Tomris Laffly

With its script (co-written by German and Yulia Tupikina) that lacks the traditional structure of a three-part act, Dovlatov managed to evoke in me an overall feeling of internment. Along with it crept in a gloomy mood, gradually formed through the collective frustrations of the time’s hampered dwellers.

Shirkers is at its most gripping when it doesn’t overestimate Cardona’s narrative worth—the multifaceted women at the documentary’s heart are far more appealing.

Unlike Kahn’s acclaimed and much tidier 2003 documentary “My Architect,” The Price of Everything has a meandering nature and explores one too many avenues in building a thesis, while losing the viewer in the midst at times.

Both scrupulous and fittingly hazy, Gyllenhaal captures her character’s outsider-ly state-of-mind with astonishing depth, through the subtlest of details in the way she carries herself.

It puts the ever-controversial M.I.A. in an intimate context perceived not only by herself, but also by her close friend, who complements Arulpragasam’s candid, camera-facing, self-interrogative recordings of over two decades with other archival material as well as his own work.

So hectically overdone in style that it already feels dated despite its timely leanings, Levinson’s film vaguely shelters a compelling story about today’s unforgiving online mob mentality beneath its convoluted layers.

The Children Act is perhaps a bit stilted in the overt way it sometimes attempts to spell out its arguments. But director Richard Eyre’s film still poses sophisticated questions around family, religion, marriage, law and the delicate boundaries that can or cannot be crossed in each institution.

While Where Hands Touch demonstrates confident filmmaking from a technical standpoint, Asante’s plot choices around the ambiguous development of Lutz feel irresponsible, especially during these risky political times that uncompromisingly demand us to be the opposite.

Call it a revisionist or an absurdist Western if you will, but Audiard’s film feels both refreshingly new (without ever going to the extreme lengths the Zellner Brothers did with “Damsel”) and nostalgically familiar.

Despite its structural hiccups, Demange’s film still manages to highlight the humanity of a family and community that fights to survive their no-win circumstances and aspire to pass on something hopeful to their descendants.

A giant leap even for the youngest-ever Best Director victor, Damien Chazelle’s technically astonishing First Man is a poetic non-blockbuster of claustrophobic intimacy.

A richly textured masterpiece, Roma is cinema at its purest and most human.

Puzzle proudly wears its unfussy metaphors on its sleeve, while sidestepping trite clichés of stories about self-discovery. Its premise might sound dull, but this charming crowd-pleaser is thankfully anything but—so much that Puzzle might even restore your faith in remakes.

The resolute Greyeyes and the always-brilliant Chastain chart their respective characters with real chemistry, and White captures the pair’s brewing romantic tension. For underscoring the brief but beautiful optimism of two ill-fated outliers, her woman comes out ahead.

This is an astonishing filmmaking debut from Burnham, a renowned comedian as well as a musician—you might secretly wonder how a young male not only captured the point of view of an eighth-grade girl so exactly, but also expressed it with such emotional precision. Whatever the secret formula to his experiential accuracy and unexpectedly inventive directorial eye is, the outcome is a deeply serious coming-of-age film that is only light and charming on the surface.

Despite committed performances across the board, I left the film craving a deeper, more conventionally attentive character study.

A film of mounting artistic imagination, Sorry to Bother You spirals into a type of mind-bending madness that is both persistently fun and one-of-a-kind.

Damsel is a worthwhile effort gleefully carried out by a dedicated ensemble—including the impossibly charming Butterscotch (Daisy in real life), who steals the screen one miniature step at a time.

At a time when movie screens are clogged with indistinguishable superheroes in obnoxious crossover events, Incredibles 2 kicks it old school and rises above the noise with its defiantly humane soul.

Ocean’s 8 sticks to the formula, though Ross never quite matches the breezy vigour of the Soderbergh-directed trilogy, but the jokes land and there’s a satisfying twist to bring down the curtain.

Ultimately pointless, Overboard makes you wonder why it exists at all when it offers neither a fresh angle into modern-day relationships nor an improvement upon its predecessor.

The visually icy Disobedience lacks the absorbing emotional pull of the filmmaker’s best but packs a rare kind of generosity in its attentiveness to complex customs, navigated without judgment.

A contemporary, gradually darkening coming-of-age tale of an Iranian teenage girl in Tehran, feel so familiar that universal is the only apt way to characterize them.

The movie’s most shocking feature isn’t any of its twisty plot reveals—mainly involving Dominika getting romantically mixed up with a CIA operative (Joel Edgerton)—but the exploitative brutality it rains down on Lawrence.

A sharply judged edit stitches together three separate timelines, shaping Molly as a complex and razor-sharp character in a world dominated by entitled mansplainers. Forget Rounders—here’s a poker movie to go all-in on.

At times, you'll find yourself wanting more of the perspective of the Cheyenne, but Cooper still does right by his story of historical reconciliation, charting Blocker’s moral transformation plausibly. Hostiles‘ disarming finale packs an earned, radiantly optimistic punch.

Betts aims divinely high and succeeds in both understanding and respectfully critiquing organized religion. Is faith escapism or an act of surrender? In grappling with the essence of spirituality, Novitiate—not unlike Martin Scorsese’s Silence—asks more questions than it supplies answers.

A sweet, deeply personal portrayal of female adolescence that's more attuned to the bonds between best girlfriends than casual flings with boys, writer-director Greta Gerwig’s beautiful Lady Bird flutters with the attractively loose rhythms of youth.