Sheri Linden

There’s a lyrics-and-melody power to the interplay of sharp observations and visuals that dive deep into archival material — a fitting dynamic for a film about someone with a preternatural gift for infectious tunes. And there’s a playful, irreverent bounce to the film that’s in sync with the Liverpudlian music hall tradition that McCartney, more than any of the Beatles, has held close.

In this film about war, told by those who survived it, it’s war’s futility that rings loud and clear.

There isn’t a predictable or hackneyed exchange in the drama, which understands not just the immense challenges its characters face but also the throwaway humor that can be essential to a family’s connective tissue.

One in a Million feels both ultra-specific and universal.

Delving into company archives, the director (whose grandfather, the animator Ub Iwerks, was a crucial contributor to early Disney films) has composed an official story, but one that wisely avoids “why this matters” talking-head commentary. Disneyland Handcrafted is instead an immersive bit of time travel.

This is a story of national identity and resistance with contemporary resonance, but it’s also a classic genre movie, its historical tapestry populated by a strong ensemble of screen stars as well as impressive newcomers.

With superb performances across the board, particularly from her two young leads, and an adventurous use of visual and aural elements, Djukić has conjured an alluring fusion of spiritual awakening and adolescent confusion.

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni, who directed and edited the documentary, with Eyni also serving as cinematographer, have made a film that pulses with so much hopefulness that when Shahverdi’s story takes a shocking turn, it’s a punch to the solar plexus.

An absolute charmer, The Tale of Silyan is an affecting look at the human-avian bond, with all its mysteries, warmth and ungainly practicalities.

Director Sang-il Lee’s feature is propelled by operatic intensity and visual poetry. It unfolds over three mostly riveting hours, with only occasional jagged lapses in narrative momentum.

With its sly, unsettling mix of politics and psychology, Anniversary is both over-the-edge and utterly recognizable.

The result is a sharp-eyed, open-ended inquiry into marriage and romance.

In terms of dramatic oomph, the problem isn’t that everyone behaves with decency and compassion, but that everyone unfailingly says what they mean, robbing the movie of moment-to-moment friction, dimension and subtext, even as its lessons in gratitude and self-forgiveness hit the mark.

From its superb opening-credits sequence paying tribute to card catalogs of yore to its sharp selection of vintage clips and intimate reportage, The Librarians is as well-crafted as it is profoundly alarming.

As a documentary subject, Hersh is thoroughly engaging — by turns charming, surly and vulnerable. He opens himself to the attention of filmmakers Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus with a sense of purpose, a bit of squirming, and occasional flares of regret.

Ben Hania lights a connective fuse between documentary and drama.

At once a satire of artistic pretensions and a tantalizing character study, Late Fame isn’t focused on big cathartic moments, and its third-act cataclysms are almost anticlimactic. But there’s a satisfying depth to it, and the movie abounds in exquisite grace notes

Huang has made an eye-opening capsule history that will resonate most keenly with Vice fans. But there’s something more widely instructive, too, in his portrait of a culture clash that turned into an unlikely courtship: ragtag punks and the investment bankers eager to hit the “millennial sweet spot.”

[An] exquisite and gripping documentary.

The place Beecroft stumbled upon is fueled by girl power, and the story she and her collaborators have created is wise and messy, keenly aware of the dark places at the margins as it burns bright with life.

There’s a satisfying balance between biography and pop-culture history.

Peck, who profiled another writer of blistering moral clarity and prescience, James Baldwin, in I Am Not Your Negro, brings a healthy dose of sympathetic rage to his exploration of Orwell’s worldview, and sensitivity to his life story.

From the pastoral beauty of its opening sequence to the gut punch of its last, Hadi’s film is an exceptional screen debut, as perceptive as it is kinetic and, with one eye on the bombers overhead, brimming with life.

No subtext goes unexplained, and at times the score underlines what we already know. But the actors always find the grace notes, and there are sparks in the way everyday exchanges turn sharp with compassion. There are welcome laughs too, particularly in Bracco’s grump-meister line readings.

In massage parlor reception areas and backrooms, working-class restaurants and karaoke bars, Tsang and her strong cast, with superb contributions from production designer Evaline Wu Huang, have captured something evanescent and life-giving, and grounded it in kitchen clatter and workplace chatter, the gritty day-to-day.

