Cusp, with its dreamy imagery of golden sunsets and thunder-y twilights, empty Dairy Queen parking lots, and birds taking flight, is a mood-driven piece of work, sensitive to landscape and environment, and the girls' casual comments about rape (just one example) stand in stark contrast.

There's something a little too neat about the structure of Showing Up, and the pigeon wears its symbolism on its broken wings. But the piercing specificity of Reichardt's vision, and her insights into the dynamics of an art scene like the one in Portland, are spot on.

Unbound by physics or any sense of psychological realism, “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” is also probably the best comic book adaptation you’ll see this year, featuring a murderer’s row of Hong Kong stars like Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok and Sammo Hung, and featuring the sort of intricate maximalist production design that puts most other blockbusters to shame.

A gentle, genuine trip down memory lane that features one of our best actresses in the kind of role she doesn’t get to play that often, and another great turn in the arc of an independent film icon.

The objective seems to be to make you feel, by the end, as if you've walked a million miles in Neil Armstrong's boots. On that score, judged solely as a spectacle, First Man has to be considered a success — especially if you see it in IMAX format.

A Gray State captures much of this in one real-life tale that’s as unsettling as it is precisely of-the-moment.

The final sequences are the only "stock" moments in this very specific family drama, and something about the last scene left me cold. But the rest is so effective and emotional, a dedicated portrait of trauma passed down through generations, it doesn't matter.

It's not a pretty picture, but it's a compelling one.

"Bird on a Wire" is a time capsule of a specific period in Cohen's career. But it also neatly illustrates the singer's personality in an accessible and compelling way. It's that rare concert doc that isn't for established fans only.

Just watch 11 Minutes like you're channel-surfing, only you don't have the remote and the roar of static between stations is steadily growing louder as the channels switch back-and-forth, faster and faster.

Although Friedkin was notoriously grandiose at certain stages of his career, he comes across as mostly calm, self-deprecating and centered here, at least when he's concentrating on the nuts and bolts of moviemaking.

As It Is in Heaven ultimately doesn't go anywhere unexpected, but it does foster a potent, unexpected bond between its subjects and its audience.

There is a welcome sense of familiarity in Bridget Jones's Baby — but also of the fresh and au courant.

It's a deceptively complex piece of filmmaking, something that feels artfully executed and organic at the same time. It has so many layers, all of them covered in the emotions that erupt when we reconnect with our families.

It’s a mid-budget riff on “Bullet Train,” after all—but meet it on its altitude, and it’s a bloody, funny good time.

Habits are hard to change; sadly, the people who are most likely to seek out a movie like Eating Animals are already on board with its message.

The most striking and curious aspect of Man of Steel is the way it minimizes and even shuts out women.

As it is, Seriously Red sneaks up on you.

Tamahori and co-writer Shane Danielsen may have taken some historical liberties in loosely basing their script on true events, creating composite characters or writing in new figures. Still, if the goal of “The Convert” was to give a sense of New Zealand when most of its residents called it by its Māori name, Aotearoa, then it is successful.

Daniels delights in his actors, all of whom accept the challenge of bringing something true and vibrant to their various sketchily written characters with the enthusiasm of celebrity competition-show contestants.

Where Maya Dardel really works is when it sticks to being a character study.

It’s certainly like nothing else you’ll see this year.

Grief and loss can take hold of your soul, not unlike a possession; what Clapin explores here is the temptation of reconnection, and what that oft-impossible yearning can do to a person.

Ian McKellen is stunningly good as the older painter, Julian Sklar, a 1960s Swingin’ London sensation who has aged into a decrepit caricature of himself.

Rams is an involving, at times curiously exciting film, because the story is so clean and simple and we always know what's at stake.

It’s a full cast of rising young stars, like Stranger Things before it, and Fear Street gives that palpable sense of having fun while hanging out with them, but worrying that one of them might abruptly die.

A dinner-party-from-hell scenario best served as unspoiled as possible. After all, a psychological thriller built upon slow-simmering tension is only as good as its surprises.

A tender and gentle coming-of-age story, as well as a meditation on grief and letting go. It is also that very rare thing, a movie about teenagers where the characters actually seem like real teenagers, as opposed to mini posing adults.

The sheer musicality of Félicité signals Gomis’ refusal to be pigeonholed into any category of filmmaker.

One of the most refreshing things about Laurie Simmons’ similarly provocative feature directorial debut, My Art, is in how it challenges the very notion of what constitutes a happy ending.

What makes La Camioneta so interesting is not so much the story that it tells as it is the way that Kendall has chosen to tell it.

For a story of a guy who’s willing to get messy for the first time in years, it’s an overly clean piece of screenwriting, one that too often lets its A-list star play ideas instead of a character. But there’s enough to like here to forgive a film whose ambition exceeds its reach, both in some of those ideas and a flawless supporting cast, especially another fantastic turn from Adam Sandler.

The special effects are still top-notch and it is a pleasant little scare-fest for the Halloween season.

Although Rotting in the Sun isn’t revelatory about how little those in the higher echelons of society think about the tribulations of average people, the movie’s forceful way of expressing it achieves its presumed goal: to punch up and mock the fools.

