From Russia With Love has two of the sexiest images I’ve ever seen: the opening credits with the names projected on belly dancers’ writhing, whirling bodies, and the scene where a bare-chested, towel-clad Bond enters his bedroom and finds Tatiana Romanova in his bed. Images like that aren’t cute. They’re primordial.

Newton’s film knows that people are always going to be letting themselves (and each other) down, no matter how hard they try, and Nicholson’s unforgettable turn makes it impossible for us to forget it.

Heinzerling's beautifully shot, painfully intimate look at the aging couple's struggle to survive amid personal and financial strain is both heartbreaking and intricately profound. This is a story about creative desire so strong it hurts.

One Night in Miami hits so hard because it remains joyfully, often painfully grounded in what makes a person extraordinary, even when the world isn’t ready for them. Here’s hoping this world is ready for what King has to show it.

The kind of film you feel you need to shower after seeing, it just might have been Fuller’s finest hour.

If Jerry Rothwell’s film version of The Reason I Jump is far more effective and self-possessed than most documentary adaptations of “memoirs” tend to be, that’s largely because it sees Higashida’s book as a lens instead of as a subject, and refracts various other people through it in recognition of the rare tale that’s less important than how it’s translated.

Hosoda is a born maximalist with a big heart, and while his most ambitious moonshot to date isn’t quite able to arrange all of its moving parts together along the same orbit, it’s impressive to see how many of them remain moving all the same.

Crucially, these characters are so believable that every scene has an internal logic and justifies itself.

More sensory experience than straightforward recounting, the documentary by Brett Morgen (“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”) is about feeling your way through a chaotic world with Ziggy Stardust as your anchor.

Hell, this thing is so mainstream it feels like the start of a franchise. And yet, that mass appeal is a huge part of what makes this funny and righteously furious American film so powerful.

Vengeance Most Fowl updates the look of Wallace and Gromit’s established world by combining classical craft and cutting-edge tools to fit the modern era. While the results are seamless (Aardman Animation never phones in the work) and the cheeky comic tone remains the same, it inevitably calls attention to the loss of something intimate and handcrafted that was previously part of the infrastructure.

There is nothing artificial here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t mystery. It’s the mystery of people and their unusual behaviors and the way they can flit in and out of our lives and our consciousness.

I can’t say whether Hong has suffered any of the creative self-doubts that animate his latest heroine, but the film he’s made for her feels as revealing as the one she then makes for herself. Free your art, your art will free you in return — a nice idea, but one that the uniqueness of Hong’s career makes easier to admire than it is to internalize.

A totally wacky head-trip with midnight movie sensibilities and a daring avant garde spirit, Glazer's movie is ultimately too aimlessly weird to make its trippy narrative fully satisfying, but owes much to Johansson's intense commitment to a strangely erotic and unnerving performance unlike anything she has done before.

A master chef preparing an entire feast inside a pressure cooker, Spielberg shoots The Post like every shot was delivered to the studio on a deadline, and the result is a film that combines the spartan clarity of hard journalism with the raw suspense of an Indiana Jones adventure.

While Kovgan, a Russian filmmaker who has made her own contributions to the world of dance through film and performances, has a clear affection and respect for Cunningham, her solo feature debut is unable to do much more than hold him at arm’s length.

The film’s hyper-naturalism is its raison d’etre, and Being 17 is at its best when it leans into that approach.

Pennebaker captures Sondheim’s eccentric perfectionism with a lovingly amused gaze, offering a rare glimpse of the notoriously private musical theater legend.

There is a stirring sense of discovery in every corner of the searching “Luther” that will awe both the most knowledgeable Vandross fans and those who are only versed in the well-known brushstrokes and ballads of his career. That latter group will learn a lot, too, hopefully making it their mission to broaden their playlists with Vandross classics.

There’s no denying that the domestic scenes of Free Solo are more powerful because you appreciate the madness of what Honnold is trying to do, and the climbing scenes are more powerful because you appreciate the full extent of what he’s risking to do it.

A slender but unholy cross between “First Reformed” and “The Exorcist."

What a miracle of a movie.

It’s unable to channel the essence of what made Powell and Pressburger’s films unforgettable. Sadly, it’s not really trying.

The overarching plot of Palm Springs isn’t especially novel, but each scene is just sweet, funny, and demented enough to feel like a little surprise.