Filled with beauty and fury, the film offers an immersive portrait of an endangered community.

In its mix of remarkable archival material, the film is both tender and galvanizing, summoning up what New York felt like in 1972 (yes, I would know) and offering a fresh slant on a country’s upheaval and a generation’s countercultural awakening.

Magic Farm features a stupendous cast fully in sync with Ulman’s deadpan absurdity. The actors effortlessly entwine the droll and the ingenuous, but as Ulman juggles more characters and more plot angles than in her first movie, there isn’t necessarily more payoff.

Something more complex and rewarding than surface tension is at play here, and it builds to a conclusion of breathtaking openheartedness. Sometimes a blip on the road is magic in disguise, the root of a dazzling new constellation.

Navigating a complex narrative line, Nabulsi doesn’t always achieve the nuance or the propulsive tension the material requires, but she has a sure grasp of emotional give-and-take and day-to-day realities.

Falco, involving as ever, might not be engaged in a wild gamble here, but there’s a certain risk in the ways that she and the movie circle a neat conclusion. And there’s wisdom in the way they wind up somewhere far messier, sweeter and more satisfying.

One of the strengths of John McDermott’s film is that it breaks the rock-doc mold by not relying on a starry roster of talking heads.

Whether the characters are forthright or devious, all the performances are in sync with the rugged seclusion of the setting, as is the rustic-meets-old-timey aesthetic of the production design (by Adriana Bogaard) and costumes (Charlotte Reid).

The Fabulous Four aims past the formula trappings and, though its misses might be evident, it also hits the bull’s-eye.

The romance at the movie’s core doesn’t deliver the intended emotional impact, but there’s a tender, potent resonance to other aspects of the story.

The story of a young singer-songwriter who’s stuck in a nowhere loop until she takes an impulsive leap, the feature is sometimes clunky but often quietly transporting.

The documentary ignites a longing to see the movies, whether for the first time or the umpteenth.

It would be easy, at quick glance, to dismiss their mischief as youthful self-absorption. It’s youthful self-absorption, to be sure, but something serious, vibrant and compelling courses through the levity.

As a woman who has pushed away a lot of hard truths, Louis-Dreyfus delves into a sphere of emotion that she’s never before explored onscreen. She gives us not just the psychology but the feelings of fear, loss and resilience that infuse Tuesday, a story with the sensibility of an Eastern European fairy tale.

Veering between strained slapstick and thoughtful tête-à-têtes, this boomer-focused reunion comedy strands a game cast of accomplished septuagenarians in a mostly laugh-free zone of zip lines and predictable beats.

When film lovers these days enjoy movies, we’re not always sitting in the dark before imagery that dwarfs us. But whatever the size of the screen, Desplechin convincingly argues, that screen is a place where reality, transmuted, “glimmers with meaning.” As it does in this artful blend of narrative and nonfiction.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness, and Taormina’s fondness for the characters is the movie’s beating heart.

For those willing to put aside reality for 90 minutes, as Unfrosted does with gusto, the Netflix movie whips up a frothy sendup of storytelling tropes and clichés.

The tyro directors manage to thread a tricky needle with their first feature, navigating the chasm and the overlap between agitated and quiet, between cartoon brightness and angst.

Terrestrial Verses is a marvel of potent understatement.

Sora has made a work of magnificent minimalism. Its vision of immortality might be most stirring in the moments when Sakamoto’s elegant hands hover above the keyboard at the end of a piece. It’s as though he’s coaxing the final chords to resonate just a bit longer before they fade into something like silence but now, after his conjuring, much richer.

Desert Road will surely invite repeat viewings to discern its hints and untangle its logic. More than that, within its very specific subgenre, this unlikely intersection of Memento and It’s a Wonderful Life just might prove an enduring classic.

With its intriguing performances, narrative restraint and unanswered questions, the movie delivers a strong pull of yearning as well as tantalizing currents of suspicion and dread.

Bursting with passion, sly humor, satirical swipes and the inescapable heartbeat of insurgency — most of the film was shot in 1968 San Francisco — it’s the life-loving tale of a wise innocent abroad, and the not exactly warm reception he receives

Fueling the drama is the quiet ferocity of Zar Amir Ebrahimi’s performance and her tender chemistry with Selina Zahednia as 6-year-old Mona.

