Natalia Winkelman

Too many works aimed at younger age groups ooze with sentimentality or buckle under a condescending tone. Here, in figurative voice-over full of imagery, we receive Lennie’s unbridled imagination and worldview.

The film’s most extraordinary trick is how Pat’s presence hovers over the film. It is a feat of filmmaking and performance that a character only onscreen for a few scenes can feel truly missed by the audience. The home Pat and Angie built together aches with her absence, and so does the film.

Beauty is pleasurable, but the film’s use of evocative visuals to focus on storytelling more broadly is what makes it a quiet knockout.

Lovingly detailed and accented by an aching score from Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in March, Monster is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure — like its circle of characters — carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy.

"Huesera" is the type of staggering supernatural nightmare that is as transfixing as it is terrifying.

Although it tells of a production gone ostensibly wrong, My First Film is, at its core, a movie not about upheaval but about yearning — and about how, sometimes, giving that yearning up can be a beautiful, generous act of creation all its own.

I Think We’re Alone Now is an exercise in ambiance, and Morano is nothing if not a brilliant conductor of tone. Favoring dreamy over dreary, the movie is a handsome and often mesmerizing addition to Morano’s expanding oeuvre.

More than anything else, Diwan seems interested in exploring how, at many points in history, young women had no choice but to bear this particular burden alone.

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.

Alongside Oplev’s commitment to genuine feeling and complexity — you won’t find easy solutions here — Grabol’s performance shines.

A work of image and mood, Bonjour Tristesse captures the mythopoetic wonder of an adolescent summer, and the effect is trancelike.

It is the exquisitely relatable messiness of this exceptional family tale that lingers.

In a film whose moral emphasizes the necessity of artistic freedom, there is a deceptive simplicity to this aesthetic style that makes it all the more special.

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

The result evokes an adult puppet show crossed with a graphic novel, and like the budding female identity the film untangles, the whole thing takes a little time getting used to. Once you do, it is remarkably beautiful.

The film’s grand achievement is that it positions its subject as a mediator between humans and the natural world. Life cycles on, and if we make the right choices, ruin can become regrowth.

The movie is a dazzling triumph of animation in which you feel the filmmakers’ attention on every frame. In a revivifying turn away from the gag-a-minute, computer-generated extravaganzas clogging up the animated zoological canon, this is a work that cares most about two things: big feelings and great beauty.

Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, an affecting film about struggle set over two days in Paris, is the rare character study that does not only build empathy with its hero’s pain but channels its sensation.

Here is a movie notably unafraid to manifest the weirdest of the weird, no matter what the Mr. Moolahs of the world have to say.

In her first narrative feature, Niasari, who based the story in part on her own experiences, demonstrates an astounding control of pacing and mood.

Affecting, sincere, and most importantly socially astute ... it’s one of the sharpest and most promising first films I’ve seen in some time.

This energetic, enjoyable movie does not set out to break ground, but in putting centerstage those who are typically left on the sidelines, the movie emerges as a rousing success.

If Lurker eventually succumbs to certain genre tropes and a handful of story bumps, it makes up for its limitations in perspicacity and the overall strength of its filmmaking.

A finely gradated study of race and masculinity in the age of Trump, Tyrel is also an engrossing portrait of the revealing power of language.

Cave has an imaginative sense of camera placement, and she’s an expert at inserting ultra-close-up shots at precisely the right moment to induce a laugh, gasp, or shiver. Her camera is always in service of the story, rather than distracting from it with artifice.

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.

For the most part, Black Box Diaries — per its title — is a personal testimony of a stressful journey, illustrating how survivors struggle, cope and find relief in support.

The film, which examines cases in which sexual assault survivors are charged with false reporting, is the rare entry whose revelations feel cogent, earned and memorable.

As Solange’s teenage woes bubble up and then cool to a simmer, Ropert reveals a knack for calibrating emotion. It can be agony to accept one’s parents as people with needs and faults all their own, and Ropert observes Solange’s coming-of-age lucidly and without judgment.

Magic abounds in A Boy Called Christmas, Netflix’s first prestige holiday movie of the season, but pulsing through this winning adventure tale is something even stronger: the immersive power of storytelling.

A triumph of sensitivity.

