No one mentions it explicitly in the movie, but this film could be in the curriculum of a grad school course on Critical Race Theory, which is not, as some confused people claim, about diversity training in corporate offices or amending history books in grade school.

With I, Daniel Blake, Loach is using the medium for one of its most crucial purposes: to shine a light on injustices he sees all around him, as well as on our capacity for human decency.

There is a timelessness to its explorations that makes it as rich and resonant today as when it was first released.

Those who don't know anything about the tale going in (a category that included me) might be gobsmacked by what happens. The order of events doesn't stick to any established commercial movie template. What happens feels as random yet eerily inevitable as life itself.

While Girl Picture isn’t necessarily breaking any new ground, this sensitively rendered dramedy invites viewers into the world of three young Finnish women on the cusp of adulthood with an affection and mellow sense of humor that makes it a more than agreeable cinematic companion.

Miroirs No. 3 feels positively Hitchcockian, a recurring preoccupation of Petzold’s oeuvre; shades of “Vertigo” abound as characters attempt to replace what’s missing in their lives with doppelgangers willing to fill that role.

It’s really like nothing that Hollywood has produced before, existing not just to acknowledge or exploit the fans of this series, but to reward their love, patience, and undying adoration.

Pathological behavior seems to be the main subject of the bitter Ukrainian satire Donbass, an unpleasant, but as-advertised slice of life drama set in the title region, an embattled territory in Eastern Ukraine.

The film bewitches you with its seemingly spontaneous humor, a cadre of original soulful folk tunes, and its adoration of the breathtaking surroundings.

With its balance of exuberant humor and rigorous insight, Bathtubs Over Broadway provides as stellar an education for the uninformed as Siegel’s “The Bathrooms Are Coming!”

The bloody fingerprints of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers — among other violence-prone auteurs — are smeared all over his tidy and tautly-told Blue Ruin.

It’s a film about outsiders, made by outsiders, that feels like outsider art, which is maybe the most exciting thing about it.

Polsky is so honest he has to add a question mark to the film’s declarative title. This slight detachment, this hesitation to believe without question, makes Polsky the best of guides.

It’s movies like these that prove that cinema still has the capacity to surprise, even in criminally goofy comedies like this.

Regardless of their ultimate fate, the existence of Ye Haiyan and every soul she has ever sought to protect are undeniable, and thanks to filmmakers like Wang, immortal.

A rare and welcome exception to that norm.

This is one of the most satisfying films, genre or otherwise, of the year.

The Tribe would be a hopelessly banal arthouse wallow were it not for its setting: a school for the deaf.

Call it a revisionist or an absurdist Western if you will, but Audiard’s film feels both refreshingly new (without ever going to the extreme lengths the Zellner Brothers did with “Damsel”) and nostalgically familiar.

Whether one looks at it as a summation statement from an artist taking stock of their life and work at the end of their career or as another one of the brief cinematic diversions that he has taken on in between his feature projects, “It’s Not Me” is a reminder that Leos Carax is one of the most fascinating and formally interesting filmmakers working in the world today.

Working from a script by Robert Kaplow, Linklater has crafted one of his finest dramedies, a consistently fascinating exploration of the frailty of the artist, buoyed by one of Ethan Hawke’s most remarkable performances.

If Zootopia were a bit vaguer, or perhaps dumber and less pleased with itself, it might have been a classic, albeit of a very different, less reputable sort. As-is, it's a goodhearted, handsomely executed film that doesn't add up in the way it wants to.

It’s about empowerment, empathy, and the impact we can have on one another, even those we never meet. You’ll cry. It’s worth the tears.

I’m Your Man may not break the mold, but it operates within it with confidence and grace.

The Velvet Queen is at its strongest when it allows for silence on this gorgeous landscape, using only its mesmerizing score to elevate the imagery into something poetic about the beauty of mother nature.

While [Lawless] only scratches the surface of Moth's traumatic past, "Never Look Away" still stands as a formidable anti-war project.

Directed by Belgian filmmakers Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen, The Eight Mountains works slowly and patiently. It doesn't rush. This may be frustrating for some viewers, but the film works because of its slowness and patience, not despite it.

A Love Song is a companionable movie to sit through. It’s well-photographed, unobtrusively edited, full of wondrous sights, and acted by a couple of masters of warm underplaying.

Crow’s camera captures the nuance of what these teens face and how law enforcement instructors and recruiters sell children on the idea of following in their footsteps.

This is a sexy, fun film filled with a lot of zingers, but it also feels a little less personal than many of Assayas’ movies, perhaps in part because it’s not stuffed to the gills with songs he loves.

After the pure joy of the musical numbers, the best thing about this movie is that even with all of its abundance it leaves you wanting more.

Would the magic hold? The magic holds. It holds from beginning to end.

Dead Mail’s quirkiness never grows tiresome, which is impressive.

The Israelis in "Holding Liat” are perfect subjects for a documentary about wartime trauma that hopes to reach beyond partisan enclaves.