At the end of Gutiérrez’s fine film, you likely will feel the spell of a remarkable person’s company.

The Crime Is Mine has a borderline-cartoonish buoyancy. If it’s not as funny as it wants to be, that’s because most of the characters are given a single note to play. But they do it with irresistible gusto.

It’s a handsome period piece that’s often too smooth around the edges, but with its old-fashioned sincerity and unforced insistence on team spirit, it has a certain all-ages appeal — assuming audiences of all ages are going to the movies this holiday season.

Immediate Family is an affectionate and insightful group portrait and a sweet jolt of nostalgia for boomers — but more than that, it’s time well spent with delightful subjects who played crucial roles in shaping the popular music of a ground-shifting era.

The rivalrous power dynamic between Jones and frontman Jagger is captured in brilliant subtlety in the glances between them during an impromptu interview. But the deeper throughline of The Stones and Brian Jones involves the primal wound of a prodigal son.

Rather than a pileup of bad behavior, the screenplay offers shifting perspectives as to who’s being sensible and who isn’t, who means well but executes badly, with few characters falling unequivocally into the camp of “right” or “wrong.”

It’s a modestly proportioned movie of quiet magnificence, one that feels spun of gossamer summer light and rooted in unshakeable depths.

With its fine mix of dark humor, healthy anger and self-compassion, this portrait of the artist as a young woman is the work of an inspired filmmaker, and it was worth the wait.

A Still Small Voice is about listening for inner truth and bearing witness.

Tülin Özen, in the lead role, delivers a pitch-perfect, tightly contained performance as an astute professional who hasn’t time for own vulnerability.

There will be blood, yes, but mainly there’s a well-written and beautifully performed investigation of yearning and the mysterious realm that apps and algorithms can only profess to quantify.

Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal tackle a tricky balancing act in their new feature, celebrating the intoxicating lilt of the bossa nova and also investigating the devastating brutality of state terrorism. It’s a testament to their talent as filmmakers that, for the most part, they manage to pull it off.

Wolfe has made an admiring but nuanced feature that doesn’t aim for biopic completism or cause-and-effect formula.

What resonates beyond the brawls and blood is a profound affection for the people onscreen — those grace notes provided by a fine cast, with Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy stirring undercurrents that are particularly affecting precisely because they’re never explicitly examined or explained.

The quiet but stirring effect is a dreamscape of eye-opening geography, existential longing and the enduring workaday.

As “Hitchcock” notes, his movies have been analyzed every which way and back again. Cousins’ fresh approach divides the work into six sections, an elegant capsule melding existential questions with the practical challenges and opportunities of big-screen storytelling.

A moving and complex homage to Barrett, Bogawa’s film also turned out to be his “goodbye to Storm,” who was ill with cancer during its making.

Rock ’n’ roll mythologizing is one of the subjects of Squaring the Circle and Have You Got It, but it’s not their method. Rather than reaching for a neat or aggrandizing summing-up, they grapple with the passage of time and the perspective it brings.

Lakota Nation vs. United States is a visually dynamic documentary, and it’s also one that delves into the power of language and how we use it.

It’s Hamm’s emotionally wounded small-town top cop who gives the film its engine, especially in his dealings with Mohammed and Fey’s characters. The schemes and cover-ups and collateral damage spin round with little dimension, or, as Police Chief Sanders sums it up, “Just a bunch of people that deserve each other.”

On the way to its mildly satisfying final punchline, this uneven comedy loses its thread.

Its perspective is entirely fresh, eschewing the standard, and more readily engrossing, nonfiction custom of first-person testimony and faces in dramatic close-up. Peering into the liminal place where history’s ghosts linger, McQueen stirs up something more complex than emotion.

Signed, sealed and delivered, Book Club: The Next Chapter is an unabashed love letter to four great movie stars. As a vehicle for their talents, it’s less of a sure thing.

Twilight is a procedural with little procedure and, by design, no satisfying answers. The mood it builds is soul-shaking.

In Hilma, Hallström delves into the fiery and sometimes messy personal story as well as celebrating, in fittingly enthralled, immersive fashion, the singular fusion of nature and spiritual mystery that drove her.

