This is an astonishing filmmaking debut from Burnham, a renowned comedian as well as a musician—you might secretly wonder how a young male not only captured the point of view of an eighth-grade girl so exactly, but also expressed it with such emotional precision. Whatever the secret formula to his experiential accuracy and unexpectedly inventive directorial eye is, the outcome is a deeply serious coming-of-age film that is only light and charming on the surface.

Even middling Welles is better than none, and it's a treat to see his longtime collaborators like Paul Stewart and Mercedes McCambridge performing as brilliantly as ever. John Huston is a special delight.

Ridley Scott's direction seems even better than remembered, starting off languidly and picking up speed as the horrors mount. [2003 re-release]

A giant leap even for the youngest-ever Best Director victor, Damien Chazelle’s technically astonishing First Man is a poetic non-blockbuster of claustrophobic intimacy.

Beautiful is the apt description for this hilarious masterpiece that embraces reason, celebrates truth and ultimately believes we're civilized enough to accept both.

If there is any "message" to Monrovia, Indiana, it may be that we all share the same fate.

Schnabel's film is not so much about the artist as a journey into his inner being, so we experience the world in much the same blissed-out, tormented and chaotic way he himself did.

Custody embodies Legrand’s attention to detail, reverence for gripping storytelling, command of tension and, above all, direction of finely etched performances for characters major and minor. It is simmering entertainment that amounts to required viewing.

The songs, written by Gaga, Cooper, Lukas Nelson, Jason Aldean and Mark Ronson, are all terrific and will make a helluva soundtrack album, and Lady Gaga’s performances are electrifying. Combine that with the genuine-feeling romance between the co-stars and the heartbreak of its dissolution, and you have one soaring and searing piece of movie entertainment.

McCarthy has found the right creative partner in Heller, who treads unchartered territory with a character like Israel: unfashionable, unfamiliar and unappealing to most viewers.

A tragic romance of identity embedded in a voluptuous atmosphere, Moonlight flirts with visual and thematic excess. But the emotional integrity of its characters, seamlessly maintained from one set of actors to the next, who so desperately want to love, pulls it back from the brink.

It’s a perfect pairing of sensibilities; Jenkins and Baldwin share a nuanced, lyrical style that conveys the beauty and hope in even the most despairing of situations, with a focus on the emotional truths of their characters. Like the novel, the film is a love story, as well as a powerful indictment of systemic racism and the criminal-justice system.

A film of mounting artistic imagination, Sorry to Bother You spirals into a type of mind-bending madness that is both persistently fun and one-of-a-kind.

McQueen, the exhilarating, heartbreaking documentary by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, presents an almost excruciatingly intimate portrait of this genius.

Even if you disagree with Moore, it’s hard not to admire his bravura filmmaking.

Devoid of any corniness, sentimentality or condescension, Pick of the Litter is a must for dog lovers, but it will also serve all those needing reminders of how kind, decent and giving humans can be and the role dogs play in our lives.

In their trailer, the gift of the religious do-gooder who owns the farm, the exigencies of survival subside, and the quiet brilliance of Foster and McKenzie’s performances surface.

McCabe stands apart not just for the impressive technical virtuosity of his filmmaking or his unblinking focus on the tragedy of the Congo, but for his refusal to chalk it up to generalized Third World chaos. Things happen for a reason, this devoutly humane but studious documentary argues, and until those reasons are dealt with, they will continue.

Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and particularly an astonishing Olivia Colman find a perfectly pitched acid tone in harmony with the director's edgy vision.

Deftly tweaking the tropes of rock biopics, this drama of singer Freddie Mercury and British hitmakers Queen dazzlingly captures an era, a man and the universal quest for identity.

The Wife is an astute character study thanks in large part to Jane Anderson’s winning screenplay.

There is nothing grand about Anchor and Hope. It is only that which is extraordinarily difficult to make: a simply well-executed film.

An awesome and inspiring doc from the team behind Meru.

