All three principal actors – Weisz, McAdams, and Nivola – give effectively constrained performances. They work as a team here, consistent with the delicate balance in their characters’ complicated relationships with one another.

Compelling, relentless cinema.

Clerks II will find Kevin Smith's detractors saying that the filmmaker simply regurgitates the past, while his loyal fan base will applaud his return to the tried and true.

However commanding and absorbing Three Billboards may be, the film is diminished by its neatness and unconvincing resolutions to the many dilemmas it puts into play.

A pure cinematic distillation of Maclean's words, it is by turns austere and vibrant, disconsolate and joyful.

Clockwatchers may not be a Grapes of Wrath for the Nineties, but its intelligence, slow-boil outrage over grunt workers' dehumanization, and subtle assertion of their power to resist make it a terrific piece of pro-labor propaganda.

The final destination is a truly touching and very modern story of being an overlooked child, and you'll cross an ocean of wonder and amazement to get there.

Undeniably gripping stuff.

It can be an incredibly entertaining romp through the picket fence yards of an America that only exists in our collective unconscious.

How do you tell the true story of a mythical woman? In epic proportions, of course.

The Punk Singer (and the formation of the Julie Ruin) offers a welcome return to, if not the fray, then certainly the front – where, as every rebel girl worth her combat boots knows, girls belong.

It helps that J.K. Rowling’s third book in the series is full of spooky stuff that translates beautifully to screen.

Aftersun is lyrical without ever being obtuse, and it's a film that flourishes when attention is paid to details.

David Lynch doesn't tell stories as much as he shows hallucinations. Wierd, wild, excessive, obsessive, idiosyncratic visions.

A carefully constructed thriller whose clever dialogue keeps pace with its fascinating lead actress.

Felix and Oscar are now part of the American mythos.

Cunningham adheres to a distinctly romantic approach to the artist: irascible and railing against the hypocrisy of humanity through these wonderful and complicated movements that soar above and beyond.

Brilliant, wacky, and utterly charming fluff, with millions of mad monkey minions to boot.

It perfectly catches that childish point just before adolescence, where young boys are starting to notice girls but still want to find frogs in pools.

The fact that Emily aspires to be an astrobiologist, fascinated by the study of extremophile life forms, is foreshadowing that could seem clumsy in a less crushingly doom-laden and exquisitely eerie story.

Causeway is at its most successful when the film is patient, giving the space to have its characters ruminate over how their past experiences don’t have to define their futures. It’s the kind of film that only succeeds with incredible performances to back it up, and Neugebauer achieves that with Lawrence and Henry guiding her film in such a touching, beautiful way.

It's also a deeply moral antiwar film, if one chooses to view it that way.

Shot in black and white with some quirky wipe transitions thrown in (haven’t seen the classic page-turning wipe in a while), El Planeta orbits around an aesthetic and sensibility rooted in Eighties indie films. But mother and daughter have a comfortable chemistry that surpasses the deadpan material.

Knuckle is the real deal, with the strapping, brutally human Traveller clans butting heads with not only one another but with the very future of their subculture's existence.

Refn’s artful and energetic film never goes further than face value.

The longer you are immersed in this exchange of stories, of hope dying against darkness but proving its value just by its glimmers, the more it enthralls.

One of the most intelligent, engaging, and gut-bustingly funny revelations to come along in a while.

Together's portrait of its social moment is right-on.

On the whole, A Bronx Tale is an impressive work and it's easy to see why De Niro connected with Palminteri's story.

The main draw here, besides the nature of the high-stakes poker milieu, is Jessica Chastain.

It's a grim, dark, and relentlessly violent film throughout; James Bond as Terminator rather than Templar – but it delivers the goods in bloody high style: explosively, sexily, and with 007 shaken (not stirred) to his icy core.

Barrymore’s casting choices are intrinsic to the success of the film. Lewis, under her rink name, Iron Maven, hasn’t had this meaty a role in maybe 15 years, while Wilson as the team’s shaggy male coach is a hoot to watch. Harden and Stern, as Bliss’ parents, create fleshed-out characters instead of lazy depictions of the paper tigers that grown-ups usually are in teens’ stories.

Something in the Dirt doesn't hide its answers, because there may not be any answers. It's the danger of obsessing over the mutability of facts that is its true and fascinating subject. In an era of post-reality politics, Something in the Dirt may be a quiet wake-up call.

Nancy’s dark appeal is not just in Riseborough’s remarkable performance. It’s in how Leo (Buscemi) catches himself saying “you,” and corrects himself to talk about what he and Brooke did before she disappeared.

Ultimately, Lemmy is a lesson in artistic stoicism and the possibility of growing old gracefully within the confines of an art form that almost always rewards youth and punishes (or, worse, forgets) anyone over 30.

The most articulate and entertaining commentary on racial differences to have come down the pike in quite a while.

For his part, Hawthorne rushes pell-mell into the thorny valley of dementia and crawls out with every puncture registering on his worn face. The performance is rich and rewarding.

