This is a persuasive piece of advocacy filmmaking, tucked inside a playful and profane comedy about female friendship. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry.

This cockeyed, oblique attempt to get closer to the worldview of David Lynch — one of American cinema’s finest oddities — is a compelling slice of cinephile inquiry.

This is a terrific document and a testament.

Kicks is knowing and innocent, profound and goofy.

It's gloriously inventive, wonderfully funny, and gorgeous to look at, the screen filled with sometimes overwhelming detail.

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.

Waititi’s film defies its convention through grounded characters, witty dialogue, compassionate filmmaking and inventive storytelling. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is consistently clever and even moving. It’s proof that we’ll keep listening to the familiar stories if they’re this well-told.

As with Morgan Neville's documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor?", the tears may flow freely due to nostalgia or from some subjects hitting too close to home, but A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood fits as a companion piece. Where the documentary offers a more complex view of the man in the red sweater and tennis shoes, Heller’s movie is more about the cultural impression Rogers left behind.

The Brits do this type of crowd-pleaser far better than Hollywood, if only because films like “The Full Monty” and “Billy Elliot” were unafraid to temper sweetness with darker elements of reality.

This family isn’t picture perfect, but the way De Filippis tells their story is pretty flawless.

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

Renaissance is both intimate and vast as it basks in Beyoncé’s impossible beauty but also turns the camera toward the audience to emphasize the powerful sense of community the Beyhive provides.

Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill), returns in this cheeky, breezy sequel that's better than the original. The character has a better sense of who she is, and the movie spends less time on explaining, more time on action. The mystery at its center is inspired by a real-life event that is genuinely inspiring.

Slow, steady, and with an exacting eye for detail, Lila Avilés’ The Chambermaid is a painfully astute observational drama about a young woman working in one of Mexico City’s posh hotels.

Written and directed by Jackson, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a poetic memoir of Mack’s life. Memories will appear one after another from her youngest days to her gray-haired years, non-sequentially, creating a winding road that bobs and weaves through mundane and life-defining moments alike.

The true heart of “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is not simply the impressive biographical bullet points, but rather the gift of witnessing its subject being unapologetically himself.

Amounts to a valuable if tremendously damning commentary on our current political culture.

With all its humor (and there is a ton), Wiener-Dog, following the journey of a dachshund as it is shuffled from owner to owner, is one of Solondz's sharpest visions of futility.

If the name "Gilliam" set off a little tremor of excitement when you heard it that is no accident because, with its combination of startling visuals, a head-spinning storyline and oddball characters that don't always conform to their presumed parameters, Snowpiercer is a film definitely in the vein of the works of the great Terry Gilliam, especially his 1985 landmark "Brazil."

I found the film to be an engrossing look at Zappa and his legacy that nevertheless avoids the mere hagiography that films of this sort run the risk of embracing when not handled properly.

Gone Girl is art and entertainment, a thriller and an issue, and an eerily assured audience picture.

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, about the career of one of the most important film producers of the last 50 years, is one of Cousins' best and most entrancing films.

The biggest strength, of course, is Ortega and Macdonald, who have great chemistry. These two actors know exactly who these guys are and their history comes through naturally.

Clouds of Sils Maria is oodles more poetic and enigmatic than the term “backstage drama” generally encompasses.

There's always something to ponder with this film, which gets stranger and more polarizing as it goes along.

No filmed footage could replicate the experience of watching “Bronx Gothic” live, but documentarian Andrew Rossi does an admirable job of channeling its power in his movie of the same name.

The best kind of anti-war propaganda film, calm in feeling and mood, yet truly terrifying in showing the scourge of our age: terrorism, which can strike anybody, anywhere, at any time. It's also a love story, and a film about having it all. And then in an instant, losing everything.

It's one of [Rogowski's] most moving and fully imagined performances, anchoring a drama that tries to do a bit too much for its own good in terms of structure.

A lovely companion piece to the latest album from the legendary musician, a gorgeous, introspective journey into the very concept of the American conscience.

Filmed over the course of three years and clocking in just over 70 minutes (minus credits), When Lambs Become Lions is a triumph of shrewdly economical storytelling on the part of Kasbe and his co-editors Frederick Shanahan and Caitlyn Greene.

There’s a considerable amount of catharsis in They Call Us Monsters, but it is bittersweet at best.

The movie offers the most psychologically complex screen portrait of a Native American character in at least twenty years, probably more.

A Boy Called Christmas is a resplendent Santa Claus origin story with a star-filled cast, sumptuous visuals, and some melancholy details to keep it from being too sugary.

