Rose Plays Julie is very controlled in its style: this control reaps huge rewards.

It's truly refreshing to watch a film where nobody has anything figured out, where life proceeds messily and imperfectly. Saint Frances is unpredictable in a very human way.

It’s a really difficult film to capture tonally and even narratively in a review, largely because it is such a stylish, visceral experience that it demands you give yourself over to it actively instead of passively analyzing it.

It is a true peek into the life of a private superstar. How did he become a rock icon? How did he turn his childhood pain into art? How did his emotional demons overtake him? These are much more difficult questions for a filmmaker to answer than “Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam” or other such garbage of the traditional rock doc.

The most pleasurable aspect of 20th Century Women (and it's pleasurable throughout) is that it allows itself to be messy.

Love remains distinct, given its unsparing view of people as flawed and not very sure of themselves.

Qhile this particular story takes place nearly a decade ago, it remains unfortunately timely as Russia’s horrific war in Ukraine rages on; Klondike helps put a specific, vivid face on a faraway conflict.

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.

Everything in The Lego Movie is, indeed, awesome.

There is that feeling you get inside when a movie suddenly starts to push your every button, creating an emotional connection that goes beyond pure reason and mere emotion. It elevates your mood to such a point that you wish you could hug the screen out of sheer joy and recognition. That is what Gloria did to me.

Ixcanul combines its fable-like plot with striking realism.

A musical about the aftermath of 9/11 may sound like an eat-your-vegetables chore, but Come From Away is as comforting—and as layered—as a plate of poutine.

Evil Does Not Exist is something different, starting out as a character study cum eco parable and morphing into an enigmatic nightmare.

Akin is here working in a tradition established in Italian Neo-realism — and by the end of the film, he shows he can turn on the viewer’s tear ducts as deftly as De Sica did in his prime — but his narrative approach brings a vivid freshness to the proceedings.

Throughout the picture, Bernstein interacts with genteel folk who quietly deplore what they see as the American perception of art and art-making.

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.

A 100-minute spell of beauty and melancholy, intimate and grand in equal measure, a film that derives its power from the universality of its final destination and the relatability of the pain, love, and regret that pave the guiding road.

Despite its occasional shortcomings, From Russia with Love is still a terrific Bond entry. There's true chemistry between Connery's 007 and Armendariz's Kerim Bey, and it is all the more remarkable when considering that the Mexican actor was in great pain and living his final days while the shooting took place. His character's eventual fate is among the few in the Bonds to have a real emotional impact.

In the end, all that can be relied upon are objects and gestures. The littlest things that tie us to each other. The film often slows to a standstill to show children playing, cars passing, people talking and streets emptied of traffic.

This is a very good film, full of memorable performances and thought-provoking speeches and arguments. The accomplishments of King and her actors are even more impressive when you stop to think about the shadows these men cast, both in their real-life incarnations and their cinematic representations.

Regardless of its missteps, Grossman’s film should be seen as a necessary introduction to a multitude of stories warranting greater analysis.

The movie version of The Reason I Jump does not, in other words, successfully illustrate what its title promises, but rather generalizes about a sensitive topic to the point of inadvertently making it seem more unapproachable.

It’s a meticulously crafted, albeit not totally original critique of internet culture, bursting with color and melodramatic teen angst.

The film's writer-director, Tamara Jenkins is a brilliant chronicler of upper-middle class white people and their foibles, and her eye for detail is anthropologically exact, empathetic but never begging for sympathy.

Moonage Daydream is a stunning achievement in editing, cutting across eras and settings not to the rhythm of the music as much the mood of it.

BlacKkKlansman presents racism as a dichotomy between the absurd and the dangerous; the film’s intentional laughs often get caught in one’s throat.

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.

The world Baker creates for her characters is so rich, warm, and beautiful.

Patient and kindhearted, a painted storybook in motion, Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds is a lovely glimpse of what animation can be.

A brilliant science fiction movie — more of an "experience" than a traditional story, with plenty to say about gender roles, sexism and the power of lust?

Emotionally charged, viscerally exciting and consistently enlightening, Gabe Polsky’s Red Army is a sports documentary like no other.

There’s more than enough to like here, including a great ensemble, the best performance from a living legend in years, and, again, a message that feels depressingly timely.

There’s been nothing quite like Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham, an exhilarating testament to documentaries as a boundless form of art.

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.

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.

The movie does a superb job showing the mental and physical preparation and effort required. And for all that, doubt and a little bit of fear persist, souring Honnold’s first try at a climb.

Although the film has much in common with other religious-based horror films, and is often quite terrifying in its own right, Saint Maud is mostly interested in the experiential realities of its central character, and Clark is so deeply in touch with Maud's shattered psyche it's impossible to look away from her. It's thrilling to meet a character where you have no idea what she will do from one moment to the next.

