Once The Good Nurse establishes that something undeniably fishy is going on, it quickly cascades into a perfect amalgam of a tense detective thriller starring dubious officers Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich), a gut-wrenching psychological drama, and a staggering showcase for Chastain and Redmayne, who deliver two of the finest performances of the year.

Life for today’s young’uns is frankly terrifying, even if they aren’t literally living inside a horror film, with overarching threats to their future dotted by day-to-day micro-threats. In its unassuming way as real-world fantasy, Weston Razooli’s Riddle of Fire is sensitive to these plights, and casually rejects didactic allegory about them.

Brought to life through Kreutzer’s skillful direction and Krieps’ earnest performance, this surprising royal reimagining offers a fresh perspective on an elusive historical figure.

The film represents a full embrace of a culture and its people, as well as a celebration of family, both present and past. As such, it’s difficult to imagine healthier holiday fare.

What’s most distinguishable about Bad Trip is the way that it depicts the public which it interacts with. The film never aims to humiliate or dehumanize its subjects—instead of being disparaged or mocked in the name of comedy, bystanders are portrayed as more of a righteous tribunal than mere crabs in a barrel.

Where What’s Love Got to Do with It was a midlife coming-of-age—a “Hello, here’s my story”—Tina is a redefining, empowering farewell that adds perspective as she tips her hat and has her happily ever after out of the limelight.

Though it takes place within the familiar thematic ground of terminal illness and fathers and sons, that willingness to take emotional risks, alongside the finely-drawn characters and beautiful performances, makes Bucky F*cking Dent a deeply lovely movie. His first film may have been a dud, but 20 years later, Duchovny the writer/director has finally proven himself a force to be reckoned with.

The Way of Water’s true achievement is that it looks like nothing else but the first Avatar, unparalleled in detail and scale, a devouring enterprise all to itself. Watching The Way of Water can at times feel astonishing, as if the brain gapes at the sheer amount of physical data present in every frame, incapable of consuming it, but longing to keep up.

What Leave No Trace portrays so beautifully, with so much unspoken grace, is that divide between living and surviving to live. One can find all of that dissonance in Foster’s fathomless eyes.

[Campbell] and Radwanski pair well. Together, they make Anne at 13,000 Ft. into a work that may leave the audience gasping for air.

The movie is tougher, and more rigorous, and more interested in the hard work of healing than empty slogans. It is true to the spirit of Mr. Rogers without every deifying him. I bet he would have loved it.

It might not fix videogame movies overnight, but Mortal Kombat might finally deliver their sweepingly bad reputation a devastating fatality.

By embarking on a truly unique creative path and embracing the facets of Murakami’s work that seemed unfilmable, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is an elegant tribute to a literary powerhouse whose signature brand of fantasy deserves to be embraced across artistic forms.

It all comes together to make The Promised Land a stirring historical epic that balances its grandiose framing with something surprisingly grounded and genuine. A bountiful harvest indeed.

In many ways Eggers’ latest reminds us of Last Tango in Paris, which explored a similar unhealthy relationship dynamic. Just as captivating, frightening and thought-provoking, The Lighthouse shines.

Through Ellis’ eyes, it’s impossible to stay uninvested. We watch, stomach bottoming out, as the law is repealed with a simple vote. We watch, sitting on our hands, as the new amendment is introduced.

The frequently complicated relationship between mother and daughter has fostered plenty of cinematic investigation, but El Planeta easily distinguishes itself as a uniquely meta and universal addition to the canon.

Summer of 1993 does what movies do so well (and yet so rarely do), which is to let viewers see the world through the eyes of another.

It is short, snappy and succinct. It also effortlessly fits in everything we look for in a doc like this: A retelling of the crime and the investigation (the latter being, in this case, even more interesting than the former), non-distracting reenactments and an engaging tone, which Swindler accomplishes by whipping around the globe to exotic locations—all paired with a lively soundtrack.

An all-out assault on the senses that’s fun, funny, and still capable of making you a little queasy. That’s Destroy All Neighbors in a nutshell, but that’s also just the beginning.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 may not be Toy Story 2 (or The Empire Strikes Back, for that matter), but it’s a more than worthy successor to the first film. Even when it falls short of its lofty ambitions, you can’t help but appreciate how thoroughly it commits to achieving them.

In most other filmmaker’s hands, these seemingly inconsequential observations wouldn’t seamlessly create a tender and alluring narrative. Yet Hong Sang-soo seems to have it all down to a science.

Hard Times is just as unflinching as Spring in its repetitive nature, but the second installment adds a dynamic approach to the material that was lacking in Spring.

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.

The movie evokes retro genre coziness and unease in equal measure, one creeping up from beneath the other.

Let the Hitchcock comparisons come. Peele deserves them well enough. Best not to think about it too hard, to not ruin a good thing, to demand that Us be anything more than sublimely entertaining and wonderfully thoughtful, endlessly disturbing genre filmmaking.

Serebrennikov creates a compelling labyrinth of a story, composed of delusions, memories, projections, fantasies and banal real-life occurrences—all seamlessly blending and blurring together with exquisite precision.

Though Drive My Car reaches a significantly less smoldering conclusion than Burning, it channels a similar feeling of catharsis. Though certain things are still left unsaid or incomplete, the tension they create—or shatter—conveys just as much as simple words or actions.