Bones and All is a heart-tugging portrait of wayward spirits searching for belonging that deadens the genre of cannibal horror into digestible, prestige-glossy arthouse.

Though it remains true to the first part of the text’s unhurried pace and detailed world building, Villeneuve’s adaptation feels overlong and void of subtext.

Simó “gets” Buñuel’s drives, and his animation lends the story a layer of romanticism while emphasizing that talent isn’t a hall pass. Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles treats genius as a knottier idea. Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan is a masterpiece, sure, but “masterpiece” takes on layers of new meaning once we see how the sausage is made.

Armageddon Time is a thoughtful examination of one’s own limited perspective of whiteness, expounding upon how a young child’s naivete can be as dangerous as a direct act of prejudice.

Even if it feels a bit too neat and tidy and predetermined a metaphor, one has to appreciate 2nd Chance’s ogling commitment to dissecting a perfectly American parasite.

More than anything, the script, by Prathi Srinivasan and Joshua Levy, is funny. And Plan B works due to Verma and Moroles’ authentic, lived-in performances. Their rapport is delightful. Their delivery spot-on.

A visual tour de force of hybrid 2D and 3D animation, Mutant Mayhem is not only the most authentically New York version of the Turtles yet, it’s arguably the most inventive.

The Dating Game plot is strong, and while it is a rather freaky piece of trivia, it is more of a footnote in Alcala’s murder spree than the entire story.

This approach fundamentally misunderstands Eno’s entire creative ethos, which relies on technology to elevate—not replace—the unique human ability to create art, a quality that is sorely remiss here.

As a birds’-eye view bio of the career of an important comedian who died too young, this film is funny, poignant and informative.

Tragos and her brave, badass subjects spend almost all of Plan C zipping through explanations of a constantly evolving abortion landscape.

Though A Couple is [Wiseman's] first narrative feature in 20 years, the narrative structure documents history by fashioning Sophia’s diaries and letters as a performance.

A counterpoint documentary to its festival companion Love Machina, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s Eternal You observes the burgeoning industry around techno-spiritualism with wry skepticism.

Anchored by the filmmaker’s coming out as a trans man about a third of the way through the film, Chasing Chasing Amy has an undeniably sweet and well-intentioned story to tell about its maker, but Rodgers comes across as a little self-fascinated in a familiarly youthful way, like he’s taking an extended selfie at a fan convention.

Scrapper isn’t funny or sweet enough to overcome some of its more cutesy leanings, and it’s not inventive enough to stand out from its peers covering the same kind of burgeoning parent-child relationship. But it hangs together, as brief and unsatisfying as its narrative may be, which proves Regan capable of pulling off a feature, even if we’ll need to wait for a second film to fully see her more off-the-wall ideas flourish.

Never sugar-coated or saccharine, Youth (Spring) shows the full spectrum of our experiences.

Raising Bertie is a moving chronicle, and a potent treatise on institutional failings that knows to demonstrate said problems instead of merely preaching them.

After years of not discussing it, Liu goes on a quest to figure out why we don’t talk about this fundamental part of being human—no matter how weird it gets.

When its pet topics enter into conversation with one another, revealing a throughline underscoring the basic rights of everyone working on a film project, Subject cruises along. In the film’s most propulsive sections, passion is as paramount as self-awareness, with vigorously cut documentary snippets affectionately emphasizing its self-critical points.

With its team assembled, Joy Ride descends into a fearless and unpredictable romp packed to the brim with absurd and unapologetically raunchy humor.

Interested in interrogating the exploitation of fantasy and imagination for human consumption, Shaw’s psychedelic, patently adult animated feature brings daydreams into the pointedly violent and bleak reality that its genre contemporaries are privy to ignore.

For all of its craft, 40 Acres feels fenced in.

In its keen and sensitive and moving observations about the uncertainty in being Asian-American, it’s always drifting, and Wu’s incredible ability to convey all those ideas wordlessly is what makes the film more than just about a material China girl.

It will especially appeal to the sensitive kids (and adults) in your life, and it most definitely meets the high standards Cartoon Saloon continues to make in the medium.

It’s best when it fully commits to its subtlety. Long passages without dialogue highlight the wavering music and Todd Chandler’s artful, sometimes wry editing.

