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

Out of a tight, terrific cast, it’s Collias’ performance – so alert and contained, its potency comes on later, like a time-release pill – that gets under your skin. It’s a star-making turn: not just a good one, a great one.

Audacious, thrilling, erotic (and in three languages, no less), I Am Cuba is a lost masterpiece of filmmaking finally seeing the light of day 30 years after its production.

What the film excels at, however, is the anticipatory desire. It builds slowly, concluding with a stunning sequence that is all breathless remembrance and self-satisfaction that is both wordless and impalpable. The film will seem the height of romantic desire to some, but will be a slow burn for others.

It’s a familiar template for domestic drama, particularly in its observations about traditional masculinity, but rarely – at least, in recent memory – has this type of story felt so potent or dangerous.

White brings an incredible freshness to the well-trodden postapocalyptic genre. Starfish flips from introspective drama to Lovecraftian creature feature to pastel-tinged animation without ever losing coherence.

Holland has honed an impressive ability to sustain nerve-fraying tension, and her brutal, field-level depictions of trauma orchestrated by oppressive political structures seeking to manipulate the hearts and minds of some, while dehumanizing others renders Green Border an angry, visceral masterpiece.

It's a thrilling, powerful movie, and one that certain people in certain quarters may have at one time called dangerous. Some of them may yet still.

There's even a Simon and Garfunkel tune on the soundtrack, which makes Braff's character seem like the only living boy in New Jersey, which, of course, he may well be. L'chaim!

For all the accurate comparisons to Brian De Palma and Italian giallo films – particularly in the murder scenes and M83’s synthy score, though it’s much more narratively cohesive – I see lots of other potential influences as well. There’s a seedy glamour and a noir sensibility that owes as much to Eighties films Vortex and Variety.

Lean on Pete is a methodical and memorable film primarily because director Haight, adapting from Willy Vlautin’s novel, keeps a distance from his characters, never taking the easy route, and never, ever letting the movie enter the killing fields of the corny or cliched.

Contemplative, though riddled with humor, After Life reveals itself gradually.

A vibrant, outspoken, and incredibly talented artist, this doc is both a biography of a life and a document of a person living on her own terms, just trying to figure things out like the rest of us.

Scott subtly weaves those stories together by having every talking head be simply a voice, unified in their belief that this weekend was vital, an affirmation that it was OK to be young and broke.

Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb dramatically and unforgettably burst from nowhere onto the screen with their searing portrayals of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and American groupie Nancy Spungen. Their performances in this embellished docudrama are so intense and definitive that they leave little room for any other memories of these doomed junkie lovers.

At almost three hours, it's a masterwork of brilliant editing and design; not a frame is unwarranted, not a scene excessive, and it holds together over its lengthy running time in a way few films half its length can manage.

Although the dramatic scale of Leave No Trace is small as well, that trait should not be mistaken for insignificance. This film raises more questions than it answers, which can prove a turnoff to some viewers, but others will soak in its ambiguities long after the closing credits.

Uncompromising and supremely controlled, it is a demanding film that will leave you shaken and shattered. How’s that for hyperbolic?

Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Skarsgård) is as joltingly nightmarish as fans could have hoped for.

It’s not quite as brutalizing as McEwan’s brilliant source novel – it bears too much of a Great Art buff – but it ravishes nonetheless in its grand exploration of the sins of the daughter and a lifetime spent making reparations.

The gut-wrenching Amy is, in the end, as much an indictment of our celebrity-obsessed (global) pop culture as it is of the perils of rampant success arriving unexpectedly fast, tires squealing and driving a hearse.

Every movie about the Holocaust should be this good, but few are.

The only term is relentless, and for a lot of viewers Uncut Gems’ third act has been stressful, even traumatic. My response was more one of sheer awe – of the Safdies’ brilliant balancing act, of Sandler’s swirling dance of a performance, and of Howard’s sprint through a minefield.

Ford’s commitment to implying trauma instead of visualizing it is more than just an impressive formal constraint. Test Pattern proves the fault of more uncreative depictions of racial and gendered violence that exploit bare bodies and blood for shock value rather than depth and specificity.

A real winner -- smart, funny, subtle, and resonant -- and there's not a hanging chad in sight.

Szpilman takes to performing sonatas in thin air, eyes closed, those jittery fingers stroking nothing but air. It's a wonderful moment in a wonderful, ghastly film, and one of the most moving arguments for the redemptive powers of art ever made.

That spiky aunt is played by Estelle Parsons (Bonnie & Clyde); one of the pleasures of Diane is the rare platform it gives older actresses, including Andrea Martin, Phyllis Somerville, and Deirdre O’Connell.

A new comedy classic whodunnit in the honored tradition of Clue, Werewolves Within finds the laughs in the jump scare, and brings back the uproarious joy of the "it's behind you!" creeping fright.

