Through its hushed portrait of loss and reclamation, After Yang whispers a powerful fable about an all too present tomorrow in which people are more intimate with technology than they are with their own family. Few movies have ever felt so knowing or non-judgmental towards the love that we divert onto material things, and even fewer have so earnestly speculated that those things might be able to love us back.

Throughout the film, Noxon refuses to offer up easy answers and feel-good conclusions to Ellen’s journey, even when it ratchets up into a literally overheated final discovery.

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.

You always know a Plaza performance will be good, but over the past few years, Plaza has seemed to make it a priority to surprise her audiences with just how good she is.

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

The contrast between the movie’s traditional execution and Stritch’s domineering powers create the lingering sense that she may be the project’s true auteur.

This is a soul-stirring and fiercely uncynical film that suggests the entire world is a living museum for the people we’ve lost, and that we should all hope to leave some of ourselves behind in its infinite cabinet of wonders.

Even if Lovers Rock hovers somewhere between episode and movie on paper, it’s undoubtedly cinematic art, working small wonders with a sophisticated blend of minor-key storytelling and vibrant choreography that transforms the entire experience into a free-form musical.

If you’ve ever imagined how you’d try comforting your younger self or your family about the uncertain future ahead of them, Blue Heron may be the most emotionally devastating film of the year — and also perhaps the most comforting.

Gravity lets you visit space without sugarcoating its dangers. It's a brilliant portrait of technology gone wrong that uses it just right.

If Great Freedom is a subdued film more interested in studying old scar tissue than licking up fresh wounds, the rare instances when it draws blood . . . are all the more bruising as a result.

The film’s quietly disturbing power lies in how Franco packages his U.S.-Mexico border metaphor — with rich philanthropist Jennifer (Jessica Chastain) and her young ballerina lover Fernando (Isaac Hernández, in a striking newcomer performance) standing in for each — into an addictive and destructive love story as sharply wrought as the movie’s grander political concerns.

It empowers its women with quiet victories and lessons and presents a range of masculine characters in which it’s obvious which characteristics compose a respectable man. To mince meanings, Rao’s latest feature is the opposite of lost — a joyous, resounding win.

For a film about two young people who are ill-prepared for a massive life event, Mad Bills to Pay is brilliantly restrained about where everybody ends up.

Wonder Woman is as much about a superhero rising as it is about a world deserving of her, and Diana’s hard-won insistence on battling for humanity (no matter how frequently they disappoint) adds the kind of gravitas and emotion that establishes it as the very best film the DCEU has made yet. There’s only one word for it: wonderful.

As it calls the institution of marriage to the stand, Triet’s piercing film holds the ambient tensions and illogical loose ends of domestic life against the harsh and rational light of a legal system that searches for order in chaos.

Whereas "45365" took the form of a scattered collage, with disconnected events and a vast ensemble of characters stitched together to represent a year of activity, Tchoupitalas brings greater clarity to a similarly diffuse canvas by situating it around a trio of innocent observers.

Like a game of Russian roulette, this is a movie that would have seemed embarrassingly stupid if things had gone wrong. It’s a dangerous and somehow enjoyable movie that dances around the edge of an open wound from start to finish as it risks making light of the heaviest things that so many of its viewers will ever have to carry. But it’s exhilarating — a little at first, and then a hell of a lot — to see these characters find the kind of happiness worth dying for.

It portrays the struggle from the inside, from about as far from the filter of mainstream media as one can get, capturing tense shootouts and the extremes of revolutionary spirit in unnerving detail.

It might not change anyone’s mind about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, but Mayor presents a fresh window into the challenges of leadership on the latter half of that equation.

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.

The story arrives at a satisfying emotional conclusion with wonderfully thoughtful ramifications.

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time brings the long-delayed, highly anticipated tetralogy to a close with a bold, messy, uplifting, audacious, and emotional film that expands, complements, and comments upon what came before, while giving fans a fitting close not only to the movie series, but the entirety of “Evangelion.”

Kechiche excels at capturing his protagonist's emergence in the world.

For all its touchy subjects and ambiguous answers, “Hustlers” is never anything less than energetic, freight-train-fast, and impeccably plotted.

Holiday is a fearless work, anchored by Sonne’s bold, subtle performance, which keeps her motivation unclear until a burst of developments at the startling conclusion.

With an editing approach that seamlessly blends past and present, Central Park Five contains a fluid, engaging storytelling that does away with the dry voiceover commentary and theatrical music choices that typically account for the narrative flow of most Burns films.

The Blue Caftan is a film about the many different kinds of love — romantic, platonic, familial, sexual — and the ways they can’t help but intersect at complicated moments in our lives.

