A potent and vividly acted drama about the FBI’s subversion and assassination of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Minari could not be more personal. Filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung based the film on his own childhood in the 1980s, when his Korean American parents moved to Arkansas to start a farm. And it’s the specificity of this delicate tale that makes it so universal and so great.

As cinematography, Malcolm & Marie (shot by Marcell Rév) is great. As cinema, not so much.

Talk about timing. When he began making Little Fish, an intimate and affecting romance in a sci-fi setting, director Chad Hartigan had no idea the world would be coping with a real pandemic in the real 2021. Watching this fictional society begin to fray in panic feels just a tad too close for comfort.

Religion and horror are hardly novel bedfellows, but writer-director Rose Glass crafts something fresh of the construct in her promising debut Saint Maud.

The actors Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth have been friends for 20 years and that is plainly evident watching them play longtime lovers in the wrenchingly beautiful film Supernova. The award-winning duo are like a well-worn sweater onscreen, comfortable and lived-in, showing the kind of tart affection people show when ardor’s lust has given way to the slow burn of adoration.

Compelling performances make Palmer watchable and fairly affecting despite the fact that we’ve seen this kind of thing so many times before.

An almost sturdy, often gripping genre exercise that ultimately doesn’t find enough fresh material in the serial killer procedural to warrant its blast from a stylish and shlocky past.

Conor Allyn is clearly a talented director and has a lot of reverence for the Western genre, but for as good and lofty as it’s intentions are, No Man’s Land comes up short.

Bahrani, with Paolo Carnera’s vivid cinematography, builds a dense, incisive film that nevertheless feels uneven in structure.

The movie’s gathering momentum, even as it grows more claustrophobic, is owed to a few things. It comes from Ben-Adir’s artfully calibrated performance as Malcolm — here more consumed with doubt, worry and self-awareness than the usual firebrand portrayal. It comes from Odom’s deft sense of Cooke. And it comes from King’s remarkable elegance as a director.

Locked Down is inevitably, and intentionally, of the moment. But I hope some of its off-the-cuff spirit lasts after the pandemic. So much Hollywood moviemaking is laboriously preordained.

There is nothing terribly new in the telling, no huge revelations or bombshells. Most of the details — including King’s infidelity and the use of Withers as an FBI informant — have been known for years. But that’s not Pollard’s interest. His canvas is large, stretching back to post-Civil War Jim Crow, exploring how notions of Black sexuality were turned into social weapons and into the way FBI agents were made mythical in popular culture.

In some ways “The Dig” feels like its own artifact too, like a lost Anthony Minghella film made 30 years ago and buried until now.

The film, earthy and sober, refuses to be carried aloft by sentiment, instead navigating a difficult and painful path toward self-preservation and renewal.

This movie will not be for everyone, but it is important not least because it continues to advance the discourse around miscarriages which is a trauma that couples, but mainly women, have been expected to shoulder in secret for far too long.

It should be required viewing for anyone who cares about free speech and democracy.

Written and directed by Eugene Ashe, Sylvie’s Love is an ode to classic melodramas, with sumptuous set design, gorgeous costumes and an enveloping soundtrack of mid-century hits.

Many of the best scenes are silent, enhanced by a wonderfully wistful score by James Newton Howard.

Soul turns out to be not an exploration of the afterlife but a wondrous whirligig of daily life.

It has the makings of a stealth classic.

The tone shifts radically from one moment to the next, and humor is a regular companion to mayhem, pain, even violence. That brings us to the wild and harrowing ending. It’s an ending that may not be expected — well, it’s definitely not expected — but Fennell has said it was the truest way to end a real story of female revenge, not a comic-book version.

The ambitions of Wonder Woman 1984 may be just outside its grasp, but it seldom feels predestined or predictable — a preciously rare commodity in the genre.

Although the event and aftermath were widely, exhaustively covered, I don’t think I’m the only one who lost the thread early. This not knowing is part of what makes Ryan White’s extraordinary documentary Assassins, about the trial of the two young women, so compulsively compelling.

Eventually, the movie does seem to get where it’s going. A scene between Alice and Roberta touches upon issues of literary ownership and artistic license that haven’t yet been fully mined. It’s a bit late in the game. But the ride has been pleasant.

The Prom works hard to be a good time, and I hope it is for many who could use one.

The writing is wry and occasionally quite funny. It’s not unsurprising that it made for a good play. But on film it moves at a languorous pace. Like its characters, it’s not interested in getting anywhere anytime soon.

The film itself might not wrap up in any sort of tidy or satisfying way, but nothing leading up to the conclusion would lead you to expect something so basic.