Little in the film stings as much as the fact that Knoxville and co. have clearly lost a step. It’s a bummer that Knoxville himself is too banged up to get involved to the same degree that he once did, and though some of the new bits reflect the visionary idiocy of the crew’s finest work (Larry the robot is a brilliant addition to the cast), many of them fail to leave a mark.

Alcock, tasked with playing a character that might strike some as “unlikable,” instead finds both the very human dimension and the out-of-this-world charisma necessary to make Kara worth rooting for.

She’s the He might not be the funniest or most fearless film about trans identity to find fans this year. But it understands that while queerness isn’t contagious, hope is.

For Girls Like Girls the movie, the final result is less a standalone work of great cinema announcing Kiyoko as a feature director, and more an act of dreamy devotion designed to comfort her core fanbase. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it does change who, and perhaps what, this soulful and peculiar film adaptation is for.

But for all of its teachable wisdom, this movie knows that life is never sweeter than it is during the moments, and years, when we simply can’t accept that love is also made out of plastic.

There’s only so much marveling at brilliant and grotesque creature designs that can be done before the story needs to get on its feet, but I Am Frankelda does eventually click into place once its world is fully established.

This is the action movie of the year so far as American theatergoers should be concerned, and nothing else really comes close.

The Death of Robin Hood isn’t revisionist history — it’s a history of revisionism. One that fittingly creeps further into fiction with every claim it makes towards “the truth,” as Sarnoski’s ultra-austere effort to cut through a millennium of myths can’t help but create a hard-to-swallow fable of its own along the way.

Filled with sight gags, innuendos, and puns galore, Stop! That! Train! has a shaky hit or miss ratio in its humor, with great jokes wedged between hacky bits that land like a botched lip sync death drop. And it’s unmistakably a fan only affair.

Far-fetched as this popcorn movie gets, it crucially never loses sight of the notion that to look outward is to look within (and vice versa), a theory that only grows clearer over the span of a blockbuster whose 79-year-old director still peers back at his childhood for a better view of the stars.

Ryuya Suzuki’s masterful anime, which spans the century-long life of a J-Pop star, makes it impossible to ignore how little it shows you.

The most compelling thing about Office Romance, which would be as formulaic as it gets if not for its admirably deep bench of deranged supporting characters, is that it gives Lopez the chance to publicly negotiate between the extremes of her own screen image — to explore the frustrations of being a self-possessed woman who has to shrink herself down in order to maintain her power.

The film isn’t so bold as to suggest that it’s never too late to find fortune and fame in the entertainment industry. But it replaces those fantasies of overnight success with something richer, and its conviction in the power of songwriting as something that doesn’t have to be connected to record sales and stadium shows makes it a charming entry in a filmography that has never tried to be anything it’s not.

A nature doc mixed with autobiography, “Time and Water” is a poetic musing on intergenerational memory, a whimsical, yet staunchly political elegy for the glaciers, and a mournful look at the Earth in all her majesty and mystery.

Backrooms is a movie more likely to blow young minds, but remember the first horror movie you saw that changed who you were? This movie will be that for a lot of people.

While hope on the horizon is presented, this rich, deeply moving drama doesn’t shy away from forgiveness being something that cannot be easily forced, even when the will may be there, however far buried.

Mysius is a rigorously attentive filmmaker, obsessed by the small details that make up the frames of a thriller, who I’d love to be served by better material that isn’t such a by-the-numbers thriller.

It is so wholly transporting that its running time flies by unnoticed, and as it barrels toward its melancholic end, you’re left breathless in your seat wishing you could spend more time with these kids, hoping they will all be OK, even while knowing that life still has many more knocks waiting for them, and that perhaps none will be ever be as monumental as when love is lost, but if you have patience, also when it is found.

It’s hard to identify when the emotional circuit board underlying “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” switches on and a low-key multi-character yarn coheres into a humanist light show, only that after that certain point it achieves the enduring power of a folk ballad.

Clocking in at a tight 90 minutes, some changes to the also-slim book are smart, while others dilute its darkest impulses.

Grisebach’s understated approach to character works evocatively at the start when it is a question of blending them into this very specific place (filmed with consistent majesty by cinematographer Bernhard Keller) and teeing up the mystery of the past. However it falters when it comes to paying off that mystery and exorcising the ghosts that Veska is reckoning with.

At a mere 94 minutes in length, its meandering, meta-textual appearance might seem like a misfire at first, but it disguises what might be Jude’s most slyly character-focused work, culminating in a completely unexpected emotional gut punch.

As a war movie, Coward isn’t especially unique. Nor is it as a queer romance. But how many straight wartime love stories have we seen? This is a lovely, if rather decorous and reverent, tale of an illicit affair that’s unlikely to cause as much noise as Dhont’s last two films. But in this case, that should actually work to its benefit.

The film strikes an elegant balance between providing context for his innovations and letting the work do the talking, resulting in one of the more entertaining art documentaries that this critic has ever seen.

This intimate and psychologically astute portrait of the human cost of U.S. imperial violence draws a precise focus from what cinema is built for: putting us in a character’s skin.

Ashes doesn’t feel like a typical immigration tale, not because of where it takes place, but because of the nuance of emotion that fuels it.

Carroll may have made her bones as someone with ready answers and an irrepressible spirit, but Meeropol’s film is best when its subject finally realizes even the best advice only applies in the moment, in certain places, for certain people. Living in the after of those questions? That’s much more important.

The gratification of experiencing all the narrative threads coming together is only eclipsed by an awe at the underlying emotional continuity.