From Cole's own words and interviews with his friends and loved ones, Peck writes a thorough narrative through the highs and lows of the photographer's life, including details about his childhood in South Africa and many years of homesickness abroad.

Roger Ebert famously described cinema as a machine that generates empathy. This movie is that machine: a relentless engine field by idealism and craft.

Guiraudie's directorial assurance is stunning: the entire movie is a master class in audiovisual storytelling, as well as an exemplary case of immersing the viewer in an environment.

Make no mistake: this is a horror film; as you stare at the screen, the abyss it represents stares back at you.

The excellent and infuriating Hold Your Fire has all the twists and turns of the best hostage movie thrillers.

At times, Sicario is a deeply satisfying, intense examination of a war with no rules of engagement, driven by a spectacular performance by Benicio Del Toro and typically mesmerizing cinematography from Roger Deakins. At other times, especially in its middle act, Sicario can be frustratingly self-indulgent.

Thankfully, “Queendom” is not a dull documentary on a fascinating subject.

The movie is potent with rage from end-to-end.

The characters in this film are defined by motives that are small enough to be relatable, and actions that are big enough to be inspiring.

Diaz displays a remarkable skill with editing hours of footage about a complex issue into a tight piece of non-fiction filmmaking that makes its point often merely by bearing witness to history being made in the Philippines.

It wants to put you smack-dab in the middle of a particular place during a particular time, and let you marinate in that place and time through quiet montages and long—sometimes very long—scenes.

It’s one of the most stunningly shot films of not just this year, but the last several. I can’t wait to just see it again, just to bask in its visuals without trying to follow its plot. And the sound design is so remarkable that it’s almost overwhelming—this is a film you don’t passively watch, you experience it.

A soul-stirring, foot-stomping and inspirational step beyond most in that its final showdown is only the beginning of a path towards a brighter future for the participants.

Orson Welles once described his approach in “Citizen Kane” as “prismatic,” and while there are many differences in subject and style between that cinema milestone and Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter” the two films share a multi-faceted formal playfulness and an essential intellectual seriousness that make them similarly bracing, original and thought-provoking.

Eden is long, but Hansen-Love's style is so observant and specific that it is always a compelling watch and ends up being sneakily profound.

By the end of the film, you feel you know these people. You still may be a “blow-in,” but they’ve allowed you access to their inner worlds, they’ve allowed you to see them.

This is a difficult movie to sit through, not just because of the subject matter, but because it's so honest in dramatizing how people process tragedy and carry it through life.

This is a thoroughly fascinating documentary about a family discovering the depth and complexity of their patriarch while coming to terms with his flaws, as well as the capitalist system of art exhibition and sale that has different tiers and gatekeepers, depending on who you are and your version of life.

The result is a slow burn of a drama with a restrained tone that may put off some viewers, but which will captivate those who responded to its low-key wavelength.

The film builds its case piece by shattering piece, inspiring levels of shock and outrage that stun the viewer, leaving one shaken and disturbed before closing out on a visual note of hope designed to keep us on the hook as advocates for change.

This Much I Know to Be True is masterfully directed, an example of when a filmmaker and a musician are working in unison creatively instead of just going through the motions.

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

Intimate and impressionistic but ultimately a little self-indulgent.

In the end, [Cregger] wants to take you on a ride, and so he’s got to provide both hills and valleys, producing a horror film that’s equally hilarious and chilling.

Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion often just from a glance or a reaction.

After Love is not an accurate description. Love does not end in this story any more than the anguish of loss. Instead, it is about characters who find that a broken heart is open to empathy and learn to recognize that what connects us is so much more than what divides us.

As focused and controlled as every scene in "Close" is, it feels, in a way, calculated and almost cruel.

A film like State Funeral is a warning. History has lessons for us about what does, and does not, work, in politics, in leadership, in culture itself. We would do well to listen. We would do well to watch.