Sherilyn Connelly

It’s notable that since her hair is cut short and she’s wearing male clothes, none of the men suspect that she’s not a boy despite her chosen male name being only slightly less conspicuous than “McLovin.” Being evil is not the same thing as being intelligent or observant.

Many independent animated films in recent years have adopted a hand-drawn and/or collage-heavy aesthetic, but few are quite as heartfelt and charming as Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming.

Sinking Into the Sea is fun, but an hour of just Rudolph and Watts in the recording studio would be no less buoyant.

Makoto Shinkai's lush mindbender Your Name has many elements that are familiar on their own but here combine to create something unique.

Though never sentimental, the picture is hopeful about breaking the cycle of violence.

Keiichi Hara's episodic anime Miss Hokusai is a lovely biopic, even if it never quite picks up and focuses on a single thread. (Then again, neither does life.)

Hugh Hudson's Finding Altamira is a rote but engaging historical drama about the eternal debate between truth and mythology.

Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol's superhero story Phantom Boy is no April and the Extraordinary World — but still fine for what it is.

Ian Edelman's comedy Puerto Ricans in Paris is a much sweeter film than its Snakes on a Plane–caliber title would suggest.

Approaching the Unknown is the best science fiction movie since Gravity, and certainly the most melancholy since Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Solaris.

An all-too-rare example of steampunk done right — which also acknowledges that, however pretty such industrial imagery might seem from afar, actually living in such a world would be kind of horrible.

Many filmmakers have tried in recent years, but few have nailed the elusive formula of the two-hander romantic comedy quite like Emily Ting with Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong.

Because it's made by people who understand the importance of a clever script and want their audience to have fun, Lazer Team may just prove to be 2016's most entertaining superhero movie.

It's both an important part of Ghibli's history and a gem in its own right.

Tension between the city and the country has been a fertile topic for as long as there've been cities, and Alê Abreu's phantasmagoric The Boy and the World explores the eternal conflict in a familiar yet wholly original way.

Charles Hood's Night Owls is a mostly satisfying two-hander that never quite lives up to its full potential.

Novice actor Hwietat is terrific in the lead role, and even if we go in knowing the historical backstory, we still discover it all from his point of view — and never stop wondering how the wolf will survive.

A fascinating character study.

The heart of this mostly bloodless picture is Max's relationship with her mother's film character, and there are some genuinely touching moments about grieving and the acceptance of loss.

The fast-paced Gravy is kind of like a Rob Zombie film by way of Bobcat Goldthwait's Shakes the Clown... and succeeds where so many other horror-comedies fail by remembering to be funny first and shocking second.

Greenwood brings his usual A-game, generating great chemistry with Purnell in their ad hoc paternal relationship, but she's the revelation.

That the most vicious homophobes are often closet cases is not news, but Dolan seems less concerned with that self-evident fact and more about creating a mood of unease.

Twinsters is a heartwarming true story that might not have happened without social media, so score one for modern technology.

Jones and Connolly have terrific chemistry, particularly as Lottie works through the fact that adults encourage dishonesty and lying when it suits their own needs, and that secrets are more pervasive than openness.

Beautifully animated and often moving.

At its most beautiful, Yonebayashi's picture is about the magic of female friendship at its purest.

Maya the Bee Movie does what it does very well, moving along at a brisk pace and with a strong underlying message for its young audience.

O'Hara and Attie never judge the players, letting their words and actions speak, though those actions are often intercut with footage from the real war.

A Girl Like Her focuses on the characters' emotional traumas while eschewing moral panic about how Kids These Days are so wrapped up in their phones and the internet.

Blethyn is wonderful as an all-too-rare character, a middle-aged woman who holds her own in a position of authority over violent men.

The picture is beautifully rendered in pencils and watercolors, with some CG, giving it an appropriately timeless storybook look, even though it's set in a mostly modern world of buses and 3-D glasses.

Expelled isn't going to change the world, but it's a fun and promising debut film.

The rom-com elements don't always work, and the conclusion is a bit pat, but Always Woodstock is never less than charming and funny along the way.

The original story was called "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," but Takahata's title puts the focus where it belongs.

Like much of the anime that influences its source series, the picture is continuity-heavy and not particularly accessible to newcomers, but for the faithful, Rainbow Rocks does, in fact, rock.

Ultimately, Advanced Style presents these women not as objects of curiosity, but as what they truly are: role models.

The characters aren't quite stylized enough; though they have skinny bodies and disproportionately big heads, their just-realistic-enough facial features often veer into the Uncanny Valley.

Yoshiura keeps the story fairly linear, while playing with perspective and composing many stunning, vertiginous images that consider the different possibilities of being at war with gravity.

To Be Takei is never less than joyful — much like the man himself.

Viewers looking for a shoot-em-up will be disappointed, but those hankering for an old-school Italian broodfest will find plenty to soak in.

Except for the presence of the Internet, the picture feels like a retelling of an ages-old fable. In fact, Moebius is almost weird enough to be a creation myth, and that's no small accomplishment.

Johnson is genuinely talented. He's often the best thing in bad movies, and Ratner's Hercules is, at the very least, pretty good.

The bickering goblins make a boffo comedy team, and while there's a recurring fart joke, it borders on classy. That's the power of good anime.

Ignacio Ferreras's traditionally animated Wrinkles is a beautiful, subtle horror movie about the rigors of old age, made all the more horrifying because it will happen to all of us fortunate enough to live a long life.

Postman Pat: The Movie is one of the best family films to come down the pike this year.

I Am I is a remarkably assured debut for director Towne, especially since she's onscreen the majority of the time, and her script eschews the rules of the standard Hollywood amnesia plot, instead following its own internal logic while not shying away from the darker implications of its premise.

Bening and Harris have excellent chemistry.

Billy Kent's charming HairBrained comes from a long legacy of collegiate comedies but still finds its own identity.