi, shooting much of the footage herself with a handheld camera, captures images that resonate on multiple provocative levels following the events of recent months.

What makes this film special, first and foremost, is the performance by Chin, who has lost none of the acerbic edge she sported as Waverly’s mother in “The Joy Luck Club.”

When a comedy is made about a real-life topic that is no laughing matter, it had better be funnier than Sameh Zoabi’s Tel Aviv on Fire. The premise is a richly flavorful one, but the execution is as bland as unseasoned hummus.

Like the director’s 2017 profile of Dries Van Noten, Martin Margiela: In His Own Words explores how its titular subject is driven by ideas rather than ego or a desire for stardom.

Though its generic title may evoke memories of the archaic science videos you fell asleep to in grade school, Schwartzberg’s film quickly proves to be one of the year’s most mind-blowing, soul-cleansing and yes, immensely entertaining triumphs.

Rather than massage the ego of its progressive target audience, this film stares back at us with a piercingly critical gaze.