It's all about the little things, and the way in which the little things can steal into your heart in big ways.

Why do I feel like a bummed-out tourist gone home with dashed hopes? “I was promised a new-millennium mindfuck, and all I got was this crummy pick-the-bodies-off horror.”

A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.

Yes, it's a coming-out film, but it breaks that mold by being thoroughly unpredictable. It's a coming-of-age film, too, and by virtue of of telling the story of a young, black lesbian, Pariah also ventures into novel territory for a motion picture.

The real star of Red Rock West is the convoluted plot, as twisty as any backroad out south of Bakersfield and with a hell of a lot fewer p(l)otholes.

Nabokov’s satire is sensationally cast, with Winters and Sellers delivering some of their best work ever.

If Pride manages to be somewhat reductive in its depiction of equal rights activism, at least it’s reductive in the right direction.

Scrappy, powerful, and shocking.

For all the provocativeness of its premise, Babygirl is notably committed to nuance, even if the pacing doesn’t always feel intuitive. It marks a major leveling up for Reijn, cements Dickinson’s rising star status, and reminded me – for the first time in a long time – of what a truly terrific Kidman performance looks like ... and, yep, sounds like, too.

A surprisingly effective adventure, El Cid begins well enough but if you stick with the story 'til the end, in CinemaScope, it becomes breathtaking.

What makes Midnight Traveler distinct from its counterparts is that it follows filmmaker Hassan Fazili’s own family, and the intimacy he’s able to capture over the life spans of three iPhones makes his documentary more tender and honest and immediate.

At its core, this movie is a piece of unflinching activism that forces you to look at something uncomfortable, something those of us in the cocoon would probably rather not see. But see it, you should. See it, you must.

It's an education suitable for both children ready to see the world's shadows, and for adults who may still not comprehend Southeast Asian history beyond the Vietnam War.

Much of the fun of The Christophers – and it is very fun – is in anticipating the hitches, then startling when they snag left rather than right. The delight is in watching Coel and McKellen play off each other.

An entirely sympathetic portrait of the artist at an advancing age. That's right, artist – and to a generation that knows Rivers only as a screeching red-carpet provocateur or as an overknifed monstrosity, that revelation alone is worth the cost of admission.

Some people might find Chunhyang a chore to sit through, including me. Despite all of its accumulated period gorgeousness, or perhaps because of it, the film moves at a snail's pace, telegraphing plot twists miles before we actually arrive at them.

A smart, funny, and youth-savvy relationship film.

Immensely entertaining, Coriolanus is chock-full o' gore and the contemporary trappings of a man and a land divided, both from without and from within.

Above everything else, this tribute is a valentine to a man you can’t help but love.

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.

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

A fearless sort of melodramaticism that might have seemed silly if it weren't for the impeccable EVERYTHING on display here, from the lush, sexy camerawork of director of photography Yorick Le Saux (Swimming Pool) to the throbbing, atavistic score by John Adams. It's not silly or, at least, rarely so, and Swinton's nuanced, aching performance is downright revelatory.

Aside from the requisite wide shots of sweeping desert, sea, and cityscapes marking the various stages of the journey, Garrone (the Italian director of Gomorrah and Tale of Tales, among others) keeps the camera close to Seydou, and Sarr’s skill at the subtle transformation of his emotional responses from, say, heartbreak to happiness (and back again) is incredibly compelling to watch.

The natural world and the industrialized world are at odds once again. But it is to Da-Rin’s talent as a filmmaker that her political and ideological intent never overshadow this deceptively simple and astute tale of a sick man yearning for his home, and finally hearing the call of the wild.

Fantasies and phantasms aside, Fincher proves himself yet again to be a better cinematic psychologist of (in-)human nature than almost any other director alive. It’s another squirmily excellent date movie from hell, courtesy of contemporary cinema’s most overt nihilist.

Kinsey is too tasteful by half, and while it may have its gentle charms, it never thrills.

It's an audacious, affecting, and unexpectedly hilarious debut, and most definitely the most original film I've seen all year.

The images this war photographer shoots are beyond awful, but there's just no looking away.