Tower is explanatory journalism and history, but also personally expressive, and the two impulses never cancel each other out.

This film is exceptionally skillful in matching the footage to the commentary in thoughtful, illuminating, and often touching pairings.

Best of all: you don't have to wait until a concluding set piece for To to prove his prowess as a storyteller.

The film carefully balances the most painful moments with glimmers of progress and hope and makes a powerful argument for looking at struggles so easily ignored.

Demme’s concert films aren’t just recordings of events—they’re cinematic embodiments of their musicians, capturing in a moment an energy that transcends time.

Even if this documentary directed by Lisa Hurwitz had nothing else to recommend it, it would be worthwhile as an excellent source of Mel Brooks.

As the heart of the story, however, Sarah Snook delivers a knockout performance that calls on her to perform the kind of tricky scenes that could have resulted in bad laughs throughout if handled incorrectly. Not only does she pull off her performance brilliantly throughout—there is not one moment in which she is anything less that utterly convincing and believable.

The filmmakers really do manage to visualize a distinctly Ballardian nightmare-scape. This in itself makes High-Rise worth experiencing.

The result is a sprawling urban drama with eruptions of violence.

Huda's Salon does not stop for one second to take a breath, and the subjects revealed have enormous and urgent philosophical reverb.

Part rap musical, part social satire, with elements of Westerns and kung fu pictures, Bodied is one of the funniest, freest movies of the year.

It is an unmistakably “small” film, but as the story builds up and the characters come into focus, you know you are witnessing something rare and precious: an American independent film that’s understated and intelligent, as well as utterly free of showiness and calculation.

Holy Spider’s rendition of this grisly tale is powerful and precise, commendably lacking the sensationalistic tone of some serial killer movies.

Spa Night takes too much time to portray David's achingly slow and incomplete coming-out process, but its focus on the interior maelstrom of a teenager is extremely insightful

Like many classic Japanese monster films of the era, it is blithely unconcerned with convincing you that anything in its running time could actually happen. As a result, you believe in every frame. You enter the dream.

A long-winded but engrossing kidnap thriller.

In the few moments where he's left to prank people on his own, Bad Grandpa doesn't treat him like the clichéd potty mouthed kid out for shock value. Instead, he uses his childlike innocence to make the adults more uncomfortable than his grandpa's raunchier shenanigans ever could.

You could call it a musical performance documentary and not be wrong, but it's trying to do other things too, some expertly and others not so well; but there's never a point where you quite get a handle on it because it keeps changing in front of your eyes.

The cast is perfect, but The Nice Guys could have used one more rewrite or two and another trip to the editing bay to really streamline jokes that don’t work and a plot that gets more cluttered than engaging.

It’s a genuine achievement on an inexhaustible subject.

Bones and All plays out as a can’t-look-away, riveting experience for most of its running time. It’s easy to get entranced by its modestly sumptuous imagery, the believable chemistry of the volatile couple, and even the rattling bluntness of the graphic sequences.

While “Jim Henson: Idea Man” may not break any new ground regarding Hensonian research or documentary filmmaking in general, it should prove valuable to younger viewers curious to know more about the man behind so many beloved childhood icons.

Wilmont's film edges into emotional exploitation at times, but the raw moments he captures in this facility are a testament to the trust he clearly built with everyone there—and that ability to capture truth without interfering or manufacturing gives his film an undeniable emotional power.

One might not think that bouncing back and forth between Jazz Hentoff and First Amendment Hentoff would make for consistently engaging viewing, but the movie is in fact remarkably fluid and never less than compelling.

Hilarity ensues, but so do the lessons. . . In this raunchy little escapade, actions have consequences.

Faults is a richly-textured movie that concerns the weird space between thinking you know what you're doing, and actually knowing what you're doing.

Some experiences are so profound (and/or scarring) that they elude explication. The Inspection is about that sort of experience, which translates far beyond boot camp and resonates through our lives, until the final trumpet fades.

Aniskovich clearly loves her subjects, but the lack of tension is noticeable and a bit of a letdown, even if everyone else remains engaging and worth following.