Coded Bias is not interested in wallowing in despair for the future, like many tech-infused documentaries like to do. Kantayya wants to inform and inspire change.

What makes Nanau’s film utterly compelling is the unfettered access he had to both the Sports Gazette journalists and to Minister of Health Voiculescu. There are no interviews or talking heads here: Everything unfolds as it is happening.

That it has so little new to say, and replaces spirited fantasy with an overbearing glumness, is just disappointing.

Mortal plods along for most of its running time with the occasional helicopter chase scene and plenty of CGI fulminology: But ultimately Ovredal’s not-so-deep-dive into Norwegian mythos is a too-obvious let down.

As Monsoon unhurriedly paces towards an open-ended conclusion, you sense Kit will be in a better place than the one he occupied when he first stepped off the plane.

Howard, mercifully, dumps most of Vance's political cant in favor of a maudlin, slow, rehab drama, carried on the backs of a cavalcade of wafer-thin characters.

Freaky hilariously modernizes the high school bloodbath for laughs.

As far as revisionist takes on the Santa story go, Fatman is a long way from the whimsical charm of last year's Oscar-nominated Klaus. Yet for all its bizarre Spaghetti Western nihilism, sporadically going full Franco Nero Django bloodfest, Fatman has an oddly warm heart under its brutal exterior.

It’s an ambitious, sometimes too bitter, second feature, but Lee somewhat manages to corrode the too-often fetishized queer period drama into something much more modern than its setting suggests.

So many strands, and when the full tapestry is unfurled, its captivating, beautiful, thrilling, and entrancing patterns are revealed. Wolfwalkers stands proud as a new classic.

In its use of texture and its recreation of beloved pop culture items, Power’s film is a fascinating slice of Nineties nostalgia viewed through a cardboard lens. But when the bodies hit the floor, you will wish for a little three-dimensional storytelling in this two-dimensional world.

Apart from the nowhere storyline devoid of any interesting character development or conflict, the movie feels vaguely exploitative.

The film’s gear change between mournfulness and madness is stuck in idle.

Kindred banks on its refined atmosphere and all-too-real story to keep its audience invested, which works to a degree because the film itself is beautifully made, but satisfaction with the ending may vary across horror diehards.

The Dark and the Wicked pulls no punches, either in its sense of perpetual unease, its occasional moments of understated yet truly stomach-churning gore, or in its emotional heft.

The off-kilter family balance is where Call Me Brother should be in harmony, but David Howe’s direction isn’t quite there, more stagnant than observant, leaving his dysfunctional family high and dry.

I cannot think of another film that plainly and comprehensively lays bare the both the complex apparatus at work, and the people dedicated to serving its populace.

The film is a deeply compelling portrait of how intense loss shapes our behavior, our perspective, and most importantly, ourselves.

Gu keeps her camera on how the community he helped build thrived and flourished without him, even as it acknowledged his role. As Asian Americans face increasing racism, its closing message about how immigrant communities – like the Cambodians who came over in 1975 with guns at their backs – help define America has only become more timely.

The film, like the subject matter, remains bleak. For every win, there are losses. That’s not to say it’s not worth watching. It is. But it only prepares us for the fight still to come.

Gloriously gonzo Appalachian creeper Spell makes one big change – having both the urban family in peril and the horrifying hicks with malicious intent be Black – and that's a refreshing change to a genre that's felt moribund since about "Wrong Turn 2."

Horror is built on moms wanting to protect their kids, and Come Play falls down because Sarah just never really seems to connect with Oliver.

There's still too much punching down, but especially too much peddling in stereotypes and xenophobic clichés.

Through contemporary and vintage interviews, animation and live footage, White Riot insightfully and vividly details RAR’s reclamation of young Britain’s soul.

This is not some whacked-out drug trip movie, or scolding afterschool anti-drug special. This is anti-psychedelia, grounded in the strangeness of true life.

He’s Kennedy-ian not only in appearance, but in the Chapins' upholding an East Coast intellectualism that turned white privilege into public service.

