Christian Petzold‘s gossamer latest film, Mirrors No. 3, is as compact as a novella, as ephemeral in its emotion, as delicate in register as one of the Chopin or Ravel pieces that float through it.

As Endgame sputters to the finish line, it leaves the impression of witnessing a Marvel Movie Marathon compressed to three hours — and 58 seconds, but trust me, they’re disposable — of unbridled fan service.

Only Boyle's unstoppable tendency to mouth off sustains the routine plot, but McDonagh pushes the limits of what he can make Gleeson say without making the crude nature of his asides overwhelm their comic potential.

The result is a cozy crowdpleaser with real heart and some lovely songs, and one that doesn’t trade honesty for predictable beats.

Coming out as a bold filmmaker with a fearless voice, prolific alt comedy editor Vera Drew’s mixed media dystopia is an experimental trans coming of age story wrapped in a scathing critique and confident rebuke of mainstream comedy. Fiercely original and deeply personal, it’s too damn good not to be seen.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie delivers everything a fan of the show could want, expanding the level of spectacle while keeping the core of the ongoing project intact.

Hooligan Sparrow is held tight on the strength of the solidarity it finds between these women, and while many other movies have more powerfully exposed the corruption of contemporary China, few have so articulately confronted the gendered weight of these prejudices, and how women always seem to be the first citizens to have their wings clipped.

The Bernard Hermann score adds another dimension.

The director ensures this chamber piece of moral conundrums never seems too heavy-handed; his fluids camera roams through each room so that at no time does the theatrical set-up feel like a limitation.

From one mesmerizing scene to the next, The Tribe never loses its flow. Even its harshest moments are defined by vibrant motion.

It’s the stirring chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly as committed siblings that transforms these lively, violent circumstances into a sweet and intimate journey designed to catch acolytes of the genre off-guard.

Despite the simple question at the film’s core, Carax is unsurprisingly more interested in assembling compelling images and sounds than offering a sincere look inside the man crafting them. He orbits vulnerability like a moth swirling around a streetlamp, getting ever closer and occasionally touching it before instantly recoiling.

Ethan Hawke is theatrical in the best way possible, commanding the screen with his every gesture and utterance without overplaying any of them.

The film is determined to prove that people can meaningfully interact with the world in any number of ways, now more than ever, and it accomplishes that goal with real clarity and rare emotional force (the last shot is the kind of gut-punch that hurts so good).

Tonally, the movie often struggles to sort out whether it’s a disarming romcom or a straight drama, leading to some listless passages.

Whether it prompts genuine introspection, or even inspires further conversation on what Tesson argues, may provide some measure of how effective the film is. But whether or not viewers put any stock in his proclamations, it’s also perfectly OK to simply celebrate the grandeur in nature that the documentary exalts.

The film serves as a tribute to a certain brand of journalism that can only be achieved by venturing out into the great unknown and putting one’s self in harm’s way. But more than anything, it tells a human story about someone who understood herself well enough to live the exact life she wanted while accepting every consequence that came with it.

The Eight Mountains lovingly adapts Paolo Cognetti’s novel of the same name, a valentine to brotherhood and a shape-shifting tale of self-discovery, resilience, nature and love — platonic but more steely than any rock you could climb – that somehow rarely feels like it treads a single step of the endless stream of movies and literature capturing the ever-evolving yet enduring nature of all of those just mentioned things since time immemorial.

Both Dickey and Studi shoulder the lesser material through a charming naturalism that papers over the script’s artificiality.

Watching At the Ready, a rich piece of journalism as well as an expertly assembled documentary, you think you’re watching what could have a riveting feature story in print. Instead, it’s a Pulitzer-worthy cover story in cinematic form.

Non-Fiction isn’t a surrender, nor is it a call to arms. It’s an anxious — but strangely calming! — reminder that change is the only true constant, and that steering the current is a lot easier than fighting it. Nobody does that better than Assayas, even when it looks like he’s not even trying.

Call it a Shakespearean catharsis or just call it a lark -- either way, the movie represents Whedon's least essential work, regardless of the material's inherent comedic inspiration.

So urgent and far-reaching that it never settles into the comforts of a coming-of-age story, The Breadwinner is a small film about the biggest things. It’s engaging from start to finish, but Twomey — to her great credit — prioritizes stoicism over sentimentality.

Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? is at its sharpest and most necessary when Wilkerson interrogates his personal connection to the past, extrapolating his reticence to explore his own family’s violent history into a national epidemic of people who are similarly reluctant to do the same.

With an energetic set of young actors liberated by Hittman’s jittery naturalism, the movie remains a gripping drama throughout — a combination that speaks to the director’s emerging aesthetic.

With a chillingly relatable Airbnb setup, Barbarian mines multiple real-life scenarios and fears to unleash some truly unhinged terrors. It’s no “Get Out,” but it’s a hell of a lot of fun — with a little something to say as well.

Singled-handedly carrying the story to its inevitable conclusion, [Wasikowska] gives Tracks a level of depth that nothing else in the movie can provide.

While the film covers — and somehow manages to contain — a staggering breadth of topics and ramifications, one little sentence is all it takes to lay out the means and ends of the crisis at hand: Russia didn’t hack Facebook, Russia used Facebook.

By the film’s end, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair proves its ASMR-like power: It’s impossible to shake, even when it makes you want to do just that.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You vibrates with a primordial love and respect for its heroine, one that self-evidently stems from Bronstein’s own experiences as a mother, but the film refuses to wink at its audience or often even the slightest hint of memeable solidarity.

If you want your del Toro weirder, Frankenstein might not be your cup. But if you want a period monster movie that’s solid, almost oaken in its sturdiness, you don’t need to knock on wood to assure that del Toro is keeping the innermost essence, the soul of cinema, alive at least.

The movie juggles a few too many subplots and not every joke lands, but it’s loaded with capricious details that shimmer with the exuberance of inspired social commentary at hyperspeed.

Ventos de Agosto presents such an extraordinary portrait of rural life that its textures often overwhelm the narrative.

Much of the world views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a fixed problem with no end in sight. Few can explain why, but “The Human Factor” finds those who can. With the white-knuckle intensity of a first-rate political thriller, Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh’s engrossing documentary tracks glacial efforts to broker a peace deal over the past three decades.

The film is ultimately most interested in celebrating the irrational levels of devotion that live theater inspires in the people who make it. While it doesn’t pull punches about the challenges that lie ahead, “The Great Lillian Hall” ultimately makes it clear that its protagonist is lucky to have something that’s so hard to let go.

The clock is always ticking in 1917, and even as MacKay is offering a heartbreaking study in restrained emotion, he’s still at least moving towards the end goal of his terrible task. There’s no time to pause, even for great beauty, a lesson that even 1917 is often loathe to honor.

Kedi is a playful and poignant look at the complex nature of the creatures and their inherent appeal to humankind.

An immensely, unstoppably, ecstatically demented fairy tale about female self-hatred, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance will stop at nothing — and I mean nothing — to explode the ruthless beauty standards that society has inflicted upon women for thousands of years.

If Logan Lucky begs you not to take it seriously, that doesn’t mean it lacks real soul.

Filmlovers! melds fiction and non-fiction, the personal and the political, popular and art cinema, into a lyrical tribute to spectatorship, embracing all the theories and emotions that come with it.

The power of this sensitive and devilishly detailed coming-of-age drama is rooted in the friction that it finds between biblical paternalism and modern personhood.

High Life is fixated on the hypnotic rhythms of oblivion, and the human desires it brings to the surface.

Eggers doesn’t want us to see in the darkness, he wants us to see the darkness itself. To recognize it not as the absence of light, but rather as a feral and undying force all its own — one that we carry within ourselves like a secret corseted in virtue.

Mascaro’s wry and witty new film will remind savvy audiences of bleak apocalyptic films about humanity’s potential loss of feeling against technologies that crush them.

Given its themes and the tragic circumstances of Dickinson's life, "Passion" is a refreshingly humorous work. Its firecracker dialogue is invigorating; the assured, measured compositions are equally compelling. And in its sensitivity to intersecting conflicts related to womanhood and class, it is quietly masterful.

There’s much to be appreciated about the movie’s energetic pace, and the casting never fails to convince. But Iannucci’s restless scene transitions — rising curtains reveal new scenes, projected images provide in-scene flashbacks, and so on — confuse empty gimmicks for innovative narrative trickery.

This charming documentary is more than an IMDb-scroll come to life, avoiding the usual pitfalls of generic biopics thanks in no small part to Moreno’s surprising candor and vulnerability.

