It has such a strong aesthetic about it, it's almost as if The Wolverine functions as its own stand-alone film, rather than as a piece of the "X-Men" mythology.

At its heart, it’s an assured tale of queer resistance, blended with the supernatural rhythms of the folktale, and it feels suitably transgressive for its gender-nonconforming characters. It’s sweet, and affirming, and hopefully opens a few people’s eyes (and hearts).

For the most part, Stay Awake stays low-key and believable, particularly when the actors are moving through real-world locations while living their lives.

As the saying goes, I may not know art, but I know what I like. I like this movie.

The result is a film that often feels like Zahler’s most assured to date. Self-indulgent? Oh yeah. A provocation? You bet. But it’s difficult to ignore the craftsmanship and performances in Dragged Across Concrete simply because you don’t like some of its darker themes or feel like it’s too long.

Baskin does what many horror films try and fail to do: it makes you feel like you're a passive prisoner/spectator, watching as an especially vivid nightmare unfolds.

To this viewer, it develops into a pretty nifty piece of genre work, a thriller that’s expertly made even if it doesn’t quite hum like the best Park films. The fact that a good, well-made thriller feels almost like a disappointment given this creator’s pedigree is just a testament to the work he’s produced before.

The results are uneven — how could they not be? — but the sheer weirdness of the whole enterprise has a charm to it and it certainly is never boring. Bewildering, maybe, but never boring.

While the film works as a primer for viewers who are curious about Lear but don’t know the details of his life and work, it’s more interesting as a movie about age and memory.

The film’s boundless enthusiasm for the idea of the library wins the day.

This is first and foremost Eastwood’s movie and if he wants to feature his incongruous tinkling piano-bar jazz on the soundtrack, that is his prerogative.

This documentary is about resilience and advocacy, but most of all it is a love story.

It has a solid story to tell, and tells it with no winks and few, if any, frills. It’s involving and ultimately exciting.

Much like the way that Stubby was often underestimated before he found his calling, I came into this film not expecting how much I would appreciate a more thoughtful use of animation to tell an engaging story.

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 Heat is violent, with some pretty gruesome moments and some questionable police work. That's part of the fun. Cagney and Lacey these two ain't. When they finally join forces, they go rogue with a gusto that is refreshing.

At least in Sin City women are full-on goddesses: powerful and awful, with big needs, willing to go to the mat to get what they want. In other films, the flat portrayal of women seems like a failure of the imagination.

Unfortunately, The Public Enemy isn't as tightly scripted a movie as some other Cagney gangster pictures. Even at 81 minutes, it meanders a bit, and one setpiece doesn't often seem to follow another, logically or psychologically.

This is Mesén's debut feature film, and it's a powerful and intuitive piece of work.

She Will isn't exactly a horror movie. It has its creepy moments, particularly in the visual collages and Clint Mansell's unnerving score, but it's more thought-provoking than scary.

In depicting one woman’s fight for justice, Kaufman’s indelible documentary becomes an empowering three-dimensional story of resistance and courage.

Worth seems to get it, all of it, in a way that films of this type rarely do, which makes it all the more irritating when it appears to retreat from the implications of the way it's telling its complex narrative.

This is an engaging and watchable activist documentary that does make way for optimism in its last minutes, but doesn’t, um, sugarcoat its envoi about changing our eating ways: “Not only can we do it, we have to.”

It’s a movie that only begins as a commentary on doping in sports and becomes something greater about the dangers of being a whistleblower, especially when the whistle blows on Russia.

While it’s ultimately a bit too self-conscious to provoke the existential dread and true terror of the best films like it, it’s still an impressive accomplishment thanks to Eggers’ fearlessness and a pair of completely committed performances.

Without being explicit, without being overtly angry, Kabakov's installations are a critique of the entire system, a critique leavened with irony, wit, and fantasy. It's powerful stuff. You go into Kabakov's labyrinths of associations and you don't come out.

Johnson keeps it all moving at a decent clip, though, with the help of Michael Penn’s score. And she photographs Powley and her mesmerizing blue eyes so lovingly that it’s hard not to find her adorable—even when she’s being awful.

By respecting the spiritual journeys of his subjects, Karslake affirms that he is more concerned with reaching across the aisle than preaching to the choir.

The result is something deeply reflective about femininity, culture, commerce, friendship, sexuality and the various souls who dwell in the impossible intersection of it all.

Magid essentially casts herself as the lead of this documentary, which has a wild way of questioning ownership when it comes to an artist that so many people love.

Beckerman intersperses the footage with static, loud and jagged, and the couple of "effects" included are quick and dirty. If you're going to go the found-footage route, you might as well try to find a new way to approach the material. Beckerman has.

Some of the symbolism has the feeling of being laid on top of the narrative. It feels imposed, especially when it goes from subtext to text. You can see it coming from a mile away. But Ms. Purple works because of Chu's performance.

While it doesn’t quite live up to its grand ambitions, it’s refreshing to see a movie so beautifully and sleekly filmed attempt to wrestle with humanity’s deeper questions. Foxhole might not be in the top tier of the great anti-war film canon, but it's not too far away.