Lamont and Singleton effortlessly mix the silly with the sincere, and although “One of Them Days” favors razzing over heart-to-hearts, our belief in this pairing never wavers. For that, hats off to SZA and especially Palmer, who lights up the screen with starry zeal.

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

Significant Other does not reinvent the genre, but its narrative flourishes make for an exciting outing.

The Girl With the Needle is most intriguing when it lingers in its disturbing fictions, which come to life with exceptional style.

Though thin on story, the film (streaming on Mubi) is a majestic vision. But most captivating are the settings.

Ostrochovsky often begins shots with characters frozen in place for several seconds before they launch into action, as if they were chess pieces moved by God across the bare lines of the seminary’s crumbling stone architecture.

Malta’s views are arresting, but the images Camilleri chooses would never be found in a travel brochure. In his subtle, vérité approach, he captures something special — not one man’s crisis, but a community’s culture.

This is an engrossing documentary, and one that raises questions about the ethics of intervening (or not) in the lives of people struggling to get by. That these queries hover unresolved may leave viewers uneasy, but it also positions us alongside the subjects, waiting for a solution that’s yet to arrive.

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

With her feature debut, Branham exposes her hand as filmmaker, and reminds us that Being BeBe is only a snapshot of Ngwa’s persona; the real thing is so much richer.

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.

In spite of the movie’s tropes, Haapasalo clearly understands that, when you’re young, desire can feel confusing or gratifying, thrilling or overwhelming. In her snapshot of contemporary girlhood, Haapasalo contains all of the above — making the movie an affecting achievement that never feels less than loving.

However generic this movie is in premise, there is wit to be found in its details, and warmth in its message.

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.

Consistently intriguing and occasionally hilarious, the movie does not depict sex itself. Instead, the characters eat food items that become objects of titillation, lust and pleasure: the sticky goo around soybeans, chili oil sizzling in a wok.

Cinema prizes a good man making history, but this story’s heroes are manifold.

God’s Creatures is ultimately a movie about the collision between a mother’s fidelity and her moral conscience, and Watson is terrific at telegraphing how these instincts grind against each other to terrifying ends.

While its stylings, including perky music and cutesy graphics, can sometimes verge on trite, its insights and guidance are encouraging, actionable and necessary.

Even during more analytic or crusading sections, the documentary’s mood never strays from inspirational.

As a director, Lewis is admirably present. She seems to have gained the trust of her interview subjects, and has taken care to create a space for openness.

Kapadia is a gifted storyteller in both modes, yet one wishes for a version of “2073” in which the veil between them was more permeable. As the film makes clear, they may soon be one and the same.

Kaur acts as an amiable anchor, gamely embodying a mother and a daughter across time periods.

In interviews, the director Patricia E. Gillespie has said that while pitching the film, people often asked whether she could cover or blur Judy’s face to shield audiences from her burns. Gillespie refused, and her resolve to train her camera on Judy gives the film an unflinching quality.

A tender tale, The Starling Girl twirls through a spate of clichés — many surround Jem’s relationship to her alcoholic father, Paul (Jimmi Simpson) — but sticks the landing thanks to Parmet’s rapt attention to the shifting desires of her central character.

Ingeniously simmering under the folly is a health crisis that has afflicted the agricultural area for decades. This is the film’s joke: If the crew could only get their heads out of their rears, they would uncover a gonzo documentary gold mine.

As our central couple’s connection falters, the documentary evolves into an astute examination of perspective.

Apocalypse ’45 knows that war is hell for everyone. But it’s difficult to escape the sense that, in this film’s view of history, America is top of mind.

Its devotion to frights makes it memorable.

There is little story beyond the snatches of conversation we receive, but Human Flowers of Flesh brims with visual and aural detail from the rocky coasts and gurgling reefs.

This is, after all, a situational comedy, in which the laughs spring from reaction shots and line deliveries. Luckily, the actors prove up to the task.

Like many other movies trailing a lone gunslinger, Sniper: The White Raven builds to a tense face-off, which for our hero comes to represent a small measure of justice.

Fortunately, Summer of 69 is a two-hander, and Fineman brings comic chops and genuine feeling to playing the tutor with a heart of gold.

The screenplay suffers from some unevenness, but it never wavers in its empathy. It helps that Talati demonstrates a keen eye for composition.

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.

