Robert Daniels

Charm City Kings is beautiful and important, unabashedly Black, yet rarely traumatic, and almost always determined statement. Soto has crafted an incredible empathetic narrative, one mile of road at a time.

Writer-director James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s “Still Film” is a stunning, acute critique of the regressive artistic sensibilities that plague contemporary Hollywood.

It’s a film that’s as aching as it is defiant, reflecting its diverse subjects.

With Night of the Kings Lacôte collapses the bounds between eras, and dissolves myth and reality, performance and remembrance, into one whole. It’s an assured, energetic piece of epic filmmaking, one that celebrates how storytelling, oration, and folklore teach us about our past so we might change our present.

Rich in thought, Origin is a dense, forceful masterwork, and, quite simply, the most radical film of DuVernay’s career.

David Byrne’s American Utopia is an ideal world; it’s exhilarating and joyful; and Byrne and Lee actually do make a perfect pair.

It is, through every composition, every serrated cut, and every lived-in performance, a rebellious and revolutionary masterpiece that swims so deep into the historical and public consciousness of race, you can’t help but be equally consumed by its unwavering depths.

Palm Springs adds meaning to the seeming meaninglessness of life, with infectious fun and introspective pleasure to boot.

With her harrowing film In the Same Breath, Wang has established herself as the preeminent documenter of the pain inflicted by oppressive regimes on their people.

Through cinematographer Amin Jafari’s sense of environment, the script’s agile tonal changes, and the attentive cast, we are enthralled from minute one until the end of an intense thriller that operates quietly but with no less punch.

Jane Schoenbrun’s second narrative feature is a gnawing search for belonging in the static spaces between analog pixels.

There are few gentler films you’ll find this year than Rohan Kanawade’s “Cactus Pears.” A touching queer romance whose subtle rhythms pull us into its tender embrace.

Spencer is an act of psychological horror, a kind of ghost story, and a survivalist picture carried by an uncannily immersive Kristen Stewart, in the best performance of her career.

Compensation, director Zeinabu irene Davis’ masterpiece, is a film guided by the desire to represent facets of Black life and history left relatively unexplored.

Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is the kind of visionary art that happens when a group of artists, at the top of their game, assemble to work on a legacy that’s near to their hearts because of the challenge, not in spite of it. Denzel and McDormand are fearless, and The Tragedy of Macbeth is an enthralling jolt of verse and just good old-fashioned dread.

By fashioning a kinetic work that pulls together references and sources from Black literature, music, politics, and meme culture, “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” stands as a seismic intellectual awakening.

When Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt forms its full portrait, pulling together these seemingly disparate images for seismic import, the film is a treasure of community, a bold depiction of Black life, and a sumptuously crafted piece of personal storytelling that rises above tropes and cliches toward a piercing intimacy.

When combined, the diametric halves form a charming diptych whose thematic and emotional profundity make for Miyake’s most accomplished work yet.

Gerima’s Sankofa is an invocation not just to African ancestors, but also the present-day viewer. It calls to attention how history exists in the present, how the spirits of the long-gone can still affect today.

A clear masterpiece held together by visual splendor and idiosyncratic performances.

A harrowing piece of filmmaking, and a fitting, powerful remembrance of those who fought for their humanity.

The Power of the Dog doesn’t just mark Campion’s return — it’s the best movie of 2021 so far. This psychological Western’s themes of isolation and toxic masculinity are an ever-tightening lasso of seemingly innocuous events, and they import more horror and meaning on every closer inspection, corralling viewers under an unforgettable spell.

It’s difficult to fully contextualize how incredible Torres is here; she matches the film’s silent grief by keenly deploying her character’s internal angst into her slender frame. Through her formidable presence, the deliberate “I’m Still Here,” a film that locates further meaning in the face of Brazil’s present Far-Right wave, remains in the heart long after the picture fades.

All That’s Left of You, a multi-generational Palestinian epic, is the kind of accomplished, immaculately rendered film that’s indicative of a director who’s learned much and is ready to seize more.

It’s a disturbing work, guided by a discomforting sense of immaculateness that chills the viewer. It is the sanitation the film performs, which speaks to the now, in a way few Holocaust films have done before.

Miller isn’t here for tawdry melodrama, algorithmic plotting, or art designed for the small screen. “Furiosa” aims to blow you away. And it does. To Valhalla and beyond.

Unlike other political documentaries, “Lowndes County” isn’t afraid to end on a bleak, truthful note. One that challenges our modern perception of what is better and what is merely different. It is, quite simply, one of the best documentaries of the year.

At every turn, “The Annihilation of Fish” is wonderfully surprising.