It’s not exactly revolutionary, and more alarming than scary. But it’s still provocatively feverish stuff from the dearly missed vintage annals of Cronenberg.

Some of the filmmaking here is a little frustrating, but Roll Red Roll is ultimately an insightful portrait of an entire city shaken and altered by one heinous act, amplified by modern technology.

The film's best asset, and the thing that elevates it above the 1986 version, is how well it is cast.

Said maintains plausibility throughout, never plotting far-fetched tribulations, but just outrageous enough to cause the viewer to cringe nervously.

The viewer might strap themselves in for some life lessons. “Driving Madeleine” does serve them up, sure, but the film, written and directed by Christian Carion, is a lot more than a sentimental journey.

Lady Macbeth has the refined, pleasing trappings of a tasteful period piece with the vicious, beating heart of a brutal psychological thriller. You can’t stop watching its beauty, even as you long to look away from its cruelty.

The commentary in this film has more affection than insight.

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.

Despite a few very funny beats, and a charming performance from the great Ben Mendelsohn, there’s an air of tragedy throughout “Steady Habits,” as if everyone is one bottle of wine away from doing or saying something they will regret forever. In other words, it’s an insightful portrait of middle-age in the ‘10s.

Breaking Fast is a sweet romantic comedy that shows how it's possible to observe nearly every convention of the mainstream romantic comedy yet still deliver something that feels new.

Before the heartbreak, there are outlandish and often funny stories about iconic album covers.

Is it good? Uh, well, kind of. Does it make sense? Hmm, er, ask me another. Is it worth seeing? Oh, absolutely.

What’s interesting about The Wave is stepping back and considering just how well-constructed the whole thing is. The slow-burn build-up is just long enough, the disaster itself is just harrowing enough and the final act is just intense enough to keep us engaged.

If we were supposed to take this movie literally, the metaphors would feel unforgivably heavy-handed. But if we think of it as a poetic, impressionistic meditation on life, death, love, art, and, yes, light, with excellent performances from the entire cast, we can be invited into its world.

Character actor Tom Skerritt takes the lead for once in this gentle, melancholic drama about an older man who, while overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts, figures some things out for himself. Fans of David Guterson’s source novel will probably get it, but everyone else might need a moment to get the picture.

Sallywood should be required viewing for anyone who thinks fame equals wealth.

What “We Bury the Dead” does really well is remind us that the zombies were once-alive. They are someone’s mother, child, husband. In many zombie movies, they are a faceless unstoppable mob, and you want all of them to be put down stat. They’re the ultimate “heavy”. Here, they are still scary, but they are also sad. What happened to them is tragic. “We Bury the Dead” never forgets that.

At its most controlled and insinuating, Dark Waters is reminiscent of paranoid thrillers from the 1970s like "The Parallax View" and "Chinatown," where you know going in that you're going to see a story about how profoundly bad things are, thanks to corporate influence over government as well as the economy, but the extent of the corruption is still shocking.

Split is more lean and taut in its narrative and pace than we’ve seen from Shyamalan lately.

A deep empathy from Vogt for his child actors elevates this from what it could have been, even if it feels like there’s a tighter version that unfolds with a tad more urgency.

We’re left with the question of what a person can hang on to when everything about their identity and values leaves them.

As in other recent female-driven raunchy comedies like “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” and “Spy,” the force is strong in this one.

Just when you thought the zombie genre was out of ideas, along comes Colm McCarthy’s smart and engaging The Girl with All the Gifts, a film with echoes of George A. Romero, Danny Boyle, and Robert Kirkman but one that also feels confidently its own creation, a unique take on responsibility, adulthood, and a new chapter in evolution.

Based on the book by Suzanne Allain, who also wrote the script, Mr. Malcolm’s List feels as choreographed as a dance, and that becomes a large part of its welcoming ease across two hours.

Ramen Shop believes that the healing power of food can satisfy our hunger for comfort in difficult times, and that should be filling enough for now.

The makers of Going to Mars do right by Giovanni by showing how she speaks for herself.

Electra‘s subject matter is heavy (the title should clue you in), and the emotions are very dark. Still, the film itself shimmers with a kind of free-floating hilarity, and the team’s sense of creativity and pleasure is catching.

Absolutely Anything is more than its unique place in history, and serves to remind us that no one made movies for goofy adults quite like Jones did.

Director Dawn Porter’s film is an intimate homage to both the legend and the man, as spry and lively as Lewis himself.

Still see this film, but see it for what it is: a ferocious showcase for Whishaw, who’s never been nervier, and a promising first feature from a filmmaker with energy to spare.

A forlornly funny and emotionally bruising dramedy that rarely misses an opportunity to reveal humans as the flawed and occasionally awful beings that they are.

A single frame of “The Imaginary” can outshine the mass-produced, visually uninspired animation in some of the American offers targeting the same demographic.

A domestic comedy-drama that starts off from a fairly pat premise but builds strength over the course of its careful, empathetic, and crafty unpeeling of its characters.

