This is pop art by way of lowbrow slapstick, with a premise that suggests "Cast Away" meets "Weekend at Bernie's," but really feels like a lunatic's idea of a big, broad studio comedy — or maybe a mad scientist's.

Cave has an imaginative sense of camera placement, and she’s an expert at inserting ultra-close-up shots at precisely the right moment to induce a laugh, gasp, or shiver. Her camera is always in service of the story, rather than distracting from it with artifice.

Hansen-Løve has traced her own paternal grief into an illuminatingly honest sketch about how loss is necessary for rebirth, guilt inextricable from self-fulfillment, and the present worth savoring for its role in bringing the past and the future together — rather than as a buffer for keeping them apart.

While some of Bispuri’s scripting can be a bit too pointed for a story that traffics in such elemental textures (a brief flashback scene is particularly ill-advised), the film renders each of Vittoria’s mothers with such riveting and unvarnished empathy that you hardly even notice how their daughter is growing up before your eyes, stronger than the both of them.

This gory teen comedy blends laughably outrageous carnage with a legitimately scary plot to delightful ends. Throw in a winking fetish for cinephile culture and audiences are sure to go wild for the gutsy film.

No matter its overarching ridiculousness, The Handmaiden remains a hugely enjoyable dose of grotesque escapism from a master of the form.

Non-Fiction isn’t a surrender, nor is it a call to arms. It’s an anxious — but strangely calming! — reminder that change is the only true constant, and that steering the current is a lot easier than fighting it. Nobody does that better than Assayas, even when it looks like he’s not even trying.

Set at the explosive intersection of technology, politics, and indigenous persecution, the film is gorgeously and sometimes ingeniously conceived, painting an intimate first-hand portrait of joy, pain, and community, before bursting with rip-roaring intensity as it captures a high-stakes struggle for survival unfolding in the moment.

Even if the film doesn't leave much to ponder past the closing credits, it's enjoyable while it's unfolding, doing justice to the strengths of Shelton's ever-expanding filmography.

Magic Mike XXL keeps its aspirations low enough to satisfy only the simplest of expectations; at the end of the day, it's just another party, but sometimes a party is just good enough.

If all of Perry’s stories have been hard to stomach, Her Smell takes things to impressive new lows before hitting bottom and tunneling out through the other side. It’s truly one of the most noxious movies ever made, which might help to explain why it’s also Perry’s best.

And “Megalopolis” — in its most dazzling and audacious moment — breaks through the screen to bridge the gap between life and thought, art and reality.

The genius of the franchise-reviving “Prey” and last summer’s utterly awesome “Killer of Killers” is that they both cast the Yautja as a foil first and an antagonist second. Now, the super fun and fantastically spirited “Predator: Badlands” takes that approach to its logical conclusion by making one of these creatures the hero of a story in which he gets deprogrammed of his culture’s “The Most Dangerous Game”-inspired approach to other species.

The movie presents its plot like a ridiculous gamble, and keeps pulling it off, somehow managing to justify its existence.

Cold-blooded killers rarely look this pathetic, which testifies to the impressive balance of Skarsgård's amusingly low-key performance.

Anchored by a brilliant Mélanie Thierry, whose stone-eyed lead performance is at the center of almost every frame, Finkiel’s film never betrays the distance that Duras inserted between herself and her own experiences, or that she wrote from the perspective of a vessel as much as she did a subject.

The nuance and specificity that makes the film so interesting is also why it requires a decent knowledge base to appreciate — this is about as far from an introduction to the Harlem Renaissance as you’ll find.

If Cold Case Hammarskjöld resolves as Brügger’s most rewarding film, it appears to reach that point almost by accident. His usual methods achieve most unusual results, as he digs into the facts with the wry amusement of someone who doesn’t expect to find anything.

In some respects, it feels like the most nakedly personal film the now 83-year-old has ever made. In others, it feels like the only film he’s ever made. Or maybe all of them.

In its haphazard search for facts, it happens upon a great many truths about how we see each other, and the price we pay for looking too closely.

Blue Jasmine belongs to Blanchett, who appears in almost every scene and frees it from the limitations of Allen's style, pushing it to far sharper results than any of the more traditional movies, good and bad, that he's churned out in the past dozen or so years.

Miller applies Gerwig to the center of a busy story with simple themes, but it glides along so effortlessly that its reductive qualities barely register. The filmmaker's exceedingly smart screenplay is the real plan, and Gerwig's performance puts it into action.

In its finer moments, however, Lee translates the book's wondrous prose into grand visual conceits meant for the big screen. Posited as a story that "will make you believe in god," instead it has the power to confirm one's faith in the cinematic experience.

In Towheads, every comic bit is weighted with an awkward blend of sadness and irreverent humor.

The movie is a visual investigation into the roots of sexual liberation in societies steeped in repression. Watching it from start to finish is a means of engaging with the inquiry at its center.

The results are fascinating, weird, and often quite moving.

The ending has often been maligned. But if it’s not especially well-executed, it’s a tantalizing wellspring of ideas that reframes the entire movie that came before it and makes us realize the difficulty all of us face in piecing together our reality.

While “Christy” has long been positioned as an awards play for Sweeney . . . her performance here is more nuanced and more painful than early indicators fully let on. She’s committed to the role, but she’s also committed to a story that doesn’t totally fit the usual mold. It doesn’t pull punches, even if that ultimately leaves a different kind of mark on its audience.