A still somewhat convoluted wrap story that clarifies a few of the show’s bigger mysteries while indulging in a parade of series callbacks of varying quality.

Lapid articulates Yoav’s increasingly fevered quest for the impossible through aesthetic fluidity: Whip pans and judicious use of saturated colors, couched foremost in the mustard-yellow, knee-length coat Emilie plucks from his wardrobe for Yoav at the beginning of the movie. It all reflects the movie’s rich and assertive style, a detached cool to hold the audience at the proper distance from Lapid’s narrative.

This movie isn’t just about America, or the collective power of the human imagination, or one man’s heroism, or one woman’s strength in his absence. It is about how being human can mean cruelty and tragedy and loss and unimaginable pain … and how that’s still not enough to defeat us, not by a long shot.

The “Eephus” pitch is an apt characterization for the film that now shares its name, an odd, surprising story about a baseball game with seemingly little to no stakes, that continues on for long after it should’ve already ended.

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.

The movie is smart, stirring and deeply exciting, but more than anything, it is surprising. This is a Star Wars movie that plays with your assumptions and upends them, but it never betrays the story, characters and ethos at the series’ core. It expands the idea of what a Star Wars movie can be. It’ll knock you over.

The characters of Universal Language somehow leave you feeling better about humanity than you did before viewing it.

Maybe we know Hite only slightly better when The Disappearance of Shere Hite ends than when it starts, but because of Newnham’s rigor, we certainly understand her better.

Told through a series of metropolitan vignettes, documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Lo’s Stray deftly weaves together a sprawling narrative of human and canine vagabond life on Istanbul’s city streets.

If the micro-drama over-proliferated cinema as a result of the pandemic, His Three Daughters, considering its subject matter, is much more appropriately situated within its small, stationary setting. I’m not sure it dodges the stuffy allegations, and its tedium can feel more contained and mechanical than it intimates. But then again, grief is defined by its tedium, if anything.

Anvari is making a stifling period drama, a horror movie of a different sort that tangibly conveys the claustrophobia of Iran during its tumultuous post-revolution period.

Between the Temples is covered in these sores, full of stories that are funny from the outside and will be funny when told with hindsight. And it is funny. But it’s the honesty, our understanding of the how and the why behind these truthfully conveyed pains, that lodges Silver’s film in your heart.

Soul stuffs its playful optimism into a simple message and delivers it with colorful, endearing beauty.

For all of its cosmic implications, the film remains steadfast in its human devotions.

Anthony’s is the rare film that thrives in its parts rather than in the sum of them, though the sum is breathlessly simple, to the extent that one wonders why no film has ever connected the lines—lined up the parallels—as Anthony has.

What [Gandbhir] presents is stark, horrifying, and infuriating on multiple levels.

Greg Kwedar’s sensitive, joyous Sing Sing does more than simply dramatize the workings of the RTA program, it incorporates participants into the very fabric of the film’s DNA.

Shot entirely from the perspective of Chernov’s lone camera, 20 Days in Mariupol is a demanding and visceral watch.

An exceptional puberty comedy by way of Sanrio-branded Kafka, Turning Red’s truthful transformations are strikingly charming, surprisingly complex and satisfyingly heartfelt. And yes, so cute you might scream until you’re red in the face.

Gorgeously realized and bolstered by amazing performances by Souleymane and Alio, Lingui, the Sacred Bonds is a prescient portrait of what tribulations afflict—or await—women who are barred from receiving comprehensive reproductive care.

There is plenty of upsetting evidence concerning humanity’s vile indifference to ecological disaster and genocide in The Territory, but there is just as much hope for the future, even if all we have is a meager fighting chance.

There are few comedies in Hollywood history more universally beloved than the likes of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, but perhaps the most impressive thing about that adoration is the fact that for many viewers it was earned without anything more than the barest conception of how effective a parody the film truly is.

Where Predators becomes fascinating as a documentary is not in its rise-and-fall accounting of the titular series, however, but in the way it examines the evolution of empathy or vindictiveness in those who have been touched by abuse and tragedy.

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.

Saint Frances gets specific, stays lighthearted, but hits like a ton of emotional bricks.

As was the case in Cosmatos’s first film, the comparatively sedate Beyond the Black Rainbow, each frame, every shot of Mandy reeks of shocking beauty, stylized at times to within an inch of its intelligibility, but endlessly pregnant with creativity and control, euphoria and pain, clarity and honesty and the ineffable sense that Cosmatos knows exactly how and what he wants to subconsciously imprint into the viewer.

Kendall wisely avoids imposing Western values on the proceedings. The details of life intrinsic to the country speak for themselves, and the film forms more a story that amounts to fascination with the journey of the singular camioneta.

Beauty from tragedy is the foundation of Come From Away. An enduring message for us all.