Ryan Lattanzio

Luzzu is beautifully shot, if at times emotionally restrained, in its centering around a man who’s occasionally hard to read. But it boast a true discovery in the casting of Jesmark Scicluna, a real fisherman who plays a version of himself, and here playing a struggling parent trying to eke out a living along the docks.

While the movie barrels toward some tense face-offs between the townsfolk, and more than a few convulsing moments of possessed (maybe?) hysteria, Zalava never quite takes off as a terrifying genre piece, even if Amiri’s attempt to exorcise his own demons is admirable.

The Tale of King Crab is an engrossing, if slight riff on 1970s foreign arthouse classics — though not quite as spellbinding as its forebears, despite a bifurcated structure that makes for two occasionally tantalizing films in one.

This is an odd film of poetic abstractions and ellipses, but consistently fascinating in its unrepentant coyness.

While this nasty film seems headed toward a conclusion where the rich win and the status quo is maintained, that’s abruptly shattered by a violent climax that assures that no one on either side of the divide is left without a bloodstain.

A murky, vaguely sinister, but ultimately dreary coming-of-age film about a young woman’s blossoming sexuality under the spell of her mother’s old flame.

This is a lovely film that will appeal to Bernstein’s most ardent fans, while warmly inviting neophytes into his world.

Unclenching the Fists turns out to be hardly the neorealist dip into misery that some of the film’s more disconnected camerawork from DP Pavel Fomintsev promises.

While occasionally veering into melodrama, Brady’s feature debut is a powerful slice of kitchen-sink gloom, and a blazing portrait of women on fire, unsure of where to go in the wake of rippling tragedy.

Despite the efforts of a bright young cast, this is a hollow and depressing Gen Z romantic comedy. What’s even scarier is that this film comes from Mark Waters, the director of “Mean Girls,” a way savvier teen satire that doesn’t pander to its audience.

In not trying to reach too deeply into the well of profundity, Sarnoski has incidentally achieved a pretty profound movie.

While the raw material for something twisted and operatic exists here, Leblanc is too committed to putting meters of space between herself and the material to fully absorb the viewer. The motivations for that choice, however arty, are uncertain.

Despite Close’s valiant efforts, everything about Four Good Days feels artificial, like face powder barely caked on over the horrors of a TV movie of the week.

While Chasing Ghosts is hardly as bold in its stylistic approach as Traylor, that’s by design, as the documentary is keen to get out of the way and let the work speak for itself. This movie should introduce one of the greatest artists you’ve probably never heard of to a bigger audience.

The way the editing (by Alain Dessauvage and George Hanmer) so gracefully unfolds from present to past suggests a kind of cinematic Proustian madeleine, conjuring how involuntary memories can be jolted again by encounters in the present.

Kier gets the role of his lifetime as a fabulously snarky, acerbic, long-retired hairdresser in Todd Stephens’ Swan Song, a dark comedy that totters to and fro the campy and the melancholic with wincing laughs and real pain.

Blending Wojnarowicz’s own audio journals with input from a handful of his contemporaries, Chris McKim’s startling and meticulously edited new movie captures the spirit of the artist as he was, bracing and in-your-face.

Graf makes “Going to the Dogs” an unpredictable visual experience, bracingly experimental for a 68-year-old filmmaker who hasn’t run out of gas.

This is a bizarre movie that disappears up its own empty gastrointestinal tract.

It’s the kind of movie that seems to suck your soul out while you’re watching it, variably crass and slapstick humor landing with a bloody thud.

While it certainly offers up a necessary-if-dour vision of patriarchy-dominated life in this particular corner of Europe, by-the-numbers storytelling and a flat, visual style occasionally lead to dramatic intertia. Still, Gashi is powerfully, effectively steely as a woman who must take matters into her own hands, even when they are tied by society.

The film shimmers with beauty and sadness despite its length, and the Japanese director’s background as both a photographer and a documentary filmmaker brings a gossamer naturalism to this realistic tale about a young woman’s regrets over abandoning her child years after the fact.

Atlantis is a political howl from the soul about a decaying Europe. But its cold, violent exterior turns out to be a bleak disguise for what is an unexpectedly sweet love story at its molten core.

While the meandering sensibility of Acasa, My Home makes it a tough sit at times, the spell it casts through its all-access dive into subterranean life brought to the surface forms a compelling addition to one of international cinema’s deepest, and ever-growing, pockets.

The actors ably carry the script, as if aware they’re pawns in a genre exercise.

The actors’ gifts are all heightened by Msangi’s delicate touch in this empathetic portrait of immigrant life in America that is, refreshingly, less interested in big drama than in a family quietly building itself back up when it may be too late.

The pop icon’s stardom is so etched in concrete at this point that he could tell his fans just about anything and they would never stop listening. So it’s a pity that the documentary vehicle that surrounds him isn’t more forthcoming about the man beneath the wife beaters and airtight skinny jeans who sends so many swooning, but surely must, at times, feel lonely late at night like the rest of us.

This is a gentle and joyous film not to be slept on, even as its low-key aura lulls you into a soothed state of mind.