Mufasa never quite bursts free of the constraints placed upon it, but those constraints never stop it from moving, or from being moving. It has a signature, rendered with a steady hand.

The uncanny confidence of Dick Gregory comes through from the opening minutes of The One and Only Dick Gregory, and he only becomes more formidable as the film unfolds.

When The Woman King works, it’s majestic.

It is that very lack of objectivity that makes Strong Island the experience that it is. It is a very tough film to shake.

In focusing on the years when the band became the first ever to mount several world-spanning tours, it offers two things at once: a history of the Beatles during the years of their initial success; and a tribute to the group’s powers as a live act.

There are dozens of carefully observed and touching moments in “Daughters,” which won both the Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance.

This isn’t a film that makes a big deal of its contemporary authenticity; it wears its carefully measured elements lightly, the better to shine a light on its intriguing characters.

This one has familiar beats but appealing performers, better dialogue, and more depth of character than many more formulaic movie romances.

Incredibles 2 understands something that most family sequels, even the Pixar ones, fail to comprehend—we don’t just want to repeat something we loved before. We want to love it all over again. You will with Incredibles 2.

Needless to say, the whole film rests on June Squibb's shoulders. She brings to the part 78 years of acting experience, which is a joy to watch.

I was riveted by every moment of this haunting weird film. Enys Men made me legitimately uneasy.

The movie makes canny use of non-linear editing, moving backwards and forwards with engaging fluidity, and it keeps this up throughout.

Is the human brain built to absorb so much of "the world"? How do we filter anything? Matt Wolf's new documentary, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, is an interesting meditation on these ideas, as well as a character study of a fascinating news-junkie with a mission.

Olympia has the usual biographical documentary structure, though it's a bit of a hodge-podge, following Dukakis to a festival, a rehearsal, awards events, at home, intercut with archival footage and comments from friends, colleagues, and family.

Huesera doesn’t necessarily re-invent either of those subgenres. But it does present them in a vessel that’s so artfully crafted, and filled with details that bring the characters and their relationships to such vivid life, that it accomplishes a lofty goal for genre cinema: Taking a familiar formula and turning it into a personal statement.

The extremes uncovered in this film become revealing of what we accept as necessary, in what we as a nation rationalize as justice even without procedure. It is eye-opening, and yet also like Gibney’s best work, affirming in the worst ways.

What makes it special is that it truly cares about the nuts and bolts of marrying pictures to music and understands how to explain the finer points to people who aren’t musicians.

Built on a foundation of comedy that comes from the silent era, “Vengeance Most Fowl” is just beautifully structured, a perfect rhythm of plotting and humor that works for all ages.

If watching a low-key portrait of a person struggling through a personal crisis with a refreshing lack of cheap melodrama sounds intriguing, well, that's exactly what director Kazik Radwanski has delivered with undeniably compelling results.

This is a project for and by those who have experienced inhumanity firsthand yet refuse to have their voices snuffed out by a corrupt institution.

One of the most impressive elements of Kubo and the Two Strings — besides its dazzling stop-motion animation, its powerful performances and its transporting score — is the amount of credit it gives its audience, particularly its younger viewers.

Good Bad Things is an intimate, small story about the gigantic issue that challenges and terrifies us all: the collision between the desperate need to be seen and loved and the fear that what people might see will repel rather than attract them.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is just incredibly fun. It feels half its length and contains enough memorable action sequences for some entire franchises.

It really is quite a movie: entertaining and engaging, but also mortifying; a good alternate title might be "American Horror Story."

The ignorant and deeply painful misrepresentation of [Davidson's] condition at the BAFTAs shows just how much this film will do to make all of us think twice before judging someone.

Riotsville, U.S.A. is certainly not an objective documentary. It’s angry and it dares the viewer to argue back. The freeform nature of it may seem faulty, but I felt it served the purpose of forcing me to interrogate what I was being shown.

The film weaves a spell with its rhythms, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, all accompanied by a vivid and haunting sound design.

She Dies Tomorrow has the feel of a horror film, and is sometimes scary, but it's really an existential meditation on mortality.

Every few seconds there's an image that delights for delight's sake.

Writer/directors Hannah Marks and Joey Power have made an intimate little drama that feels fresh because the diagnosis turns the usual love story upside down.

Apatow also has a knack for spotting up-and-coming talent and using his considerable influence to help foster it on the biggest stage and under the brightest lights. He’s done this with Lena Dunham (“Girls”) and Amy Schumer (“Trainwreck”), and he’s done it again with Nanjiani.

This is a soft-spoken but ultimately powerful work that makes the case for the importance of empathy in treating those with mental illnesses, and makes you hope that programs like the one depicted here will one day become the norm.