Chukwu maintains an impressive command over her material, but Woodard herself becomes the movie’s central storyteller.

On its own terms, the film is an exquisite star vehicle for one of Hollywood’s best rising actresses and an engaging thriller about the contradictions that form when you can’t assemble the puzzle of your own life without relying on pieces you’d rather throw away.

A Secret Love is full of the kind of gentle ribbing and loving chuckles one would expect from any adorable old couple, but it’s made all the more poignant by the fact of Pat and Terry’s trailblazing personal histories.

While Deadwyler turns in a remarkable performance as Mamie, beautifully calibrating her love and anger in one riveting package, the rest of “Till” is prone to trope-ridden, predictable sequences that do little to advance her story or Emmett’s legacy.

Lombroso has made the scariest documentary of the year without telling us anything new.

Huppert gives a virtuoso performance here — not only because she deftly meets the extreme physical challenges of her role, but by playing Maud with unabashed humor and heart.

Pribar’s subtle movie eschews sentimentalism for a patient and inquisitive character study, mining familiar territory and rejuvenating it with emotional impact that worms its way into the material from unexpected places.

Thankfully, Kpop Demon Hunters isn’t just a cynical attempt from Sony to cash in on a cultural trend: in the hands of directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, it’s a endearing, beautifully animated crowdpleaser, with a dorkily sincere love for the pop culture phenomena it embeds itself in.

On the few occasions when the filmmaker does manage to capture their faces, Trapped obtains a more profound connection to the stakes at hand.

The vivid palette of Liu’s animation conveys a comic book-like exuberance to the proceedings, but the underlying socioeconomic frustration is very real.

Apatow shoots her mother with obvious affection, especially in her scenes opposite Dora. Yet, it’s the dudes who steal the show. Feldman and Hoffman have that magnetic chemistry.

It doesn’t hurt that Peele’s latest boasts some of the most inspired alien design since H.R. Giger left his mark on the genre, or that Kaluuya’s eyes remain some of Hollywood’s most special effects, as “Nope” gets almost as much mileage from their weariness as “Get Out” squeezed from their clarity. It’s through them that “Nope” searches for a new way of seeing, returns the Haywoods to their rightful place in film history, and creates the rare Hollywood spectacle that doesn’t leave us looking for more.

So much of Welles’ history has been relegated to scholarly texts that it’s a thrill to see this final chapter laid out with such clarity and charm.

Finding Dory doesn’t feel lazy, cynical, or like a rehash. On the contrary, it does what a sequel should — it’s a compelling argument for why we make them in the first place.

Human Flow is an epic portrait of mass migration that understands how a lack of empathy often stems from a failure of imagination.

Terrifying in the abstract even as it grows increasingly absurd to watch, “Longlegs” slinks its way into that liminal space between childhood nightmares and grown-up practicalities with the same precision that it splits the difference between serial killer procedurals and supernatural psychodramas (let’s say “The Silence of the Lambs” and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure”).

Herzog’s singular vision and Blank’s brilliant capturing of that obsession seem especially worthy of consideration from the adventure film lovers who stay up late.

Every Body” is a beautiful and cathartic celebration of intersexuality — and should be mandatory viewing for people of all genders.

Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother marks the emergence of an exciting new filmmaking talent. The Montreal actor, a mere 20 years old, displays a startlingly mature perspective on human behavior in his triple threat position as writer-director-star.

Ferreira is a believable and sympathetic protagonist, bringing a vulnerability to Grace that makes the viewer root for her even as she blows up her life for reasons even she doesn’t seem to understand.

It’s one of the master’s most transparent and — when it comes to confrontations about what parents, and specifically women, can or should do for themselves and for the babies they are forever bound to — brave films of his career.

Perry and editor Robert Greene switch back and forth between twin time-frames with no fuss or warning - and flashes of virtuoso flair - finding ironic parallels between the happy gathering of the previous summer and the more fraught atmosphere of the present day.

Hard as it might be to imagine, Women Talking is an upbeat and propulsive film cut with a sharp wit and a ready sense of humor, even if its characters are often laughing as hard as they wish they could cry.

Part road-film, part-gambling excursion, and part-bromance, the film does show the influence of its talented directors. But falters when it comes down the story itself.