Such is the nature of this movie. It’s like a series of charcoal sketches with marginalia; there are unexpected mini-flashbacks, and even a visualization of a poem. Hong’s free style isn’t showy; there’s a stillness holding the film together at all times.

This is a solid thrill ride all around, especially for those who like their Faustian parables with a bit of the bloody red stuff.

It’s a shaggy hangout film where McCartney and Wonder are dimwitted adversaries who spend their days getting high, insulting one another, and eating veggie dinners. In short, it’s incredibly fun.

The Man in the Basement doesn’t endorse a single answer; it ends on a deliberately tentative note, leaving the viewer thoroughly unsettled.

It flourishes as a modest picture, an acute character study of men and women picking up the pieces of a patriotic ideal that seems to have failed them

The cooking scenes comprise the best moments in this episodic film.

People going to C.O.G. expecting a re-creation of one of Sedaris's reliably uproarious readings of his own material will be disappointed. People who approach it as a film in its own right, with its own rhythms and goals and pleasures, will be amply rewarded.

A.C.O.D. is a sharp, dark-ish character comedy, settling for a dry tolerance in its point of view that is very appealing and even admirable.

The movie’s half-hearted jokes, on frustrated women artists and their blind male collaborators, tend to be one-note and thankfully besides the point. But if you adjust your expectations, you’re more likely to accept Lux Aeterna as a vigorously realized doodle.

Boonyawatana provides a confident and distinctive vision of his own in this, his debut feature. While his spiraling from one genre to another may produce a final lack of coherence, it’s a nervy, purposeful strategy that keeps clichés at bay while engaging viewer interest throughout.

Smoking Causes Coughing works because Dupieux’s already been here and done similar things before. This is just a superior collection of shaggy dog jokes.

The Work asserts that the collapse of emotional barriers feels like an exorcism, and that life’s true labor involves facing and contending with the blues inside us all. Prison blues doesn’t only belong to actual prisoners.

Trocker is deft at creating situations that go right up to the edge of blatant symbolism or metaphor, bit resist the urge to pitch themselves over the brink and become blatant and simplistic.

Most of the best portions of “Ricky” are hard-earned enough to look past moments of inconsistent tone and approach. Because when this character study hits, it can often feel divine.

Remote Area Medical is a rare contemporary documentary that is determined to tell by showing.

A marvelously kooky, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny buddy comedy.

Although the characters tend to lean heavily on caricature, Rodriguez, Wise, and Snow seem to have plenty of chemistry with each other.

Given the complexity and near-fairy tale improbability of his real-life story, it is not surprising that Anthony is comfortable taking a break from plot to revel in the pure abstraction of movement. With this documentary, we can appreciate his story, and his relevé and pirouette.

It’s a movie designed to simultaneously challenge viewers, move them and get them talking. For the most part, it succeeds.

King Car may leave viewers wondering about a number of basic questions (mostly related to the plot), but it also often feels open and precise enough to work on its own terms.

The jump scares work (jump scares almost always do; they're the easiest way to convince the audience that they've gotten their money's worth), but Malum is much more impressive when it turns its talented ensemble cast loose on material that was obviously a lot of fun to play with.

The director was smart enough to take a trait that often caused an actor to be be typecast as a menacing figure and turn it into a strength.

The film may be cinematic comfort food, but its creators do earn our trust and nail all the essential beats they need to along the way.

There may be nothing new in the message but that does not mean we don't need to hear it.

Xavier Giannoli's film adaptation of Balzac's book leans heavily on voiceover, so much so that some sequences are practically an audiobook with images attached. This could be seen as a negative, but in practice the voiceover-heavy sections are some of the film's most successful.

It features career-best work by Long and Rossum, both eagerly devouring Esmail’s witty script. Yes, some of it is overwritten and a bit too clever for its own good, but more often it’s an engaging character piece.

Pope Francis: A Man of His Word is a non-denominational sermon, under the cinematic care of an artist first, Pope Francis fanboy second.

The mission statement is right there in the title. Whether it succeeds will be up to the viewer. As is so often the case with these types of non-fiction films, the people who stand to benefit the most from watching it are likely to avoid it after hearing what it’s trying to do.

After a slightly rocky first act that succumbs to thin generational differences, Brown allows his slow burn to catch fire and doesn’t look back. You may be regretting not being able to visit the beach this summer. Maybe it’s for the best.

It’s a deeply personal film, a life story told by the people who knew and loved Jeff. It hums with the emotion and vibrancy of Buckley’s music.

Anchoring it all is the ever-great Moss, who is also a co-producer on the picture. The actress is always heartbreakingly good playing character forced to endure a lot of humiliation, and in this scenario, she gets it coming and going. She illuminates the serious mess that this farce is about, underneath it all.

Rat Film is an odd and captivating experience, and its fluid style is its most distinguishing characteristic.

Yes. It is good. It is sincere, funny, thoughtful and spiritual, often poignant, and with a deep strain of existential worry running underneath the whole thing.

Man of Tai Chi is hugely entertaining.