Within this framework, Avishag’s wants and needs are not quite legible enough to trace a satisfying arc, but unspooling under the film’s stylish, judgment-free gaze, her interactions are alluring nonetheless.

Although Future People struggles to break through to the kids, an engaging family portrait emerges nonetheless — of a group clustered by biology, but bonded by a singular shared experience.

It’s a somewhat rote exercise in soul-searching, and the script lacks subtlety. (At one point, a character actually says, “you have found yourself.”) But the experience is still a worthy one for our furry leading man.

Fendt is more interested in tracing the architecture of their ennui than considering its cause or consequences, and the movie observes their leisure with a warm gaze.

Conventional but genuine, Metal Lords comprehends the riot of adolescent emotions and the many ways teenagers manage them.

As familiar as this tale of female transformation feels, there is an authentic sweetness to Darby and Capri’s fledgling friendship. Their bond resuscitates a movie that might otherwise have been dead on arrival.

Here is a documentary that casts a clear eye on the offenses of an industry driven by capitalism while never losing sight of the workers whose safety and success should be that profession’s number one priority.

Changing the Game could have gone further, analyzing how fairness in sports is a myth to begin with. But the movie isn’t interested in rewriting the rules; it would rather introduce us to the brave young people who are.

Seeking Mavis Beacon still goes down smoothly, at least until its conclusion; while other films tie up too neatly, this one could use a bow at all. It helps that Jones and Ross are clever and likable guides.

The Beautiful Game is a model of a modern “nice” movie.

Even when the movie wants for tension, it brims with playful style.

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.

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.

Through a series of arresting images, the director Rahul Jain presents a city on the verge of apocalypse.

Directed by Mark Monroe, the film wisely does not linger in the lurid details of the Titan’s catastrophic end, and instead uses an investigative framing that sketches the company’s origins and use of carbon fiber while chronicling a series of problematic dives leading up to its final plunge.

Frías de la Parra is thoughtful and precise in conveying the cultural identity of these young people, and their spirit pulses through the story.

Its driving force may seem topical, but the story’s heart is timeless: the harmony between longtime friends, and Veronica and Bailey throw themselves into even the most fraught situations with giddy enthusiasm.

Susie Searches is more than comfortable drawing on the staid tropes of its genre, particularly those that paint mental illness as a path to depravity. But despite its narrative shortcomings, the film builds a tense and mischievous mood that acts as its hook.

The film makes a case for the healing power of soil, arguing that its capacity to sequester carbon could be the key to reversing the effects of climate change.

This is a filmmaker able to wrest real feeling from his actors, and from his audience.

It is a compliment that A Secret Love, which runs under an hour and a half, could stand to be longer, with an expanded portrait of Terry and Pat’s early life as a couple.

While the immediacy of the storytelling may blur out precise details, it excels at building stakes.

That marketing campaigns are built on fallacies isn’t exactly revelatory, but in pairing his excavation of the diamond myth with new inquiries into how the industry is evolving (and how it’s stagnating), Kohn strikes on something valuable.

What begins as an optimistic piece of advocacy eventually veers into something more complex, ambivalent and even frantic.

The quiet candor with which Hannam addresses issues of masculinity, and how it intersects with an Indigenous and queer identity, elevates this otherwise conventional story.

After so much media coverage, certain details of the events feel overly familiar. But the director, Sarah Gibson, is often able to put the episodes into fresh contexts.

It could take a lifetime, or at least the sustained attention of an aficionado, to untangle all the lore. But the themes — solidarity and self-interest, allegiance and betrayal, love and loathing — are easy to follow. For the casual fan, the chief reason to seek out “Infinity Castle” is for its visuals, which position passionately emotive characters over impressionistic backdrops.

Addiction is a complex, challenging topic, and Our American Family, in its sharp specificity, handles it with grace.

This is a sweet, uncomplicated story relayed with enough entrancing dance breaks to fill an American halftime show.

Drift, a patient character study set on a craggy Greek island, proves a mesmerizing showcase for the actress Cynthia Erivo’s talents.

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.

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.

Grooving through the decades, this entertaining documentary aspires to prove that the Bee Gees were more than a hitmaker for disco nightclubs. Rather, Barry, Maurice and Robin were master songwriters and chameleons, continually reinventing themselves to harmonize with the times.