It’s not a hard movie to follow or fall for, as fans of Guiraudie’s earlier movies already know. He commands our attention even when his characters are either too ridiculous or too petty to be taken seriously.

Although the duo's reputation hardly needs bolstering these days, it gets just that in this extraordinary exploration of their legacy by one of the many filmmakers who have found themselves enthralled and inspired by it.

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

With all the humor, though, the film strikes an unexpectedly tender almost bittersweet chord, the humor shadowed by sorrow, loneliness, helplessness.

James White is a masterful examination of how our behavior and the excuses we make about our lives fall away under certain, life-changing conditions.

No, what's most disquieting about It Follows is the way it presents sex as neither abnormal, nor beneficial.

Mitchell makes a very solid case that the Black cinema of the ‘70s was just as formative and influential as the white auteurs who so commonly define that revolutionary era.

This is a movie that’s impressively, if not stubbornly understated, where life stories come from select bits of precise dialogue, with lovingly rendered characters put into a collection of scenes that simply allow us to live with them.

Tsang has made a small, affecting, and studiously minimalist film here, with lived-in and tactile visual and design elements signaling a major auteur in the making.

So spot-on in its evocation of that whole "scene," onstage and off — its intimacy, competition, struggles and rhythms — that at times it feels like a documentary.

This movie won an award in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes last year, and was also Finland’s entry for consideration for a 2016 Academy Award. For all that, I should warn some readers that this is a movie that’s laid back to what many would consider a fault.

While “Souleymane’s Story” throws many roadblocks in this Guinean man’s way, it’s pretty clear where we’re heading. And while that predictability does slightly undermine the weightiness of the journey, the ending, a cathartic revelation, is granted immeasurable pathos due to Sangaré’s overwhelming openness as an actor.

In Lacorazza’s hands, the film becomes less about individual memories of a fraught childhood than their gradual accumulation; it’s not slice-of-life but rather summation-of-self, for all three protagonists.

Indian filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane’s first feature is a masterpiece, one of the best films of the year.

In the end, Locke is a cinematic stunt that engrosses as it unspools, and pays dividends after it’s been accomplished.

Cave's soulful performance, shot in real-time and in extreme close-up, is that much more impressive once you realize he's playing a song for Forsyth and Pollard before he's performed it in front of a live audience.

The Woman Who Left isn't as exhausting as other recent works by Diaz, like “Century of Birthing” or “Norte, The End of History,” and its grace notes are more sublime.

Although the script, from Al-Rasheed and co-writers Delphine Agut and Rula Nasser, is at times overstuffed and its symbolism obvious, its world is so well built out and Palestinian actress Mouna Hawa’s lead performance is so absorbing, the final result is a mesmerizing piece of personal, yet political filmmaking.

It’s a collective dream coated in a blue lacquer dancing on the edge of something unrecognizable, something wholly transcendent. And it arrives with an exceptional display of bravura.

RRR feels simultaneously personal and gargantuan in scope.

Indeed, González has the keen eye of a documentarian that can perceive the very details that normally escape one’s gaze. His film demonstrates just how much we can glean by slowing down to savor the sights around us and those who inhabit them. To take the time to look at the world through the eyes of others rather than be limited by our own perspective.

There are as many quietly effective moments as there are stand-up-and-cheer moments, and they’re all handled with skill and dexterity on both sides of the camera.

Bad Axe really gets at how much the national anxiety of the 2020s broadened the chasms that already existed in our society, pushing politically different people against one another in ways that historians will debate for eternity.

It is daring, riveting, and the first great movie of 2019.

Dear Comrades is a fascinating, irony-steeped portrait of a soul who’s been hardened by her trauma, to the extent that she embraces its architects.

The movie is relentless in how it poses questions about our culture’s way of dealing with the power of female sexuality (and it wouldn’t work without Robinson, whose appearance and performance is impeccable for the job) and acknowledges that there’s not only unease in these questions and their answers but also mordant hilarity.

Hundreds of Beavers, a boldly bizarre, nearly wordless slapstick comedy about a 19th-century trapper doing battle with nature, exceeds expectations in every way, including the promise of its title.

With a knowing smile, she revisits her memories in one-on-one style interviews, looking directly at the camera—at us—to tell her story. A chorus of scholars, critics and friends join her to sing praises for her work that she’s too modest to bring up herself.

Simply as a technical spectacle, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is a dazzling achievement, capturing the sensation of seeing the pop goddess’ sold-out concerts in all their enormity and intimacy.

