Ricky emerges as a marvelously understated examination of one man’s struggle to achieve stability.

Simmien both mocks and provokes the nature of our seemingly progressive times by illuminating misguided assumptions and fears embedded in forward-thinking discourse. But Simien's relentless screenplay is never too self-serious or didactic, instead pairing culturally-savvy brains with a goofy grin.

If “Synonyms” was a howl, Ahed’s Knee is the spittle that was still left in Lapid’s mouth when it was over. It’s a smaller and less electrifying film — as contained and implosive as its title’s reference to Éric Rohmer would suggest — but also one that cuts to the heart of Lapid’s visceral genius and cauterizes the open wound at the center of his body of work.

The movie's light touch at times makes it difficult to engage with the stakes at hand, and Nichols' reverence for his couple's deep bond is practically so sacred he seems resistant to show any of their flaws.

A slow-burn tale filled with beautiful imagery and understated performances, its elegance yields one of Scorsese’s most subtle efforts.

Maple’s love for her neighborhood and her neighbors is obvious, as she paints an unflinching portrait of the struggle and resiliency of the community.

The relatively gentle, meditative, and straightforward Hotel by the River is like everything and nothing that Hong has made before; to say that it’s “just another Hong” movie is an accurate way of emphasizing what makes it special.

This isn’t just the definitive story of a perma-stoned frog who just likes to do what “feels good man,” it’s also an expansive forensic look at the life cycle of an idea, a warp-speed analysis of internet sociology, and a harrowingly modern fable about innocence lost. If the film can’t find a way to be all of those things at once, it’s still horrific and fascinating and maybe even a little bit hopeful to see how this strange world of ours has knotted them together.

Pinocchio feels like the best mix of classic del Toro and new del Toro, with the wisdom and melancholy that comes with age and experience, yet his bright-eyed love of fairy tales from his Spanish-language films. Perhaps more impressive is how Pinocchio pushes the oldest form of animation to new places, and like the puppet himself, breathes life into inanimate objects.

La Llorona is a quiet movie that shudders with spiritual trauma.

It’s a tough story, but told through a decidedly female gaze, Night Comes On blossoms into something beautiful.

No filmmaker is better equipped to capture the full sweep of this saga (which is why, despite being disappointed twice over, I still can’t help but look forward to “Dune: Messiah”), and — sometimes for better, but usually for worse — no filmmaker is so capable of reflecting how Paul might lose his perspective amid the power and the resources that have been placed at his disposal.

It should come as little surprise that the best-selling author gets (even to this day!) tons of fan mail, but that Blume delights in saving much of it, often responding to it, and truly cherishing it is just one of the delights to be found in the doc.

Combing a memorably gritty Ryan Gosling performance with the breakneck tempo of the getaway cars his character handles for hire, Refn churns out a hyperactive love letter to road rage with unapologetic glee. It's a total blast.

This semi-autobiographical sketch isn’t really a story at all so much as a sweetly effervescent string of Kodachrome memories from the filmmaker’s own childhood — the childhood of someone who was born in a place without any sense of yesterday, and came of age at a time that was obsessed with tomorrow.

Entrancing from the start but slow to reveal the full scope of Wilson’s vision, Look Into My Eyes locks into that furtively cinematic essence by framing its psychic readings with a stiff naturalism that recalls the interview scenes in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “After Life.”

Talati finds constant poignance in girlhood, beautifying even heartbreak and doubt in the process of reflecting.

A dense and looping melodrama that spirals towards its core idea with the centrifugal force of a Christopher Nolan movie, Monster is one of those movies that — from its title on down — invites the audience’s worst assumptions of its characters so that it can show us our blind spots when the story eventually circles back to fill in the blanks.

"Buster Scruggs” is a singular illustration of what makes the Coen formula so appealing, and a reminder of so many better examples.

When lifetimes of latent drama come home to roost in the surprisingly eventful final scenes, Fourteen builds to an unsparingly lucid assessment of what two friends can take from — and carry for — each other.

Perhaps what is most radical about Disclosure is the wide array of trans spirits both onscreen and off. In making the film, Feder and Cox are rewriting the very history they set out to tell, adding one more title to “positive representation” list. That alone is worth coming out for.

The threat of violence hangs over even the most quiet of moments, and — some shoddy CGI animals aside — the film’s grip on that disturbing undercurrent is convincing throughout. That’s why the ending works so well, an abrupt climax that’s darkly poetic and anything but normal.

Littered with clever dialogue, a beautifully constructed narrative, as well as moments that shift between the energizing and sheer terror, there are a slew of endearing qualities worth sifting through.

This is a deeply emotional film in high concept clothing, coded to resonate with those of us well-versed in the instinct to betray ourselves in order to be accepted.

No movie has so literally reduced basketball to “just a game,” and no movie this side of “Hoop Dreams” has so ecstatically conveyed why it’s also so much more than that.

It’s enjoyable enough, and the acting is comparatively looser than most of what comes before it thanks to the allowed improvisations on set, a first for the director

The simple film is a straightforward entry in Hong’s filmography that is unlikely to ever be held up among his true masterpieces. But its delightful execution of small details speaks to how clearly the artist understands his own strengths at this point in his career.

Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex folds a nuanced look at the pressures and permissiveness of teenage friendships inside a frustratingly didactic story about the vagaries of consent.