As its title suggests, the movie embraces generic types, but smart writing, unforced direction and a superb cast give the sentimental-but-not-gushy comic drama the messy specifics and narrative friction to lift it well beyond been-there-done-that.

As a look at Kubrick’s methods, madness and burning intelligence, Kubrick by Kubrick is fluent and discerning. Monro shapes the material wisely, without imposing “meaning” on any of it and giving center stage to the maestro himself, a man for whom moviemaking was a matter of “working miracles.”

In their matter-of-fact toughness and mostly unshakable composure, Knightley and Coon are riveting as their characters navigate boys’ club politics and newsroom dynamics — and Cooper provides a superb foil with his thoroughly lived-in embodiment of a newsman undergoing a reluctant awakening.

The action flows with the rhythms of play and labor, joy and grief, thanks to sensitive editing by Lucrecia Gutiérrez Maupomé and Huezo and the sound team’s evocative work.

Through an affecting mix of comedy, romance and drama, A Radiant Girl sounds a warning about the perils of not looking directly at tough realities. And yet it’s so alive from moment to moment, so finely attuned to the emotional lives of its characters, that it never feels like a history lesson dressed up as narrative.

The emotional impact of A Little Prayer doesn’t so much detonate as unfold, a series of quiet epiphanies, well-observed and elegant in their awkward yearning.

This movie’s dazzle is all about the chemistry of its powerhouse quartet and the potential for comic sparks, and on that front, the starry huddle of Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field delivers.

It comes on like gangbusters and keeps generating belly laughs well past the halfway point, slowing down then to take a GPS-directed turn into familiar romance territory.

The day-to-day takes on an understated eeriness that matches the unarticulated ache of the bereaved.

Whether you call it a relaunch, comeback, return or rebirth, it’s captured in a fittingly down-to-earth, memory-infused documentary that’s a gift to fans — moving, thoroughly engaging, and a chance to see a remarkable sexagenarian at a turning point, doing what she does best.

Inviting us to sit a while in this world of tradition, What We Leave Behind offers a vision of a good death as well as one of a good life. The time will go by quickly enough, and they both matter.

D’Ambrose’s drama is attuned to how much sensitive kids keep inside, watching and holding their breath while the adults convince themselves they’re not making a mess of things.

Icarus: The Aftermath is both more intimate and of broader scope than the earlier film. It’s documentary as spy thriller, a portrait of institutional gaslighting, a legal nail-biter, an intimate look at the cost of refuting authoritarian doctrine, and, above all, an affecting character study.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed takes [the director's] work to new aesthetic heights and wrenching emotional depths.

That the story of someone so off-putting climaxes in a moment as profound and moving as the penultimate scene of Return to Seoul speaks to the subtle power of writer-director Davy Chou’s storytelling and the portrayal by Park Ji-Min, a visual artist making a strong impression in her first screen role.

The balance between detail and momentum can at times be off, and the helmer doesn’t entirely avoid generic tropes of the legal drama. But he conveys the enormity of the undertaking at the film’s center — the first major war crimes trial since Nuremberg — and it’s felt in every moment of Darín’s compelling portrayal.

Nothing in the film has a fraction of the dramatic impact of the emotional roller-coaster Colman’s performance embodies.

The philosophical and sometimes faith-steeped bent of the women’s discussion might put off audiences not willing to go there. For those ready to take the leap, the thoughtful and beautifully lensed feature is a rewarding exploration that addresses not just the characters’ predicament but the existential questions that face any contemporary woman navigating patriarchal setups.

At once a vivid portrait of a place and its people, an unsentimental ode to the art and craft of tequila-making, a damning depiction of the results of globalizing economic policies, and an exquisite character study, with Teresa Sánchez delivering a performance of potent restraint.

At times disarming, at others plain silly, it takes a few daring leaps without quite avoiding middle-of-the-road sitcom territory.

Shepard’s reach might exceed her grasp, but there’s no question that she takes risks and is a filmmaker of notable promise.

The performances by Brealey, Earl and Hayward are terrifically sweet and sincere, in sync with the film’s unaffected attitude of silly but serious. The magic that Brian and Charles taps into is handwrought and underplayed, with Archer letting the weird details cast a low-key glow.

Rodeo is a combustible fusion of crime story, character study and existential mystery, a tale of celebration and lament, and it announces the arrival of a gifted and adventurous filmmaker.