Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is a haunting reimagining of a tense Christmas holiday in the life of Princess Diana.

Caveats aside, this is, in my estimation, a typically stimulating but opaque and deliberately frustrating late-period Godard film, good but not great, distinguished primarily by the fact that it's the first Godard film to use no actors at all.

Our favorite films often drop questions like these into our lives, allowing us to appreciate the world a little differently than before we saw them. The Revenant has this power. It lingers. It hangs in the back of your mind like the best classic parables of man vs. nature. It will stay there for quite some time.

The real draw of Natasha is without a doubt its young, charismatic lead Gordon, who portrays an emotionally tarnished young woman’s complex journey with a cool kind of unaffectedness. She effortlessly brings out the best and most mysterious in Bezmozgis’ unassuming little film.

Intercutting interviews with Marcos and her son with archival footage and other experts on the Marcos regime, Greenfield has put together her best film yet.

While Cassandro is not a winner, Williams and his cast put up enough of a show to make things interesting.

No Sudden Move is like watching a musician return to the themes and ideas explored throughout a career but with the renewed insight that comes after decades of success.

As a formal experimentation by an actor whose filmmaking talents are only the latest chapter in his Hollywood story, the documentary offers a touching reflection on Jonah Hill, The Star. Without specifically mentioning movie projects or other's names, he shares his sense of self during success, and how self-esteem remained elusive.

It’s an absolute blast of an action movie, another showcase for Jalmari Helander’s increasing skill with action choreography and inventive set pieces.

Some of it is too broad, and I wish the film dug a little deeper at times, but this is one of those rare inspirational films that earns its inspiration.

What we’re seeing in “September 5” is the birth of live news as entertainment. It’s the opening salvo in a long and sadly successful war against journalistic ethics and ideals that would lead to the current pathetic conditions of cable and Internet “news,” which consist largely of “takes” rather than original reporting.

While it does profile the work of brilliant dancer, the film also contains two complex and moving love stories as well an account of a physically devastating tragedy followed by an extraordinary tale of struggle and survival.

True to Lee’s reputation of playing with the chemistry of storytelling, Pass Over has the air of an experiment and the clarity of poetry, as inspired by the news and told by artistry beyond far beyond Lee’s. In the grand scheme of his filmography it’s one of his smaller projects, but it is by no means a minor work.

It’s an impressionistic film, concerned more with the atmosphere around genius than explaining it away.

The result will no doubt polarize viewers, as has been the case with his other major works, but it will certainly go down amongst those who see it as one of the most unforgettable films of this or any other year in recent memory.

The only request you can make of a documentary is for it to be as interesting as its subject. Alex Ross Perry’s slippery experimental mockumentary “Pavements,” a film about the 1990s slacker band behind Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, is as gleefully idiosyncratic and as suspicious of mainstream success as the band and its fans.

Unlike in Judd Apatow's "Knocked Up," with a similar circumstance and where abortion is not even mentioned by name (except for the cowardly "schma-shmortion"), Obvious Child is honest.

The movie is straightforward, brisk, engaging, and sometimes even moving. One might entire feeling wary that the movie, in depicting an attempt to duplicate Vermeer's achievement, might also glibly undercut it; but that's not the point at all. Rather, Tim's Vermeer wants to expand the audience's understanding of what the actual practice of art is.

There are laughs and uncomfortable observations throughout, but Tsangari never lays on too heavy a hand. One is free to contemplate the allegorical and satirical implications, but also free to enjoy the spectacle of self-imposed insecurity that plays out among these characters.

The Godfather Coda does seem different, thanks largely to how he opens and closes the film. Overall, this version feels even more elegiac—a true coda instead of just another part of the same story.

King Richard is half sports movie, half biopic. As such, it hits the sweet spots and sour notes of both genres.

Slathered with a score that makes the sadness of each passage unmistakable, Pray Away narrows its purpose to be simply informative; it is too artistically flat to have the emotional peaks that would give its own otherwise vital message some dynamic, or make it more impactful beyond its very subject matter.

Decker's visual style is as distinct as a fingerprint. She destabilizes images, focusing in on parts of it, rarely looking at things head on. The experience is sometimes like listening to music underwater, or trying to adjust the muscles in your eyes to read the fine print.

mother! is at times horrifying, at times riveting, at times baffling, and at times like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Black Souls isn’t quite the great film the international cinema buzz machine has touted it to be in some circles, but it is a very good one, the kind that ends with such gravity that you feel its weight for a while after.

Most of all, this film is a tribute to the imagination and dedication that goes into the innumerable tiny decisions that make the difference between the beautifully drawn but listless "Black Cauldron," and the timeless, heartwarming appeal of the Ashman-era films.

An irrepressibly charming B-movie that never over-stays its welcome, and is both conceptually clever and admirably well-executed.

A tight, tense thriller carried by excellent performances from John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Originality is missing from the movie, but it has plenty of great jokes and a whole lot of people you enjoy hanging out with. When a horror-comedy is as agile, charming, and funny as this, everybody wins.

This is one of those movies that shows rather than tells—always preferable, even in the moments when the big picture is still coming into focus.