The gradual transformation of an innocent child into an accessory to violence, forced to become increasingly pragmatic and cold along the way, is far from a fresh hook this far into the history of crime movies. But Colonna’s film, co-written with Jeanne Herry, is a riveting, moving take on this narrative.

Despite the cerebral formalism that pushes it forward, Mond has made a genuine tearjerker.

No matter its conceptual intentions, It Follows never ventures too far from visceral horror. Mitchell populates a number of scenes with well-timed jump scares as the being frequently bursts out of the shadows or appears in unexpected forms, while the score provides a screaming punctuation mark.

Despite the expansive nature of the film, Mitchell’s narration makes it all feel personal. The documentary flows freely from topic to topic, giving it a conversational quality.

Without a singular galvanizing conflict to focus the plot, Driveways feels more like a collection of character studies than a cohesive whole.

Tsang’s debut is born from a palpable tension between the loneliness of leaving home and the tenderness of imagining a new one.

A delicately wrought ensemble piece with first-rate turns by Gillian Jacobs, Keegan-Michael Key, and Birbiglia himself, Don't Think Twice scrutinizes its playful setting and finds an ideal entry point for exploring creative desperation.

Gibney unspools an ambitious, three-pronged timeline that mixes and mingles throughout the documentary, including the immediate aftermath of the attack, Rushdie’s youth and early years of writing, and what happened in 1988 after the publication of his “Satanic Verses.”

Sometimes Souleymane feels like he’s sprinting through a race with no finish line, and sometimes he’s running into an unmovable brick wall. The film exists in the space between those opposing outcomes, and its contradictions become its greatest strength as it depicts the endless exhaustion of navigating a system that doesn’t care about you nearly as much as it claims to.

In the Summers is brimming full of its characters’ internal aches rendered elegantly across time.

Transmitting a massive download of ideas into one film, there’s no doubt that Williams and Uzeyman have creativity to spare, and they deserve all the support they can get to share it with the world. When you’re this close to the divine, the medium is a pretty-enough message.

S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR is a dazzling work of historical fiction — emphasis on the “fiction” — that makes the moving image feel intimate and enormous all at once.

González’s fiction is so indelibly tied to the reality of the place and its inebriating spirit that certain segments of the film (particularly those focused on the painstaking work of making tequila) give the impression of watching an observational documentary.

Creed does justice to its roots while trying something new.

Cuba and the Cameraman, while essentially a greatest hits collection for Alpert’s career, never feels recycled. It also never feels Frankensteined together.

The result is a film that lucidly traces the specter of fascism (never extinguished, always waiting to exhale), and how unreal it feels for it to cast its shadow across Europe once more. It’s also a film that feels stuck between stations, so doggedly theoretical that it borders on becoming glib.

Brimming with anger and intrigue, this fiery historical drama from a veteran Russian filmmaker revisits the tragedy with fresh immediacy, and gives it a human face.

The Academy of Muses draws viewers in and forces them to take sides along with Pinto’s skeptical apprentices. By its end, the movie has transcended the boundaries of the classroom to become an educational experience in more ways than one.

[A] warm and heartfelt documentary.

Biller spins an archly funny — but also hyper-sincere — story about the true price of the patriarchy. There hasn’t been anything quite like it in decades.

How does a transcript of a conversation become a movie? Sachs is searchingly in pursuit of the answer to that question, but what he has captured here is oddly wrenching and moving.

The Killing of Two Lovers moves at such an involving pace that it’s easy to get lost in the tension of the moment and forget we’ve seen countless iterations of this scenario before.

While the film, both written and directed by Lacôte, is grounded in oral traditions that may seem exotic to certain viewers, the movie is really about the universal power of storytelling regardless of tongue — and how it can be used as a way to survive.

What we’re left with is a rather opaque portrait of the artist as a man, but certainly a vivid one of the man’s art.

Powell and Arjona have fizzy chemistry with each other, which isn’t much of a shock for two people who could probably get a spark going with a paper bag during a rainstorm, but it’s fun to watch both of their characters throw themselves into their new lives.

O’Sullivan and Thompson gently fold their story together, finding humor and heart at every turn . . . leading to the kind of ending that somehow inspired the film’s very first audience at Sundance to laugh and cry.

