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.