It's a rapturous experience, mostly, though tempered by a certain Godardian crankiness. Watching it is, I would imagine, as close as we'll get to being able to be Godard, sitting there thinking, or dreaming. It's a documentary of a restless mind.

Structural quibbles aside, “Nuestra Tierra” is a powerful work of reclamation and advocacy for native peoples who have long been disenfranchised and dehumanized by systemic forces in colonial Argentina.

The real question of culpability that provides an element of suspense here, ironically, concerns not the obvious baddies but the ostensible good guys.

Stevens slowly and subtly unpacks that heady, provocative conceit with care and in a way that makes his directorial debut feel like the arrival of a major new talent.

A love letter from one iconoclastic Italian Catholic artist to another, Abel Ferrara's Pasolini stays far from the cliches of the Hollywood biopic, embracing a fragmented, intense, impressionistic approach.

It’s exciting, quietly volatile stuff that digs refreshingly deep into the fears of the coming-of-age genre.

A smart and strong genre work that makes up for a relative lack of gore and viscera with plenty of tension and suspense and a number of impressive performances.

Dog Man, based on Dav Pilkey’s popular series of graphic novels for kids, is sublimely silly, a mixture of comedy, action, and heart, all done with such high spirits it seems effortless.

Ernest and Celestine is the coziest movie you'll likely see all year. Every frame is suffused with a fireplace kind of warmth that, for me at least, cast an immediate spell that didn't let up.

The lead performances are extraordinary. They're real-seeming, in the manner of so many gifted but relatively inexperienced performers who haven't yet had the spontaneity crushed out of them by the cliches of formal training.

The Trials of Muhammad Ali a unique and inspiring viewing experience.

This is more than mere fan service slide show. It is a joyous, infectious story of the human capacity to change, and the importance of creative freedom to guide that change.

Taking on a novel that’s already been adapted by two of the greatest filmmakers of all time should give any contemporary director pause, you would think. But Benoît Jacquot shows no signs of intimidation in his Diary of a Chambermaid.

With Love Antosha, there’s now a coda to Yelchin’s story beyond somber headlines and obits. There’s an impression of who he once was to those who loved him and a sense of how we might remember him having heard their stories.

At times the movie feels like Hereditary without the supernatural elements and gore. It's a psychological horror movie about the ordinary miseries and compromises of family.

Tower is explanatory journalism and history, but also personally expressive, and the two impulses never cancel each other out.

This film is exceptionally skillful in matching the footage to the commentary in thoughtful, illuminating, and often touching pairings.

Best of all: you don't have to wait until a concluding set piece for To to prove his prowess as a storyteller.

The film carefully balances the most painful moments with glimmers of progress and hope and makes a powerful argument for looking at struggles so easily ignored.

Demme’s concert films aren’t just recordings of events—they’re cinematic embodiments of their musicians, capturing in a moment an energy that transcends time.

Even if this documentary directed by Lisa Hurwitz had nothing else to recommend it, it would be worthwhile as an excellent source of Mel Brooks.

As the heart of the story, however, Sarah Snook delivers a knockout performance that calls on her to perform the kind of tricky scenes that could have resulted in bad laughs throughout if handled incorrectly. Not only does she pull off her performance brilliantly throughout—there is not one moment in which she is anything less that utterly convincing and believable.

The filmmakers really do manage to visualize a distinctly Ballardian nightmare-scape. This in itself makes High-Rise worth experiencing.

The result is a sprawling urban drama with eruptions of violence.

Huda's Salon does not stop for one second to take a breath, and the subjects revealed have enormous and urgent philosophical reverb.

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.

It is an unmistakably “small” film, but as the story builds up and the characters come into focus, you know you are witnessing something rare and precious: an American independent film that’s understated and intelligent, as well as utterly free of showiness and calculation.

Holy Spider’s rendition of this grisly tale is powerful and precise, commendably lacking the sensationalistic tone of some serial killer movies.

Spa Night takes too much time to portray David's achingly slow and incomplete coming-out process, but its focus on the interior maelstrom of a teenager is extremely insightful

Like many classic Japanese monster films of the era, it is blithely unconcerned with convincing you that anything in its running time could actually happen. As a result, you believe in every frame. You enter the dream.

A long-winded but engrossing kidnap thriller.

In the few moments where he's left to prank people on his own, Bad Grandpa doesn't treat him like the clichéd potty mouthed kid out for shock value. Instead, he uses his childlike innocence to make the adults more uncomfortable than his grandpa's raunchier shenanigans ever could.

