A Cop Movie is too gentle to rouse new disdain for an institution currently subject to such piercing critique. It chooses to make the self-consciousness about its subject matter into a twee form of guilty self-awareness, when what’s needed is bitter medicine, or just insights that better challenge our moral certainties.

There are plenty of laughs but also, of course, moments to trouble the tear-ducts.

Anxiety is high at the start of Jesse Noah Klein’s Like a House on Fire.

McHale and Bishé are the ones who carry things because only they (like us) are aware of the sinister goings on beneath their over-the-top lust and the increasingly transparent surrealist nightmare entrapping them. Their dynamic is simultaneously an impossible ideal and an authentic reality to aspire towards. Mankind’s unwitting heroes.

As a gift to those who’ve stuck with him through changing trends in the genre, the director’s vision gets its freest reign in this four-hour director’s cut, boldly titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League and thus asserting authorship under what’s become not so much a genre of cinema as it as an entire mode of production, corporately controlled and split over hundreds of FX artisans in post. And while still bearing a few unfortunate marks of industrial cinema (like almost all of The Flash’s painfully lame jokes from the studio-bungled theatrical cut being kept intact), this title is earned.

Unquestionably one of this year’s great films, The Inheritance seeks to position them both on equal planes of historical and individual experience, one invariably informing the other.

Zbanic expertly wades through the scenario so that we aren’t taken for granted. Rather than show us what we know is happening, she includes foreshadowing, rumors, and expressions to put a chill in our spine instead. What’s more is her ability to weave in the reality that this fight concerns divisions on the lines of religion and race rather than pure geography.

The film is at its best when it lets Elbaum to dig further back into the canvas’ history and the connections born from it.

It’s almost as if Frye’s childhood was stolen to some extent by this whirlwind of sensory experiences, rebellion, and dual lives she’s only now able to unpack, interpret, and acknowledge with fresh eyes recontextualizing memory through truth.

Nagy’s is a story of bleakness, a test of endurance, and a reminder that war is a hell that, atypically, refuses to rely on gratuitousness. And it ultimately, just about, earns that overbearing solemnity.

It feels a complete whole––a wry intertwining dialectic on modern desires––yet each scene is uniquely bracing: beautifully poised, exquisitely observed, and even erotically charged––rife with unabashed seduction, though always close enough to farce to keep things kösher and to keep you guessing (it’s telling that we barely glimpse a kiss).

It is an incendiary, playful, and wonderfully exasperated piece of filmmaking that shows a director trying to draw some threads of sense from our current malaise.

Xavier Beauvois has made a film that contemplates trauma of one’s own making, a perceptive work that grapples with guilt and grief.

Coming 2 America takes too long a road to get to a simplistic lesson: be kind to the person who threatens you the most and everything will work out. Only in Hollywoodland (and their version of Zamunda) does this feel remotely possible.

Petite Maman is, amongst other things, a beautiful ode to mother-daughter love and a melancholy acknowledgment of the distance that always exists in that relationship, when both parties are separated by age and responsibility.

Luckily the familial and personal stuff has the strength to stick in our heads when the battle on the court fades because the work the actors put in is effective.

Introduction is a thick, tangled ball of yarn, compact but dense; like beloved Hong influence Bresson’s off-screen space, non-narrative information is ample and cosmic. But for all the deliberate choices and teasing ellipses, this is one of the director’s more meager works, appearing unfinished and misshapen rather than productively clipped at the edges.

It would be churlish not to report that there are some laughs and profound moments to be discovered here.

This is an entrancing film, orphaned by an unspeakable longing for a place–a whole world–that will never return.

After a year that’s been marked by the collective anger of the global populace facing disease and inequality, Lost Course feels particularly necessary. It’s a story that will haunt you with the question: is change possible?

While Chaos Walking has its faults, it is very much of ilk with YA novel adaptations such as Maze Runner and Divergent, while perhaps lacking the immersive depth of The Hunger Games, or at least the first couple entries of that series. Thankfully, its two charismatic leads share just enough chemistry to add the requisite stakes for a decently thrilling ride.

A violent lark playing fast and loose with its science fiction so Grillo can have a blast.

Get ready for a tense ride because writers/directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s Rose Plays Julie never relinquishes its sense of brooding until the very last frame’s welcome exhale of relief.

Because of the personal subject matter, Jessie Barr’s feature directing debut contains a multitude of sensitivity and care. A tenderness washes over the entire film, and even as Sophie makes unassured decisions, you want to support her.

Unconcerned with happy or sad endings (or endings at all beyond the desire for one to be shared and enjoyed to its fullest), [Sødahl] focuses instead on the unbridled emotions that swirl within us on the difficult journeys through tragedy. Nothing is out of bounds.

Spare an hour. Give time to cinematographers who usually give their talents to stories other than their own. This film will remind you of the purgatory we live in, but more than that, it’ll remind you of our shared experiences and worldwide connection.

Let this tale be a stepping-stone then—a beautifully rendered and energetic one at that. Let it entertain while planting the seeds of acceptance and understanding so our children can build upon that foundation and be better than the insular generations that failed before them.

Some may be exhausted by the emotional weight of divorce, but Delpy carries us through each stage of grief and motherhood with a deft directorial touch.