Frame's story is told with an intriguingly naked honesty but one that never drags the viewer into emotional prurience. It creates a fascinating portrait.

Ultimately, Buster Scruggs is lesser Coen, despite the movie bearing many of the filmmakers’ trademarks. Both silly and serious, it’s a hodgepodge in spurs, a horse opera with nothing but arias.

Is it classic cinema? Perhaps not, but then again, American shores and citizens have never been lacerated by atomic weapons. What do we know?

There’s nothing in Fourteen that moviegoers have not seen before, but the empathetic performances by both Medel and Kuhling make this a journey worth taking.

Definitely a film that marches to its own drumbeat.

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.

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.

John Pirozzi purportedly spent nine years gathering material for the project, and the film spotlights musicians and performers who would have been completely forgotten if not for this enterprise.

Ultimately, and as is to be expected, In Our Day is not revelatory or revolutionary. It’s a film about being comfortable from a filmmaker who is comfortable with who he is.

And Favreau? If you'd told me 12 years ago that Swingers' comic linchpin would end up helming one of the best, most visceral, and downright fun foray of all the comic-book franchises waiting in the CGI wings, I'd have told you to amscray, kid. But what the hell? Turns out irony's good for your blood.

Perception is key and Control Room should be required viewing for anyone within reach of a TV signal.

Torn isn't really about growing up in the shadow of a legend. It's about growing up without a father, about finding your way through the grief of your other family members, and how processing that experience never really stops.

After the inexplicable roars of applause for the ham-fisted Promising Young Woman, seeing first-time feature director Molly Manning Walker treat similar issues with so much more empathy and nuance makes How to Have Sex a disturbing if welcome addition to the conversation.

The film is hypnotic, which lends it an addictive sensibility that complements the need Adam and Eve have for their bloody fixes.

Altman-esque in its disjointed narrative but clear as day in its complexity of vision, Schimberg's film works best in its individual scenes, and scenes within scenes.

Ju Dou is a juicy and stylish potboiler that keeps the pilots turned on full blast.

An ambitious comedy with not-negligible dramatic depth, but Bell, a first-time feature writer and director, is frankly too generous with her large cast.

Whether you view it as a trenchant treatise on the contemporary effects of Marxism, or just a wonderfully odd glimpse into a fading star of the fashion industry, Celebration is at turns beguiling, fascinating, and true, which is what one should want and need out of a documentary.

Although Selma is dramatically uneven overall, the film is a commendable historical drama that sidesteps the pitfalls of adulatory biopics and great-man approaches to encapsulating bygone events.

If you’re just along for the spectacular ride, then Furiosa is Miller at his nitro-fueled, chrome-covered, overblown best. But if you’re trying to make any sense of this, you’ll find it increasingly stalled out.

Thunder Road has received oodles of festival awards, including the Grand Jury Award at SXSW. The film is a singular work. Even though it doesn’t always live up to the promise of its opening sequence, Thunder Road is an exhilarating ride.

Complicity is the offense under investigation in The Assistant, the first fiction film of the #MeToo era that indicts the system along with its colluders, willing and unwilling.

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.

The narrative and its attendant lessons about how one rotten ape and/or human can spoil the bunch are engaging, although I found myself drifting during the battle sequences.

It's an out-of-this-world, real-life adventure for kids of all ages, budding Neil Armstrongs and Ray Bradburys alike.

Smith presents the danger as the cumulative effect of being trans and Black and a sex worker in America. However, that's not all that Smith is talking about.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that Bergman is finally getting around to asking himself questions he now realizes he should have asked long ago is not sufficient enough premise for a movie. The answers may be news to Bergman, but the rest of us might just want to opt for divorce.

Unfamiliar to most these days and it goes without saying that Harris performs a great service in the eyes of history with his film.