You could call it a musical performance documentary and not be wrong, but it's trying to do other things too, some expertly and others not so well; but there's never a point where you quite get a handle on it because it keeps changing in front of your eyes.

The cast is perfect, but The Nice Guys could have used one more rewrite or two and another trip to the editing bay to really streamline jokes that don’t work and a plot that gets more cluttered than engaging.

It’s a genuine achievement on an inexhaustible subject.

Bones and All plays out as a can’t-look-away, riveting experience for most of its running time. It’s easy to get entranced by its modestly sumptuous imagery, the believable chemistry of the volatile couple, and even the rattling bluntness of the graphic sequences.

While “Jim Henson: Idea Man” may not break any new ground regarding Hensonian research or documentary filmmaking in general, it should prove valuable to younger viewers curious to know more about the man behind so many beloved childhood icons.

Wilmont's film edges into emotional exploitation at times, but the raw moments he captures in this facility are a testament to the trust he clearly built with everyone there—and that ability to capture truth without interfering or manufacturing gives his film an undeniable emotional power.

One might not think that bouncing back and forth between Jazz Hentoff and First Amendment Hentoff would make for consistently engaging viewing, but the movie is in fact remarkably fluid and never less than compelling.

Hilarity ensues, but so do the lessons. . . In this raunchy little escapade, actions have consequences.

Faults is a richly-textured movie that concerns the weird space between thinking you know what you're doing, and actually knowing what you're doing.

Some experiences are so profound (and/or scarring) that they elude explication. The Inspection is about that sort of experience, which translates far beyond boot camp and resonates through our lives, until the final trumpet fades.

Aniskovich clearly loves her subjects, but the lack of tension is noticeable and a bit of a letdown, even if everyone else remains engaging and worth following.

An engaging and sneakily profound film.

The most emotionally arresting moments of Boy Erased are delivered through quieter scenes between Jared and his parents.

In an era of stark division, not to mention demands for simplistic storytelling one can absorb while doing household chores, “Honey Bunch” revels in the uncertain, ungraspable, the neither-nor of it all.

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.

The clever details, amusing name-drops, and precisely pointed digs at vapid celebrity culture keep Johnson’s movie zippy when it threatens to drag.

The hormonal surges in Our Souls at Night aren’t quite the rollercoaster ride they are in those adolescent affairs. But this steady-as-it-goes approach to a senior snuggling has its ups and downs, too.

While some might decry the ludicrous showdown that unfolds in the darkened aisles of McCall’s mega-store workplace, I got a kick out of watching Washington turn everyday hardware supplies into lethal weaponry.

If this movie and her previous project signal a shift in Watts' career that will be dominated by survival tales that put her at the center of a movie and showcase her doing things that give most viewers a pulled tendon just sitting there in the audience, so much the better.

Match has enough meaty and engaging character material to effectively sidestep the very theatrical contrivance of its plot premise, which does have a great deal of potential for reversal and counter reversal and indeed takes full advantage of that potential.

By the time you get to the end, Cronenberg has pinned all his people against the screen like so many laboratory specimens, ripped off their scabs, and vivisected their longings: an old wound here, a long--deferred dream there. Still, the movie sticks with you. It's a fleeting nightmare that refuses to fade.

Barbershop: The Next Cut belongs, as the entire series does, to Cedric the Entertainer.

The Menu remains consistently dazzling as a feast for the eyes and ears.

A deeply felt teenage melodrama.

Does the movie work? Intermittently, sometimes brilliantly.

It’s wrapped in an original, funny piece of entertainment, but this is also undeniably a warning.

7 Days has an overall sweetness that keeps it charismatic for its 85-minute runtime, with an agile directorial eye that makes sure the back-and-forth scenes of them talking have enough life in them.

The film does a good job conveying the excitement generated by that band as a live act, especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles. But though it produced some remarkable music, Cream’s success was short-lived.

If you feel like you know where it’s headed, you are probably correct. But while Chen’s refusal to subvert commonplace elements is disappointing, there’s a sharp note of sorrowful, aching understanding running through the protagonists’ shared ordeal.

Monster Hunt 2 is charming enough on a scene-to-scene basis that its success is worth noting.

This Louis Theroux-starring film belongs to the Michael Moore school of docu-making, in which much hinges on the personal viewpoint and observational wit of the on-camera investigator.

The threat of a comedy lurks around corners in "Tikkun.

It works best when it's most impressionistic. Although the big events in life have the most impact (you wonder what on earth is going to happen to these three boys), it's the small things — the early morning light, the tall grass, the black flowing river, Ma's smudged mascara, Paps' dazzling grin — that we really remember.