An ambitious but occasionally uneven animated film.

Endless Poetry is as galvanizing as a lightning rod because it's equally accepting, and intolerant, a pro-individualist work about celebrating and cultivating yourself.

Whenever Spontaneous starts to run out of imaginative juice, it turns a tonal corner and either puts a smile on your face or wipes it off.

It’s impossible to deny the power of much of what’s on display here. Wilkerson looks at the racial discord and violence in the world around him and has the courage to examine his own legacy instead of just casting off the concept as something that happens to or is perpetrated by others.

Hittman's devotion to the male bodies onscreen is obsessive. Most good filmmakers, and most good artists, are obsessives. It goes with the territory. Hittman's obsession creates a potent blend of eroticism, pent-up feelings and good old-fashioned appreciation of beauty.

This is Smith's show, and it's all about the writing here, with Smith serving more as a town crier, an information delivery device in human form.

A sharply crafted drama that has elements of noirish suspense, the Danish-Swedish coproduction, which is distinguished by exceptionally fine performances by its three leading actors, offers an incisive, penetrating look at the psychological disorientation and dilemmas of people caught between cultures.

It’s so refreshing to see an unhurried, patient documentary, one that trusts its audience to follow along rather than relying on cheap gimmicks to manipulate emotions.

Writer/director Zach Cregger proves himself to be a bonafide jack-in-the-box horror filmmaker with "Barbarian," beginning with a nightmare that could happen to any of us—a double-booked Airbnb.

Whatever your movie plans, you miss Tracks at your aesthetic pleasure peril. It’s a truly outstanding cinema experience.

The most important lesson from The Social Dilemma is that we should question everything we read online, especially if it is presented to us in a way that reflects a detailed understanding of our inclinations and preferences.

Through Cobb, we take an alarming and up-to-date look into the life of any average contemporary teenager that grows up and establishes a voice mostly online, struggling to close the gap between the real and virtual. It’s that performance that elevates a film that often rings to be less than the sum of its parts.

This exploration of the unfiltered self leads us to the deepest crevices. Just like in astrophysics, it’s unclear where this black hole will lead us, or if we will ever be able to come back.

The visuals here are interesting because Adela is a circus clown and we get see a lot of the colorful life around her performances.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a breathtaking coup, an exhilarating riposte to the conventional wisdom about dream projects. The writer-director makes something almost new, and definitely rich and strange, out of a story we all thought we knew well.

An adrenalin-shot of a comedy and a fearless dissection of identity politics, corporate malevolence, and the American tendency to look the other way when confronted with horror.

The Case Against 8 beautifully reminds us of the human beings who opened up their lives to the world and became representatives for one of the most important movements for equal rights this country has ever seen.

The Human Factor is as much about modern day America as it about Israel and Palestine, and how much we have to lose when we give into the easy temptation of demonizing those who think differently—even if it’s as a result of listening to Tucker Carlson.

Horror fans always look for new ways to tell some of the most timeless stories, and I think they’ll flip for it.

Sitting through it is like watching someone else playing a video game for two solid hours, and not an especially compelling one at that.

I am a cat owner, I admit, but even I was surprised at the power of Kedi. Where did all that emotion come from? It's because what Torun really captures in her unexpectedly powerful film is kindness in its purest form.

Limbo is entirely engrossing as it brings its discomfiting points home.

One can’t watch this film and not think of events in the world today. How did the German nation get so caught up in the Nazi mythology that it plunged willingly toward its own destruction? Obviously being seduced away from a clear comprehension of reality into self-regarding mass fantasy was a big part of it.

The Substance works as well as it does because of Moore’s unbridled performance as a woman struggling with self-hatred, society’s treatment of her, and a newfound dependency on a miracle drug.

When Melanie falls under the spell of a silver-haired pedophile as tall and trim as a Marine (Joseph Lorenz), the film gets set on its rocky path to a conclusion that fulfills the film's title and rounds out the "Paradise" series quite beautifully — if you're not afraid to look.

The movie is put together with the no-fuss confidence of Soderbergh's best entertainments, staging comedic banter and suspense sequences with equal assurance, even playing sly perception games with the audience by making you wonder how smart or dumb the characters (and the movie) actually are.

The Starling Girl is so effective because it feels so specific to the character Parmet creates but remains accessible to people who haven’t shared her experience. The film is rich in detail, both in the sense of what it’s like growing up in a very religious community and what teenage rebellion looks like when just acting like an individual is enough to earn a stern talking to from an elder.

With its brutal violence, explicit sex, and up-close views of blood, sweat, urine, and semen, it is proudly an R-rated film, verging on NC-17—though the X-rating, which was discontinued by the MPAA almost 30 years ago, might feel more appropriate.

It reminded me of being a child and seeing the original "The Exorcist" and feeling as if I was seeing a documentary record of evil, one that was itself cursed, and that I should not even be looking at, because by looking at it, I ran the risk of releasing that evil into the world.

