The girls bring a passion to the band that they can muster nowhere else in their lives. Not everyone gets what they're doing — well, no one, really — but that's the point. This is a knowing film, and a liberating one.

What makes Drinking Buddies so compelling is that feeling that these are real people, behaving in real ways.

There's a purity to the experience of watching a film so naturalistic, like living in someone else's life for two hours.

The Patience Stone largely functions as a one-woman play, with Farahani’s character soliloquizing over her husband’s body.

It's the best kind of fairy tale — tough, deep and meaningful, with a heroine who stays true to herself in spite of shallow temptations.

It’s refreshing to watch Bening, making the most of her best role in a long time.... It’s just an outstanding performance, and reason enough to see a movie whose charms are as unusual as its characters.

On the whole it’s a remarkably controlled exercise. It’s to the film’s credit that Moll is the center of attention from start to finish, and not even a romantically damaged bad boy can steal the spotlight from her barely contained wildfire of emotions.

The movie is fascinating when it looks at the mechanics of Big Bird, which are physically challenging.

Some documentaries are about answers. Others are about questions. Cartel Land is about the hazy territory in between.

What's most enjoyable about Crazy Rich Asians is that, while it never forfeits its sense of responsibility, it also never forfeits its sense of fun. Chu wants you to slobber over the settings, to imagine what a life like this might be like — and to ensure that being Asian is a part of that.

What makes the film more than just a starstruck string of great stories is that it also gets at the loss and longing in Gordon's life.

Lucy is insane, makes very little sense, doesn't stand up to scrutiny and is an absolute blast.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie is good. At times it’s really good, with a lot of the charm and humor that makes the show so great.

We don’t need to continually revisit every horror movie ever made. How many versions of “Friday the 13th” are we up to? Too many. But the best thing about this is that Candyman is not just another sequel. More like a revelation.

Mulloy’s only other directing credit is for the documentary short “This Morning.” She brings a documentarian’s objective eye to Una Noche, yet the actors — non-professionals — convey exactly the emotions she is looking for.

Logan is a serious take on the comic-book genre, the Marvel Cinematic Universe in particular, and it’s a good one. Not a great one, though, which it might've been if it hadn’t gotten in its own way, overdoing it with its R-rated freedoms.

It’s experimental in the best way; Estrada takes chances, and not every segment works. But pieced together they tell a full and rich tale of a city and the people who live there, and the diversity of their stories.

Terribly Happy must surely be the greatest Danish Western ever made.

A delicious trifle for anyone who has ever dreamt of bantering about the cinema with Luis Buñuel or lounging at the piano to hear Cole Porter sing "Let's Do It."

The brutally sparse documentary Rich Hill removes poverty from the realm of the abstract and makes it personal.

It's a surprisingly moving film. While the fight scenes are unquestionably thrilling, the movie's best bits are not about winning and losing but about pain and, ultimately, forgiveness.

It is a sweet, gentle, at times beautiful movie that does not gloss over the ugliness Steele, a transgender woman, references.

He's often called the Yiddish Mark Twain; supposedly Twain, upon hearing this, said to tell Aleichem that Twain was the American Sholem Aleichem.

One reason the movie works so well: Writer-director Malcolm D. Lee returns from the original, so the characters feel true to the first film. Secondly, most of the cast is back, and they have the kind of comfortable chemistry you can’t fake. It’s easy to believe these people have a history together.

Denis (“Beau Travail,” “35 Shots of Rum”) is a very particular filmmaker, forcing you to adjust to her rhythms. Never is that more apparent than the last scene, which goes on for a quarter of the film or more, right through the end credits and beyond.

How do you make an age-old tale that’s been told many times before feel fresh and invigorating? Hire Peter Dinklage, for starters. He makes Joe Wright’s pandemic project “Cyrano” come alive with a performance heartening and heartbreaking. Wright’s penchant for elaborate, over-the-top set pieces helps, too.

It's an engaging, accessible documentary that explores the (truly) eternal questions, "Does hell exist? If so, who ends up there, and why?"

In an age in which celebrity gossip and page views trump all, hearing two masters talk intelligently about movies and how they’re made is, if nothing else, a welcome treat.