Post-Holocaust discourse frequently used the phrase “Never Again” as a slogan, specifically referring to persecution of the Jews but also denoting a prohibition against barbarism; the events under consideration in these films are dispiriting reminders that human progress in this area has been meager at best.

As gorgeous and impenetrable as a dream.

A Finnish ensemble comedy about a wannabe black metal band, is probably the only film you'll see this year with a crowd-surfing corpse. Don't let the last part of that sentence dissuade you from seeing Heavy Trip: it's a real crowdpleaser.

It’s impossible not to appreciate the deep understanding of human behavior, as well as the way that ordinary objects and situations acquire symbolic meaning when we think about them in relation to the characters. This is a lovely, unique film.

The film’s look and sound are lyrical, providing an apt setting for the poets who recite their work and discuss the kind of communication that fills in the gaps left by recitations of fact, archival images, or dramatic re-enactments.

Vermiglio, about the lives of villagers in the mid-century Italian Alps near the end of World War II, is the rare movie set in the past that seems attuned to the consciousness of the time it depicts.

RRR feels simultaneously personal and gargantuan in scope.

The Persian Version pulses with personality, striking an excellent balance between humor and heart.

Ditching many of the high school movie tropes for idiosyncratic raunchy comedy, Lorain’s film deliberately calls out the double standard that still exists while letting her flawed young characters still have fun.

When Linklater's style works (and it works in Everybody Wants Some!!), there is nobody quite like him.

What makes a space feel safe? The small miracle of the Estonian film “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” is that it does more than show us a blissfully safe space; it invites us inside.

What this film may lack in terms of visual flamboyance, it more than makes up for in telling its simple and direct story with a raw, emotional power that doesn't need lavish spectacle in order to get its point across.

The President’s Cake is notable for its unvarnished, affecting performances; its digitally shot yet eerily film-like cinematography, which packs an amazing amount of crisply focused information into wide frames with rounded edges. But most of all, for the way it captures the strange disjunction between the monotony of daily life for children in a war zone and the anxiety between adults who are aware that everything could fall apart at any moment.

Thankfully, while “Monster” depends on dramatic irony and revelatory twists, it’s also a showcase for director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose knack for collaboration brings out the best in his actors, especially his younger cast members.

Laughter is an essential fuel when dealing with subject matter as heavy as this, and The Fight does a splendid job of humanizing its heroic lawyers.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives a performance of breathtaking vulnerability as the mother of a dying teenager in “Tuesday,” a film that tells the story of the most shattering loss of all without melodrama or a score filled with syrupy strings.

Trying to explain how this movie works as well as it does, without using excessive jargon or some kind of audiovisual aide, is tricky since “To the Ends of the Earth” isn’t about anything less than its heroine’s uncertain relationship with her foreign environment, and what she chooses to communicate simply by being seen and heard. Which is often thrilling to behold, but not so much to explain.

The Librarians is a documentary about the hysterical, unfounded, personal, and sometimes violent attacks on librarians. It is also about their unwavering commitment to making facts, literature, and inspiration available to anyone.

Looking at the picture’s mostly sun-drenched and drolly cheerful surface layer, one marvels at Rohmer’s unerring sense of what drama kings and queens young people can be.

Shields’ story is inspiring, beyond the training montage, the matches and medals, and the pep talks from Crutchfield. The film has a spacious generosity toward all of its characters, even Shields’ parents, reflecting her commitment to her family and community, as deep as her focus on winning boxing matches.

A brutal but stirring fantasy.

It is a formally gorgeous piece of work, the kind of film that exudes confidence in structure and tone, and it contains some of the most striking, memorable imagery of the year. Don’t miss this one.

This is an ambitious and enlightening documentary, filled with wisdom and asking great questions, some of which may never have a satisfying answer.

Her thrilling mastery of slow-burn tension, insightful examination of power dynamics in business and personal relationships, and creation of exceptional performances prove Domont to be a director with a singular voice.

To Kill a Tiger tells an important story in a compelling manner that makes it worth watching, but its journey is so intense at times it might prove to be too much for some.

A remarkably full-bodied and frank character study that illuminates the old saw about the political being personal in a genuinely unusual way.

This is filmed theater in the purest sense.

Talking with the residents of these different worlds, and contrasting their different lives, is where the film’s heart and greatest insights reside.

Luckily, the performances and characterizations add heft, and the very Russian vibe of soulful heaviness sets it apart from its American cousins.

The question of how we see our history and who gets to decide is powerfully presented, with respect and insight, in the documentary “Natchez.”

I haven’t seen anything quite like it before. That alone makes it worth seeing, as long as you accept the proposition that a movie like this is unique, in some ways beyond genre labels, and feeling its way towards the right flow and shape as it goes.

Late Night comes directly from Kaling's own experiences. This is an earnest and funny comedy, with very sharp teeth.

The strength of Hama-Brown’s film is how deftly it captures that feeling that emotion can’t always be expressed through language.