Brimming with potential that it doesn’t exactly follow through on, You Are Not My Mother is nonetheless another aesthetically rich horror film that clearly mines an individual’s personal history.

Like a dream itself, Dream Scenario guides us through multiple tone shifts, from comedy to horror, rather smoothly, but the head-first jump into sincere romance toward the end of the film is bumpy, even if it is silly and sweet, and the imagery is lovely.

Once the documentary has made its easy point, it doesn’t have much else on its mind aside from making it again and again. For some, that’ll be eye-opening enough, but I don’t think they’re the people who’re watching documentaries about rap lyrics.

Overall, this is an easy film to admire—it’s exhaustively detailed and an intriguing collage of an important American institution.

It’s a movie that sometimes feels obsessed with music, and sometimes feels like an old man flipping back to his preferred, familiar playlist.

A film jam-packed with melancholy, powerhouse performances, and told with a somber, realistic storytelling structure that is at first jarring to the senses, but ultimately pays off. But I would be remiss to let you go without noting that this movie is also ridiculously fun.

Fans of female-led body horror such as Titane will dig She Is Conann for its delicious violence, gender-bending “badassery” and surreal aesthetic. I only wish Mandico’s dedication to story or character development were as strong as his barbaric heroine.

Schrader pushes the somber score and just-the-facts cinematography as close to pure explication as possible. There is visual storytelling, but little in the way of mood or evocation.

Beast plays with enough restraint to sustain our doubts for most of its duration, its gentle and often lovely filmmaking lulling us toward false certainties about its underlying inhumanity.

For those who wish to unravel the power dynamics inherent to sex, society and sensual pleasure while experimenting with what we as individuals are comfortable engaging with, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a masterpiece that stimulates emotionally and philosophically.

Though it lacks a more exigent purpose, The Crime Is Mine has layers of textbook farce decorated with a confectioner’s critique. We rarely see such quaint delights in cinemas these days.

The third film in the arguably least-loved franchise of Kevin Feige and company’s box office-melting enterprise, it’s also the liveliest, funniest and “loosest” film of the bunch (and that includes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2).

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project does an admirable job capturing the aesthetic of Nikki Giovanni’s life and poetry. It offers windows into certain parts of history, and glimpses into her ongoing evolution as an artist. Unfortunately, those glimpses don’t offer enough to be memorable.

A film so ambitious lives and dies by its central performances, but Rogowski is typically brilliant, and acting newcomer Adams marks yet another casting coup for Arnold.

Wild Indian doesn’t have answers. There aren’t any. Instead, there are experiences, and Corbine Jr. captures his protagonists’ personal transformations with steeled honesty.

All this seriousness about love, loss and the human needs that start up early and continue until the end aren’t without a sense of fun. Some Kind of Heaven’s glib punchlines (like its title) and aesthetic choices (like a voyeuristic camera and thrillery score accompanying Dennis’ more slimy schemes) work best when they’re paired with some nicely dry moments of undermining honesty.

Coppola pours sweet foam over a bitter cup. The heart of the film is darkness, the exterior exuberance, and taken together they make for piquant viewing.

Karmalink is a very good story about child detectives trying to make do in an imbalanced and unfair world. Like Inception, it nods at the human desire to escape into our dreams, and like much of sci-fi, it grapples with human reliance on technology. Some of the most interesting implications go unexplored, but it’s beautiful to look at and delights where it treads.

Final Destination Bloodlines does deliver. The elaborate opening set piece is one of the series’ best.

While Palm Trees and Power Lines certainly functions as a cautionary tale, it derives the intensity of its power from the uncomfortable degree to which we’re compelled to empathize with Lea as she makes a string of increasingly perilous decisions.

When Miss Juneteenth isn’t trafficking in tropes, it’s a history lesson, and not the entertaining kind where you forget you’re actually learning; the textbook kind.

A story about drug addiction, corrupt authorities, and environmental collapse sounds grim on paper and plays grim on screen, but Unicorn Wars is more than “grim.” It’s deranged.

It’s a film about pettiness couched in maturity, and a brilliantly merciless take on the comedy of manners.

The Iron Claw focuses intimately on the Von Erich brothers, painting a tender and forlorn picture of their misfortunes, but it’s hard to call it unflinching.