Afire doesn’t have that much story to tell or cards to turn over. When it does run out of reveals, we’re left with a character too thick to catch up and an approach that begins to double itself.

Potrykus’ movies are fixated on the self-destruction inherent to all capitalist systems, and there may be no better avatar for this concern than a brain-dead dude playing video games until the end of time.

[A] transfixing and troubling archival documentary.

Martins strikes a delicate balance that’s unusually satisfying from a narrative perspective. It’s refreshing to witness characters grow outside the traditional beats of most American dramas. There is an abundance of heroes’ journeys in waking up every day and pushing past surviving to thriving.

The filmmaker has made a rather soulful look at what it means to grasp onto life in its waning moments, and invites his audience into the center of that dilemma.

The movie provokes the wonder and terror of what it means to live in a world where every resolution brings new questions, and the prospects that a happy ending might carry the greatest risk of all.

There’s a reason this Altman picture isn’t as recognized as his other ’70s classics. But as laid back and matter-of-fact as Thieves Like Us is — there’s no score for example, just diegetic sound — it’s still a fascinating piece of work in Altman’s not-always-perfect, still-interesting ouevre.

While the meandering sensibility of Acasa, My Home makes it a tough sit at times, the spell it casts through its all-access dive into subterranean life brought to the surface forms a compelling addition to one of international cinema’s deepest, and ever-growing, pockets.

While Maiden is satisfying on its own, it’s tailor-made for a remake that can dive deeper into a story that has so much life left in it.

With War for the Planet of the Apes, technological wizardry and first-rate storytelling combine into a bracing action-adventure that concludes the best science fiction trilogy since the original trio of “Star Wars” movies.

It’s a challenging movie, but one so overflowingly empathetic for even its cruelest characters that the emotional beats outweigh the headier structural conceits that make for a narrative often hazy, out of reach, and gorgeously weblike.

But for all the luminous beauty of its images, "Grand Tour" sorely lacks a current strong enough to sustain the thoughts that flow between them, compelling as some of those thoughts may be.

Taking its time to let the world take shape, Short Term 12 builds to an involving series of mini-climaxes without tidying up every loose end.

It’s a shame that Meneghetti’s script (co-written with Malysone Bovorasmy) almost seems to be afraid of its own potency, as the movie stagnates over the course of a second act that relies on thin suspense and empty introspection when it can no longer bear to sit with the agony of Nina’s predicament.

“Street Gang” may lightly gloss over some of the tougher elements of its genesis and legacy, but the staggering amount of material on offer makes the case that a good heart was always meant to be the best part of the show.

Sensitive and lived-in and strong in ways that a more forceful version of this story could never have been, Bora’s debut sketches a portrait of a girl coming into her own strength, and learning to see the blank page of her life as an opportunity rather than a death sentence.

Too distracted to be a love story, too contained to be a city symphony, and not didactic enough to feel like an essay film, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? gradually coalesces into a kind of abstract pastoral romance more than anything else — it finds the romance that fringes everything around us, and captures it on camera with the unbearable lightness of a movie that knows we could never hope to see it with the naked eye.

I wish we got to see more of the big show at the end of the movie, but that’s almost beside the point — all that matters is that, somehow, someway, it goes on.

The frame moves slowly, if at all, but it always brims with physical and emotional energy; in “Joyland,” there’s always something in the ether, whether embodied by dazzling displays of light as characters move across stages and club floors, or by breathtaking silences as they begin to figure each other out, and figure out themselves.

Delightful ... [Rye Lane] takes a simple premise and infuses it with warm performances and a distinct sense of place.

The result is an extremely multi-dimensional portrait of a First Lady, one who, you can’t help but think, was the most significant at that point since Eleanor Roosevelt in her accomplishments and her influence on policy.

Though at times almost too peculiar for its own good, The Lobster brings Lanthimos' distinct blend of morbid, deadpan humor and surrealism to a broader canvas without compromising his ability to deliver another thematically rich provocation.

Rose of Nevada does not abandon or anonymize any of Jenkin’s hallmark quirks, and is thus unlikely to convert any agnostics. But for the faithful and the curious, here is a work of hypnotically accomplished form and legitimate depth.

Life and Nothing More may be shot with the unblinking attention of Frederick Wiseman’s films — and share their same broad scope of concerns — but it’s always true to the tenderness of its title.