It is grounded, and made most exemplary, by Cynthia Nixon’s performance. Every actor in this movie is wonderful. But Nixon’s precision in portraying every particular mood of Emily — for each individual scene calls for absolute specificity — is simply spectacular.

While the results will obviously not come close to resonating with the public in the manner of “Walk the Line,” My Darling Vivian does an admirable job of recounting the story of a woman who was ultimately far more than just a footnote in someone else’s life.

This is an issue about women’s rights and so this powerful film exclusively listens to the stories that women tell.

Rasoulof’s story proceeds with the deliberate pace and simmering tension of a ‘70s political thriller.

It’s a story that speaks for itself, and so the emphasis on talking heads explaining it to us is dispiriting.

“Copperfield” is a grand, long novel, and in reducing it to 120 minute scale, Iannucci has hewn it to something almost anecdotal.

Moreno, who is brash and self-effacing, thoughtful and charismatic, has such a commanding presence on camera; every time she speaks, you unintentionally lean in a little closer, hanging on to every word she has to say.

This is screen acting of a very rare sort, and Clemency is a vital emotional powerhouse sorely deserving of being seen.

Fancy Dance reminds us of how communities care for each other, regardless of the risk involved. Tremblay’s narrative debut is simply beautiful, and hopefully, there’s much more to come.

There is no crying in baseball, but you might just be reduced to a puddle of tears while watching Bolan’s film, which finally brings the duo’s love out of the shadows and gives it a long-overdue chance to shine.

If nothing else, see it for Danielle Deadwyler’s incredible performance. She truly is unforgettable.

This is a work just as startling and potent as anything she has done to date — a powerful example of art being used to exorcise personal demons that is anchored by two stunning performances and some of the most gripping moments to be seen in any film so far this year.

Mood is ephemeral, but it helps establish point of view and orients us in the dream-space of the film. With all of the things that Christmas, Again (written and directed by Charles Poekel in his feature debut) does well (and it does almost everything well), the most striking thing about it is its evocation of an extremely specific mood.

Unabashedly pro-choice, Trapped is not a debate itself, but it has no need to be.

Writer/director Liu Jian has taken familiar stylistic elements, and made them feel fresh, and exciting. Have a Nice Day may be Jian's second feature after "Piercing I," but it feels like a major breakthrough.

Easily the most important film anyone has released this year, it is a documentary that deserves to be seen by every sentient citizen of this country – and indeed the world.

It’s a puzzle with a few pieces missing; standing back from it, you can still see the picture. But does it give the viewer exactly what they want? See the title.

Genius, this movie believes, is real, whether it’s failed or successful.

The result might be less fulfilling this time, but “Dory” is ultimately worth the voyage.

Though Donald Trump is never mentioned by name in all 140 minutes of Ai Weiwei’s new documentary, Human Flow, the picture is, quite simply, the most monumental cinematic middle finger aimed at his scandal-laden administration to date.

For this viewer, the formal element and the narrative never quite cohered, and I wound up admiring the movie for its ambition while unsatisfied with its achievement.

Absolutely no one is phoning in “Longlegs,” and that commitment to craft and mood has an impact. It may be disappointing that it doesn’t land with the same force promised by the viral marketing, but nightmares are unpredictable like that.

Strategy combats chaos, strategy focuses people on one goal, and with strategy, winning is actually possible. That's what The Dark Horse is all about.

The Gift uses the tricks of the thriller trade well, but why it really works is that it withholds the necessary information until almost the very end.

Every Body is a moving, fascinating look at a too-often-ignored subset of the world's population, filled with empathy and understanding but also a cool, analytical anger about what history has put them through.

The trouble is that while many of these bits and pieces are often fascinating, they never quite pull together into a truly compelling or satisfying narrative.

Dear Mr. Brody does a fine job of showing how the financial chasm between rich and poor people is as wide and insurmountable today as it was in 1970.

The best thing about Victoria isn’t actually its technical prowess—it’s the lead performance from the mesmerizing Laia Costa as the title character.

A movie that will soothe the hearts of every single female journalist who, on various occasions, felt pushed to the periphery while bearded dudes in plaid tossed around their self-satisfied takes, “Mile End Kicks” instantly offers a breath of fresh air about what it means to pursue one’s passion for writing about the arts while being a woman.

This is a moving drama about people pushed together by fate who end up not merely helping each other survive but elevate through an increasingly harsh world.

Queen of Earth is terrifying because it is so emotionally unmoored—Catherine is a character with little reason to care about anything or anyone, and Perry and Moss convey the danger of that brilliantly.

It’s charmingly funny and shamelessly punny.

Sarah Polley's trust in the material—and her actors—allows for the performances to flourish, and the performances drive the story along with the barrage of words.

It's bracing in its simplicity. It's a character portrait, period.

There’s too much story to tell in a feature runtime, so parts of The League feel like they’re just skimming the surface. But what a fantastic surface it is.