There are a handful of filmmakers – Wind River director Taylor Sheridan comes to mind – who carry the torch of the American Western forward into the present. Like Sheridan’s films, Montana Story introduces an element of finality to the American West.

There is a sense of ambiguity at the core of The Reader that makes it all the more brutal, all the more honest in its deflowering of love and what one imagines love ought to be instead of what it too often is.

It is this combination of maximalism, nationalism, fatalism, and two-dimensional characterization that makes this one of the most enjoyable current franchises.

F*ck manages to strip some of the mystique from the forbidden word, and in the end, despite some road bumps, is a satisfying f*lm.

Eighteen short films by an international who's-who of filmmakers make up this omnibus celebrating the joys and sorrows of love and Paris, organized by neighborhood.

Kasdan injects this all with vigor and breezy humor.

There is one absolutely inspired scene in Rocket Science, and for this scene alone, it’s pretty much worth the price of admission. It occurs when our hero, Hal (Thompson), an occasionally incoherent teenage stutterer delivers his opening remarks during a high school debate.

Focusing on a quartet of charming, venerable men and the dogs they love, the film offers an engaging portrait of life in the truffle hunting trade, a bucolic life spent roaming picturesque forests, maintaining the winter wood heaters, and drinking wine.

The cast is nothing short of sensational (especially Woods, who gives us the most memorable and oddly likeable villain since Cruella DeVil) and the animators wisely imbue their drawings with the actors' attributes -- right down to Hermes' (Shaffer's) shades. All the cast members seem to relish their roles and their zest is infectious.

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.

The film moves at a slow and deliberate pace, much like the wheels of justice. As viewers, we come to feel ensnarled in the grip of bureaucratic entanglement, much like Kornyev, fighting for justice against diminishing odds.

The opening and closing courtroom scenes, in which brother Sumner is granted legal guardianship, show a family in need of healing, mentally and spiritually.

Holdridge is clever enough to keep his characters from slipping into outright narcissism, or when they do, he's familiar enough with the art of mainstream moviemaking to balance the exhausted with the ecstatic.

Though fashioned as popular entertainment with laughs, light moments, and mostly humorous segments, Religulous is as serious as a disapproving Jehovah about its mission to upend our rote allegiance to blind religious faith.

The Roberts are unforgettable figures, and their insiders' perspective and ultimate survival and rebirth provide an exhilarating example of how wondrous things can emerge from the flood.

Character-driven movies this brutally honest about life below the poverty line are few and far between, but the ensemble cast and Riegel’s skills not only behind the camera but also – judging from her lean and mean script – behind the keyboard help Holler rise above expectations and overcome cliche.

One of the strangest riffs on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ever. Stanwyck is hot!

Less a film than a lyrical, naturalistic tone poem.

Hamnet is at its best when exploring primal emotions, following the example of Agnes, with her elemental connection to the earth.

The good news is that Moana is a wonderfully animated – in every sense of the word – tale of youthful female empowerment that dazzles the eye with an oceanic kaleidoscope of bioluminescent color, catchy songs, and a perfectly suited vocal cast.

Crooklyn is a winning work whose charms far outweigh any pitfalls.

A Rorschach test of a movie that reveals more about the audience than the characters onscreen. The Drama doesn’t just invite judgment; it’s coded in its DNA.

There’s an element of synesthesia and a touch of religiosity to The Colors Within, but more importantly there’s Yamada’s welling compassion for the inner lives of young people.

When Liz is good, she's very, very good, but when she's bad, she gives it all she's got. Director Daniel Mann definitely had a way with leading ladies.

Writers Steph Lady and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) retain much of the source's action and all of its spirit, but still make the work speak to our age.

The fact that Wordplay works as a film at all is a testament to its skill. The New York Times may never find a better marketing tool.

Bone Tomahawk is not your typical Western retread, to be sure. If someone had told me that it was adapted from one of Joe R. Lansdale’s genre-hopping horror stories I would have believed it. Kudos then to director Zahler, who on his very first film, buries that g--damn tomahawk deep in the audience’s memory.

The movie appeals to an old-fashioned sense of horror.

Besson's visuals are, as always, vibrant and decidedly European. He fills the frames with odd-angled shots and alarming riots of color that catch you off-balance.

There's also real breadth in scenes between Burr and Davidson: The older stand-up doesn't give any ground but still tries to give the screwed-up young man something to cling on to in several firehouse scenes.

The swarming dragon attacks may truly frighten the littlest viewers, but the depiction of the pleasures of flight and the conquering of one’s fears should make How to Train Your Dragon a perennial delight.

Does the man make the uniform, or does the uniform make the man? Schwentke's conclusion is as dark as you may fear.

At some levels, there is nothing new here: Everyone knows about the casting clashes, the abandoned score, and even Friedkin's take on it all. But it's the immediacy that comes from Alexandre O. Philippe's decision to leave everything to Friedkin that makes its so important.

It’s that rare film that truly tackles how people live within a bloody conflict.