Simien’s efforts are valiant and, above all else, wholly original, so when he decides to ramp Bad Hair into overdrive, it’s easy to forget about his unintentionally hollow metaphor.

It proves that value of the journalist as record keeper of horrors.

Every so often, a spark in Marinelli’s mesmerizing blue-gray eyes flickers and you can imagine the passion that drove the man to his madness. In those moments, Martin Eden subtly flames, if only briefly.

One of the most extraordinary debuts of the year.

If left in less deft hands, the film could’ve teetered into a too-on-the-nose commentary on America’s current immigration debate. However, the lean screenplay and Paragas’ focused creative vision makes for a singular directorial feature debut that feels like nothing else happening in film right now.

Sometimes charmingly fantastical, Over the Moon definitely doesn't have the fairytale elegance of Keane's earlier work.

Part of the brilliance of Cummings’ performance is how he can turn on a dime, baring his soul one second and throwing off a well-timed jab in the same breath. Thankfully, the actors around him are able to keep up with his pace.

The ho-hum practical jokes the two inflict upon the other can be described as Home Alone lite: No concussion-inducing swinging paint cans or burn-inducing doorknobs inspired by Looney Tunes violence here. Which, of course, takes all the fun out of it.

It all comes back to Sorkin's core idea, implicitly and expertly expressed: that the tactic of violence and provocation, then making the victims seem like thugs, is still performed in Portland and St. Louis and New York, just as it was in Chicago. It's also a reminder that there was no Chicago 7 until the establishment brought them together.

Its core, depressing, and unavoidable question is simple: How did one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries on the planet so completely fail in its response?

First-time feature director Kapsalis understands that the best way to capture a performance like this is to just leave the camera on her as Holly leans in to her worst instincts.

Bettis is perfectly cast as Mandy, her hazy disaffection to the increasingly bloody mayhem she has to deal with is best described as nonplussed irritation. Other performances are hit and miss.

Save Yourselves! isn't completely toothless, although its softball targets are only lightly lambasted for their silliness. It's a comedy of manners of sorts, in which puffball personalities are outwitted by barely-sentient spheres of fur. The ending may waft away, but at least it stays true to the story of two people with no tools to make an impact.

Possessor is queasy-smart near-masterpiece of psychotronic slippage. Like its protagonist’s risky psychogenic recollections, it’ll stick with you whether you’d like it to or not.

Jiang Ziya is a big story, an incredibly complex mythos not unlike Hercules, and unfortunately it never finds its beat. Like many films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the story of Jiang Ziya is far more concerned with big epic punches rather than complex character weaving, and earned pathos.

Wisely, writer/producer/director John Scheinfeld mostly keeps to the sound capture of his subject and a little soundtracking on Alpert’s storied imprint with Jerry Moss.

Even with all the conflations and simplifications, and a middle act that verges on an extended montage of guerrilla warfare and undercover intrigue, A Call to Spy is undeniably a heartfelt take on a fascinating and heartbreaking true tale of heroism.

On the Rocks is light-hearted and, ultimately, more a story about a girl and her father. The good and the bad of that parental legacy and the task of disentangling from it forms the subtext of On the Rocks.

An interesting subject does not make for a great documentary. Stuntwomen, while clean cut, has the feel of a made-for-TV edit, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t wow.

At least this excursion into mediocrity is relatively brief, although, as mentioned, a vastly shorter cut would be much preferred.

If what you want is a fancier episode of The Great British Baking Show, then you'll "ooh" and "ah" at all the right moments as Ottolenghi assembles his kitchen of world-class patisserie chefs and jelly experts.

It's another tour de force performance from Jenkins, in the same week as his headturning performance as the pater familias of a clan of grifters in "Kajillionaire."

Dead, the latest from the Land of the Long White Cloud, is closer in tone and subject to last year's phenomenal low-key Irish exorcism comedy "Extra Ordinary" – just without its charm or gentle silliness.