This is a quiet classic. Every choice is just right.

The movie is grisly and its sense of humor is mordant, but it winds up communicating a heartbreak that’s pretty straightforward, all things considered.

This movie grabs you by the heart quickly and doesn’t let up the stress for any significant amount of time.

Nicole Riegel's debut feature Holler is a film to treasure—an intimate drama about family and work, steeped in details that can only have been captured by a storyteller who lived them.

At its best, López’s movie has that del Toro signature style, and she also proves herself a deft director of children, another element she shares in common with the Oscar winner.

A mother-daughter bond shines through stark black-and-white cinematography and surreal humor in El Planeta.

It is a daring and assured subversion of conventional film language that will likely infuriate certain viewers and reward others.

This is a classic film, not just because every scene and line is casually beautiful and devoid of extraneous touches, but because its tone is mercilessly exact.

When The Woman King works, it’s majestic.

Gentle and lilting, "Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” moves at a hiker’s pace.

A tremendously absorbing film, a documentary that plays like a first-rate thriller hinging on key issues of the Cold War and African decolonization.

This is a film that captures how art isn’t just how we heal; it’s how we live. And how we can each write our own symphony, especially if we have someone who inspires us to do so.

Asteroid City, his latest collaboration with cinematographer Robert Yeoman, may be the most incandescently beautiful of all their movies so far. Additionally, its emotional impact is substantial. Imagine a gorgeous butterfly landing on your heart and then squeezing on that heart with sharp pincers you never knew it had.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is one of the most original American thrillers in years, and one that draws from a deep well of movie history as it develops its characters and sets up its plot twists.

With each on-screen chapter, the poor girl from District 12 continues to fulfill her destiny as an inspiration and a rebel fighter. She is but one female, but she's the perfect antidote to the surplus of male superheroes out there.

The best part of Frot's performance, and the key to why Marguerite works when it does work, is how totally Marguerite believes in her nonexistent gift.

Linklater not only pays his respects to Godard but also shares that adoration for his craft with his own audience.

If you go into a Herzog documentary hoping for a definitive, deep look at a certain subject, you're bound to come away disappointed. But if you go into them expecting a series of portraits of obsessed people, each painted by one of the most likable obsessives in cinema, you're likely to come away satisfied.

The Truth doesn’t have very much of a plot. What little there is serves as a clothesline for its two excellent leads to hang their performances out to dry.

Pearl gets a little too close to letting you simply laugh at her. We know she wouldn’t like that.

Audiard is invigorated by these vibrant, gorgeous young people, delivering one of the most sexually active films in years, even for the French. And his cast fearlessly work through their characters most private moments and emotions, leading to a movie that isn't voyeuristic as much as it is genuine.

It's slightly frustrating that the movie doesn't venture a point-of-view on any of these larger issues, which are less clear cut than the matters of sexual abuse and its immediate enablers.

A Hard Day has a breakneck pace that allows one to easily dismiss the more ridiculous, downright nonsensical aspects of its plot. Only occasionally will the eyes roll. For the most part, it works.

The wisdom of this meticulously crafted film is in its genuine irony, which amplifies steadily throughout until culminating in a moment of real heartbreak that, ironically enough, only sets the stage for a cycle of deceit to begin again.

A compilation of quick clips at the end is not entirely persuasive about O’Connor’s impact, but her story and her voice are impact enough.

The spirit of Claude Lanzmann, whose monumental Shoah remains a nonpareil cinematic text on the Holocaust, lingers over and around Final Account, a film assembled by Luke Holland around interviews he conducted beginning in 2008.

The Love That Remains plays out with remarkable intuition and sensitivity about its troubled characters, ones who try to love and reckon with hard feelings when those endeavors don’t work out, and you have to sift through the rubble to find meaning.

When Magary’s dialogue gets a bit too theatrical and self-conscious in the final act, you notice just because of how strong it’s been for the previous 80 minutes.

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.

There is a fascinating impulsiveness to the production of this story, especially as it essentially drops viewers into the world of Daje, and then has us follow her for months.

Similar to how Pixar’s Coco paid tribute to Mexican culture, Encanto holds many nods to its Colombian roots, from the use of flowers and animals specific to the regions to crafting songs that incorporated their respective countries’ musical palette.

An exhausting, and mostly frustrating display of emotional scab-picking.

The Bad Kids is interesting enough in what it shows us to spark interest in what it leaves un-shown. In its case, the information supplied by a few well-chosen talking heads could have given it additional clarity and appeal.

Writer and director Ekwa Msangi constructs this nontraditional narrative with an attention to detail for each of these characters. Just as important as their conversations is their body language and how it shifts around one another.

In Richard Gere’s deft, veteran hands, Norman Oppenheimer is consistently, completely fascinating. You may not be able to root for him, but you can’t help but feel for him.

It is Inherit the Wind among all of Kramer's films that seems most relevant and still generates controversy.

Kiss The Future uses hope, joy and love of art as its foundation for building its thesis on how the arts unifies, how it scares people in power and how it helped rebuild a city you’ll want to visit after seeing this film.

