Natalia Winkelman

An often miraculous and occasionally exasperating Japanese anime film.

Forastera is an exquisitely deconstructed ghost story, a muted mystery that beguiles while remaining deeply grounded in its evocative setting.

This is an upsetting film with an abrupt ending, but the feeling of despondence it imposes upon the audience is part of the point.

As its return to the IMAX — I mean, silver — screen, the saga could do worse than this movie. With their main guy’s face behind metal, that’s a more than respectable showing.

A crafty reveal does not a clever film make, and even at a merciful 80 minutes, the device eventually feels more tired than the sullen Erin, who soldiers on through her suffering.

Pelage and plumage noticeably lack the tactile quality of a Pixar extravaganza, but the animation gets a pass for the movie’s purposes — namely, to impart a message that communities should trust each other, whether they’re covered in rotely-rendered feathers or fur.

Ultimately, Two Women is less a message movie than a featherweight comedy, gesturing at big ideas about sexual politics before settling in as an amusingly mischievous diversion.

In his first feature, the writer and director Joel Alfonso Vargas takes a rather unremarkable premise and unspools it with sedulous care.

There is charm in the film’s allusions to New York City indie filmmaking, like the crew member who fibs that he’s shooting a mayonnaise commercial. But that specificity does not extend to Simon and Bruce’s bond, which consists of parallel play or the odd story about getting too stoned.

Two creative decision makers more at ease behind the scenes, they are, perhaps, not the most natural chroniclers of their own careers and social lives, and as the film goes on, it strains to arrive at even the most basic personal revelations.

Although chiefly a straightforward — and at points repetitive — synopsis of the events, Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare distinguishes itself in its devotion to elevating these men as heroes.

The American dream gets a quirky wardrobe upgrade in Idiotka, a lightweight but winning comedy that feels like a Netflix movie’s indie cousin.

The saving grace of Midwinter Break is the pair of stellar leads, who would be appealing to watch just fumbling for their reading glasses. That also happens to be the pinnacle of action, however, within this prosaic drama.

Kramer has constructed an ironically detached artifact that invites questions about ownership and image and then bats them away, making it a frustrating experience with an intriguing veneer.

The men give Jimpa a warm, intergenerational quality, gesturing at the power of queer family over time. If only the film didn’t ask the audience to invest in so very many subplots; the clutter ends up sucking the air out of all of them.

It’s so earnest, so vulnerable in its portrait of the disappointments and anxieties of young adulthood, that one tends to forgive its tweer flights of fancy.

Leviticus is not a perfect horror film . . . But the film’s moody atmosphere — including a soundtrack full of clanks and bangs — makes it an enjoyably disquieting ride.

The documentary tries to heighten the stakes of Talankin’s story by casting his efforts under a pall of danger, dread or distress. But these bids for drama are far less persuasive than the horrifying raw footage Talankin captures, such as one scene in which young students are coached to march down a hallway, as if preparing for battle.

Here is a movie whose atavistic excursion through time transfixes, even as its psychology remains as fuzzy as a photograph smeared by motion.

We Bury the Dead is most haunting when it gestures at a world dazed with trauma and explores a path to personal closure through collective efforts.

The story, about a dying matriarch and her stricken adult children, paints by numbers with stock characters and cloying scenarios.

Sending up costumey, upstairs-downstairs tropes, the movie seldom lets five seconds pass without a wisecrack, pratfall or sight gag, sometimes all three stacked on top of each other.

Expressive visuals and evocative scenes, including one involving an overactive meerkat, make Left-Handed Girl a memorable family affair. It’s only when the film introduces one too many social realist tropes . . . that the melodrama grows unwieldy.

If earlier segments of Middletown suggest that we’re building to something revelatory, the latter half feels a bit like a train that chugs on aimlessly after passing its destination. It’s a pleasant ride. It just lacks a little edge.

While the film centers on the comfort Anand finds with Balya and vice versa, it is also an elegantly reserved study of Anand’s grief, finding a rhythm in its scenes of ritual that allows us to ache alongside.

Bunny is a New York movie that eschews realism but still brims with authentic affection, and in doing so, bursts with life.

A David and Goliath story with big feelings, edifying speeches and a swelling score, Sarah’s Oil is a movie that will surprise nobody. Viewers might even make out a regressive strain reinforcing the feel-good mood.

While DaCosta’s intelligence as a writer and director makes Hedda a standout film, her penchant for play makes it a delightful one.