Even though Wetlands is absolutely, brutally unrelenting in its depictions of bodily functions and searching adolescent sexuality, it’s also an inventively sharp, briskly edited, spectacularly-acted post-adolescent coming-of-age story.

Limbai captures all of this in a direct, unforced, and restrained manner that makes its points about the need for reform to social services without becoming overly strident.

It’s smartly crafted, well-written, and strongly performed. I’m not sure it works as social media commentary, but it undeniably clicks as an entertaining thriller about someone who thinks the Insta-world is shallow enough to hide her sociopathic behavior.

In Jakob’s Wife, the classic vampire theme is looped into an insightful and often very funny commentary on marriage and the limitations placed on women.

The movie hits its cinematic stride, as it happens, when events are at their worst. The Promise is drenched in production value and replete with ravishing shots of sunrises and sunsets, but it’s in the scenes of fleeing, of battle, and of horrendous loss that the film is at its most effective. The depiction of the savagery inflicted on Armenia is bracing.

It might not always gracefully connect its plot dots, but “Tomorrow” is almost always watchable.

A humorous if occasionally horrific pitch-black satire.

Thankfully, Jodo’s latest is also way too weird to be hagiographic. It’s indulgent, absurd, frustrating, and more than a little gross. It’s also idiosyncratic and funny enough, and in ways that Jodo’s fans will probably love.

It takes prodigious comic gifts to make a loathsome, pathetic character so mesmerizing that you enjoy watching him dig himself into a hole for 90-plus minutes. Jim Cummings, the star, editor, co-writer, and co-director of The Beta Test, has those gifts.

Whatever "Breaking Bread" lacks in artistic ambition, it makes up for with its good heart, sincere intentions, and, most importantly, all of those luscious images of food.

Fair warning: If a romance about beautiful, miserable people is your least favorite indie subgenre, this may not be your cup of tea.

There’s more than enough to like here, including a great ensemble, the best performance from a living legend in years, and, again, a message that feels depressingly timely.

It is the compassion the film has for its characters that is the film’s true grace.

With music by Qween Beat, Kiki shows the new generation of the ballroom scene, their care for one another, their awareness of the struggles ahead, their determination to be themselves, against all odds. They are scared, but they are strong.

The sensibility behind “The Strangler” is sufficiently unusual and stalwart.

Ozon has a ball poking fun at a corrupt justice system that shuffles one criminal to the next crime-out-of-convenience and imagines how public opinion would fashion Madeleine into a feminist symbol.

Ultimately, For Madmen Only is essential for comedy fans and historians. It’s something that anyone interested in theater as a career or even anyone who does improv comedy on the weekends should check out on VOD.

Whether his film is lush or rolling in the muck, it always has a tactile quality that makes it accessible, which is also true of the performances from his (mostly) well-chosen cast.

While the wind goes out of its sails a few times along the way, this is a ravishingly photographed, old-fashioned man-against-the-elements adventure epic propelled by human-scaled heroics.

In recalling his youthful days in an insular neighborhood in the titular city, Branagh has made a film that’s both intimate and ambitious—his Roma, if you’ll forgive the inevitable comparison to Alfonso Cuarón’s recent masterpiece.

It seems more likely that this is a film about discoveries rather than statements, with the camera following people and then abandoning them to seek insight elsewhere, by looking into things rather than merely looking at them.

Harrison’s powerful performance and the chance to learn about this extraordinary artist make Chevalier more than worthwhile.

So clever and well-done that it makes the sins of the finale easy to forgive.

A largely fun watch, a corporate crime tale of consistent tartness enacted by a superb cast.

Despite its hard message, Dogman comes across as sympathetic for any gentle soul trying to make a deal with the devil. May you heed this movie’s warning and not end up like poor Marcello.

What Bill Skarsgard does with the role works well precisely because he doesn’t appear to be laboring so hard to frighten us. He doesn’t vamp it up. He’s coy — he toys with these kids — making his sudden bursts of insane clown hostility that much more shocking.

Southwest of Salem has an investigative questioning bent, but it is always clear in its attitudes about the four co-defendants. It is a powerful act of advocacy. It's hard to look at these events in any light other than that a terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place.

The Heart Machine lies somewhere between the AOL love letter “You’ve Got Mail” and the more cautionary “Her” on the issue of what effect all this technology is having on society.