As it stands, Queen of Chess gives a champion her flowers, reminding that you can always build your own chair and pull up at the gatekeeping tables. That’s worth celebrating in and of itself.

Ghost Trail is an intimate study of trauma that plays with the gripping suspense of a globetrotting spy thriller.

A very funny and observant movie, albeit squirm-inducing, with endlessly quotable dialogue.

Even though we can pick our flavor of digital numbing, Birney brings his DIY mentality and a host of collaborators who are in sync with his sensibilities to craft a project that shakes us out of the tempting lull and urges us to live life as an NPC.

Once Upon a Time in Uganda is the advocacy that Isaac’s auteurship and ideology need most—this doc helps one re-appreciate movie-making as a compulsive, creative odyssey, a shot-by-shot pursuit of elusive inner peace.

Even the most open-minded viewers may have difficulty relating to the two lead protagonists in Border, a cynical Swedish romantic-fantasy that follows estranged border patrolwoman Tina (Eva Melander) and her unconvincing attraction to Byronic stranger Vore (Eero Milonoff).

In its understated way, the movie is a celebration of the miracle of connection.

This is John Patton Ford's directorial debut, and it is an extremely impressive piece of work.

An entirely watchable and sometimes engaging effort that serves as a great showcase for both the new and more seasoned members of its cast.

A film that is always interesting, largely thanks to an entirely committed cast and a writer willing to play with themes like a band improvising until it finds the right tune. There are a few off-key notes but the melody finally comes together.

Both scrupulous and fittingly hazy, Gyllenhaal captures her character’s outsider-ly state-of-mind with astonishing depth, through the subtlest of details in the way she carries herself.

Try Harder! is a charming dark comedy with a light touch, with part of its self-deprecating humor right there in the title.

Overall, there’s a timeless quality to the best jokes in “The Naked Gun” that makes them feel of a piece with the lines in the original without being direct copies. They don’t all work, but there are so many of them packed into this film’s blissfully short runtime (under 85 minutes) that every one that lands with a thud is followed by one that connects.

The subject is one of the most innovative and influential composers of all time but the documentary that tells his story is very conventional, with chronological archival footage and talking head interviews given by the composer and his co-workers.

What Happened features some of the best concert footage and musical performances in recent music doc memory, even if it never quite answers the question in its title.

Part rap musical, part social satire, with elements of Westerns and kung fu pictures, Bodied is one of the funniest, freest movies of the year.

This is one of the year’s best films.

One of the intense pleasures of Ruben Brandt, Collector (astonishingly, it is Krstić’s first feature) is how it suggests that theft (i.e. "collecting") is the only way to manage obsession.

To watch Possession again is to realize that it remains one of the most grueling, powerful, and overwhelmingly intense cinematic experiences that you are likely to have in your lifetime.

The tensions in “Living the Land” are experienced in a bittersweet key. We are looking at Atlantis. The film is deeply mournful, but also pierced with joy.

It is wrenching but never exploitive. It is impressively skeptical of the same mission that it takes on its shoulders: to make something positive from a senseless crime without diminishing its senselessness. This film doesn't just revisit an atrocity, it moves through it, and finds meaning in it.

Unlike most other true-crime films, "The Order" isn't out to titillate or digress into exploitation. The film instead heeds to a strict hold on tone, mood and pacing that doesn't aim to manipulate the viewer but to slowly unravel them to the point of feeling as hollowed out as Husk. In the process, it furiously tears us apart

Is the movie too adulatory? It is not the most subtly layered documentary I've ever seen, but these days it's no longer verboten to take a stance in docs. And there is so much to be admired about Hanna. Plus…if you've never seen some of those songs performed…it's electrifying.

There is an undeniable neorealist quality to Labaki’s work, bringing to mind not only the first half of Garth Davis’ "Lion," but also the likes of Vittorio De Sica’s "Shoeshine" and Sean Baker’s "The Florida Project" (even though it falls short of the artistic command of these titles).

This movie shows how Fitzmaurice was able to direct the picture — scheduling the shot so that he could efficiently marshal his energy was a big part of the process, as of course was the “eye gaze” computer.

The satisfactions of José as a whole offers are considerable, and they begin with the human element. Like the Italian neorealist classics from which it descends, the film has a keen appreciation for the lives of people who maintain a stubborn dignity and resolve under the challenges of poverty and other hardships.

Whatever its limitations, though, The Settlers provides a vivid primer on a situation that looks inherently tragic.

The film doesn't feel or look like a documentary. It's a character-based piece, but the structure is carefully considered with a clear narrative thrust and an unusual style.

More than any film in recent memory, The Retrieval made this reviewer yearn for the subtle softness and subliminal flicker of celluloid, as opposed to digital's sometimes overbearing brightness and clarity.

If you go in for allusive British humor that builds slowly from dry to uproarious, as executed by two absolute masters of the form, The Trip To Italy will work for you, I believe. I also think the film, directed, like the prior one, by the astute Michael Winterbottom, is a somewhat smoother trip than the first.

The actual filmmaking, and the excellent acting, do a good job of camouflaging the way Vidal-Naquet ultimately romanticizes Léo.