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

Funny Boy is a luminous coming-of-age tale seen through the eyes of a relatable yet entirely unique experience.

Whale’s direction nods to German Expressionism — the Escher-like dimensions of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, the off-kilter camera angles, the long-armed shadows that extend over characters’ faces. Yet something softer anchors the film: sorrow.

Unfolding like a symphony of small humiliations, there isn’t a moment in this movie that doesn’t feel at least vaguely familiar, and there isn’t a moment in this movie that doesn’t feel completely true.

This could be a recipe for excessive self-indulgence, but the meta quality of Red Flag is entirely irrelevant to its low key charm and persistent irreverence -- anchored, as always, by Karpovsky's loopy screen presence.

Possibly the best war movie of the year.

Cheatin' is gleefully enjoyable and loaded with unexpected twists at every turn.

As a scathing metaphor for humanity’s original sin, Out of Darkness is a revelatory feast of cranial gore and heady philosophy — one that’s not only worthy of a trek to the movie theaters mid Oscars season, but that has Cumming snagging an early lead in the race for best horror debut of 2024.

In Red River, the destination of life’s long cattle drive is never more specific than “somewheres.” The lines marked on the map are just stops along the way.

With a dense, often impermeable style and a mentally unstable protagonist, Simon Killer is like watching the disturbed anti-hero of "Afterschool" all grown up.

The brilliance of the movie lies in how it starts from a familiar place, then sneaks into transcendence.

Much of the movie relies on Cotillard's jittery expressions as she veers from tentatively hopeful to despondent and back again, sometimes within a matter of minutes, reflecting the ever-changing stability of job security among the lower class.

Mostly, though, it’s Kaluuya and Stanfield — two actors who seem destined to be hailed for career-best turns with every subsequent project — who make Judas and the Black Messiah such an incendiary watch.

Frammartino keeps the material engaging simply by aiming the camera at his subjects and letting the material organically emerge-rather than enforcing the supernatural element with overstatement.

This is the rare movie that’s redeemed by its unchecked nostalgia.

Grounding the lightness and frivolity with real heart, Booster’s laugh out loud script and Ahn’s artistic corralling of the energetic ensemble is a match made in heaven — or gay paradise.

Nocturnal Animals is an impressively ambitious effort, one part mean Texas thriller, one part middle-age melodrama, and makes for a meta-textual riddle that is almost as pleasurable to reflect on as it to actually watch.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret isn’t just the best Blume adaptation currently available, it’s also an instant classic of the coming-of-age genre, a warm, witty, incredibly inspiring film that is already one of the year’s best.

Bergman Island is a heart-stoppingly poignant stunner all the same — one beating inside a body of work that has always been seasick with the bittersweet vertigo that comes from looking at the past through the smudged lens of memory and imagination.

It’s one of the most chilling art-Westerns to come along in some time, as provocative for its ideas, dialogue, and characterizations, as for the beauty of its empty landscapes.

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.

Aferim! amounts to a serious endeavor designed to explore many facets of its era through the lens of people trapped in it. Their crude dialogue, real as it may be, hints at comedic possibilities while offering a shrewd look at people defined by their circumstances.

A beautifully tender comedy that tears your heart in half with a featherlight touch — a film that swerves between tragedy and gallows humor with the expert control of a stunt driver, and knowingly sabotages all of its most crushing moments with a deadpan joke.

If nothing else, the dazzling finale feels like a hyperviolent ‘80s period piece tailor-made For the Girls. It delivers some of the series’ most extreme kills as well as its best uses of glittery costumes, bloody testicles, and feminist subversion for a whirlwind joy ride that doubles as a societal lambasting.

What Now? Remind Me sketches out the tragedy of living a full life and being aware of it slipping away.

Rampart is co-written by crime writer James Ellroy as a messy, disorienting noir, and shot by cinematographer Bobby Bukowski with an unsettling degree of realism.

Sheil is an ideal vessel for the film's inquisitive style.

Catherine Called Birdy is so good, so raucous and wild and wise and witty, that it not only makes me eager to write in alliterative adjectives, but to reconsider my views on everything else she’s made in recent years. It’s wonderful.

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.

In a incredibly contained performance that ranks among the best of her career, Juliette Binoche portrays a woman trapped by mental and physical constraints alike.

You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll have, yes, a very good time. You’ll also marvel at the introduction of a newly-minted filmmaker with a crystal-clear vision of both what the world is and what it could be, at least if the women were in charge.

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

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.

Lanthimos wants us to examine the different reasons we grasp at power — avarice, self-preservation, even fear — and better understand its corrosive effects.

