Dick Johnson is Dead is both a poetic act of defiance and a portrait of love at the end of a life.

Three Minutes – A Lengthening is not a ghost story, but it still feels haunting.

There are certain movies that grab you from the jump, and Train Dreams is one of them — as the film began its journey, I felt instantly connected to it; engrossed, near hypnotized. I didn't want it to end.

Most of the time, attaching visuals to these songs I know so well enhanced my experience because actually seeing the performers, chests heaving and sweaty from performing choreography while singing, gave me a newfound appreciation for the disembodied voices that have been branded into my brain. But occasionally, a lighting or camera choice actually lessened my enjoyment of a song.

This bleak and profound meditation on diminishing faculties results in a shattering work of cinema. I was left shaking with the results, drawn in completely to the film’s shifts in tone and character, anchored throughout by Hopkin’s impeccable performance.

Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers may at first present like a run-of-the-mill effort from the face of Spanish cinema, but there's a deceptive amount of variation here. It's both a perfect distillation of his artistic fascinations and marked evolution in the depth of his thematic explorations.

With Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos meets every challenge with aplomb. Nearly every single second feels perfectly calibrated in tone, theme, character, and scope.

The search for one's identity is never an easy one. "Return to Seoul" understands that, and allows us to live in — and finally, accept — that uncertainty.

Even if the bird rescuers' efforts are merely a "Band-Aid" against an ever-engulfing miasma, Shaunak Sen provides a worthy arc for the audience to grasp an elegant understanding of the brothers' ecological purpose.

Thanks to some fantastic performances and a patient, well-crafted script, this is a film that should find international audiences interested in some truly adult storytelling. There’s enough originality and sophistication here that an English language redux wouldn’t be unheard of, making one hope that any translation maintains the craft and elegance of Sødahl’s presentation.

Within The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh manages to capture both the elemental resonance of folklore with the sophisticated weightiness of classic stage drama. This tragicomic tale nimbly balances both the personal and political dimensions of his richly developed characters and scenarios.

Coen shows an understanding of Shakespeare's original play as well as a willingness to go beyond it. His "Tragedy of Macbeth" leans into the staginess of the story, while tapping into the surreal nightmare of the whole thing. It's nothing short of magnificent.

Filmmakers: give us more of this, please. Just remember to give us an actual ending while you're at it.

With comprehensive access and a vital narrative, Welcome to Chechnya is an important work of journalism.

It's in favor of observing an artist, busy with her projects and her family life, like slowly sipping a warm cup of tea. In doing so, it strikes a — not quite steady but a work-in-progress — equilibrium of the personal life and the artistic priorities.

I Saw the TV Glow is both a musing on the way entertainment (and screens in particular) will step in to fill the gaps left by poor emotional regulation and support from those who are supposed to help children grow and thrive to become capable, fully-realized adults and how exclusively escaping into worlds of fiction rather than fighting the very real monsters of the week in your own mind will only hold you back.

May December is an intricate patchwork quilt of melodrama and stark reality woven into one big blanket of suppression.

Like in her previous works, director Hansen-Løve has a gentleness when painting the portrait of women living and enduring in transitions, often exiting the bubble of a relationship or (re)entering.

The final result is the funniest feel-bad movie in ages, though one that will worm its way into your thoughts long after the credits roll. No Other Choice is proof of that all-too-rare kind of theatrical experience — one capable of being far more than it appears to be from the outside looking in.

The enormity of this film intimidates me. And it hypnotizes me, and seduces me, and captures me until it feels as if the green has grown like moss over my entire body. But rather than threatening to choke, The Green Knight injects a new source of oxygen into the sword-and-sorcery genre.

Spielberg's West Side Story is a knock-out. A dynamite blend of old-school musical showmanship and modern sensibilities. It's one of the best movies of the year, and one of the best movies of the acclaimed filmmaker's career. Yes, really.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth encapsulates one woman’s blossoming from a reserved drone into a willing participant with Maeda’s subtle dynamism from a perpetually placid and pouty countenance to a focused visage.

Fuhrman’s performance is so unhinged, and Hadaway’s direction is so merciless, that The Novice constantly dances on the edge of character drama and full-fledged horror movie. It’s an impressive feat of incisively dark tone, even if the plot and characters are little more than shadows.

Sanders' ability to interpret the material on the page and turn it into this living painting of a film is nothing shy of a wonder.

The dreamy images and the simmering passions of the film lingered with me.

Black Bag is a perfect example of all of Soderbergh's strengths and the heights he's capable of reaching throughout this run-and-gun phase of his post-retirement career.

As the narrative unfolded in lickety-split fashion, I found myself totally charmed and a little dizzy. Anderson uses almost all of Dahl's prose here, and while that could've backfired, or even resulted in bloat, the filmmaker keeps the proceedings brisk and snappy, relying on Dahl's inherent dry humor to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

This is not as surprising or innovative as director Park's earlier work, but it is still a fascinating and exquisitely directed film about desire, regret, and love. The final moments will likely be talked about and discussed as much as any of his other work.