As a living record of the history of the Negro Leagues — it’s role in shaping America, in the prospects of upward mobility, in providing a playing field for Black folks to express themselves — Pollard’s The League is a rich, engrossing, and necessary tribute to a critical early wave in the Civil Rights movement.

As a conversation starter, The World Before Her gets the job done. By virtue of the topic and interviews, Pahuja showcases plenty of tensions between old world values and idealistic goals. That's hardly enough to make its narrative persistently alluring or emotionally sound.

And Then I Go isn’t elegiac or fatalistic, nor is it a dread-filled slog toward an inevitable conclusion.

The film makes plain the experience of being caught between a rock and a hard place, a boldly incisive metaphor for the trans experience.

An increasingly loud world may have made the quiet truths of "Mrs. Miniver" seem small - tune out the noise and hear what this film is saying. It's a roadmap for how dignity and freedom can survive.

While adhering to an internal logic that makes each punchline land with a satisfying burst of glee, the movie nevertheless stems from genuine fury aimed a broken world. It's the rare storytelling endeavor that manages to be laughably absurd and profoundly tragic at the same time.

A maddeningly shallow look at Ronstadt’s remarkable life.

By placing vastly different people into a situation in which they find common ground, it highlights the tantalizing idea that the minutiae of day-to-day problems matters less than the prospects of escaping them through companionship.

Buzzard is among the first great American satires of the 21st century, its scathing indictment of capitalism delivered as a prolonged, disorienting punchline.

Julian Higgins’ excellent film constantly dangles redemption in front of our faces, begging us to imagine a better world, but ultimately delivers a stark reminder of how bitterly divided the country is.

Much less consistently enjoyable than many Hong films twice its length, Grass compensates for its dramatic slackness and deviant sobriety by honing in on the ideas that its director’s work often skirts around.

While Glob took exception with the assessment that Apolonia’s personality was more interesting than her work, her surface level portrait of her as both an artist and as person ironically upholds that very statement.

Most of all, it’s about the depressing reality that some of us are capable of holding both of those extreme views about a person without noticing any level of contradiction. There might be no fixing such a fundamental flaw in the human condition, but “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” does an admirable enough job of dramatizing it.

This is a measured, richly ambiguous work about the subjective process of grief — masquerading as a ghost story — that experiments with the minutiae of film language as only a master of the medium can do.

As a personal portrait, “Ailey” is lacking for charming anecdotes or nuggets of wisdom from the artist himself. But a true artist speaks through his work, and it’s appropriate that the revelations in “Ailey” arrive via the dance scenes.

Jan Hřebejk’s The Teacher is a sardonic, richly seriocomic morality play that uses a delicate touch to explore why communism never seems to work out in the long run.

Babyteeth is the kind of soft-hearted tearjerker that does everything in its power to rescue beauty from pain.

It’s a delightfully-executed technological wonder, which is exactly the expectation of the moment.

Charlène Favier’s Slalom is a familiar story of sexual abuse, but one told with such bracing intensity that it snaps across your face like a blast of cold mountain air.

The Hunting Ground is at its best when it stops dwelling on variations of the problem and points toward a solution.

While We're Young is a clear-eyed satire of intergenerational tension that derives much of its comedy from a series of moments in which its mid-forties couple attempt to mesh with a younger crowder.

At heart, Inu-Oh is a film about storytelling’s power to keep the past alive, and while Yuasa’s carnivalesque extravaganza can be too slippery to hold onto at times, it always proves unforgettable in a way that serves that ultimate purpose.

Dickinson clearly hopes this story will make it that much harder for people to dehumanize the homeless population, but the power of his film — and the promise of his intelligence as a filmmaker — is that it recognizes how a portrait of mottled ambivalence might better accomplish that goal than a million cheap sops of empathy.

If Nagi Notes is so watchful and unforced that it often seems as though it isn’t looking for answers — or for anything — as hard as it should be, Fukada’s elegant plotting gradually allows this quiet film to assume the forcefulness of a full-throated shout.

It renders a global crisis in strikingly intimate terms.

Clearly a dynamo in both her life and work, observing the juxtaposition between pre-cancer Jones (the film is filled with excellent performance footage of her over the years) and the still-mending Sharon is profound; Kopple resists making cheap comparisons between the two, instead opting to let the footage speak for itself.

As much as Questlove probes his many interviewees with questions about the expectations and responsibility that comes with “Black genius,” his film doesn’t live up to the ambitious framework he puts forth.