A Woman in Berlin is like a tour through the blast-cratered psyche of two colliding cultures, each with its own nightmarish tales to tell or acts of violence to experience.

This skillfully creepy film tells the story of some housemates who experience unwelcome visits from a partially decomposed former resident who rises from beneath the floorboards. Seems he wants the flesh and blood of the new residents in order to settle some old scores.

I recognized a lot of my younger self in The Edge of Seventeen. It’s crummy that teenagers just shy of 17 won’t get the same chance.

The influence of the original Mad Max is undeniable – not the crazy biker bits, but the sense of a collapsing world, of the personal impacts and damage inflicted by the end of everything.

Not only does this genre exercise deliver the little jolts and inside laughs that keep modern horror fans pleased, Get Out is also one of the smartest, funniest, and most socially astute films to come around in a while.

What truly binds this film is the love story that lies at the heart of it. It’s a love battered by fate and bad luck, quite the opposite of such forces as planned redesigns of China’s social and geographic landscapes.

Mesa Soto initially mines wry humor from Oscar’s sad-sackness; he and editor Ricardo Saravia are especially good at scene transitions that land like a punchline, and the marvelous Rios – small of stature and existentially slumped – cuts a comical figure. But the film, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes last year, subtly evolves (more successfully than Oscar, it turns out) to find just as much to scorn in the poetry center elites, and to nudge the viewer toward a more compassionate approach to its luckless sorta-hero.

Young@Heart more than subtly suggests that the secret to growing old is to feel young, and – based on what you see in this film – there may be some truth to that platitude.

Mami Wata is a marvel to behold (cinematographer Lílis Soares winning a Special Jury Prize at Sundance this year was a no-brainer) and Obasi throws in enough curveballs to this familiar story to keep you off-kilter.

Dragged Across Concrete is a nihilist's morality tale. In the end, Zahler suggests, there's the dead, the innocent, and those smart enough to know that running is the only path out; and even then, there's a lot of innocence on that pile of corpses.

The deeply heartfelt Milk is more of a surface skim: a fairly standard biopic – if a very fine one, indeed – but never the transcendent work one would have hoped from the filmmaker or his subject.

It's a good bet for youth audiences (the PG-13 rating is for one instance of language) and finds plenty of thought-provoking subject matter courtside.

Given the minimal – albeit excellent – cast and the film’s maximal rollercoaster of shifty mood swings and its increasingly paranoiac atmosphere of disorienting dread, it’s no wonder Come to Daddy lingers in the mind long after the final, emotionally revelatory denouement.

Visually stunning (as can now be expected from esteemed studio Production I.G.), what truly distinguishes The Deer King is in the narrative, and how it is laid out by the co-directors, Miyaji (Fusé: Memoirs of a Huntress) and directorial first timer Ando.

Quite astonishingly, amidst all the chaos – and there's no better word for Tristram Shandy's inspired, breakneck madness – what emerges is a featherlight, moving meditation on new fatherhood.

With lyrical beauty and memorable performances, The Postman articulates many feelings that seem to defy explanation.

Neither talking down to children nor pandering to their parents, The Secret Garden functions something like a fairy tale in the way in which we all can latch onto different aspects of meaning during different stages of our lives and also in the way in which primordial and psychosexual concerns are made palpable in narratively distanced and socially acceptable terms.

Masie Crow's Sundance-selected documentary thrives on providing such depth and nuance to very real students with very real experiences.

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s latest film Close is a devastatingly heavy watch, a delicately filmed tragedy that takes hold of your emotions and never lets go for the duration of its run time.

Whether or not Murakami intended this rambling, erotic nightmare as a metaphor for modern-day Japan is a question I'm not going to get into here, but the fact remains, Tokyo Decadence is a powerful, disturbing film, teeming with episodes of rampant passion, abuse, and beauty.

At a silkily dispatched hour and a half, Black Bag is perfectly portioned and entertaining as all get-out.

Going dramatic, Stiller commits to the role completely; there's something rather admirable in his refusal to pander or soft-pedal the self-serious, frankly unlikable Greenberg.

Though this capable documentary is comprehensively informative in so many ways (perhaps to a fault), the one thing it doesn’t quite convey is the wonder and marvel of the undersea world of Cousteau, which continued to move him until his death at age 87.

Appropriately belongs to Lopez. His mannequin glaze and never-wavering smile provide more creepy-crawlies than a thousand quivering violins or perfectly timed thunderclaps.

I will admit, the fact that Oklahoma oddball Mickey Reece had recently become the cinematic flavor of the month left me cold and baffled, especially with his breakout festival hit Climate of the Hunter. Yet the excellence of religious chiller Agnes finally means you can mark me as a true believer.

At first, you fear this uncharted emotionalism may undercut the delicious pleasures of Christie’s clever plotting, this one being a particularly nifty stumper, but in the end, it subtly enhances the film without being pretentious.

Infamous successfully captures a sense of the loneliness of a writer's life.