Knightley shines in period films (Anna Karenina, Pride & Prejudice) and here inflects Colette with a boldness and forthrightness that create a bridge between Belle Epoque Paris and today's zeitgeist.

Briskly paced, the film makes for a visually exuberant experience as it cuts quickly among photos and video clips of Kusama’s flashy artwork, commentary from critics, gallery owners and fellow artists (delivered both on-camera and as audio over images of Kusama’s work) and footage of the maverick artist herself.

Laurent’s film is gripping throughout. The filmmaker shrewdly frames each scene to convey the characters’ loneliness and isolation without being too obvious.

The Little Stranger invites debate and analysis long after viewing. Heady horror films with psychological tics and twists are few and far between, and this is the best one since The Innocents, Jack Clayton’s stylishly sinister 1961 edition of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

Never Look Away, a cohesively integrated collage of many genres (history, war, crime, medical drama with romance and spectacle), is also a feast of fine acting and magnificent visuals. But with so much going on, viewers, as if confronting impressionistic paintings or pixel-based photorealistic portraitures, need to step away to get a better picture.

Milford Graves: Full Mantis is a wide-ranging look at an intriguing artist, a documentary brimming over with his thoughts about culture as well as his music.

Compositionally often quite gorgeous and filmed largely in luminous, at times otherwordly black-and-white, The Great Buddha is compelling due to its mordant wit, authentically observed performances and distinctive cynical/lyrical outlook.

There’s something almost inevitable about these real-life characters getting a feature showcase, so unusual, engaging and inspiring is their journey from antagonism to deep friendship.

Bombach’s respectful distance from her subject allows the audience to see in a way that one does watching a Robert Bresson film; in the slowly unfolding narrative, stripped of drama but not of emotion, Nadia’s spirit emerges.

The seams definitely show in the film’s effort to contain all the comment, comedy, horror, romance and drama, but Lee handily orchestrates the layout of the period and players.

This is a riveting, important story in which the personal can’t help but be political.

Endearing and funny but with a melancholy edge, Juliet, Naked is more than just a rom-com—it’s a movie for and about adults, in all their messy complexity.

Fallout is the boldest of a series that has set a very high (sometimes literally so) standard for breathtaking set-pieces. By my count, the new film has at least seven of them—a generous gift to summer audiences from daredevil star Cruise, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood.

Gavagai is a curiosity and nonetheless remarkable in its own way. Slow (very slow) paced, it’s a meditative, haunting and lyrical film that explores the many layers of love and grief.

A Crooked Somebody (the title derives from pastor Sam’s unheeded advice that “it’s better to be an honest nobody…”) is a meticulously balanced blend of character-based drama and genre conventions.

Wildlife offers a fresh glimpse of lower-class anomie and the rhythms of life in a simpler time and place.

The dominant performance throughout remains Forster’s. He’s such a hard-charging engine that he reduces everyone within his earshot to a reactive mode.

The Bookshop is an exquisitely understated tragicomedy.

The smartest kind of sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet remembers what you liked about the first film. And then, not only gives you more of the same, but something different.

Overlord, produced and presumably overseen by J.J. Abrams, is good, bloody fun, with all the polish and production value that come with not being a low-budget exploitation movie.

Under the Wirecements Colvin’s legacy as it illustrates the value of getting to the truth and making it public. In Martin’s hands, Conroy’s story is no less compelling.

Deliberately paced but shot with a quiet magnetism and close-in immediacy,The Citizen benefits in comparison to other immigrant dramas because even though this is a story suffused with empathy, it doesn’t center on either a good deed being done by a white Westerner for a helpless dark-skinned foreigner or that foreigner’s two-dimensional pluck.

The action scenes are complex masterpieces of speed and stunts that combine physical bits with fresh, exciting 3D effects.

Their most potent commentary is often their silence, their wordless responses to those questions that are unanswerable. Their restraint and dignity are an emotional sucker punch.

Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary finally tells its full story, and an enthralling, sometimes absurd, sometimes very sad and at times almost unbelievable story it is.

