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

It's the closest thing to a magnum opus in Arnold's blossoming career.

The shagginess of it, the missteps, the rambling bits are pleasurable enough, and there are plenty of laughs and insights here, but there’s also nothing new.

"Black & Blues” is a doc that will make you appreciate Armstrong, the man. Someone far too complex to reduce to any one thing.

More impressionistic than the searing intellectualism of his last work, Monrovia, Indiana at once demonstrates Wiseman’s formidable cinematic capabilities while posing a number of tantalizing questions about the community at its center.

This intimate, unvarnished, and occasionally transcendent micro-portrait may seldom leave Dunning’s property, but it takes stock of the whole world.

A Hidden Life is a lucid and profoundly defiant portrait of faith in crisis.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) isn’t the wittiest or most exciting movie that Noah Baumbach has ever made, but it might just be the most humane.

I Wish embraces blissful ignorance, even celebrating its child characters' naivete.

Like a great poem, End of the Century gives voice to a seemingly indescribable feeling, one anyone who’s ever fallen in love will recognize from deep in their soul — as if bumping into an old friend you forgot how much you liked.

Even a passive comparison of Tarantino’s work and the first Lady Snowblood film betrays that it had a significant effect on the filmmaker. The film’s non-linear storytelling, morally uncertain characters, freeze-frame character introductions and vivid chapter titles are all hallmarks of Tarantino’s movies.

Snazzily directed by J.J. Abrams with vibrant effects and a busy plot that sets the whole franchise in motion all over again, The Force Awakens delivers on expectations with a fun, polished space odyssey that embraces the appeal of the originals.

Last Men in Aleppo is less about finding meaning amidst a massacre than it is about people who are trying to survive without it.

"Making Waves” is smartly articulated and arranged, with Costin breaking the film down into the various disciplines of sound design in order to illustrate just how much thought goes into every decibel.

Union is all the more effective because it doesn’t see the need to argue its case. Instead, the film is free to focus its attention on how difficult and inspiring it was and remains for the Amazon Labor Union to press that case into action — and even just to exist in the first place.

Going Clear delivers an efficient overview of Scientology's dark history with a cohesive focus on the precision of its corrupt motives.

Trusting that her subject matter is fertile enough to merit such a scholarly approach, and also bewitching enough to survive it, Janisse connects the dots between “The Wicker Man” and “La Llorona” in a way that allows this multi-chapter epic to function as both séance-like spectacle and streaming-era syllabus in equal measure.

Each scene is so quietly compelling because Haigh doesn’t focus on cruelty, but helplessness.

Guided by Jóhannsson’s ethereal score, this dazzling apocalyptic immersion blends cosmic 16mm black-and-white images of Yugoslavian architecture with a deadpan Tilda Swinton voiceover, resulting in a profound lyrical rumination on the end of days.

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.

With the shift from conventional rock doc into something more sophisticated, As the Palaces Burn remains enthralling all the way through.

“Barbie” is a lovingly crafted blockbuster with a lot on its mind, the kind of feature that will surely benefit from repeat viewings (there is so much to see, so many jokes to catch) and is still purely entertaining even in a single watch.

While Zagar doesn’t force the material into many surprising places, it’s a fully realized tapestry, owing much to the complex, layered score by Nick Zammuto that hums through nearly every scene, and frequent cutaways to hand-drawn animation based on the scrapbook that Jonah stores under his bed at night.

No matter how contrived or hackneyed things get, Buckley’s voice always breaks through the clouds like some kind of divine revelation. And that voice only gets more powerful when Wild Rose finally gives it something to say.

An excruciating chase film, a terrifying puzzle-box whodunit, and a testament to romanticizing even the darkest cinema in glowing 35mm, Strange Darling is an outright triumph.

Where Hogg’s last two movies saw the filmmaker tracing a version of herself from memory, this one sees her tracing a memory from a version of herself.

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.

The documentary lets its subject’s weathered charisma do most of the hard work here — Scorsese and Tedeschi love him too much to beg for your attention — and yet it weaves in enough context to convince even the biggest New York Dolls neophytes of the band’s legacy. Even longtime fans might be struck by the contrast between the breeziness of the film’s tone and the weight of its history.