The way July is able to juggle both the slyly cruel circumstances and the genuinely heartfelt transformation makes this her best work yet: a fractured mirror fable broken into perfect pieces.

Collins, who also wrote this woeful, dolefully humorous take on mankind’s endless struggle to overcome the banal but no-less soul-sucking minor mishaps of modern life, ends things on a surprisingly encouraging, optimistic note.

A beautiful, quiet, lyrical, funny wilderness trip, a meditation on loss and picking up the pieces, and the most perfectly poignant performance of David Cross' acting career, all based on the best-selling autobiography of a leading lepidopterist (butterfly expert, to you and me).

The film does much more than showcase eight years of a top photojournalist’s career. This is a film about evolution, about how Souza learned to use his voice.

The layers constructed between author and art, emotional manipulation and terrorism as coping methods are dense and dizzying. This is film as therapy, and Triet appears to be the one on the couch.

Neither inspired enough to work as a fable nor sufficiently grounded to bear up to even an instant of examination, Antebellum is a woeful misfire.

The sense of true wilderness is amplified by sound mixers Morgan Hobart and Brian Mazzola, who deploy bug rattles and rain splatters like weapons, building in the diegetic sound of nature so that the odd moments of silence are truly oppressive and menacing.

The Nest pushes up against the edges of the supernatural, of the way that shadows in big, empty houses play tricks on you, but it's all in service of a simple drama of a couple falling apart as the rocky foundations of their world are exposed.

With a small cast and a handful of locations – the only other character of note is Rachel (Seimetz), Thomas’ unsuspecting wife – The Secrets We Keep blends the best of B-movie thrillers and black box theatre.

Sometimes a documentary doesn’t have to change the world, but make you feel warm and that your passion for something is matched by another person.

A gorgeous, violent, brilliant puzzle box of a movie that relishes in how convoluted it is, and pays off every second of attention.

Maleonn somehow finds an anchor of optimism amidst the situation, despite his father’s steady memory decline. That, too, is part of this film’s gift.

Wharton brings an extraordinary diversity of speakers to explain the wildly eclectic archive footage she assembles, with as many foreign policy experts as guitarists.

The love match is cringing; as a rom-com’s raison d’etre, their limp connection pretty much sinks the thing. But when the script settles down and stops feeling quite so much like an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink thesis project, it has its bouncy moments.

Still, even at its most rote, Critical Thinking captures the appeal of chess without defaulting to a white perspective of these students.

Yet Porges (who pops up as an expert talking head) and co-director Chris Charles Scott III never quite hit an even tone - or rather, there's a big divide, like bouncing along on a kiddy coaster that suddenly turns into a brutal corkscrew with a massive drop at the end.

The portrait he (Hossain) paints, while visually arresting thanks to cinematographer Sabine Lancelin’s eye for Dhaka’s colorfully saturated and gritty milieu, is a grim one.

If there’s an error, it’s the occasional atmospheric shots of the frigid mountains around the car.

It smartly skips the goofier aspects of the original, too. Once you’ve shed musical numbers and Eddie Murphy cracking wise as a dragon, you’re in far less jocular territory...And that feels right for the material.

In Fatima, director Marco Pontecorvo and his team meld religious storytelling with the flourishes of a historical biopic, resulting in something both better and more frustrating than your average faith-based film.

So even though Get Duked! is a slapstick, rap-fueled horror comedy about a bunch of Scottish inner-city kids being hunted in the glens by a pair of rich snobs disguised as the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, you could slap a "Filmed at Ealing Studios" card at the end, and you'd know exactly what to expect.

What's saddest is that this was a wasted opportunity to adapt an era-defining comic arc into something with weight, meaning, and visual flair.

With a story built around the need to bring everyone, all the oddballs and weirdos and lost friends and new friends together with peace, understanding, and a lack of judgement, maybe now is the time we really, truly need Bill & Ted.

What Mr. Soul! expresses is that we still need people like Haizlip to push Black stories so they are seen and heard.