While there’s no new ground to be covered—Elizabeth’s captors were long ago brought to justice—it’s still a journalistically thorough and fascinating look back at the story, highlighted by present-day interviews with Elizabeth, her little sister Mary Katherine (who witnessed the abduction) and Elizabeth’s father, Ed Smart.

It’s this kind of mindful direction and editing that helps make 21 Bridges one of the most entertaining and thoughtful American policiers in recent memory.

All the artistry and absurdity, glamour and the grit of the fashion industry are on display in the documentary Mademoiselle C.

Using skillful, involving storytelling and beautifully executed rotoscoped photography, director Ali Soozandeh creates a world of intersecting urban miseries and challenges.

Even if you can’t stand the Minions (who are once again voiced in “Minionese” by Pierre Coffin), you might find this one tolerable. Especially if you’re old enough to get the 1976 jokes yet feel young enough to find bemusement in all the goofy slapstick.

Marks has a skill with character, and her clear trust in Cho and Isaac is rewarded with a father/daughter chemistry that we believe 100%, which allows the emotional arc to connect even when we can see where it’s going.

Its greatest asset is its performances, which operate in strikingly different registers (some more subtle or ‘naturalistic’ and others more heightened) yet somehow work together to further the film’s story and themes.

The film is fun to watch and occasionally illuminating, but is over-packed and barely touches on the problems of scammers, the murky world of “influencers,” copycats who engage in dangerous or harmful behavior, or the infinite regression of people filming their reactions or their friends’ or children’s reactions to what they are watching.

Threaded through with interesting thoughts about matriarchy, climate change and generational trauma, Fast Color tries to do a little too much, and there are maybe one too many things shoehorned in, but Hart wisely keeps the focus intimate, staying close to the characters.

What makes Chase Joynt’s first solo outing as a feature director, Framing Agnes, such essential viewing is the extent to which it sheds new light on the legacy of trans Americans from the past century and beyond, whose voices are only just beginning to emerge from the vault of obscurity.

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

With a running time clocking in just over two hours, Promise at Dawn often plays like a truncated miniseries, with scenes moving along too quickly for their emotional peaks and valleys to reach their fullest expression.

Night Patrol is far from perfect, but it’s got a certain something that pulls you in. The bleakness of its worldview is matched by the integrity of its filmmaking and performances. The life it depicts is not sugarcoated. It’s drenched in blood.

Thyberg keeps her cards close throughout Pleasure, using the film’s verité framing to obscure the extent of her involvement as a director. The film feels even-handed, in the sense that its fly-on-the-wall style lets situations speak for themselves.

The web spun by The Origin of Evil arguably features one twist too many, but the viewer is in for more than a pound by the time it happens. Largely thanks to Calamy’s rock-solid performance.

It's as if the group had studied the "Rabbit season! Duck season!" exchange from the Bugs Bunny-Daffy Duck classic "Rabbit Seasoning," and figured out how to turn the punchline into a political movement.

Echo in the Canyon appears all too content in banking on our nostalgia for the formidable roster of artists it has assembled, relying solely on our familiarity with their work to keep our attention rapt.

Noah is more of a surrealist nightmare disaster picture fused to a parable of human greed and compassion, all based on the bestselling book of all time, the Bible, mainly the Book of Genesis.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World isn’t a perfect watch, and it's often confusing and confounding. But it gets at the heart of this forlorn figure, a once idol turned tragic Greek hero. It’s unflinching, and one of the most honest portraits of the pitfalls that can happen in child stardom.

The Forger is constantly wrestling with its comedic impulses and the gravity of its time.

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.

Most of all it is a pure story about love, without the scandals.

By the time Edie and Jonny make it to the top, we can almost see their souls expand to the farthest reaches of the truly spectacular vista.

Under Potrykus’ clever direction and with a striking performance from Joshua Burge, Marty goes from quirky to desperate to dangerous gradually and effectively. He’s not a character to be taken lightly, or quickly forgotten.

I wonder how people will feel about the final moment of the film. I thought it was great, albeit extremely cynical.

Aaron Swartz’s story should make you furious. In an era when real criminals of our financial crisis ride limousines to dine with the President, our government overzealously tried to put a man behind bars for decades because he tried to better the world.

Some sharp dialogue and Freeman and Pugh's committed and insightful performances hold it together.

The three entirely committed, fearless performers put through the physical and emotional motions by Kim carry a film that is the definition of “not for everyone” but Moebius works on its terms. Its twisted, Oedipal, sadomasochistic, castrated terms.

Unabashedly entertaining at an efficient 91-minutes, The One I Love is an extremely confident first feature, with some really fun things to say about identity and relationship, connection and destiny.

This is neither a trifle nor a truly Major Motion Picture; it’s an entertainment maybe in the sense that Graham Greene used the term. But one needn’t be so hifalutin about the matter.

It’s Mortensen and his smokes that seal the deal. Puffing away, he is dangerously sexy and morally dubious, the latter of which makes perfect sense as we are in Patricia Highsmith territory.

It leaves us with a series of stark images (of the struggle to harvest wheat during a snowstorm, of lamp-lit farmhomes, of Sorenson’s tireless Model T). And it also acts as a reminder of how much of American history stands in danger of being overlooked just because it happened outside the American mainstream.