The resilience in Scrapper is a type of lived creativity, an imaginative space where Georgie—and her father—make up their own rules and their own world. This is an amazing directorial debut.

Full Time looks and sounds like a nail-biting thriller and tells a story that many viewers will be able to relate to on an intensely personal level.

Because it is the first film to be released by Higher Ground, the production company formed by Barack and Michelle Obama that signed a highly publicized deal with Netflix, American Factory will no doubt find an audience far larger than the typical documentary focusing on the contemporary labor movement.

Ixcanul combines its fable-like plot with striking realism.

Intelligently conceived, beautifully executed and filled with surprisingly convincing performances all around... We Are What We Are is that rare horror film that could play at both arthouse and grindhouse theaters without seemingly out of place at either one.

The best thing about Welcome to Mercy is that its creators don't go for cheap thrills ... not many, anyway.

Dinner in America, written, directed, and edited by Adam Rehmeier, is a movie with anti-establishment anti-social quicksilver coursing through its veins, but at its heart it is a sweet love story, one of the sweetest in recent memory.

The film’s final scene is both charming and hilarious and puts a delightful ribbon on top of what the film’s opening so sneakily established.

Most modern sports movies feel a few years behind the story—purposefully nostalgic for a feel-good, motivational story. High Flying Bird feels like a product of the 2018-19 NBA season, which may not have a lockout but is dealing with the same issues.

What Trachtenberg seems to get about the Predator franchise, between “Prey” and this, is that the central appeal of the Predator is conceptual: How would we fare, we at the top of the food chain, if placed in competition with a hunter far more well-equipped than we?

Though this isn’t very gory, the intensity level is impressive in the haunting scenes, so much so that, at one point, I caught myself watching through my fingers. The sound design also deserves mention, because a haunted house is only as good as its noises, creaks, and moans.

Super Dark Times has a deeply unnerving mood, more unnerving than "what happens."

This is a special movie. It has a life force unlike any other crime thriller I’ve seen. It’s about characters who suffer a personal failure but emerge transformed. It’s a violent movie, but not a cruel one, and unexpectedly moving by the end.

Avalon is often a warm and funny film, but it is also a sad one, and the final sequence is heartbreaking. It shows the way in which our modern families, torn loose of their roots, have left old people alone and lonely--warehoused in retirement homes. The story of the movie is the story of how the warmth and closeness of an extended family is replaced by alienation and isolation.

One of the most influential science fiction films that most people haven't seen, Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 Alphaville is a combination film noir, social satire and riff on tough-guy movies, set in a world of nearly nonstop night.

Similar to “Gravity” or “Avatar,” it offers viewers experiences that can only be seen in large scope storytelling, this one coming with the budget of NASA trips to the International Space Station.

There are so many ways to go wrong with this story, which we are told was inspired by an unidentified real father and son. Writer/director Uberto Pasolini does not let that happen, relying on the most ordinary details to take on greater and greater weight.

It draws us in with acutely observed details and relatable characters that portray universal conflicts, all with nuance and good humor.

What elevates Hide Your Smiling Faces is Carbone's gentle, lyrical touch where other filmmakers would have turned the same thematic concerns into melodrama.

Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc is a beautiful, bizarre, and poignant adaptation worthy of its source material.

The most enchanting thing about “ChaO” isn’t necessarily its hyperpoptimism, but the many little ways in which its breezy and arresting style reflects its creators’ lightly held Utopianism.

The Mermaid will make you laugh. It doesn't matter if you don't like subtitles. It doesn't matter if you've never heard of the director. It doesn't matter if you've never seen a Chinese movie in your life. It will make you laugh. Guaranteed.

Without making it blatant, this is a film that is obviously building to disaster, a story of a man who is the human iteration of one of his high-speed vehicles, just hoping not to crash.

While the documentary does conjure up the whole sex-drugs-rock ’n’ roll ethos of that fabled time with great flair and pungency, it also movingly probes the hazards and costs of the overindulgence and self-deceptions the era’s lures often entailed. In essence, it serves up the myth and a necessary corrective to it simultaneously.

A sharp, funny, and bizarrely responsible documentary about an amusement park in Vernon, New Jersey.

The Pivens, who literally grew up together and made this as a passion project, have a shared vision, and a level of comfort and communication that brings sincerity and authenticity to the performances at every level.

Centering the character’s experience is pivotal to making the movie so effective, but when it deviates from those visual guidelines, it feels like it loses a touch of its power. As a trained actor with a camera on him throughout the entirety of the film, Poikolainen shoulders the task with a stoic grace and a sardonic wit.

Simply put, this is one of the craziest films to come along in a while and I can confidently say that anyone who sees it will either hail it is some kind of crackpot masterpiece or dismiss it as one of the silliest damn things they've ever seen.