Buried under Yannick’s aggression and chafed emotions, he’s wanting for the basic need of being understood. This side of Yannick enhances Dupieux’s critique with a casual observation: Art is freeing, and without it, we’re doomed to lonesome misery.

As can be said of its real-life subject, Val is moving, inspiring, funny and fractured. It’s a look at the man and an expansion of the myth, revealing just as much as it continues to obscure.

Domont’s compellingly drawn portrait of entitlement, impotence and the amplified conservative values of the bros casting the bones of capitalism is a violent delight, filled with tough scenes. Yet, its unpredictable ending is such a triumphantly visceral showdown that the impossible is achieved: The excruciating intensity is completely worth powering through.

A tight yet thorough timeline of Wham!’s creation, meteoric ascension and then abrupt ending, Wham! uses the archival recordings of Michael and more recent recorded musings of Ridgeley to tell their story from their perspectives.

Parents of teens will be charmed (and definitely feel validated) by how accurately the movie captures this period of time.

Thanks to Gosling—playing his role like his schmuck detective from The Nice Guys accidentally found himself in a Mission: Impossible—the film breezily flits between a savvy behind-the-scenes pastiche and a committed action rom-com.

Even when Creed III treads familiar ground, this series feels like the ideal outlet for the on-screen persona Jordan is building: a resilient man who needs to better understand the power he’s fought so hard for.

This film is as good as this project could ever hope to be, and it bodes well that Part Two will live up to everything that’s been set up here. When granted the chance to see them back-to-back, we just may, as the song goes, all be changed for the better. After this first act, it’s already safe to claim that Wicked is frickin’ Oz-some.

Writer/director Nicholas Colia builds out Griffin’s world slowly, and winds up with a quietly formidable ensemble.

Spaceship Earth provides us with a keepsake of a moment forgotten by collective memory after the project it depicts was coopted by others to become a resource for climate denial.

The World to Come doesn’t offer queer viewers anything revelatory in the realm of lesbian period romance—an increasingly prevalent subgenre that could stand to closely scrutinize the involvement of men behind its scenes—but its audiovisual creativity might very well justify Fastvold’s adaptation of yet another sad Sapphic story.

Zauhar’s filmmaking style has matured along with her characters. Where Actual People took us on a fast and loose misadventure from New York to Philly, This Closeness is controlled and taut, displaying immense restraint and intention.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is endlessly watchable but only intermittently arresting—you’re held captive by its craftsmanship, even if you find yourself not particularly invested in how it all plays out.

It’s a wholly relatable and surprisingly sharp tale of grandiose risk-taking and myth-making.

As video games and action movies parabolically draw closer and closer to one another, John Wick 3 may be the first of its kind to figure out how to keep that comparison from being a point of shame.

Fuller is in fine form with Dust Bunny, and with its goofy tone, and its unabashedly maximalist elements navigating between more subtle character beats, there’s a plenty to admire about this feature film debut from a well-established storyteller.

Poehler’s film hits the same notes that we’ve heard before without presenting new information, exploring new territory or asking any new questions.

The film’s vistas are beautiful and Matthews’s aim, high, but those aspirations are not fully realized in what feels like a first draft attempt at brushing Western customs with textures drawn from a South African palette.

An intimate drama about a family disbanded by abuse, Montana Story is superbly acted, but lacks a formidable narrative capable of carrying its protagonists.

Emergency’s ensemble sustains its premise for far longer than it should be able to, maintaining the nuanced balance of commentary-thriller-comedy whenever the script becomes too interested in just one ingredient of its complex cocktail.

Funny Pages has all the bells and whistles of a Safdie joint, from the hustler caught in a hellish loop to the frenetic coda set to rest by moments of painful introspection.

The film’s narrative structure is as aimless as its lead, and it hangs onto her every whim; few obstacles are placed in Anaïs’ way, leaving the stakes low and little room for doubt. For those who enjoy watching a protagonist effortlessly get what she wants, Anaïs in Love is a breezy ride.

Briskly paced and charming to a fault, it’s a Spider-Man movie that fully embraces both its source material and the perils of 21st century teenage life.

