For all its whimsy, Fingernails is delicately profound. Its characters aren’t making bold romantic moves; they’re interrogating their assumptions of what is ultimately an unknowable phenomenon.

De Clermont-Tonnerre understands that the lovers’ behavior and Lawrence’s social commentary no longer spur much pearl-clutching, so instead, she surprises viewers by adding uncanny elements to her most explicit scenes.

Bugonia’s provocative premise doesn’t yield a sci-fi thriller. The film instead offers an intimate, unhurried exploration of human cruelty.

Mike and Max’s relationship—in which she whisks him off to London so he can direct an all-male revue at the theater she owns—is the stuff of romance novels, but that’s the point: Last Dance is all wish fulfillment, seductive and surreal.

The result is a mishmash of subgenres that, surprisingly, works.

This is a film about Cameron’s core personhood, and how it stands up to concentrated efforts to transform it, and it’s told with quiet steeliness and grace.

Another kill is coming, and because we’re in this peculiar, mischievous film, it’ll be a playful one. But the outcome will always be the same: Someone who was once there is now gone. In the face of that chilling, prosaic nightmare, all Perkins can do is laugh.

Aquaman works because it isn’t laughing at itself—it’s both joyously whimsical and confident in its own seaworthiness.

The result is a documentary that’s fascinated with its subject without being reverent, one that’s beautifully photographed (the way that Vasarhelyi and Chin capture the scale of Honnold’s climb is stunning) without ignoring the horrifying consequences lurking if he fails.

A sensitivity to both petty human concerns and striking natural beauty is what makes Honeyland a particularly enthralling documentary.

Decker’s filmmaking is often dreamlike, but her storytelling has a cruel bite of reality to it—just as Jackson’s writing did decades before.

The story’s heightened reality works best when it’s barely distinguishable from our own—though it starts to lose steam the more it drifts into fantasy. The movie is at times a mess, but a compelling one, and this debut from Boots Riley should herald a fascinating filmmaking career.

It’s a movie that gleefully kicks its characters out of their comfy environs to plunge them into New York’s rattling, noisy crowds—and it’s worth watching with the biggest audience you can find.

There are no quick cuts here, no goofy ways of hiding gore from the audience: Nash wants the viewer to engage with the pure terror of what’s going on just as much as he wants them to sit in the tedium of it.

Air is a great return to Affleck’s original impulses as a director: It’s a fun, well-made film for grown-ups that gives its actors room to flesh out their characters and, most important, doesn’t rely on Affleck’s star persona.

Its advertising promises goofy hijinks amid an enclave of diverse species whose ecosystem is threatened by humans. The movie, in actuality, is refreshingly mordant about what might really happen if prey and predators were to try banding together: Their efforts would immediately devolve into a despairing, even political quagmire.

Coupled with Stewart’s exposed nerve of a performance, the suffocating intensity of Larraín’s filmmaking, and Jonny Greenwood’s droning score, the movie brings a fresh sense of tragedy and loss to a tale that might otherwise feel familiar.

The film may be too much of a bloody slog for some; others will be on board for every gruesome minute like I was.

The Square is darkly amusing, but it’s also bracingly honest in its absurdity, and that’s what kept me coming back to each one of its wonderfully knotty scenarios even months after seeing it.

This is the rare comic-book movie that actually seems geared toward families, mixing adolescent humor with sincere sweetness that doesn’t cloy.

When it’s at its subtlest, Lean on Pete sings with power; but when things get outwardly grim, it loses a little of its impact.

It’s a refreshingly silly and airy adventure focused on the emotions of one character, Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), and a charming end to a tiring year of cinema.

Men would likely drown in its own weirdness were it not for its dynamic leads.

Wonka is saccharine, yes, but if you’re going to indulge, it’s better to be in the hands of a master confectioner.

Even by Kiarostami’s standards, this is a daringly, charmingly tedious piece of cinema, one pushing at the boundaries of what you could even call a “movie.”

Amazingly enough, the result is a witty, visually inventive, and fittingly sober story about the perils of the internet, told through the eyes of a video-game avatar with unusually large forearms.

Luhrmann’s approach works for one reason: Elvis should be a mess. Presley’s adult life was chaotic, and it unfolded almost entirely in public, from his spectacular successes to his ignominious decline. Watching it play out on film ought to feel a little disorienting.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco works best as a mood piece, and as its final act swung back toward heavy plotting, it mostly lost me, getting bogged down in thinly sketched interpersonal dynamics.