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.