The movie bridges the traditional Restoration comedy to the political satires of Armando Iannnucci (Veep, The Death of Stalin). Comedy also entwines with tragedy here, and bold touches of absurdism and iconoclastic revisionism.

The Loneliest Whale is gripping and highly persuasive, blending hard science with real-life action/adventure sequences, talking-head interviews, and — sorry, sorry — a whale of a true story that has been headline news for years.

Lost Angel — with its engaging mix of animation, talking-head interviews, voiceovers, still photographs, and archival footage — ensures viewers understand the depth of her achievement over two albums released in her lifetime and a third issued posthumously.

Apollo 11 is ultimately the finest look back to the anniversary of this historic event you’ll see this year.

Sentimental Value, one of the year’s best films, is an absorbing, beautifully drawn family drama that walks lightly, but goes deep.

Rocketman is as fabulously mercurial and debauched as its subject; anything less would have been futile and disappointing.

Watching this film is a lesson in history. It’s detailed, accurate and meticulous in its presentation of a human drama that realistically could have happened. When you hear about Viggo’s attention to history, this is a western story that becomes and grittier and accurate look into the past and a lesson in history.

Without being explicit, and by leaving the details up to us to intuit, Wells has given us a film that has a tonal delicacy yet a deep emotional core. It’s a beautiful debut film.

Wistful, funny and complicated in interesting ways, Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, may be his warmest film since Jackie Brown - which may not be what you expected to hear about a movie set against the background of the 1969 Manson murders.

It’s impossible to overstate the range of emotions, from heartbreak to delight to humility, conjured by the new documentary Blink, which is also visually dazzling thanks to its pedigree as a National Geographic Documentary.

It is also astonishingly tender and very human despite its fantastical premise, which rivals any superhero film for boldness of imagination yet summons uncommon emotional heft.

It’s not accurate to say the film stars Saoirse Ronan. Saoirse Ronan is the movie, the luminous north star of every scene.

For a film where not a lot happens, and what does happen happens very slowly, Islands is strangely gripping. That could be the hypnotic effect of its endlessly sun-drenched Canary Island setting, as writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster dips his audience in the languorous pace of a holiday destination in this low-boil psychological drama.

Feig has done a superb job of building a compelling story from angular bits that shouldn’t fit together but do while making pointed commentary on everything from gender roles to social media.

Beautifully shot and terribly sad, with a wildly twitchy score ratcheting up the tension, the Mexican drama Identifying Features is a profound statement about maternal love, brutal inequality, and institutional corruption.

Food, Inc. 2 is a gobsmacking compendium of scary information about food systems and monopolies, what we eat, what it does to us and what will happen next.

Koefoed’s stylishly made film takes its time, gives everyone their due, and leaves us with some profoundly interesting questions.

The film, which is an economical 90 minutes, is a drama which, at times plays like a mystery, with incredible tension. Çatak gives us a satisfying film, but an unsettling one with unanswered questions.

It speaks to the legacy of things that are impossible to record: love, experience, encouragement, a sense of family and belonging that Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller gave to their children, and which continues through them into the next generation.

Tick, Tick…Boom! packs a great deal of joy into a story that pushes a more modern and darker take on the make-it-or-break-it mantra of classic ‘40s musicals. The songs are engaging and staged with a feel-good choreography that consists less of formalized dance (for the most part) than it does gleeful bursts of movement.

McCarthy’s talent is towering and yet so few roles (excluding SNL appearances which feature dozens) really leverage her versatility. Can You Ever Forgive Me? gives platform to it all — funny but nihilistic, bleak, sardonic, knowing — with McCarthy disappearing and something else rising in her place.

Running a digressive two hours and 43 minutes, this idea-filled absurdist comedy, presented in the fragmented visual language of social media, ties together economic inequities of the European Union, political corruption and the exploitative labour practices of foreign film productions. Also, it’s seriously funny.

It’s one of the year’s best. Built around a moral question, the film is complex, intelligent, and relatable.

Expect deep conversations to follow your screening.

Sosa, who shared cinematography duties with two other women, Judy Phu and Monica Wise, depicts a world of humble beauty, of sunrises and dogs and chickens and weed-strewn lots. With a measured pacing (the film was edited by co-writer Isidore Bethel), she has created a film that is more like an elegy than a simple chronicle of events.

Porter and Souza together, in this film, are using his images as a reminder that a true leader can bring more than just relief from a chaotic time, and that the best leaders have always had a deep and measured well of compassion.

The Stones and Brian Jones is an intriguing and surprisingly moving documentary that offers new insight into the man, the band, and the era.

I thoroughly enjoyed Kid Detective. It’s not the kind of picture that wins awards, which is too bad because nestled within a traditional tale of a detective in need of redemption, is a story surprisingly unique and humane.