Von Horn, however, cares for his characters and each is allowed a hardwon grace note. One leaves the cinema entertained and reeling, very unsure of what in any other context would be so easy to judge.

While the stirring visual fluidity of “The Unknown Country,” her first fiction feature and a kindhearted triumph, provides further arguments pointing to Malick likely being an influence, what distinguishes Maltz’s approximation to that style of evocatively loose filmmaking is that it’s grounded on the personal victories of real individuals. Based on that, she forges eclectic narrative devices for a tone poem with substantial dramatic meat on its bones.

Utilizing the pure physicality of a cast you can count on one hand, the movie maintains a minimalist dread throughout, with every footstep or sudden move carrying the potential for instant death.

Veiel and Maischberger build a compelling case that she was in fact a Nazi, right up until the end of her life.

At times, Frances Ha strains from emphasizing the characters' snarkiness and disregarding plot. By routinely going nowhere, however, the movie eventually finds a distinctive voice that carries it through.

The results are a bit more wishy-washy than usual. If Mills’ films are typically aimed at the intersection where the personal and the universal collide, this one can be unspecific in a way that drifts toward vagueness.

Time doesn’t stop in the world of Nocturnes, but in this introspective and captivating doc, a respite isn’t just possible, it’s imperative.

For the most part, Black Box Diaries — per its title — is a personal testimony of a stressful journey, illustrating how survivors struggle, cope and find relief in support.

Part of the power of Small Things Like These lies in its Trojan horse nature. This is a political allegory disguised as a character study, a reflection on national guilt and moral complicity, wrapped inside the experiences of one man, in one small town, standing in for the whole of Ireland, and possibly the world.

The central appeal of The Trip is that it's only a comedy in bits and pieces. Overall, however, Winterbottom constructs a thoughtful and generally sad portrait of Coogan's persona as a man unsure of his next move.

A crackling, devious, and hugely satisfying old-school whodunnit with a modern twist ... Even if you do somehow manage to piece the whole thing together in advance, there’s no way of predicting the joy of watching it all unfold.

Anchored by a funny and especially credible performance by newcomer Miles Teller, Ponsoldt's follow up to his alcoholism portrait "Smashed" has all the hallmarks of a bittersweet teen drama with flashes of realistic comedy on par with "Say Anything" and "The Breakfast Club."

Costa is, above all, an excellent chronicler of the moods swirling in her nation, but there is a flipside to the way she paints the picture.

Longley’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “Iraq in Fragments” finds a way to negotiate between empathy and condescension.

Big Words at times seems like it's heading towards a microbudget version of "Hustle and Flow," but Drumming aims for a much smarter and subdued look at the various regrets and hang-ups haunting men of a certain age. Their blackness is only one piece of the puzzle.

A comedy of remarriage buried in intellectual abstraction and cinephilic obsessions, Certified Copy wanders a bit but never loses focus, with the only certainty being that its gimmick is genuine.

Those who stay invested will be rewarded with an honest and holistic vision — one that, in following each thread separately, speaks to the rupture that tragedy can bring, and our endless quest to put the pieces back together again.

Brilliantly combining archival material, voiceovers, contemporary interviews and a variety of hand-drawn animation, the movie deconstructs the process of self-mythologizing from the inside out.

These competitors only feel alive when they’re bound together by the mutual intimacy of being edged to the break points of their desire, and Guadagnino’s deliriously enjoyable movie doesn’t let any of its characters get off until even the most sophisticated Hawk-Eye line-calling technology on Earth would be unable to pinpoint the exact spot where tennis ends and sex begins.

In not trying to reach too deeply into the well of profundity, Sarnoski has incidentally achieved a pretty profound movie.

It’s a lot to take in, but Mikhanovsky doesn’t hesitate to keep barreling forward, and it’s an impressive gamble even when it runs out of gas.

Almereyda’s feature is rich in acting talent, but this stagey, flat drama can’t match the wattage of its leads.

Sorry to Miss You doesn’t break new ground for the filmmaker, but it radiates a timeliness that suggests an old-fashioned Ken Loach lament matters more than ever.

While at times too over-the-top and operatic for its own good, those same flawed ingredients echo the rough edges that define the movie's iconic subject.