At Lonergan's best, he turns the sounds of Patrick's home into its own claustrophobic, percussive sympathy.

If only the script measured up to the craft. La La Land gives us no reason to root for Mia and Seb’s romance, except for its blithe assurance that you will because you loved Stone and Gosling together in Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Is it possible that the great American sports film is not about football, baseball, or boxing, but instead about downhill ski racing? Likely not, but Downhill Racer makes a strong case for the possibility, filled to the brim with heart-pounding slides down snow-covered ravines, the quiet contemplation of an athlete competing against himself, and a realistic scorn for coming in second.

This solid genre pic salutes its touchstones.

Peele is so attuned to the tiny ways race sneaks into conversations that we hear it in every line. Our suspicions are so heightened, we start to second-guess our own senses.

Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is a jaw-dropping, pulse-quickening mash-up.

The Love Witch, by writer/director Anna Biller, is a feminist film about a character who thinks feminism is bad news. It's delightful.

Adams’s clear-eyed, open-minded doctor forces us to ask how much we’re willing to communicate.

Pablo Larraín's Jackie is an elegy to two slandered traits: self-consciousness and superficiality.

Ducournau has made a beautiful film about terrible horrors.

Negga, an Ethiopian-born, Irish-raised Hollywood newcomer, gives an Oscar-worthy performance. She's so still and powerful, she gives the film a depth the script doesn't earn. I can't think of the film without thinking of her gaze, and I can't think of that gaze without admiring the film more than it deserves.

It's possible to watch Silence and see a story about saints martyred by an oppressive government. It's also possible to see a told-you-so parable about imperialists who should have stayed home. I suspect Scorsese would be a little disappointed by either conclusion. But he stays quiet because he wants to challenge the audience to go deeper inside themselves, to separate our own religion (or lack of one) from the faith that guided us to it.

Instead of a thrilling climax, he chooses to let the story evaporate into the Amazon fog. Yet this odd film left a chill in my bones that I'll be thinking about all summer.

Lee is credited as a director for filming a live performance of Rodney King on an outdoor stage in New York. But Lee mostly seems to have loaned Smith his brand name to get the monologue attention. He doesn't leave a fingerprint on the play, and didn't care about where to put the cameras. The angles make no sense; the edits are clumsy.

What lingers is Kedi’s awareness that the city is alive.

At a time when judgment and self-righteousness outrank forgiveness and empathy, Nadine is the heroine we need.

Logan is the rare action flick in which the quiet moments are as compelling as any of the fights.

At times, Wonder Woman feels like watching Splash with a shield — another babelicious naïf breaking all the rules. Yet the joke isn't on her. It's on all the men mistaking unsophistication for weakness. To be uncultured is to be mentally free; no one's put on a yoke. That's what makes Wonder Woman a knockout.

In the first film, his rhythmic overkills felt brutal. Here, they're more like a dance, and the best bits of the movie have a lightness that made me giggle with delight.

Like most coming-of-age flicks, Morris From America tries too hard to make friends. At least its scenes of unearned triumph are balanced by embarrassing bits that hit emotional bullseyes. It’s so likable I wondered if I was a sap for enjoying it, so I watched it again and liked it more.

With The LEGO Batman Movie, a shiny, irresistible delight, blockbuster flicks have perfected their ideal form.

Casting JonBenét, my favorite film at this year's Sundance, shows a director in full control.

It’s candied history. The timeline is all wrong, the soundtrack is too cheery, the movie is too eager to please. Yet at the end, I found myself tearing up anyway.

Tom Hanks is so quietly compelling that he gives the film an illusion of depth.

The dialogue is dense and quick and brainy.

Barry's questions are powerful whether asked by a future president or a future janitor. The script is great no matter who it's about — it's just that fewer curiosity-seekers would give it a watch were it about someone else.

For the first time, a Marvel movie draws that pencil line from dream to screen. Where the earlier films felt hard and shiny and steel-colored — the look of bashing action figures on a sidewalk — Strange is ink-smudged and obsessive. It's defiantly old-school — not the cozy, apple-scented nostalgia of the first Captain America film, but that cold, back-of-the-library whiff of eraser nubs and mold.

Fegley’s heartbreaking performance is fused onto a marshmallow. Lowery overcompensates for the darkness in the script by making everything else soft and squishy.