It's a small movie that takes big swings.

Brad’s Status might be the most Ben Stillerish movie Ben Stiller has ever made, and that’s actually a good thing.

It’s a movie that doesn’t just allow for silence but thrives in it, with Ahmed’s eyes and body language charting the arc of his character. He doesn't miss a beat.

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.

Written and directed by Robin Lutz, this is a rare feature that takes the trouble not just to understand its subject and communicate his significance, but find ways to actually show us, visually, how his style evolved, and the principles behind that evolution.

By the end of Arnold’s lyrical passion project, one feels genuinely connected to Luma and her likes, deeply concerned about their wellbeing amid the grueling circumstances they are obligated to dwell in.

No wonder the lean, 79-minute running time of All This Panic is not a liability: Gage makes each minute boldly and deeply matter.

As Olfa and the sisters give perspective on their shared trauma and heartbreak and discuss the underlying principles of it with each other and the actresses, what ensues is not simply the story of a family but a tour de force examination of women’s place in the world and the costs of how they choose to cope with it.

The result, though not without flaws, is an invigorating and interesting observation of the man, his work and the entire medium of photography.

The result feels like one of the many thoughtful films made about life under dictatorship, but with a unique twist: This one isn’t critiquing past events in Argentina, Chile, or Uganda from a safe historical distance, but events happening right now in the U.S., from behind a scrim of metaphor as thin as tissue paper.

At times, Hale County This Morning, This Evening evokes the work of Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose films “Tropical Malady” and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” tell the stories of people and places primarily through their visuals.

It’s quite a ride even when the tempo drops ever so slightly towards the end; the kind of stuff fun summer entertainment should be made of.

Stillman pushes the comedy right up to the edge of screwball.

Thankfully, “Queendom” is not a dull documentary on a fascinating subject.

A nearly great documentary about a national crisis, but its heart is a tragedy with a sickening ironic twist.

It’s very easy to dismiss a film about a hapless loser. But it’s nearly as difficult to ignore a performance like the one Rios gives.

I love this kind of backstage documentary, which is not surprising for someone who has "All That Jazz" and "All About Eve" on his all-time top ten list.

I Love My Dad is the kind of story that doesn’t overthink what makes it so laugh-out-loud funny, but there’s a whole lot of ugly, extremely human things going on each time its comedy makes you cover your eyes.

It's messy in the way that life is messy. It's one of those movies that simultaneously feels too long and not long enough. But there's a purity and earnestness to what it's doing that's increasingly unusual in American independent cinema.

The Children Act is perhaps a bit stilted in the overt way it sometimes attempts to spell out its arguments. But director Richard Eyre’s film still poses sophisticated questions around family, religion, marriage, law and the delicate boundaries that can or cannot be crossed in each institution.

The Meyerowitz Stories shockingly belongs to Sandler, who is absolutely fantastic.

The result is a twisty-turny plot that sometimes feels like a family drama, sometimes like a legal thriller, with Bahkshi delivering a bombshell, allowing the film’s characters time to react to it, and then dropping another secret that is even more shocking than the first.

This one stands out not only because it’s the fittingly agonizing climax to Wang’s trilogy but also for its sheer wealth of heartbreaking and totally convincing details.

Carol is often about its surfaces, their beauty contrasting with the scary duality of people, relationships. The surfaces in Carol are so seductive that one understands the ache to belong in that world.

Exquisitely researched, beautifully put together, with that celebratory knowledgeable chorus of voices pouring over us, what Spike Lee's documentary really is is an act of love.

The Lobster plays rigorously by its own rules without once telegraphing "Just kidding!" While extremely funny, it is a bitter and ruthless film. Lanthimos plays target practice and his aim is deadly.

An intimate epic, Testament of Youth has great historical sweep yet remains focused on the human vicissitudes experienced by Vera and her circle.

Mustang grabs you with its own sense of haunting melancholy, as well as an increasing feeling of urgency and outrage.

Despite my ostensible disinterest in the subject at hand, I found myself mesmerized by this spare, affecting, and powerfully humane work that may seem quiet and reserved, but which ends up packing a surprisingly powerful emotional punch by the end.

Welcome to Chechnya is both astonishingly groundbreaking in its use of technology, and difficult to watch.

There are no zombies in the streets, boogeymen in the basement or witches in the woods—and yet it is one of the most terrifying films in years.

It is about those human elements that transcend the five senses—loneliness, jealousy, fear, etc.—and how they are heightened in times of stress. However you interpret it, Vogt's film lingers, haunting like imagery that refuses to fade away in memory.

Hall, Grau, editor Sabine Hoffman, and composer Devonté Hynes do an excellent job of casting a hypnotic spell on the audience. This is a deliberately paced film with enveloping moods that feel like symphony movements.