The Mad Women's Ball is part psychodrama and part melodrama, and it wears those mantles proudly and confidently. Each scene throbs with urgency and emotion. Nothing is unimportant. At the same time, the film is highly controlled, with a taut assured script.

Blitz Bazawule’s new film combines the best aspects of each disparate form, structuring a stunning hybrid that combines the visceral meditations of the written word with the thunderous energy of musical performance.

Watching The Lure is a bit like having manic depression—the thrilling high points are just as relentless as the crushing low-tide ebbs.

Mistaken for Strangers was a group effort. And also an act of love.

This is a smart and loving movie about female friendship.

Christine, centered on a riveting and at times unbearably emotional performance by Rebecca Hall, attempts to give a three-dimensional and respectful-yet-honest portrait of a complex woman. Sometimes the film is successful in this, sometimes it's not.

A sweet film with a purity of purpose and intent, elevating it above other films portraying similar struggles.

Abrams and his screenwriters (Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof) are so obsessed with acknowledging and then futzing around with what we already know about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and company that the movie doesn’t breathe.

Dope alternates between being shockingly tone-deaf and surprisingly on-point.

It also serves up a smorgasbord of explicit homoerotic imagery, surrealism and ambiguity at a time when Western culture seems to be stampeding towards 1950s prurience, fascist-scented literal-mindedness, and corporate self-censorship, "Queer" is a film out of its time in just about every way. That's what's invigorating about it.

The Great Invisible is strongest when it focuses on the micro rather than the macro. How the spill impacted individuals in the region is the real story of The Great Invisible.

You’re likely to laugh and learn in equal measure–and so will your little ones.

Bugonia is an enraged picture. It’s mad at the world; it’s mad at humanity. Nevertheless, the structuring to reveal the full scope of that anger is surprisingly deliberate.

So really, what's great about "Master Z" isn't the way that its creators transcend their chosen formula, but rather how they perfect it.

Instead of piling on contrivances and cheap psychology to move the story along, Kavtaradze keeps "Slow" situated in a refreshingly human level, respecting the intelligence of her characters and the audience.

With sharp character design, entertaining dialogue, and positive messaging, “Orion and the Dark” is an early-year Netflix original surprise.

A soulful, uplifting, but also heartbreaking look at race and poverty's impact on troubled childhood, Alexandre Rockwell's Sweet Thing is a welcome return to form for the accomplished indie filmmaker.

Author is a particular kind of documentary: a first-person account of the creation of a myth by its creator. As such, it poses all sorts of questions about the intersection of art, celebrity and psychological disturbance in our media culture, but it also gives us Laura Albert as a shape-shifting artist of astonishing talent, resourcefulness and originality.

Possessor is humorless, start to finish. Its energy is ponderous and glum, and the provocative ideas are not given a chance to really take on a life of their own. Still, there's much here that is imaginative and fresh.

India's Daughter is a sorrowful and angry movie, yet measured. It seems determined to see a bigger picture without letting one victim's story get lost in the canvas.

Blade of the Immortal required the hand of an experienced director, and they don’t get much more experienced than Miike.

As Alice, Piponnier is phenomenal, putting in a meticulously reserved performance in what could very well have been a melodramatic role.

Martine Syms has a singular voice, flowing with creativity. Using her own background as an artist, Syms has taken artistic academia and the whiplash of exiting the comfort of school and churned it into a jungle juice of weed, ketamine, and self-discovery.

Lesage supplies exemplary tension and intrigue over the course of two plus hours, while at the same time suggesting to the viewer, accurately, that anything in the way of a definitive resolution is not in the cards.

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.

When it comes to conjuring a sense of place, Driver’s film succeeds spectacularly, though it comes up short in other areas.

It’s a low-key trippy sci-fi movie about booty calls with an unwieldy space squid, but I wish I could say it was much more than that.

Does it matter that the trajectory of The Eagle Huntress feels scripted at times and the actions we witness are sometimes staged or even manipulated? Somewhat.