Sheila O'Malley

Alexander Nanau's Collective has a propulsive energy, relentlessly building in urgency and outrage.

Carol is often about its surfaces, their beauty contrasting with the scary duality of people, relationships. The surfaces in Carol are so seductive that one understands the ache to belong in that world.

The darkness of "All We Imagine as Light" isn't darkness at all. The darkness is filled with light.

No Other Land is a portrait of relentless cruelty, but it is also a portrait of the resilience of this besieged community.

Delusion feeds addiction, and addiction needs a constant supply of delusion. Uncut Gems shows this electrified-fence feedback loop like no other film in recent memory. It's excruciating and exhilarating.

A great newspaper movie of the old-school model, calling up not only obvious comparisons with "All the President's Men" and "Zodiac," two movies with similar devotion to the sometimes crushingly boring gumshoe part of reportage, but also Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell shouting into adjacent phones in "His Girl Friday."

In "Here," what matters is not what is offered, but the act of offering itself.

It's a great film, engrossing, suspenseful, and strange.

Alice Diop understands how silence, when allowed to exist, vibrates with echoes, and it is these echoes that are trying to speak to us. They have a lot to say. "Saint Omer" shows us how to listen.

The final sequences are the only "stock" moments in this very specific family drama, and something about the last scene left me cold. But the rest is so effective and emotional, a dedicated portrait of trauma passed down through generations, it doesn't matter.

A powerful and thoughtful film, it is also not what it at first seems, which is part of the point Polley appears to be interested in making. Can the truth ever actually be known about anything?

This potentially maudlin stuff is elevated by the work of all of the actors. What matters here is not just what is being said, but the emotions underneath.

With a script by Eric C. Charmelo, Nicole Snyder and Shepard, The Perfection has a gory grindhouse sleaze overlaid with the tony gleam of the upper-crust, a very sick combo.

The Souvenir Part II is more, though, than Julie's progression towards a completed film. It could be called, with apologies to James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman.

Sound of Falling operates like a ghost story, complete with a haunted house, but the ghosts aren’t supernatural. The ghost is history.

The Swerve is the opposite of comforting.

The film is one long interrogation, not only from Jennifer the character's standpoint, but from a directorial standpoint.

An effective and creepy-surreal film.

Elle is a high-wire act without a net.

Watching the film is almost like feeling the muscles in your eyes shift, as you look up from reading a book to stare out at the ocean.

Foster is masterful in evoking a child's point of view.

Only 90 minutes long, the film feels intimate and yet at the same time vast. It has a relaxed pace, but an intensity of focus.

In each of her films, Hansen-Løve has the patience to wait for what Henri Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment,” the moment where something "small," something detailed and specific, reveals the universal. Things to Come is full of such moments.

Leave No Trace is, at times, heartbreaking, but it's also filled with glimpses of almost casual human kindness, throwaway moments of good will and inclusion piercing through what could be the bleakest of tales.

The fantastical and surreal are presented with unshowy practicality. It's magical realism mixed with kitchen-sink drama, seasoned by a haunting sense of history as a sentient entity.

"D-Man" is one of the most eloquent works of art to come out of the AIDS era, and it continues to be done by dance companies around the world. Can You Bring It shows the challenges inherent in this, but is also an essential reminder—to people who sorely need it—of just how bad it really was "back then"...

En el Séptimo Dia makes its points powerfully, even more so since the set-up is so simple. Even better, its third act is as thrilling as anything in a traditional sports movie. McKay's control of tone and rhythm is in high gear, creating a work both thought-provoking and hugely entertaining.

Vesuvius might erupt again. The angel of history keeps moving forward. Time destroys, preserves, and then returns (one hopes, at least). Rosi’s film is a meditative and moving document showing that process and possibility.

The result is a film that is funny and sad, scary and sweet, disturbing and revelatory.

The Shape of Water doesn't cohere into the fairy tale promised by the dreamy opening. It makes its points with a jackhammer, wielding symbols in blaring neon.

Good One is intriguing in its disinterest in explanations. The film's refusal to "satisfy" an audience with easy explanations or even cathartic moments pulls you into its atmosphere, dragging you into the weird dynamic which grows more claustrophobic by the moment.

Despite the harrowing stories that fill the film from start to finish, Dreamcatcher is not hopeless.

Watching Krisha is a revelation: there are expected "rules" for such material (a former addict returns home for a holiday), but then director/writer Trey Edward Shults breaks every rule, making those rules seem tired and arbitrary in the process, and he does so with bravura, confidence, flash.

