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.

This is a movie that ripples with sublimated fury well before the bloody and shocking long take that ends everything without much of an answer. But it is also a movie that leaves too much unsaid and takes too long to end up nowhere.

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.

Part Two, Walk With Me Awhile, is overstated and adds nothing story-wise short a few snippets that could have been incorporated into its predecessor.

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

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

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

The whistleblowers of the NYPD 12 definitely deserve a comprehensive chronicle of their struggle for justice, as their struggle affects so many. Crime + Punishment speaks well on their behalf, but not emphatically enough to close the case.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ross’ debut is scattershot, and lacking in the consistent purpose that articulates a filmmaker’s intent.

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

As it is, it’s a bit of a slog. A well-crafted slog. But a slog nonetheless.

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.

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.

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 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.

An awesome and inspiring doc from the team behind Meru.

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.

In the end, the fine acting cannot salvage the uninspired material that fancies itself cutting-edge yet is paradoxically dated. Madeline’s Madeline might have been innovative in the mid-’60s, but its novelty has long expired.

Rather than working so hard to steer viewers’ emotional reactions, Wardle could have trusted in the provocativeness of his material and endeavored to provide broader context for this entrancing tale.

It's the camerawork by director of photography Brett Lowell and cinematographer Corey Rich (along with many other contributors) that impresses the most here. Close-ups show just how precise and physically challenging the climbers' moves are.

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.