Moira Macdonald

Azazel Jacobs’ His Three Daughters is one of those films that’s so intimate you feel like you’re in the room with the characters, breathing the same air.

A holiday gift, it’s bringing some much-needed light to these dark days.

Winner of the best film award at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing” is a gentle reminder of the power of art to transform lives.

Shi and screenwriter Julia Cho present a sweet, graceful ode to growing up.

The drama of Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women takes place in Annette Bening’s masterful pauses.

Beginning with its enigmatic title and concluding with a haunting, strange ending, “Evil Does Not Exist” is filmmaking more interested in creating a mood than telling a taut story — but what a mood it is.

BlacKkKlansman manages that tricky balance of being both entertaining (some of the performances are quite comedic, particularly Paul Walker Hauser as a mouth-breathing Klansman) and devastating.

The movie’s a playful commentary on overdependence on technology — Wallace has machines that bathe him, dress him and make his tea — but it’s also just fast-paced fun, and you look forward to watching it a second time to catch the sight gags you missed.

The film is both a gripping and timely celebration of the free press, and, in the remarkable hands of Streep, an exploration of what it meant then (and, perhaps, now) to be a woman thrust into power in an all-male world.

A smart, wistful and very funny movie.

It’s a feel-good film about dreams, about obsession, about believing in yourself when nobody else seems to be doing it for you, and Hawkins carries it with effortless ease.

As you have probably seen a movie or two before, you know where this is going. But Lopez’s glossy sweetness and Wilson’s dad-jokes charm blend amiably together, and Marry Me glides along smoothly, full of pop songs and earnestness and very expensive-looking hair.

Much of the film’s pleasure is in hearing Morrison speak.

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is one of those movies that just picks you up immediately and sweeps you away; it’s made with an irresistibly breezy confidence.

A taut, gripping documentary about one young woman’s dream ... Maiden is wonderfully suspenseful — especially if you, like me, have no idea how the race turned out.

A Quiet Place is brief, taut and often quite terrifying. And it creates in its audience a fascinating relationship with sound.

In this season of Big, Serious Movies, what a treat to find this wonderfully silly, perfectly paced hall of mirrors hanging out at the multiplexes. It’s as if Agatha Christie came back for a visit, after getting caught up on pop culture in the beyond.

It’s not a perfect movie, but Zendaya makes it a great pleasure.

It’s the kind of movie in which stories are conveyed wordlessly through a half-smile, a droopy posture, a man who looks for just a few seconds like he might cry but doesn’t — a film made all the more heartwarming for the work it takes to get to its heart.

Isle of Dogs is full of delightful touches, but it’s not Anderson’s best. Nice fur, though.

On this wintry landscape, with its endless plains and biting wind, it seems as if everyone — even the quietest — has a story, if you take the time to listen to it.

Those fascinated by the art of animation will find much to ponder here — the hand-drawn brush strokes, the lush colors, the way just a few quickly sketched lines suddenly take vivid life.

Pandas leaves its viewer newly educated, filled with hope, and dazzled.

Megan Griffiths’ latest, I’ll Show You Mine, is impeccably filmed and thoughtfully written, but it doesn’t quite justify its running time.

So much of Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s disturbing drama set in the world of law enforcement and Mexican drug cartels (the title is the Mexican term for a hit man), takes place on Emily Blunt’s face.

The film is inspiring and funny and lovely.

So much of the pleasure of Denis Villeneuve’s poignant science-fiction drama Arrival lies in watching Amy Adams figure things out.

The night after I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once I had a dream, in which I took a journey that was chaotic and messy and strangely beautiful. I suspect that dream was heavily flavored by the movie I had just seen, which also fit that description. The dream quickly faded, as dreams do, but the movie is staying with me, turning over and over in my head like stones in a kaleidoscope, ever-shifting.