Little Men doesn't reach the humanist tragedy of "Love Is Strange," but that's an unfair comparison since very few films achieve what "Love Is Strange" does. Little Men is extremely powerful in its own right, with its devotion to its characters' differing perspectives so refreshing in an increasingly black-and-white world.

There's something a little too neat about the structure of Showing Up, and the pigeon wears its symbolism on its broken wings. But the piercing specificity of Reichardt's vision, and her insights into the dynamics of an art scene like the one in Portland, are spot on.

EPiC is so vivid it makes Elvis seem not like an entertainer from the past, but a figure who lives in the perpetual Right Now.

May December is one of Haynes' most unbalancing and provocative films.

Harrowing, unpredictable, painful, confrontational, this is a movie for grown-ups.

It is that very lack of objectivity that makes Strong Island the experience that it is. It is a very tough film to shake.

The extraordinarily assured feature film debut by writer-director and standup comedian Bo Burnham, starts out with one of these videos and it is so touchingly real, so embarrassingly true to life, you might swear it was improvised, or found footage. But it's not. This is Elsie Fisher, a 13-year-old actress herself, amazingly in touch with what it's like to be in the stage of life she's actually in.

A powerful and entertaining film about a gang of girls, and what friendship means, the protection it provides.

In "The Taste of Things," no distinction is made between cooking for someone and loving them. It's "all one."

Close to Vermeer is a gentle, thoughtful documentary, populated by knowledgeable individuals like Vandivere, experts at the top of their fields who have maintained their passion and love for the subject.

When Linklater's style works (and it works in Everybody Wants Some!!), there is nobody quite like him.

It's one of those rare films where the title has real meaning, one that grows in power the moment the credits roll.

Watchers of the Sky, an intricate and immensely powerful documentary, directed by Edet Belzberg, is both the story of Raphael Lemkin as well as a harrowing examination of genocide, past, recent, and ongoing.

Writing with Fire is a powerful piece of work, although it moves at a mostly slow and steady pace.

Reality is a brutal film, with a short run-time and a story arc so strong it obliterates the memory of self-important complex films, weighted down with a "message," straining for relevance. Satter's film doesn't need to push. Reality wears its relevance on its fluorescent-lit short sleeves.

On the Record does a lot of things very well, but what it does best of all is back up Mayo's eloquent and pained statement. Everybody loses when women go away.

How on earth Patterson made a movie about a UFO hovering over a small town in the late 1950s without falling back on every cliche in the book is the fun and wonder of The Vast of Night. You already know the plot. You've seen it all before. But the way the story is told is new. With The Vast of Night, it really is about the how, not just the "what happens."

Based on Jonathan Ames' novella of the same name, the film is rooted so firmly in Joe's point of view he sometimes is absent from the screen entirely. We're inside his head.

Under the Shadow, a Farsi-language debut feature written and directed by Babak Anvari, creates a world where reality itself is suspect. In a year filled with great first features, add Under the Shadow to the list.

Wind is both benign and ominous.

Rat Film is an odd and captivating experience, and its fluid style is its most distinguishing characteristic.

Of all of the things Tatiana Huezo captures in Prayers for the Stolen, her first narrative feature, the terror of the night is most unnerving.

Rose Plays Julie is very controlled in its style: this control reaps huge rewards.

It's truly refreshing to watch a film where nobody has anything figured out, where life proceeds messily and imperfectly. Saint Frances is unpredictable in a very human way.

The most pleasurable aspect of 20th Century Women (and it's pleasurable throughout) is that it allows itself to be messy.

Although the film has much in common with other religious-based horror films, and is often quite terrifying in its own right, Saint Maud is mostly interested in the experiential realities of its central character, and Clark is so deeply in touch with Maud's shattered psyche it's impossible to look away from her. It's thrilling to meet a character where you have no idea what she will do from one moment to the next.

With all the humor, though, the film strikes an unexpectedly tender almost bittersweet chord, the humor shadowed by sorrow, loneliness, helplessness.

So spot-on in its evocation of that whole "scene," onstage and off — its intimacy, competition, struggles and rhythms — that at times it feels like a documentary.

The Lost King gets sidetracked. Still, it's a great story!

The Cathedral marries form to content in a striking way.

The Lobster plays rigorously by its own rules without once telegraphing "Just kidding!" While extremely funny, it is a bitter and ruthless film. Lanthimos plays target practice and his aim is deadly.