A thriller wants to entertain you. Little Woods wants you to think, and feel. I did both.

Love, death, hope, and hatred: Spider-Man 2 has ’em all, in spades.

It’s blunt but not grating, a result of Johnson’s deft touch as a filmmaker. He toes a line of getting too gratuitous, with maybe one too many celebrity cameos, but there’s an infectious quality to the worlds he builds onscreen.

The movie is like an old honky-tonk song, a little sentimental but full of heart. It torches and twangs without getting too hokey.

An abundance of feeling plays across the faces of his two leads; Cartlidge and Steadman bring to light every flicker of awkwardness, indecision, anger, regret, joy, admiration, and affection felt by Hannah and Annie.

The work of a fine craftsman and artist.

Carver's stories are obviously inspiring for Altman, and that's the point, this movie is bursting at the seams with ideas and energy.

Electrifying and decidedly downbeat slice of life and death in Ajami.

It's possible to point to some weak spots in Brokeback – its seeming multiple endings, the lack of clarity about certain images, some digressions – but there is no movie this year that has moved my heart more than Brokeback Mountain.

Sharp scripting, note-perfect performances, and nimble direction and technical execution combine to make Wag the Dog one of the wittiest and most mordant political satires to come along in quite some time.

It's the kind of movie you wish you had more time to absorb and could see more than once before reviewing.

An evocative, probing, enlightening, and impressionistic look at the lesser-known period of Hendrix’s life: the pivotal time from 1966-67 during which the musician discovered his style and voice.

A Most Violent Year is its own thing, hypnotic and exacting and as subtly savage as mellow-voiced Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler),” which opens the film and sets the tone. I was fully in thrall to it all.

It is beautiful, lyrical, tragic, redemptive, and focused down to the last tick on a dog’s nose. His animated characters have all the grace, quirk, and charm of any live-action performance.

Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm.

I hope we don't have to wait another quarter-century for the next great Dahl adaptation, but for a film as good as this one, I'll wait.

One of Jordan's best films, and almost certainly in Nolte's top two percentile.

Though Crumb is packed with information and telling details, the movie's objective is hardly art history or a survey of Crumb's place in the world of comics. The movie aims for broader subject matter, to discover something about the role art plays in the life of the artist, and about how the release of art may, indeed, allow the artist to function as a stable human being.

The performances are first-rate, and Anderson as the obsessively attached maid Mrs. Danvers is a perverse gem.

So many things come together so beautifully in this movie based on the life of John Forbes Nash Jr. that you're likely to find yourself willing to benignly overlook its occasional biographical lapses and narrative sweetening.

It's a mistake to confuse Zero Dark Thirty for "truth" – that would be a disservice to the high level of craftsmanship, from first-billed actors to below-the-line production crew, at work in this movie fiction – but there is admirably little fat on its bones.

An unexpected classic.

Mary Harron's movie turns out to be anything but a sensationalistic bio-picture; it neither sanctifies nor demonizes the shooter or her famous victim. What the movie accomplishes is something trickier: It treats its two principals, Solanis and Warhol, with respect and humanity.

If the hilarious soundtrack isn't ample motivation for those intimidated by the freakish sex and violence, the side-splitting sight of shrimpy Villechaize coupling with the 225-pound, 6-foot Queen (Tyrrell) is reason enough to slog through the insanity.

From its opening tracking shot of four furry legs sauntering through a bed of colorful pansies as cars and trucks whoosh nearby, Stray is a documentary of unhurried pleasures.

It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed.

Saulnier and co. have crafted a gleefully merciless update on Deliverance, except instead of city folk vs. hillbillies, it’s punk rockers vs. neo-Nazis, and it is one of the most brutal, visceral films to come along in quite some time.

The Last Duel is a thematic gold mine, one that sits nicely alongside some of Scott’s best work to date.

Audition's take on the war between the sexes is bleak and almost entirely devoid of hope. --It's enough to make you give up dating altogether.

A phantom of a movie whose beautiful flakes fall into the deep crevices of memory long after the seasons change.

This Is Not a Burial, it’s a Resurrection is arthouse cinema at its best, a lyrical eulogy from a confident auteur whose poetic touch is meticulous and grand.

What's best about Markus and McFeely's script is that they understand the characters.

Focusing her camera on the rising cogs in the machine of China’s insatiable consumer culture, Jessica Kingdon expands on her 2017 short “Commodity City” with the visually stunning feature Ascension.

The documentary has no narration, and uses excellent expository camerawork to say things that no narrator could equal.

The overall execution add up to a film of beautiful, ultimately heartbreaking honesty.

The film is a wonderful choice for older teens and has considerable crossover appeal for adult audiences.