What could have easily been a hairball of half-digested nostalgia is transformed into a mature and cat-ivating story that positively purrs.

By applying our technocapitalist present to the kind of person that this reality inevitably creates, Fincher’s created a thoroughly entertaining look at a pathetic crook—all while delivering a self-deprecating blow to clockwork living.

The film’s abundance of tenderness and lack of cringe laughs, save for that opening sex scene, lets it stand out from its feel-bad comedy peers.

In pure plot mechanics and interpersonal dynamics, Splitsville resembles any number of Woody Allen movies, double-hinged on the capriciousness and endurance of love.

At its best, Folktales paints a grounded, nuanced picture of what it means to be a young person.

Though the threat of tragedy hangs over Fairyland, it never diminishes the film’s emotional weight. As a viewer, you carry a heavy heart that knows where the story is likely heading, yet some part of you still hopes a miracle might intervene.

Ferrari is a loud and thrilling race that leaves the figure of Enzo stranded on the side of the road, unknown and lost.

Zengel is a fresh spark in an otherwise old-fashioned production, but old-fashioned here is a compliment. News of the World has no interest in subverting or updating classic Western formulas: It is content with its function as a handsomely-made studio picture, built ostensibly around Hanks but with plenty of room for its young star to make her mark.

Yes; it stars a dog–but it’s also one of the year’s most potently unnerving and emotionally resonant horror films at the same time.

The Square’s contrast between categories of morality is peak Östlund. There’s no clearly defined gauge for goodness or badness here, just a palette of gray ethical relativism to offset the film’s superior construction.

Though it pales in comparison to the bold creativity of High Life, Fire is adroitly handled in Denis’ hands. A melodrama steeped in typically French ideas of sexual deception and personal passion, it still manages to find a freshness thoroughly conveyed by Binoche and Lindon’s involvement.

Battle of the Sexes projects a breezy confidence—the movie’s a little too smooth and polished, eschewing the grit of real life—but Stone conveys her character’s growing anxieties with such care that King emerges as an immensely empathetic, resilient figure.

Far more interested in unpacking the pervasive misogynistic sentiments in Kosovo than the actual war itself, the film is pointed in its chosen observation, but appears remiss of broader political engagement.

For better and worse, The Inspection seems like the movie Bratton had to make, a story so personal that some of its biggest emotional confrontations start to resemble a therapeutic exercise.

The Devil’s Bath is motivated by its character study, exploring the dread found at the intersections of rural peasant life, untreated mental health issues, a patriarchal environment and religious dogma through its almost documentary-like lens.

Mostly, though, the movie’s cartoonishness feels pitched just right, a heightened silliness that the characters’ circumstances keep bringing back to earth.

True to its small, sometimes nearly microscopic, scale, The Adults draws a perfect miniature portrait of a highly specific demographic: People obsessed with doing bits, making up songs, and perpetuating their own inside jokes who nonetheless never turned to a life in the performing arts.

Artistically, For the Birds is admittedly not groundbreaking. It’s rustic and basic and in some instances a bit muddled. At times it lacks a cogent forward thrust. But it illuminates something we might not think about very much, which is what is actually going on in the mind of a hoarder, and how the pathology of such a person ramifies on other people (and animals).

Rich with subtext and warring cultural iconography, it’s got body horror, religious doubt and enough delicious flesh to leave gorehounds completely sated. Colorful and bold, it’s a beautifully scary affair.

Although it all may veer towards a cliched representation of British-ness, Fiennes and Mulligan’s leading turns as Brown and Pretty are charming.

A war epic between the people and the state, it sprints through a grassroots resistance movement like a brushfire: Blinding, dangerous, all-consuming.

As wacky as it all sounds (and there are certainly punchlines to appreciate), Escobar’s creation can be shockingly moving.

By the time the movie reaches its poignant, beautiful conclusion, I defy anyone to have a dry eye. CODA is about letting go and letting your loved ones soar.

The epicenter of the film lies in its characters’ sexualities, from discussions about the unique struggle of gay Asian invisibility to refreshingly candid conversations regarding the minutiae of their sex lives.

Bros says many of the right things, often loudly and directly, as it reblazes an already well-marked trail towards normative convention.

Just give yourself over the utter weirdness.