You don't watch the movie. You experience it through your senses.

The rhythm is slow. You really get the sense that when you walk through the doors of Carmine Street Guitars, you step outside of time.

Keegan's writing is spare and controlled: she gets a lot done in 116 pages, and Walsh's adaptation captures the suggested interiority of the story.

Hearts Beat Loud could use more urgency in the telling, more sense of what is at stake for the characters.

Folktales suggests that finding the threads connecting us to our collective past is work of great healing and rejuvenation.

The most striking part of Nuts! is its extensive use of animation.

At a brisk and efficient 78-minutes, Mercury 13 is engaging, yet sadness and anger seeps in as it progresses.

Is the human brain built to absorb so much of "the world"? How do we filter anything? Matt Wolf's new documentary, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, is an interesting meditation on these ideas, as well as a character study of a fascinating news-junkie with a mission.

Both actors give incredible performances, playing characters stopped up with feelings and secrets. "You'll Never Find Me" is intensely alive.

Heal the Living is director Katell Quillévéré's third feature, and shows her humane vision of the interconnectedness of humans and the fragile miracle of life. The plot comes straight out of any hospital-based episodic, but it's Quillévéré's approach that is so unique, and ultimately, so powerful.

It's a courageous film that's willing to sit in those moments instead of underlining them or hurrying past them, hoping we get the shorthand. Love is Strange is a patient film. The emotions it unleashes are enormous.

Laudenbach's style is haunting. Some of his artwork stops you in your tracks.

There are a couple of things that make Animals effective, the main one being the performances of the two leads and the symbiotic relationship they create.

Eden is long, but Hansen-Love's style is so observant and specific that it is always a compelling watch and ends up being sneakily profound.

By the end of the film, you feel you know these people. You still may be a “blow-in,” but they’ve allowed you access to their inner worlds, they’ve allowed you to see them.

A film like State Funeral is a warning. History has lessons for us about what does, and does not, work, in politics, in leadership, in culture itself. We would do well to listen. We would do well to watch.

Lisa Cortés uses the Big Bang as a visual motif throughout, with stars and galaxies exploding, hurtling out into the darkness. It is an apt analogy.

Gottlieb (the director) uses a very light touch throughout. This is a family affair.

So many documentaries cut away from performances, thinking we only want a glimpse of it to get the gist before shuttling on to the next thing. What a joy to be given the space to settle in and let Tina take you where she wants you to go.

Along with Jarmusch, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is steeped in other influences: Spaghetti Westerns, 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, gearhead movies, teenage rom-coms, the Iranian new wave.

Gimme the Loot is thrilling, although there aren't any stereotypically "thrilling" sequences. The thrill comes from the compulsively watchable dynamic between the two leads (non-professional actors, both of them), the excellent supporting cast (also non-professionals), and the fun use of multiple locations throughout the bustling metropolis.

Suffused with fantastical elements, dreamlike sequences and hallucinatory images, A Fantastic Woman stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress, and her performance roots the film in a kind of intimate verisimilitude.

The film weaves a spell with its rhythms, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, all accompanied by a vivid and haunting sound design.

My First Film is very emotional, but it’s also filled with ideas about cinema, being a woman, and creating art. Anger is willing to acknowledge her flaws and shortsightedness, and brave enough to recognize it is our flaws that make us artists, not our perfection.

She Dies Tomorrow has the feel of a horror film, and is sometimes scary, but it's really an existential meditation on mortality.

Some interesting things start to happen in Thy Father's Chair as the cleaners make headway, room by room.

Xavier Giannoli's film adaptation of Balzac's book leans heavily on voiceover, so much so that some sequences are practically an audiobook with images attached. This could be seen as a negative, but in practice the voiceover-heavy sections are some of the film's most successful.

There's more going on here than meets the eye. The Night of the 12th runs deep. The film's effectiveness lies in its matter-of-fact surface and its roiling wordless interior, the stealthy way it makes its points (without announcing "This is The Point").

Make it through the first 10 minutes. It’s just the film warming up. The rest of it flows.

An astonishing directorial debut.

The moments of sentiment, when they come, feel fully earned, and they come out of characterization.

Dinner in America, written, directed, and edited by Adam Rehmeier, is a movie with anti-establishment anti-social quicksilver coursing through its veins, but at its heart it is a sweet love story, one of the sweetest in recent memory.

Strange and creepy and entertaining.

Drowning Dry holds you at arm’s length, but I found it more moving—and unsettling—because of that.