Moonlight transforms rage and frustration into unadulterated intimacy. In this mesmerizing portrait of a suffocating world, the only potential catharsis lies in acknowledging it as Chiron so deeply wishes he could. Despite the somber tone, Moonlight is a beacon of hope for the prospects of speaking up.

It could, from premise alone, sound like an Austen-ish comedy of manners, and perhaps the film that Ozu might have made early in his career. Here, though, it’s an immaculate, gentle drama in which society gets in the way of the happiness of a father and daughter, and growing up and moving away isn’t so much a victory as a bitter cost of time and change.

A brilliant synthesis of story, theme, performance and innovation.

Roma is by far the most experimental storytelling in a career filled with audacious (and frequently excessive) gimmicks. Here, he tables the showiness of “Children of Men” and “Gravity” in favor of ongoing restraint, creating a fresh kind of intimacy. Like a grand showman working overtime to tone things down, he lures viewers into an apparently straightforward scene, only to catch them off guard with new information.

Pawlikowski doesn't punish his viewers, he simply challenges them. Take the vow to dedicate your attention to Ida and you’ll be rewarded deeply.

The Mole Agent may not look like a documentary, but it builds to a poetic finale enmeshed in emotional authenticity.

If The Raid: Redemption was a thrashing drum solo, its sequel is the opulent symphony where every instrument is played with fevered inspiration.

Walsh sends about a half-dozen plot lines, styles, and themes into the air and keeps them all whizzing along like a master plate spinner, but he makes it look effortless — you never feel the director straining for his effects, all seamlessly integrated into 96 smooth minutes.

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.

An immense, brave, and genuinely earth-shaking self-portrait that explores sexual assault with a degree of nuance and humility often missing from the current discourse, The Tale is undeniably primed for the #MeToo movement, but it’s also so much bigger than that.

While this dream-like warble of a swan song may be too pitchy and scattered to hit with the gale-force power that made “The Wind Rises” feel like such a definitive farewell, The Boy and the Heron finds Miyazaki so nakedly bidding adieu — to us, and to the crumbling kingdom of dreams and madness that he’ll soon leave behind — that it somehow resolves into an even more fitting goodbye, one graced with the divine awe and heart-stopping wistfulness of watching a true immortal make peace with their own death.

Flee becomes his cinematic catharsis, as Amin recounts his journey in fits and starts, while the animation turns his memories into a bracing adventure that doubles as modern history.

For all of its profundity, it’s just as funny as the gag-heavy likes of Sleeper and Bananas, and while it has some competition for the title of Best Woody Allen Film, few would contest its status as his most beloved.

It’s a powerful look at the durability of parent-child bonds as well as a fascinating psychological thriller about what it takes to heal such a rift when it seems irreparable.

The Irishman is alive with Scorsese’s trademark style.

By shattering genre conventions, Silva subverts traditional perspectives on modern adulthood and finds no easy answers in the process.

The movie's stakes are alternately personal and political, but Petzold's skill truly comes into focus in the tense climax, when those two aims come together with a powerful act of defiance.

A nuanced tale of mutual attraction that reflects a filmmaker and cast operating at the height of their powers, rendering complex circumstances in strikingly personal terms.

If all of Anderson’s movies are sustained by the tension between order and chaos, uncertainty and doubt, “Asteroid City” is the first that takes that tension as its subject, often expressing it through the friction created by rubbing together its various levels of non-reality.

An unhinged work that captures the escalating madness of untangling entire social webs through the lens of a single person or event, Babysitter charges through the ruins of mainstream cinema’s post-#MeToo moment.

The Secret Disco Revolution is the doc that disco deserves – rigorous, critical and entertaining.

It turns material that could have resulted in a sporadic narrative into a profound statement that the Arab Spring is a continuation of humanity's constant efforts to make a better, more just world.

Things to Come may lack the urgency or cool that flecks the writer-director’s previous movies, but this is perhaps her richest piece to date, a warm, funny and profoundly sensitive portrait of letting go and learning to make new memories.

The filmmakers have instead provided a brilliant window into the impact of the contemporary media circus on public life. While not exactly a figure of sympathy — he lied, after all, more than once — Weiner nevertheless maintains the charisma and drive to provide the movie with one of the most compelling anti-heroes in recent memory.

Rather than relish in the stark proceedings, Manuscripts Don't Burn preys on its viewers' imagination, leaving several deaths and other dreary outcomes off-screen. In the unbearable tension of its final moments, the movie arrives at an expected destination, but the outcome stings more than anything preceding it.

Strickland generates a discomfiting quality that keeps the mystery of his world in play. Above all else, he taps into the intangible elements of sexual attraction by bathing them in ambiguities.

To no one’s surprise, Reinsve is immaculately attuned to Trier’s energy, and Sentimental Value is carried by the manic frustration she brings to her part, which is as fun as it is freighted with crisis.

First Cousin Once Removed benefits from the clarity provided by Honig's published poetry, which surfaces in voiceover narration and words on the screen, rendering the undulations of his life in sweeping abstractions.