A pop music phantasmagoria that’s equally egoless and entertaining.

We’re seeing a then-17-year-old Eilish change her style, come into her own and demand control of her image, right down to directing her own music videos. We’re watching the birth of a star, an exhilarating and sometimes excruciating experience.

I often rolled my eyes at the kitschy, broad humor that Knife+Heart director Yann Gonzalzez (who co-wrote the film with Cristiano Mangione) sometimes used to characterize his sexually active queer characters.

A movie that veers off the track of slow burn into turgid pacing a few too many times to be entirely effective.

An existential story that is a less bleak and more scenic version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a psychological journey about connection, regret, memory, and meaning.

I prefer, and recommend, the original, but I’m on the fence about this one. Your mileage may vary.

Everything in Life of Riley, Resnais makes plain, is a contrivance. Much of the joy and beauty of the movie comes from letting the levels of contrivance fall into place, as with some Rube Goldberg contraption, creating a parallel abstract narrative to the more conventional semi-farcical one unfolding on screen.

The mode of this short movie is naturalistic. There are interviews of people in voiceover, but not a lot of talking-head footage. The perspective is of an observer sauntering through the town and then thrust into the middle of a fearsome but exhilarating spectacle.

Director Ivy Meeropol (“Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn”) weaves an impressive tapestry of conflicting perspectives—man and animal—that's far more entertaining and insightful than your average Shark Week fare.

If you’re not too conversant with the regions or works under consideration, the viewer has a choice of laboring to connect the dots unassisted, or just kicking back and letting the people and their recollections and philosophical reflections wash over you, like the sea of the movie’s title.

All About Nina has moments of stark tragedy alongside the vivid comedy, plus a third-act revelation of what has made Nina so angry.

Though its generic title may evoke memories of the archaic science videos you fell asleep to in grade school, Schwartzberg’s film quickly proves to be one of the year’s most mind-blowing, soul-cleansing and yes, immensely entertaining triumphs.

Like “The Deeper You Dig,” Hellbender gets better as it gets more surreal, but this one has a nice balance to the out-there imagery in Zelda’s grounded, coming-of-age performance. I love the movies she’s making with her family, but I’d also really like to see what she could do with another director too. She’s got the range and potential.

In addition to observing the humanity of its heroes, The Old Guard also employs Prince-Bythewood’s penchant for grandiose, melodramatic gestures that shouldn’t work at all yet play out masterfully.

This is very evidently a personal story for the people who made it, a heartfelt note of thanks for the fresh start they found in their new home, and for all fresh starts and the people with the courage to find them.

In surveying this setting, one might think Almost There is a documentary about impoverished, elderly folks who have sadly fallen through the cracks in the system. Instead, it’s an uncomfortable journey through the later life of an artist, a warts-and-all look at the filmmakers’ process that fails to get past its most troublesome wart.

A lot of substantial or just different material might have enriched this documentary’s tidy fall-and-rise story.

There is, nevertheless, something to be said for a documentary that tries to do something different and perhaps impossible, even if it doesn't quite get there. And in the end, any flaws or missed opportunities are subsumed by the movie's sincerity and wealth of insight.

Blichfieldt’s “burn it all down” approach creates turbulence and upset while walking over very well-trod ground.

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.

Especially for those in law enforcement, Killing Them Safely should be required viewing before taking taxpayer money to invest in their next attempt of serving and protecting their fellow man.

This is a strange film all around, distractible and full of Olympic-level tonal gambits. Viewers’ mileage will vary. Wildly.

The addition of Cage to the already heady cinematic brew definitively puts it over the top, making it the kind of cult movie nirvana that was its apparent destiny from the moment the cameras started rolling.

In the end, the neatly wrapped resolution amounts to a sense of incompleteness, like a concert that leaves you waiting for an encore.

Cliches aside, there's something at work in The Peanut Butter Falcon, something eccentric and exuberant. Nilson and Schwartz's devotion to the details of Zac's world highlights Gottsagen's funny and intelligent performance, giving the film an authenticity it wouldn't otherwise have.

Yes, you’ve seen this type of story before, but Standing Up, Falling Down shows that there can still be a little magic—and charisma—when the material is genuinely funny.

While Double Lover is as squeamish as most Cinemax-style wank material about a certain male organ, it’s more than charitable about its female counterpart. One can’t be faulted for expecting greatness from a film that opens with a close-up of a stretched out vagina morphing into an eye.

Rather than massage the ego of its progressive target audience, this film stares back at us with a piercingly critical gaze.