Both sprawling and intimate, it tells a story dealing with life, love, friendship, mortality and, yes, AIDS, in a manner that is relentlessly and deliberately unsentimental in tone but which nevertheless proves to be quite affecting.

One of the great director Terence Davies' best films: an example of old school and new school mentalities coming together to create a challenging and unique experience.

Chol Soo Lee’s complicated story deserves to be told; this film does a good job telling it.

It’s a movie that finds most of its power through silence—the proud and yet pained look Tucci gives to Firth during that speech will stick with me for a long time.

This isn’t a classic, but it’s good enough to make you think Fuller has a classic in him.

Beyond the Lights makes unapologetically damning statements about the music industry’s treatment of women, yet it never feels preachy. It strikes a risky, though successful balancing act between being immensely entertaining as a musical feature and making dramatic, important statements about depression, self-worth and female empowerment.

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

As proven in Ondi Timoner’s unbelievably personal, profoundly bittersweet, and occasionally disquieting documentary “Last Flight Home,” having agency over one’s final departure isn’t exclusively reserved for those existing in conflict with the status quo.

Touzani’s “Calle Málaga” is a reminder to savor the days we have in the places and communities we hold dear.

When Michell is on his game, as he definitely is with Le Week-End, he unearths small, invaluable and even profound truths about the human condition that are often as inspiring as they are devastating.

There are no thrills in this western yarn, just a mounting series of tragedies that are by turns frustrating and numbing.

The insights offered from the almost two-dozen show biz luminaries are not always commonplace, and Gottfried is always an interesting screen presence, even when he’s far removed from his persona.

As we see how society functions (or fails to do so) in the face of one of history’s most devastating crises, take some time out and watch The Platform, a funhouse mirror reflection of our world.

Hoppers is Pixar at its best, a story with warmth, humor, exciting action, endearing characters, and a reassuringly expansive notion of community.

There are many rewards to be found here, not the least of which is a skill at staging scenes with beginnings, middles, and ends that are entirely dependent upon the subtle interactions of a few actors who live or die on the basis of the words they've been given to speak, and the silences they've been encouraged to inhabit.

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.

Directed by an old family friend, “Jim” is a moving portrait of courage, but it is most of all a concerted effort to take back the life of James Foley.

This is a dazzling movie, all the more so for being made on a seemingly tiny budget. Emergency has a lot to say even though it never carries itself as a film that has a message.

The most purely entertaining zombie film in some time.

Mija weaves a more nuanced emotional tapestry than is typically seen in immigration stories like this one. Yes, sadness and fear are present. But gratitude, resentment, guilt, stress, hope, and excitement are also essential to Doris’ story, her family’s story, and the Mexican-American community at large.

One of the more tough-minded and effective war pictures of post-American-Century American cinema.

One of the main pleasures of watching The Raft, a new documentary that combines decades-old footage of the Acali's 101-day voyage with modern-day commentary by the ship's six surviving crew mates, is that the Acali's story isn't just told from Genoves's self-mythologizing perspective.

Riley understands that satire can embed messaging in the whimsy. You’ll walk out of this one feeling boosted.

By the end of this film, you might think that understanding trees on such human terms is not even close to doing them justice.

This is Owen Kline's first feature, and he knows this world—the world of comic book obsessives and hopeful comics artists—very well. Nostalgia is probably at work in the film—somewhere—but it's buried under layers of grime and bitter disillusionment.

There are some similarities in all of this to Joachim Trier's "The Worst Person in the World" (particularly the women’s hairstyles, as well as all that running), but the mood and tone is entirely different, less meditative, less mournful.

A documentary that inspires long, gauzy gazes back to the carefree, youthful past of viewers of a certain age.

Don't let the tacky American-friendly title of Kill Zone 2 fool you: the martial arts genre's next big thing is here, and it is way meaner, more technically accomplished, and more exciting than its disappointing marketing strategy implies.