Anyone expecting truth from Bannon is on a fool's errand, and the floating criticism that there's no confessional here is missing the entire point.

It's the final act that takes that final twist of the knife, as the thriller becomes a grand guignol horror, yet still based within the world and the rules established in that grounded opening.

With these two actors in command, Supernova doesn’t just dare to speak the name of a love between two deeply committed men facing an untenable situation. It shouts it from the rooftops.

This modest French-language film follows the time-honored cinematic tradition of plot as spearheaded by a simple twist of fate.

Efforts to pin down its odd seductive power are as futile as, say, describing the specific sense of disorientation you feel at the instant when a darting cloud suddenly obscures the sun, throwing all your perceptions into a new light before you realize what's happened. Disquieting, but subtly consciousness-expanding. Just see the movie.

More than an appreciation, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is an inspiration.

Truly, it is elucidating for folks who’ve never seen dementia up close, and guttingly familiar to those who have. But even more profound is the film’s record of a remarkable love.

Mystic River asks plenty of questions but rarely if ever offers any answers, and certainly no easy ones. If this fine and sorrowful film is what can be expected from our aging cinema icons, here’s to the golden years, dark though they may be.

Much has been made about the film's "humanizing" of Hitler, but he's only human here in the most prosaic of terms.

If the drama feels occasionally slight, read it as a way in which the film is asking you to understand the perspective of its central character — for Margaret, it’s momentous. And for me, the twentysomething guy in a Bride of the Monster T-shirt and Dr. Martens seeing this movie solo, well, I left choked up seeing something so assiduously warm and sincere.

Bahrani's small marvel of a film.

As a documentary on the origins and backstory of the unfilmed film, Jodorowsky’s Dune is unsurpassable. More than that, however, it also allows audiences a rare glimpse inside the furiously creative mind of Jodorowsky, who still, at 84, is a wonderfully mad genius of the moving image.

At first, you may question whether this is all some elaborate head game, but gradually the creatively unorthodox approach to pay tribute to a man who gravitated toward unconventional artistry enlightens more often than it disorients.

It is rich with ideas and contemplations and packed with the sort of existential jokes that tickle the Coen boys so.

What truly enthralls the viewer is Bi Gan’s journey through the history of cinema.

This material is so rich probably any halfway decent filmmaker could assemble a competent doc tallying the two men’s extraordinary accomplishments. But only Lizzie Gottlieb could make a film where she does that plus needles her pop about wearing sweatpants for his sit-down interview.

Like the weeping sores that spread on Eli’s body, the bloody gouges that Ben carves into his thumb with nervous scratching, and the haunted look in Daddy Wags’ eyes, Polinger delivers a troubling and heart-stopping lesson that such childhood horrors will always leave a mark.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is not just a reminder of the crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza. It’s a reminder that the constant smears against human rights organizations and aid agencies are vile slanders by people who want this to happen again and again and again.

Coco is animatedly empowering entertainment for anyone who’s ever had to go against the wishes of their family to achieve their most heartfelt dreams.

Cloverfield is the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life, and that's coming from a guy who knows his Gojira from his Gamera and his Harryhausen from his Honda. Cloverfield isn't a horror film – it's a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie.

A masterful synthesis of generic conventions and creative imagination, a sublime amalgam of some of the best tendencies and talent our times have to offer.

This is horror with a wink and a nod to drive-in theatres and sweaty back seats. This is how it's done.

He's (Flanagan) never trying to one-up Kubrick or King. Instead, he's trying to push past his own best work, and he may well have achieved that in one supernatural scene that is as shocking and captivating as the fall of the bent-neck lady. In honoring both Kubrick and King, Flanagan's greatest achievement is not being swallowed by the Overlook's shadow.

Love means being helpmates throughout all of life's stages. Death is part of love's bargain, and Haneke lays this fact bare.

A rare achievement.

While though the influence of 19th-century Russian literature has always been evident and admitted in Ishiguro's work, Living is even further removed from the The Death of Ivan Ilyich than Kurosawa's film. It is even smaller and more intimate, and much of its suppressed wonder comes from a career-best performance from Nighy.

Like its bloodline kin, it’s a perfectly scathing glance at power, money, and how the love of both can curdle the soul.

This is a quest movie, with a lot of ground covered, and just as our heroes never stay long in one place or feel safe in their surroundings, neither does the audience.

This is powerful filmmaking that goes beyond just vilifying racist scum, and asks hard questions about what hate hath wrought.

The Velvet Underground is exactly the movie the Velvet Underground deserves.

Thornton, who wrote, directed, and stars in Sling Blade, has created an unforgettable character and situation, a film that's sure to become an American classic.

Piglet, your time has arrived. Sooth us.

Witty, wry, spry, and deliciously and effortlessly romantic, this is Austen as she is supposed to be.