Not only do the Coens remember and reproduce it well, so does their French cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel

Cocote’s narrative structure exhibits a tidy symmetry, strongly suggesting that what ultimately transpires has a certain inevitability to it, that cycles of retribution and vendetta all too easily devolve into vicious circles.

Above all, this is Sarandon’s picture and maybe her best film work in many years.

Comprised entirely of the diva’s own words, whether filmed or transcribed from her various writings, letters and reminiscences, the film offers the definitive portrait of a woman who rose from obscurity in her native Queens, NY, born Greek, to become a true citizen of the world and queen of an art form.

Schwentke’s delectable drama is ultimately a keen indictment of the stereotypical German affinity for efficiency and the sense of community born of bonding together in the hurting of others.

Sibling filmmakers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist’s riveting Nossa Chape (Our Team) reveals at first a team and a town that have been utterly destroyed by the unimaginable. Then, with the tension of a well-plotted sports drama, the documentary tracks the team’s rise from the ashes of grief back to something like normal.

Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is a truly engrossing film, one that balances the big picture and the small one.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead gives a rich, flavorful account of a self-destructive genius on one of his last creative benders.

A Private War certainly gets viewers to care about Colvin. The screenplay, by Arash Amel, drops Marie (and viewers) into several war zones where she reports about various horrors. Heineman wisely does not shy away from showing some of the blood and the carnage, lest anyone forget the very real human stories that Colvin reported.

Ruizpalacios doesn’t waste the movie beating up on Juan’s foolishness. He’s painting a broader picture of ennui, lost suburban souls who seem to want nothing more than to tool around in their car and talk nonsense.

As much as you might want to look away from Dark River, you can’t. The direction is assured, inventive, precise. The performances are compelling. And while the writing is often a little too deliberately obscure, once it becomes clear where the story is heading, it moves forward with the force of classic tragedy.

Foy and Alvarez have still spun the old and new elements together in an effective web. If this is a trap, it’s one you won’t hurry to escape from—or even fear being caught in again.

Puzzle proudly wears its unfussy metaphors on its sleeve, while sidestepping trite clichés of stories about self-discovery. Its premise might sound dull, but this charming crowd-pleaser is thankfully anything but—so much that Puzzle might even restore your faith in remakes.

Older Than Ireland isn't relentlessly upbeat. It's filled with stories of loss, disappointment, tough lessons learned and compromises made, and it's hard not to suspect that the genetic hand you're dealt counts for a lot.

The Front Runner works hard to accommodate all points of view.

This is a simple, macho morality tale—of the oppressors and the oppressed, of good and evil, and of the one man who sets out to settle the scales of justice. And the level on which it works is primal—and frighteningly effective.

Araby stays so grounded in acutely observed behavior, while still sufficiently elliptical in its storytelling methods, that it successfully avoids getting up on any particular soapbox.

No one-dimensional, stone-cold badass here—this version of Laurie Strode is among the most nuanced horror heroines presented onscreen over the last handful of years.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a minor miracle of a musical, something you never thought you would ever see.

Casal and Diggs have both lived these roles for years, so it’s not surprising that they never deliver a false moment.

A movie that should be seen on the big screen, in order to fully appreciate its special effects, this Disney production will likely enchant lots of little girls and boys while also tugging at the heartstrings of grown-up sons and daughters who still value all that was given to them by their departed parents

This exquisitely mounted sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) skims past any narrative shortcomings through the complete and convincing totality of the wizarding world it creates, drawing you into another reality with perhaps more verisimilitude than any film in the Harry Potter canon.

There is magic in this film's ode to growing old and being with the people who knew us young.

Dramatically constructed and studded with sharp, thoughtful points of view,The Oslo Diaries nevertheless falls down on one point. The movie doesn’t get as much sunlight into the PLO viewpoint on the process, focusing almost exclusively on Israeli domestic politics.

