Lynch’s directorial debut is a wisp of a movie, blowing across the screen like a tumbleweed, but it’s also the rare portrait of mortality that’s both fun and full of life.

Sleep is fun enough the first time out, but a second watch will likely reveal even more natty twists and smart scripting, nothing to snooze at here.

7 Prisoners is mostly powered by the natural tension of its premise, which is simple and gripping and develops along a linear arc from bad to worse.

While the narrative hardly goes into the fully unhinged direction it teases, it’s pleasantly askew and always marching to its own strange and, slightly off, beat.

Campbell’s staggering performance becomes the film’s center of gravity, her captivating sense of chaos and complexity giving the audience emotional motion sickness as her moods shift between extremes.

Berberian Sound Studio constructs a perpetually strange, unseemly series of events overshadowed (and sometimes consumed by) the spooky movie-within-a-movie that hangs over every scene.

Valuable for its access yet limited by its lack of perspective, Desert One puts a human face on one of the late 20th century’s worst debacles while framing the whole thing in the passive voice, resulting in a film that boasts the immediacy of a testament but the resonance of a textbook.

After four decades of crafting creatures for iconic films, Phil Tippett has finally unleashed his magnum opus, and it is worth the wait. Mad God exudes devotion, with every frame carrying decades worth of ideas and craft, resulting in a film that is just as hard to describe as it is hard to forget.

The typical trappings of a reflective documentary about a larger-than-life star are all there, from nods to the weight of stardom and how political leanings can both help and harm a talent on the rise, but they’re made bigger and richer because it’s Crosby who is acknowledging them, unblinking.

The Pearl Button is a vivid, essential portal to understanding not only the heritage of a nation, but also the art of nonfiction cinema.

Efira imparts her character’s early anticipation — and eventual yearning, bliss, and hurt — using nothing but a glance. Rachel is a woman of the world with a universe inside.

Artfully told and tenderly performed, Bantú Mama maps the history of the African diaspora in the Caribbean onto a tightly focused and compelling human story.

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.

Through majestic overhead shots of Shahverdi (and her young girl gang) speeding through the mountain-cradled landscape, alternated with intimate closeups (Shahverdi’s expressive face sometimes speaks louder than her words), we’re brought closer to a world both foreign and undoubtedly familiar.

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

A Still Small Voice — much like the residency program that it chronicles — is all the more valuable because it never pretends that being a palliative chaplain is an inherently selfless task.

Gasoline Rainbow simultaneously succeeds as a nuanced depiction of a generation’s concerns and an ironic look at what young people have yet to learn.

The understated performances and coolly detached, shivery hypnotic vibes of this film won’t be for anyone looking for a story, but The Ice Tower casts a creepy spell that lingers and even deepens in the mind long after it’s over. As only the best spells do.

Introducing, Selma Blair often feels a bit messy and unfinished by its final act, but that’s also part of its charm (and realism).

It’s an impressive illustration of a director in command of the medium, but more than that, points to the potential in whatever she does next.

Monia Chokri‘s brilliant feature is one of the sharpest cinematic examinations of the paradoxical expectations we place on our relationships in the 21st century.

The Old Man & the Gun eschews pastiche for a sweet, affable character study that resurrects Redford’s original star power with a wet kiss. The entire picture amounts to a low-key cinematic resurrection.

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.

Linoleum is difficult to pin down; the obfuscations and slippages that run through it seem just as likely to frustrate viewers as they might compel them.

The Last of the Unjust rewards those willing to invest in Lanzmann's pensive technique with a complex tale that's alternately sad, enlightening, unexpectedly witty and ultimately exhausting, but carried along throughout by Lanzmann's commitment.

Fans of the director’s late-period work (particularly his last completed effort, the rapid-fire diary film “F for Fake”) will find it thrilling to return to those unpredictable, garrulous recesses, no matter the bumpy ride. Welles continues to contemplate storytelling, Hollywood, and his own troubled career by transforming these obsessions into a marathon of creativity.

It comes imbued with the same twinkle in its eye, the same sense of mischief and Dadaist sensibility, that made Devo so alluring in the first place.

The small miracle of director Andrea Arnold’s experiential documentary is that it enacts its simple premise in straightforward terms, but assembles them into a profound big picture.