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.

It’s a bold, angry, provocative indictment, but because Franco zooms back to the state-of-the-nation big picture, he loses sight of the characters who were sketched so sharply in the opening scenes. They’re still in the film, but they have so little agency and dialogue that they are reduced to counters on a board – or ants for him to scorch beneath his magnifying glass.

In Tamhane’s dreamy, transcendent character study, the undulating raga melodies serve as a transformative portal to self-discovery that places the audiences in the confines of its entrancing power.

Brimming with anger and intrigue, this fiery historical drama from a veteran Russian filmmaker revisits the tragedy with fresh immediacy, and gives it a human face.

After the implosive force of those first 30 minutes, the rest of the movie can’t help but feel like a self-defeating scavenger hunt through the rubble.

One Night in Miami hits so hard because it remains joyfully, often painfully grounded in what makes a person extraordinary, even when the world isn’t ready for them. Here’s hoping this world is ready for what King has to show it.

Nomadland relishes the nomads’ expansive universe, emphasizing the contrast between gaining freedom from society while feeling estranged at the same time.

Even in their most intimate scene, Mary and Charlotte and their love remain at a remove.

There is no reason to care about anyone in Antonio Campos’ The Devil All the Time, a sweaty, bloated mess of a movie that flushes a knockout ensemble down the drain.

American Utopia isn’t just a concert doc, but also a life-affirming, euphoria-producing, soul-energizing sing-along protest film that’s asking us to rise up against our own complacency.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of voting rights won’t find much new information in the film, but it’s a rousing and well crafted piece of educational media that takes aim at what research has found to be its most crucial audience: Young voters.

While the film covers — and somehow manages to contain — a staggering breadth of topics and ramifications, one little sentence is all it takes to lay out the means and ends of the crisis at hand: Russia didn’t hack Facebook, Russia used Facebook.

Bolstered by winning, real performances from its leads, Unpregnant will delight as much as it stings, a sterling reminder of how many stories about this very subject are still demanding to be told.

While Jimmy Carter Rock & Roll President doesn’t always manage to fuse these recollections together, it compensates in a bevy of amusing anecdotes.

Enola Holmes doesn’t just use its heroine as a cute way to nod at progressive thinking; it fully embraces a story that is, at its heart, deeply feminist.

The Broken Hearts Gallery will fit snugly on the shelf for tweens and teens as a source of comfort and maybe even empowerment, an ode to rebuilding, when the dissolution of a relationship leaves you feeling like a husk of yourself.

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.

Mulan is perhaps the best example of how to marry the original with something fresh. The Ballad of Mulan has always been an epic-scale story about the power of being yourself in a world not ready to accept that, a tale that will likely always have resonance. In Niki Caro’s “Mulan,” that story elegantly and energetically moves forward, a timeless message made for right now.

The Mole Agent may not look like a documentary, but it builds to a poetic finale enmeshed in emotional authenticity.

Antebellum might have been a movie that met this awful moment, but its confused attempt at seeing yesterday in today resolves as a throwback to a time when anyone could actually overlook it in good faith.

The situation is dire, and while Centigrade eventually spins off into some well-worn tropes and predictable twists, the strength of its clever introduction keeps it pushing forward into a satisfying end.

Face the Music is a giant party of a movie, made all the more gratifying by the way it sits at odds with the divisive moment that greets its release. Things may be dire (in this movie and IRL) but Bill and Ted’s unbridled enthusiasm as their stumbles through daunting circumstances turn gleeful ignorance into a form of escapism.

For all of its self-insistent detours and high-minded indulgences, I’m Thinking of Ending Things rarely feels like a concept in search of a movie. There’s a fullness and vitality to it that shines through even when the film is chasing its own tail, which is basically all it wants to do.

Lingua Franca illustrates the woefully untapped potential of marginalized storytellers.

It’s undeniably affirming to watch someone risk it all in order to embrace who they really are, even if that’s not who the world said they should want to be. It’s been one hell of a journey, but David Arquette has finally found the role of a lifetime.

Haley’s tender approach may not sting, but it does leave a mark. Yes, it has a happy ending, but the film also makes it clear that such conclusions are only the start.

It’s more of the same, but more of the same has always been what “Phineas and Ferb” does best.

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.