Writer-director Colin Minihan’s thriller is tightly plotted and delivers a couple of terrific shocks, shocks that are firmly rooted in character

Although no one dies from Lou Gehrig’s disease or gives a heart-rending baseball retirement speech, Late Life is possibly the most purely moving batter-up film since every dad’s favorite male weepie, The Pride of the Yankees.

The Super is well written and acted—two things that should be givens but often aren’t, especially in genre films

Languid, associative, at times dragging, at other moments deeply affecting, thanks to a song and a trick of the light, Ethan Hawke’s Blaze is difficult to define.

Jordan really commits, and his scenes with Thompson have genuine warmth and intimacy.

Although hardly conceived or executed on the scale of his work, Proust kept popping into my mind as I watched this disarming film, with its meditative accretion of the fascinating little details that comprise a life.

Amy Scott’s affectionate and smart documentary sheds light on an artist obsessed with addressing the injustice and intolerance in this country, but who himself could be the most problematic of men.

You come away from the film feeling that Cecil Beaton represented the very essence of the fashion business, which continues to celebrate, be inspired by and imitate his huge legacy: absolutely exquisite and impeccable on the surface, often hiding a much darker and uglier reality.

Path of Blood is more an immediate experience, and as such succeeds in unexpected ways. The human normality of what it shows is nearly more sickening than the carnage itself.

The story of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which opened the spigots of campaign cash, has been told before. But Reed weaves it into a larger narrative in which it is simply one of the steps in the unraveling of modern campaign-finance laws.

Despite its structural hiccups, Demange’s film still manages to highlight the humanity of a family and community that fights to survive their no-win circumstances and aspire to pass on something hopeful to their descendants.

The true star of the movie is its structure. By cleaving the action in two, both the development of Elliott and Mia’s relationship and what happens after its peak are given their just due. It’s certainly something to make someone who is sure she already knows where the story is going think: Who cares? I’m with these characters, anyway.

It’s a movie made with an insider’s knowledge (directors Ben and Orson Cummings are both proud graduates of the school) and affection (Shaquille O’Neal is one of the producers, as is art-world titan Larry Gagosian). And yet, while it has heartwarming moments, it’s not a predictable, eager-to-please entertainment.

Narcissister boldly skirts convention personally and artistically, and so does the film, by assembling a cogent narrative from acutely disparate parts, to explore her mother as the primary relationship of her life and inspiration for her art.

This is a more-than-promising directorial debut, well worth seeking by adventurous moviegoers.

With heavy-hitters like Melissa Leo and a particularly terrific John Hawkes backing up a magnetic deGuzman, the slight, 80-minute movie makes for strange and surprising entertainment.

Part One, subtitled For the Sake of Gold, is original and intriguing.

A few minutes into The House with a Clock in Its Walls, you realize Eli Roth knows what he’s doing—and that means carefully mixing the scares and stillness for a horror comedy that’s made-to-order for certain monster-loving 10-year-olds.

At any moment, We the Animals might look and sound gorgeous—yet the film unfolds with a naturalistic pace that plods like a too-lazy summer day. This gorgeous view demands ample, ample patience.

while All About Nina does not add anything new to this genre, writer-director Eva Vives’ film does benefit from the female perspective. It also showcases a fearless performance from Winstead.

On the strength of its authentic storytelling voice and galvanizing lead performance, The Hate U Give delivers a powerful message that all the rallying and rioting and impassioned pleas in the world won’t change anything if they fall upon deaf ears.

Much of the film’s success is due to the work of a better-than-average ensemble.

The approach, while admittedly daring, leaves the game viewer, although certainly dazzled by much of the footage, rather wanting more than Bartsch verbalizing the arc of her life and ambitions, yes, but in a distorted layered and overlapping soundtrack that, intentionally, is not always decipherable.

Ostensibly a drama filmed with European realism, What Will People Say has the air and the unsettling effect of a horror film.

The biggest flaw in Mackenzie’s film is that it is so focused on plot and action, there is all too little emotion, save that surge of rage for (or in) battle.

It’s a raunchy, rollicking story of movie legends off the set and between the sheets.