Richard Whittaker

It’s an understated performance in many ways, but in those quiet moments, whether it be a new haircut or a tapping foot, Ebrahimi provides an astonishing education of what it means to be a woman fleeing an abusive relationship.

This is a character study in extremis, built around the strengthening bond and rising tension between an aimless serial killer lover and her more driven but mysterious counterpart.

There’s a profound mournfulness to this elegiac portrait of the end of an era, given greater poignancy by Jones’ understated performance.

The ninth film in the franchise, Predator: Badlands flips the whole Predator equation on its severed head from moment one by, for the first time, really concentrating on the Yautja rather than on humans.

Audiences wanting a more rounded discussion of the U.S. occupation of Iraq might find it too militaristic and Americentric, while flagwavers wanting raw jingoism may find its questioning too probing. But as a depiction of the futility of conflict from those who fought, Warfare is far from ambivalent.

First-time feature director Kapsalis understands that the best way to capture a performance like this is to just leave the camera on her as Holly leans in to her worst instincts.

It's that rare horror-comedy that is both comedic and horrifying.

It’s such a simple story but told with such grace, tenderness, compassion, and wonder, that all its strangeness seems familiar and welcome.

Most anthologies have the framing mechanism simply service the stories they contain: Instead, Spindell weaves each tale into the bigger fabric, like bloody fat quarters making up a gruesome but surprisingly snugly quilt. When the pieces all are sewn together, the fully assembled The Mortuary Collection may well be the most wickedly fun anthology since Trick'r Treat.

Cobweb's greatest achievement is in ambiguity, in leading the story to its inevitable ending without ever sacrificing that unnerving quality.

Földes manages to balance the potentially dissonant tones of the diverse source material and create something akin to a story, one with diversions created as side characters relate elements of some of the smaller chapters within the books as anecdotes and memories.

It’s in the semi-improvised or captured moments, like the looks of desperation and abandonment on the faces of old men on the streets of a mining community, that Caught by the Tides is most striking.

Where Shinkai remains peerless is in taking those big, magical, melodramatic swings and landing them with a gentle, compassionate touch.

The Nightmare Before Christmas said that it’s all right to wrap a few scares up under the Christmas tree. Terrifier 3, the latest in the extreme gore franchise, sets fire to the decorations, cuts off your eyelids, and makes you watch the whole house burn.

In this charming, funny, tear-inducing, and instantly recognizable world, and through the (in)actions of Grace, Elliot tells a gentle, touching, bitter-but-ultimately-sweet fable with a warming message: It’s OK to leave your shell behind.

If anything, Ross’ work reminds us that the camera need not be God’s unblinking eye on a story. He has crafted an exceptional film driven by captivating performances.

In adapting James Lee Burke's short story, "Winter Light," Higgins and cowriter Shaye Ogbonna (The Chi, Lowlife) have taken the barest of its bones and grown fresh meat.

Even in the hail of bullets, shrieking needle drops, and blinding lighting effects, John Wick: Chapter 4 still works as a cohesive, linear film with a strangely philosophical heart.

Las Vegas may demolish its own history, but The Last Showgirl will break your heart by showing you a woman clinging to the rubble of her life.

Most importantly, Sherman and Abbasi deflate the myth that has dominated the last decade, that somehow Trump is some kind of aberration from the historical Republican Party, perverting it to his will.

As for Johnson's grasp of the era in tech firms, it's astoundingly accurate, so much so that you'll swear you can smell the switch from the Sprite-and-sweaty-T-shirts years to the days of chrome and corporate art.

It's another tour de force performance from Jenkins, in the same week as his headturning performance as the pater familias of a clan of grifters in "Kajillionaire."

Hundreds of Beavers works because everyone involved knows to deliver the whimsy with a straight face, treating knitted fish, puppet frogs, and the Wisconsin snowdrifts in which it was filmed all as equally real.

Indeed, much like the Academy that created an animated features Oscar just to keep cartoons away from "real movies," Paint Vs Pixels often falls into the trap of believing that animation should be kid-friendly. Yet it still provides an incredible viewpoint from the artist's side of the wonder of American animation and its rich legacy.

There's an undeniable boldness to Capobianco's decision to channel a biography through the medium of stop motion, but it's perfect for the untrammeled exuberance and boundless ingenuity of Da Vinci.

An open, honest, and crystal-clear explanation of what it is like to live with Parkinson's: much of it painful, with no off-ramp.

Suicide Squad just never quite has the heart of Guardians.

We know that we have turned rivers from mystical places into resources, but in its sumptuous 75-minute delivery River allows us to see the flow of that narrative. And it is beyond gorgeous, as visually dazzling (if not quite as stomach-churning for acrophobics) as Mountain: luscious landscapes of quiet streams, poisoned fish and angular dams presented as abstract patterns, and the quiet joy of swimming.