Hoss' portrayal of a woman at odds with her surroundings is in a class by itself.

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.

Costa Brava, Lebanon may be a fantasy memory of Lebanon’s past, but it’s alive and well in the hearts of its people.

The measured vérité style of Frederick Wiseman meets the visual polish of Terrence Malick in Dragonslayer, a fascinating slice of crude Americana from first-time director Tristan Patterson. However, it stands alone with an infectious hard rock attitude.

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.

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.

In the movie's final shot, Jung's confidence crumbles and he looks supremely troubled, still uncertain of a world he once believed could be explained with textual prowess. Better than any analysis, his expression sums up the dangerous method at the heart of every Cronenberg movie.

It’s a story about the invisible fault lines of inequality, the moral compromises demanded by the American Dream, and the very practical ways in which remembering the past can be the only legitimate defense against the social forces that keep trying to repackage it as a vision of the future.

For now, the only thing that matters is that after 13 years of being a punchline, “going back to Pandora” just became the best deal on Earth for the price of a movie ticket.

Equal parts journalistic investigation and family portrait, Ford’s delicate project transforms the source of his frustrations into an absorbing cinematic elegy.

Hall made many good choices for her debut — her entire crafts department turned in rich period production elements — but the casting of her leads might be the best of the bunch.

Suspense is rarely delivered with such distinctive patience.

The filmmaker’s best and most personal movie in years.

The visual collage retains a consistent melancholy, resulting in an experience that's both deeply affecting and-since José never actually appears on-camera-utterly detached.

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.

Extraterrestrial can be forgiven the tangents into melodrama due to Vigalondo's seamless ability to navigate those soapy waters.

Little Accidents takes its time, but Holbrook’s confident performance makes his story riveting throughout, reflecting both the gravity of his situation and the enormous consequences his choice will have on the entire town — certain individuals in particular.

Nomadland relishes the nomads’ expansive universe, emphasizing the contrast between gaining freedom from society while feeling estranged at the same time.

The typically great Binoche conveys a tantalizing mixture of confidence and unease as she considers her glamorous past and undetermined future.

Potiche successfully satirizes the gender politics at its core. At the same time, it knowingly mocks the obsession over debates about the suppression of women that pervaded the culture during the movie's setting.

Opting for an observational mode that is nevertheless highly stylized, Rosi understands that an urgent frontline missive needn’t be ugly.

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.

Though anchored by a affecting and sullen turn by Channing Tatum, the movie derives its primary discomfiting power from Steve Carell in a revelatory performance as a monster of American wealth.

Kim's movies are generally grim, disturbing affairs, but "Pieta" leaves much to the imagination in favor of its unsettling implications.

Gyllenhaal’s film is a story of self-ascribed transgression and of shame buried and turned bitterly inward, and it too, is made with such alertness to the power of cinematic language – particularly that of performance – that even as you feel your stomach slowly drop at the implications of what you’re watching, you cannot break its spreading sinister spell.

The Safdies have stood out over the last few years for continually challenging audience expectations even while seeming to adhere to conventional storytelling traditions, and that's certainly true here: You've never seen a sports movie like this before.

A brilliant home-invasion thriller laced with cultural reference points stretching back to the late ’80s, and a smorgasbord of first-rate visceral cinematic scares. Think “Funny Games” collided with Cronenbergian body horror and Hitchockian suspense, and you’re maybe halfway there.

Clocking in at a slim 85 minutes, the whole thing flies by quite pleasingly, a warm and funny feature that reasserts the value of high quality visuals and attention to detail.

Gazer might be inspired by New Hollywood, but its existence is almost reason to believe that a similar filmmaking renaissance could be on the horizon.

Gerwig’s adaptation looks at the eponymous little women through ambitious storytelling techniques that modernize the book’s timeless story in unexpected ways.

Building to the potential of a confrontation with the wedding climax, The Farewell threatens to melt into sentimentalism, but Wang dodges the obvious pathways to a tidy resolution.

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

Watching the 90-year-old filmmaker pick through the scrapheap of her own memories and fashion the bits into a fresh perspective on the relationship between reality and representation, stillness and movement, life and art, it seems that Varda has become something of a gleaner, herself.

To a Land Unknown is a tour-de-force of empathic storytelling, with its genre narrative bursting with an overabundance of humanity.

The movie’s conclusion pits religion against personal desire in remarkably visceral terms.

Raw and unadorned, Whose Streets? is a documentary in the truest sense of the word; an actual moving document of events fresh in the country’s memory, but never before laid as bare as they are here.