In the end, Jones’ performance is even more lifelike than I feared — a tortured and astonishingly nuanced rendering of a childlike creature whose id could only be tempered by love for so long before it chose violence instead. And it should go without saying that Kurzel’s fatalistic storytelling so pungently exhumes the pain that led up to that awful day in April 1996 that you can smell the death coming several hours in advance.

This is a human story, as messy and complex and maddening as any ever told, and while Bratton makes it his own (how could he not?), the generosity with which he shares it with us make it special indeed.

Fingscheidt’s nonlinear approach allows the film to ride the tidal rhythms of addiction, while Ronan’s committed performance churns those ebbs and flows into a widescreen journey that earns its epic backdrop.

Collet-Serra ensures that we feel the risk of every stroke between his heroine and her safety. The action is visceral and immediate, but crucially contextualized by a helpful array of wide shots and bird’s-eye views.

Watching Candy Land is a lot like eating beef jerky from a truck stop. In both cases, you might find yourself thinking, “if someone told me this was made in 1973, I’d believe them.” Yet both experiences can end up being enjoyable despite leaving you with an overwhelming desire to shower.

American Dharma delivers a suspenseful and upsetting showdown between one man confident of his cause and another mortified by it.

Santana was cast prior to making her gender transition and had never acted before. Her personal experience brings such legitimacy that she would probably succeed in the role even if she sucked at line reading. Fortunately, she doesn't.

Blue Jay doesn’t lean on destiny or succumb to the easy refrain that time is a great equalizer. There’s genuine happiness here, but heartbreak is always right behind it.

It's Lonergan's masterfully subtle writing, littered with awkward exchanges that speak far louder than any cohesive monologue, that gives "Manchester" its humanity.

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.

Ultimately, Two Prosecutors is like a perfect 50-50 cocktail of dread and dialogue, the vodka being whichever you’d choose, making the inevitable feel capable of deferment, before it strikes more devastatingly than you’d even think.

This is a film that trembles with a need for redemption that never comes, and the urgency of that search is palpable enough that you can feel it first-hand, even if Benediction is never particularly clear about the nature of the redemption it’s hoping to find.

All of this is about connecting the dots in the case and raising awareness of something that was forgotten all too quickly in the Republicans’ haste to get him confirmed.

Rises above the over-tired gross-out comedy genre partly because of its meta celebrities-parodying-themselves trick, but it mostly stands out because it's genuinely funny.

All That Breathes is determined to illustrate how two peoples’ failure to listen to each other is no different than one species’ failure to acknowledge the rest of its environment — that each aspect of Delhi is sharing the same broken conversation, whether they recognize that or not.

Ghost Trail is a film that refuses to let anyone treat the plight of Syrians like a thing of the past, or to delude themselves into thinking that the war ends once Syrians are relocated to safer countries.

It’s a clever exercise in no-frills science fiction that should please fans of the genre, but it’s more than just a sci-fi exercise thanks to a script that prioritizes, and cares about, its characters.

Progressing with a coldly observational pace, Rapt often strains its drawn-out structure, creating a lethargic experience despite essentially taking the form of a Bressonian suspense-thriller.

Making her feature debut, writer-director Chandler Levack has pulled off a rare trick here by making a movie that feels warm and safe without coddling its protagonist.

Told with the ramshackle energy of a first feature (but with a depth that hints at many more to come), Hart’s debut blossoms into a lovingly realized story of grief, getting by, and finding help in unexpected places.

Without Kidman in a fearless turn and Dickinson there to pivot her to the edge, “Babygirl” wouldn’t work as smashingly as it does. This is a sexy, darkly funny, and bold piece of work. Don’t sleep on it.

Despite its ludicrous turns, the movie benefits from the far-fetched events for its sheer willingness to go there, not unlike Smith's goofy, self-deprecating public persona.

While the rules of her conundrum never quite coalesce and some of the twists feel shoehorned, The Intruder generates so much intrigue to maintain a breathless pace and unsettling atmosphere at every turn, with Rives’ layered performance fusing the strange trip together.

There is a satisfying, compact completeness to their handling of the storylines of four different young mothers and sufficient grace notes are enabled in each case to stave off the cliches that occasionally threaten to engulf events.

It’s a film that contains multitudes, and only asks for a world willing to do the same.

Rapaport and Farley’s script turns the speech patterns of amoral idiots into a science, relying on perfectly placed filler words and profanities to wrap horrible ideas in hilarious sentences.

Leave it to Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan to crack the code as to what makes a good legacyquel, which they’ve done quite handily with their long-gestating Freaky Friday sequel, Nisha Ganatra’s charming and quite fun Freakier Friday. The secret? Fittingly enough, it harkens back to exactly what Curtis and Lohan brought to Mark Waters’ 2003 Freaky Friday: actual verve, obvious joy, and performances that are about three times better than they need to be.

At the very least, Nowhere Special is one of the great father-son movies.