With Sachs’ painterly compositions and Whishaw’s deceptively effortless performance, “Peter Hujar’s Day” is a surprisingly beautiful and subtle tribute to the balancing act it takes to be a working artist.

Admittedly, this 85-minute film is not the kind of movie you wish that had been a lot longer. And yet, it's still worth exploring for a number of reasons—primarily the strength of Crawford’s performance—and those who do not have a problem with raw and unflinching dramas may indeed find it well worth watching.

With Night of the Kings Lacôte collapses the bounds between eras, and dissolves myth and reality, performance and remembrance, into one whole. It’s an assured, energetic piece of epic filmmaking, one that celebrates how storytelling, oration, and folklore teach us about our past so we might change our present.

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.

Wenders chooses to illuminate indirectly, and to compel the viewer to concoct questions of their own.

It’s a deceptively well-made flick that appears to be Linklater in little more than his “let’s have fun” mode. But it can’t keep one of the smartest filmmakers of his generation from elevating everything that this movie is trying to do with remarkable depth.

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.

Like all of Petzold’s recent pictures, Afire draws you in confidently and prepares its knockout emotional punch with scrupulousness and a vivid sense of surprise.

The Cathedral marries form to content in a striking way.

Relaxer is a light, but moody comedy about an irredeemable loser who is too unwell to save himself. Imagine a deceptively optimistic comedy concerning a neurotic fish who's slowly circling his unwashed, slow-draining aquarium.

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.

What it definitely isn't is a biography of David Foster Wallace, much less a celebration of his work and worldview.

Labyrinth of Cinema is tremendously affecting, frequently beguiling, usually exhausting, and on, and on, and on.

One leaves Vortex feeling cleansed by fire.

The pleasures of watching There Is No Evil—a title that grows more piercingly ironic as the film progresses—are considerable.

While the filmmaker tries to neatly bring the complex tale to a close in its final minutes, it feels like a different story takes off at the conclusion of Ciorniciuc’s compact 80-something minutes; one that would encompass new jobs, a newborn, distressingly uncertain prospects, and even higher-than-before stakes in the midst of an unforgiving urban jungle.

It’s a stunning showcase for the great character actor Frankie Faison, who conveys Chamberlain’s confusion and terror with palpable empathy and honesty.

Maiden excels as a suspenseful sports tale and a record of a historic first, but its biggest strength is in its warts-and-all character study of the Maiden crew. One can’t help but feel seen, moved and empowered once the credits roll.

While it may be a few beats too long, especially in its multiple endings, it’s a shockingly memorable movie, the kind that gets better as you dissect and discuss how much it does right after the lights have gone up. And, let’s not forget this important factor for summer movie dollars, it’s wildly entertaining.

You Won’t Be Alone announces the arrival of a fierce new genre talent, an inventive stylist and an unapologetic interrogator of mankind with something worthwhile to say.

Viewers looking for a tidy narrative and gratifying conclusions will come up short with this movie. But if you can roll with atmospherics that are their own reason for being, “Grand Tour” has plenty, and they’re all beautifully realized.

Cretton shows as much care and kindness with the minutiae of the daily routine — as he does with the larger issues that plague these lives in flux. He also infuses his story with unexpected humor as the kids hassle each other — and their supervisors — on the road to healing.

The beats play in a suspense thriller’s register, creating a heightened tension that is often unnerving. We are living the story through the eyes of a lover desperate to reconnect with her beloved, and her feelings of desperation, concern and fear bleed directly into the frame.

What is most endearing about the film is the palpable message throughout that Sesame Street was brought to us by the letters LOVE.

But the true strength of Residue is in its images. Gerima finds a poetic grace in his framing while forcing you to focus on unexpected things.

House of Hummingbird deserves a place alongside the likes of “The Virgin Suicides,” “The Ocean of Helena Lee” and “Eighth Grade” as one of the most knowing and intelligent cinematic takes on the pains and occasional pleasures of female adolescence of recent years.

In the meantime, this movie means to make us notice the marvelous in the everyday, in much the way that a great James Schuyler poem does.

More than just a shaggy dog story, Grand Theft Hamlet is a pointed, entertaining and moving examination of interdisciplinary conductivity at its most surprising.

While it keeps a sharp, neo-realist-influenced eye on the everyday lives of its characters, Joyland often gets so intimate as to discomfit the viewer to the point of exasperation. But the movie itself never judges.

What begins as a thorny meet-cute turns into the longest unofficial first date ever, unfolding into a survey of the difficulty of moving on and the joy of quick connection. Rye Lane is a playful rom-com for the modern age.

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.

From director Hubert Davis, Black Ice is an icebreaking expose on the influence and oppression of Black athletes in Canada’s most treasured sport, hockey.