The entire cast gleefully digs into their parts with a relish not seen in an ensemble in quite some time. Even my screening partner, who has a notorious aversion to British period pieces, was helplessly beguiled by The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Chatwin may be the nominal subject, but this film is really about Herzog: Not in a self-serving way but, rather, self-analyzing.

There’s little juicy about his life, except for maybe when he briefly left his stalwart, long-time male lover and business associate, André Oliver, for the sultry French actress, Jeanne Moreau. While House of Cardin devotes a few more than a glancing minute to this intriguing episode, perhaps it’s a worthy topic for another documentary at another time.

Beyond putting the focus back on the artist and his art, what makes Jones’ documentary important is that it actually takes on internet culture in a serious fashion.

What fascinates Greenwald (who must have slept on Belch's couch to get this kind of informal access) is his subject's utter lack of self-control. Diagnosed with manic depression and gambling addiction, his successes seem designed to take him to ever greater heights, just so he can fall even further when his depression hits.

Often the discussion about a film is more interesting and worthwhile than the film itself, and that's why You Don't Nomi exists.

On the whole, An Easy Girl is a light and pleasing enough watch.

It's never a good sign if you're watching a thriller, and your first thought is, "Is this supposed to be funny?" So goes the comically overblown The Vanished.

What Desert One does accomplish in shining a light on this epic national failure is to celebrate the American can-do spirit and a noble willingness to go down trying.

All in all, it's a bleak lesson in civility: don't honk your horn, because you just never know who you're honking at.

Less initially mawkish than the first film and more entertainingly overblown, Peninsula keeps to the established paradigm that the living are far worse than the dead, then goes on a gonzo excursion through a wrecked city.

It's rebellious within an era of restraint, bathing Tesla in glowing pastel shades in a time of mahogany, leather, and steam.

In the end, your appreciation for horror-Westerns will determine where you stand with The Pale Door. If you are willing to look past the film’s genre shortcomings and find happiness in the little things – such as Sage’s Creole accent, or several cinematic nods to iconic entries in the genre – you might find the film to be worth your while.

Fiennes assumes the character and recites shocking revelations that Amirami’s obsessive research has disclosed. It sounds like a cheap trick, but the actor pulls it off flawlessly.

Unlike Alfonso Cuarón's critically-lauded "Roma," which somehow managed to reduce its indigenous protagonist to a passive observer in her own life, Song Without a Name never loses sight of Georgina's pain or her agency - or its limits.

Beyond the title, the elegant, calm, and unnerving La Llorona has nothing in common with the bland big budget namesake. If it has real cinematic kin, it's the much harsher and more grotesque "A Serbian Film," or the darkly comedic "Cold Sweat" - even (and especially in the trial sequences) Costa-Gavras' "Music Box."

So while there's nothing incredibly new here in the narrative, it's also a reminder that Keery has natural charisma, and is turning that to increasingly interesting ends.

In an era where so many horror films are anchored in the aesthetics of Eighties American cinema, Sputnik establishes itself as an especially polished work of retro-futurism.

Denise Ho: Becoming the Song offers an affecting timeline of a political awakening of a person, of a movement, and of a generation utterly frustrated with the machinations of oppression.

These are just boys, and it is all pretend, but Boys State, like the event itself, delivers some legitimate life lessons.

Diaz stays out of the way of her own lens, instead giving a portrait in context of Ressa's valiant struggle for truth, and her determination to simply do the job even as she becomes part of the story.

The larger message of River City Drumbeat isn't just about how important White has been to his community. It's about how important community is.

Mostly it will just make you hungry to revisit Ashman’s work. That’s perhaps not the intended result of this fond tribute/merely serviceable survey of a too-short career – but it’s not necessarily a bad one.

Max Reload isn't for everyone, but it's not trying to be. It's a pizza-and-soda Saturday night gamer film for serious gamers - not the kind that just grind through bug releases, but can name a developer other than Hideo Kojima.

Brutally honest, startlingly insightful, and poignant when it could have been bizarre, Dead Dicks earns its tragic, purposefully misleading title and reframes it with dire meaning.