Wendy doesn’t take the appeal of “Beasts” in a new direction, but it clarifies its strongest qualities. Zeitlin’s roving narrative techniques may have their limitations, but this spellbinding followup proves they still have juice. Everyone grows up, but the “Beasts” formula has yet to grow old.

It’s hard to ever shake the sense that everyone would be much better off just queuing up Östlund’s film and moving on.

Decker’s characteristically sawtoothed and delirious new film is set in the same latent space between fact and fantasy — a story and its telling — where she located all of her previous work.

Emerald Fennell’s raucous debut, Promising Young Woman, twists its buzzword-laden, spoiler-free synopsis — it’s a #MeToo rape revenge thriller with bite! — into something fresh and totally wild.

Possessor never manages to wrest control of your mind, but it’s unnervingly good at getting under your skin.

It’s a smart and sturdy behind-the-scenes look at a high-profile #MeToo drama, and succeeds at scrutinizing the conundrum facing countless women still afraid of speaking out.

Great horror movies should feel unsafe, but this one just leaves you feeling beaten down.

July’s style is at once cerebral and irreverent, but “Kajillionaire” doesn’t always find the most satisfying way to juggle those dueling tones. However, its spell lingers as July’s biggest concepts take root, and the movie turns from tragic to hopeful at an unlikely moment in tune with the artist’s previous works.

Splitting the difference between “Terms of Endearment” and David Cronenberg’s “Crash” in a way that’s often sweet and surreal (but never sinister), Wittock essentially takes an ultra-familiar premise and coats it with the candied shell of something you’ve never seen before. It’s enchanting stuff, at least until that colorful layer of hard sugar melts away and you’re left to chew on the beige core inside.

Oscillating from intimate father-daughter exchanges to surreal meta-fictional tangents, the movie lives within its riveting paradox, reflecting the queasy uncertainty surrounding its subject’s fate.

The 40-Year-Old Version doesn’t overcome all of its rough edges, but they’re so closely tied to the personality of the creator that it’s hard to shake the underlying appeal.

Lloyd’s feature strikes a fine balance between all of life’s ups and downs, illustrated by Sandra’s unfortunately relatable traumas and a series of stellar performances.

A confident, entertaining, and well-upholstered historical spy thriller about a regular guy who stumbles his way toward saving the world, it’s the perfect movie for anyone who watched “Bridge of Spies” and thought: “If only that had been 30 minutes shorter, a bit less artful, and a lot more British.”

What starts as a blandly divided documentary eventually finds its way to something inspiring, infuriating, and unbounded by old ideas.

It makes up for a dry and sometimes stilted filmmaking approach through sheer clarity of purpose.

Although Doucouré steeps Cuties in emotion and experience, she abandons its grace to make crazier gestures.

Crip Camp proves some success stories only grow more powerful with age, and their ability to inspire action is timeless.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets may not be the straight-faced documentary it looks like, but it’s a sober-eyed document of our times nonetheless.

Intimate and involving as it can be, The Painter and the Thief increasingly leaves the impression that Kysilkova and Nordland are holding something back.

Yes, it’s a searing examination of the current state of this country’s finicky abortion laws and the medical professionals tasked with enforcing them (from the small-minded to the big-hearted), and if art can have any impact on its consumers, the film will stick with many of its viewers, perhaps even changing long-held beliefs. But it’s also a singular look at what it means to be a teenage girl today, and with all the joy and pain that comes with it.

Director Janicza Bravo’s zany road trip comedy about a pair of strippers on a rambunctious 48-hour Florida adventure embodies its ludicrous source while jazzing it up with relentless cinematic beats.

Bad Hair has plenty to say — about the plight of black women in particular and blackness in popular culture in general — but his movie can’t settle on laughing off the conflict or regarding it with dread. Instead, it settles on lingering in the knotted chaos, hoping that the message still burns.

As Swift observes in the movie, powerful women are given the almost impossible task of being “strategic” but not “calculating,” and Wilson is so good at splitting the difference that some of her documentary’s most humanizing moments are beautiful for how they contradict Swift’s intention.

The Turning announces Sigismondi as a bold and adept genre filmmaker, with an eye for detail and impeccable casting choices.

This cut-rate military drama makes an admirable attempt to bridge the gap between the Vietnam War and the veterans it cut loose, but there’s no hope of reconciling the two in a film where each scene feels hopelessly disconnected from the ones that came before it, and every character feels cobbled together from the stiffest clichés that other war movies left for dead on the battlefield.

Perry’s self-produced soap opera scribble is the kind of hilarious so-bad-it’s-good romp in which the man behind the curtain invites his viewers to roll their eyes.

The studio did its best to taxidermy this mess into something presentable, but it’s hard to make a Doctor Dolittle movie if you can’t even understand the parable of the scorpion and the frog.

The result is a fun, explosive, and surprisingly thoughtful action movie that manages to thread the needle between the pyrotechnics of vintage Jerry Bruckheimer and the softer, more forward-thinking demands of contemporary multiplex fare. It may not be as raw as “Bad Boys,” but it’s more human. It may not be as operatic as “Bad Boys II,” but, well, neither was “The Ring Cycle.”