Yen continues charging ahead in “The Prosecutor,” which frequently goes hard enough to fly through its corniest lulls.

Breezy, sleazy, and sometimes-intense, Rob the Mob depicts a very specific sliver of time in New York history, a time overrun by crack, graffiti, and omnipresent organized crime.

Polsky’s skill in mining the darkly humorous shades of disastrous hubris is not all that surprising, considering he produced Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage’s funniest film to date, 2009’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.”

Stray Dog largely succeeds because Granik's technique complements her subject. Both he and the film are modest in their goals and cherish the value of honesty.

We experience the sharp pain of a sad loss, a young father and a beloved neighbor and friend. But the larger story, the one about the failure of the Israeli military to respond quickly, about the normalization of having to have a safe room in every home, about the culture of a country where every citizen serves in the military, and about the return to Murrow’s perceptive warning 70 years ago is what we will carry with us.

It's a self-aware movie that makes fun of the macho clichés it indulges.

This restless film is hardly content to present a portrait of an icon, instead insisting, with compassion and clear eyes, that icons are all too human too.

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

Touzani’s “Calle Málaga” is a reminder to savor the days we have in the places and communities we hold dear.

In “Pepe,” a formally imaginative and thought-igniting experimental docufiction, Dominican director Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias molds the real-life events around the hippos imported by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar into an exciting, visually unpredictable consideration of colonialism and human hubris tinged with the fantastic.

While Hood’s film says very little about American policy in this area, it does suggest that its terrible subject is likely to be with us for a long time to come.

The characters are constructs who are so aware of themselves as constructs (and the plot, too) that there's really no reason why we should feel for them, but we do, thanks to the lead performances, the direction, and the kidding/not kidding vibe of the entire production.

What works so well in Mandibles is how it's set up as a basic heist movie, using very familiar elements, so familiar they're almost tired cliches, before going completely off the rails into random demented territory.

Burns' filmmaking is confident and his attitude is anti-sentimental. He captures the atmosphere of a town where a person can leave for five years and come back to find that nothing much has changed. A visit to a local pub means you run into half your high school class. I grew up in a beach town like this. Burns gets it right.

We're watching two strong-willed people overcome their differences and learn to be a team: it's "Die Hard" reimagined as couples' counseling.

The evil that men do, a character says near the end, “tethers us to proof of the divine.” That Crowley packages these ideas in such a bleak, bloody curiosity as this is something to celebrate.

The movie feels instructional without getting too preachy, taking time to explain various inequalities and barriers facing black Americans, typically in exchanges between father and daughter.

In its best moments, Copenhagen, the debut feature of Mark Raso, who also wrote the script, takes place in that dream space.

A dark, weird, smutty, fitfully amusing comedy that ultimately wears out its welcome. As a provocation, it's aces, especially if — like the film's writer-director, Randy Moore — you hate Disney and everything it stands for.

It takes a special screen actor to play a character who appears in almost every scene of a movie; is anxious, sad, or irritable in most of them; never talks about his feelings; and makes choices so upsetting that certain viewers might want to quit watching, but somehow leaves you thinking he’s not that bad of a guy. John Magaro is such an actor.

Pickles in a bag, runaway sheep, dusty roads, the same movie over and over until the tape wears out—these are the sense memories that remind the filmmaker who he is and where he comes from. To share it with the world in this way is an act of profound generosity and love.

Wicked Little Letters is a really effective British mystery, spiked with the comedy of a real caper, with sneaky people bicycling down lanes, or literally crouching in the bushes staring at a mailbox.

The disposable, summer diversion that many families will be looking for as temperatures rise and the start of school seems so far away, but most won’t be able to remember after they see it.

It’s just another solid Loach film, an affectionate realist portrait of individuals fighting against state and religious oppression. In this case the setting, as it was for his 2006 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner “The Wind That Shakes The Barley,” is Ireland.

The smart script is brave enough to venture beyond yesterday’s fleeting Twitter fodder for its pop-cultural references. As a result, Paper Towns might be the only movie to ever pay tribute to Walt Whitman’s poetry, Woody Guthrie’s music and the empowering theme song from the “Pokemon” cartoon series.

As for why the film is called "the pervert's" guide, this reviewer noted that its end credits do not acknowledge the many movies it draws upon so copiously. That, in terms of standard filmmaking etiquette, truly is perverse.

At times, “Diane Warren: Relentless” falters in embodying the transgressive nature of the artist at its center. But upon further reflection, this is the type of lean, no-nonsense documentary that could be made about an artist like her; it’s disarmingly straightforward and bursting with a candor befitting of someone toiling away in a merciless industry purely for the love of the game.

An assured and refreshing first feature from writer/director/star James Sweeney. With the rhythms and conventions of a traditional romantic comedy, it is refreshingly unconventional in form and content, boasting a sharp script and a gift for cinematic storytelling.

Miss Julie is a rather strange experience, with its consistently static medium shots of the three actors, as they roar their lines at one another. But it has an undeniable power.

Against the Tide, a documentary directed by Sarvnik Kaur, depicts environmental disaster with an intimate lens.