De Araújo’s masterful ability to interrogate tension on every level keeps the film clipping along, each turn both a surprise and an inevitability.

In "Adventureland" and this summer's "The Way Way Back," disillusioned teens have worked through their issues in the weeks leading up to college by taking on quirky summer jobs. However, Carey's wacky sensibilities retain a notably fresh quality by using the same framing device as an excuse to bat around one funny idea after another. The story transcends the derivative scenario through a noticeable lack of verbal censorship.

While Victor’s film might be rooted specifically in Agnes’ story and the bad thing at its center, in its specificity, there’s still tremendous room for wider recognition and and revelation.

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a rich visual assemblage born from an uncompromising artistic vision and collectively rendered praxis. One senses that it breaks typical forms, not to be contrarian, but to revel in its authentic self.

To quote a poem that Orlando reads toward the end, the dead are “not gone, but merely within you.” This urgent and beautiful documentary urges us to let them out.

Mangrove is a taut and thrilling judicial drama that transcends the genre even while acknowledging its barriers.

The film’s only villain is the passage of time, and its protagonists are simply facing the unpleasant realization that their era is ending sooner than their lifespans.

Overall, the big swings this wending odyssey takes in merging genres and weighty ideas do pay off — it’s a gargantuan, continent-crossing feat.

Imagine "Harold and Maude" directed by Eric Rohmer with shades of film noir and doused in philosophical chatter enhanced by ample white wine. But Domain isn't pure formula, because the subversion of expectations is its centerpiece.

Molly Shannon is brilliant and warm as the literary icon.

Barnard once again proves herself the bard of the British working class. In Ali & Ava, she abandons her occasionally bleak realism for a kind of stubborn hopefulness, letting the delight of unexpected connection break through the storm clouds.

Stoned out of its mind and shot with a genre-tweaking mastery that should make John Boorman proud, it’s also the rare movie that knows exactly what it is, which is an even rarer movie that’s perfectly comfortable not knowing exactly what it is.

Fearlessly specific in its comedy and just as attentive with its character arcs, this algebraic study in adventure might have a metaphoric typo or two (insert obligatory comment about CGI), but it’s mostly a triumph.

Without the influx of talking heads and other bits of opinion and information, the audience is forced to confront their own judgements. ... The effect is ingenious and chilling.

Support the Girls is a humble, restrained movie, at times aimless as it moves along, but never devoid of keen observations.

In Oculus, the horror is at once deceptively simple and rooted in a deep, primal uneasiness. Its scariest aspects are universally familiar.

With its intimate focus, Menashe avoids indicting the strict logic that stifles its anti-hero’s individuality (though secular viewers can reach their own conclusions). Instead, it succeeds at showing how his challenges are more universal than judgmental viewers might think.

Bones & All is fundamentally a beautifully realized and devastating, tragic romance which at multiple moments would have Chekhov himself weeping as the trigger is pulled.

The ultimate brilliance of Fastvold’s movie, which remains without question for all of its peaks and valleys, is that it has the courage to reimagine the essence of belonging itself; to see it not as something we find, but rather as something that we create together.

Overflowing with stunning visuals, Black Is King blends imagery from the Pan-African movement, African art and Western portraiture of African bodies, as well as Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s shared vision of Black excellence within Western culture.

It’s at once a celebration of individuality and its potential to unnerve those who resist it.

This combination of lively image and mournful narration imbues the camera’s fly-on-the-wall perspective with a sense of melancholy. As life unfolds with verve and passion, the spectral narrator, L, exists at a remove, as if she were both present amidst the frolic, and distant from it, her heartbreak leaving her unable to get involved.

Tales from the Grim Sleeper concludes by offering up the haunting possibility that even if the killer has been caught, the systemic failures that let him get away with it for so long remain firmly in place.

Even a passive comparison of Tarantino’s work and the first Lady Snowblood film betrays that it had a significant effect on the filmmaker. The film’s non-linear storytelling, morally uncertain characters, freeze-frame character introductions and vivid chapter titles are all hallmarks of Tarantino’s movies.

The reality-show aesthetic pervades the movie as well. Garrone's roaming camera style draws you into each moment with extreme close-ups and long takes that wander through each scene and get lost in it. Luciano's plight is crushing because Garrone renders it with such detail.

As a living record of the history of the Negro Leagues — it’s role in shaping America, in the prospects of upward mobility, in providing a playing field for Black folks to express themselves — Pollard’s The League is a rich, engrossing, and necessary tribute to a critical early wave in the Civil Rights movement.

The film makes plain the experience of being caught between a rock and a hard place, a boldly incisive metaphor for the trans experience.

Anyone who’s willing to meet this movie on its own terms and roll with the dream logic it requires will be rewarded with a resonantly cathartic saga about the struggle to find beauty in a world that forces us to leave parts of ourselves behind.