While formulaic on its face, Green’s film resists the sort of obvious cinematic catharsis expected of such a story, resulting in a final product that earns its emotional beats.

Fireball splinters into so many scattered pieces as it hurtles into our atmosphere that it almost seems as if the movie is trying to ignore any of the harder truths that might hold it together.

City Hall doesn’t just deserve an audience; it deserves a conversation. Even as Wiseman celebrates the sophistication of American ideals in practice, his movie illustrates just how hard they are to grasp.

Shaggy and slapped together as it may be, “76 Days” is an urgent act of witnessing for a world that only tends to see itself clearly in hindsight; the film’s value to future generations is self-evident, but it has just as much to show us in the here and now about the history we’re making alone and together.

It’s like the most depressing speed-dating night ever organized.

Far and away the best animated film of the year so far (one worthy of such hosannas no matter how limited the competition has been), this heartfelt tale of love and loss is the most visually enchanting feature its studio has made thus far, as well as the most poignant.

Even if Lovers Rock hovers somewhere between episode and movie on paper, it’s undoubtedly cinematic art, working small wonders with a sophisticated blend of minor-key storytelling and vibrant choreography that transforms the entire experience into a free-form musical.

While Souza and his life and work are more than interesting enough topics for a documentary, what The Way I See It is really about — what it really wants to be about — is not the man who took the photographs, but the man who was the subject of those photographs.

Mortensen’s first effort behind the camera never settles into the expected grooves of its genre or premise. On the contrary, the film vibrates at its own unrecognizable frequency as soon as it starts, and only allows for easy categorization during the clunkier moments when it bumps against clichés like a boat that would rather crash into lighthouses than use them for guidance.

Shiva Baby blends a claustrophobic Jewish humor with a sexy premise to deliver a lively debut.

Run Hide Fight is a glib, artless, and reprehensibly stupid thriller that doesn’t even have enough on its mind to be provocative. It’s a movie made by someone who’s seen too many movies, and now made at least one too many as well.

Dramas pile up, some obvious, some not, and Penguin Bloom meanders a bit before coming in to land. The path there might be predictable, but there is still something beautiful when it really takes flight.

Despite the sound of gunfire off in the distance, Notturno is less a film about life during wartime than the life that subsequently follows it, as those damaged by the violence try to move forward.

While the film, both written and directed by Lacôte, is grounded in oral traditions that may seem exotic to certain viewers, the movie is really about the universal power of storytelling regardless of tongue — and how it can be used as a way to survive.

MLK/FBI reveals shocking behavior by the American government, but the most troubling aspect of its revelations is that nobody had to answer for it.

What makes Mandibules so refreshing is that, just as its anti-heroes don’t care about how they are supposed to behave, Dupieux has an airy disregard for how a chase thriller or a horror movie is supposed to proceed.

For all of its elusiveness, In Between Dying is a film that wants to be found.

Twists abound, and while they don’t always pay off, at least “I Care a Lot” cares enough to deliver a full, bloody meal of a film for anyone intrigued by the allure of anti-heroes.

Fans of the two cinematic titans will find plenty of cinephile brain candy in the meandering back-and-forth. It’s a long, drunken party conversation that allows you a seat at the table.

I Am Greta is not always as disarmingly open as its star, however, and keeping its focus so narrowly on the past two years robs it of some nuance.

The movie walks a jagged line between conflicting sources, and overplays some of the more outrageous claims to the detriment of the trenchant investigation at its core. However, Kennebeck still musters a fascinating and provocative study of today’s misinformation age simply by adopting its elusive terms.

If you suspect The Duke is on the cosy and nostalgic side of the cinematic spectrum, you might be right. But it’s such an expertly crafted and highly polished piece of warmhearted escapism that it’s difficult to resist.

There’s certainly representational value in the way it brings a conventionally rousing narrative to such unorthodox material. At the same time, it leaves you wondering how much better the whole thing would have held together if it simply let the riders speak for themselves.

Even at this point in his career, Wang is skilled enough to find a strong emotional through-line amidst a mess of tattered threads.

This is a movie full of lovely and lilting moments that invite you to reflect on the value of your own painful memories, and yet precious little of it is specific enough in a way that makes it hard to forget.

The World to Come is at its sharpest when trying to articulate the alchemy that happens when theory and sensation collide with each other and morph into something new.

While this crisp and subdued Hitchcockian melodrama represents yet another unexpected pivot from a filmmaker who’s never liked putting one foot in front of the other (it’s Kurosawa’s first period piece), it’s also just a well-done slab of red meat from someone who hasn’t served up a satisfying meal in so long that it seemed as if he might’ve forgotten how.

Sunny, seductive, and strangely refreshing even when things get dark, Summer of 85 is the cinematic equivalent of someone going back to their childhood home and seeing it through the bleary eyes of an adult, clouded by memory but also liberated from the teenage myopia that once made every new emotion feel like a matter of life and death.