Mixing talking heads and on-the-ground footage, National Bird is a vital film about the true cost of war, well-reported by Kennebeck.

Into the Inferno is a memento mori aimed at the whole human race, and only Herzog could make one this non-pretentious, funny, curious, and respectful at the same time.

Yourself and Yours is enjoyable the way every other Hong Sang-soo film is enjoyable: funny, relatable and emotionally honest, structurally innovative, and composed with a patient eye that favors the peaks and valleys of conversation over standard get-to-the-point construction.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is harmlessly generic.

Together with the camera’s constantly creeping pans and dollies — as well as the bilious green tinge that permeates each frame — the film thus generates a sense of unease that intensifies very gradually and unremittingly, reaching an extreme pitch by the time of its denouement.

The lushness of its images, how they simultaneously recall and move forward, in concert with its confidence in its pacing, as a work of both writing and editing, are a powerful thing taken in-tandem.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, proves both messy and inspiring.

In its ruminations on artistic tradition, creation, and vision, Miss Hokusai is something close to a minor masterpiece. Its other ideas, though less inspired, also resonate in significant ways.

For every moment that feels overly self-serious, there are two that promise this thing’s some kind of pop-schlock classic.

I don’t think anyone outside of Dekker himself can truly unpack the type of psychological chaos occurring within Jack Goes Home, and I like that notion. This is an artist using his medium as an outlet to exorcise demons without necessarily factoring in audience expectations.

It’s not a perfect film...but it’s one that resonates for anyone who’s ever been touched by a book, movie, painting, or song and had their world shift into something it wasn’t before.

Tower offers a chilling, first-hand account of those tremendously haunting days that live in infamy within our collective conscious: days that begin like any other until the unimaginable occurs.

Biller’s work is light on its feet, delighting in its own sensuality, basking in gorgeous colors that seem to have bled through the screen from another age, and coyly seducing the audience before hitting them over the head with a hammer.

If the screenplay’s sense of scale can begin to feel limited by an overfamiliarity in environment, it’s suddenly made expansive with the realization of how much these places are extensions of these five people’s lives and personalities.

By examining our prison industrial complex, Ava DuVernay’s 13th looks to the nation’s past, points to our present, and lays the stepping stones for a better tomorrow.

Taylor’s unremarkable thriller is not one that demands to be seen in theaters, but will undoubtedly be seen and enjoyed in that rainy Sunday afternoon kind of way. There’s some comfort in that.

By the end, there’s a strange sense that the film has been both elongated and rushed in the way that it ends a few arcs, but it’s also an unusually sensitive romance that doubles as a showcase of three of our most talented modern comedic actors.

Do Not Resist attempts to present a fair inquiry of police’s use of force. The issue itself is fraught with conflict and, unfortunately, the interest of immediacy of the conversation seems to trump thorough journalism.

The cinematic version of this children’s book retains an air of wonder steeped in simple resonate clichés for younger viewers enduring the same hardships as Milton Adams.

A mostly winning combination of the strange and unusual, the adventure is an entertaining, clever, and fun one.

As an introduction to the subject matter and a portrait of the artist, Sky Ladder works nicely, condensing much into its 76 minutes. What is missing, apart from some minor personal drama, is more behind-the-scenes moments that might have been very interesting.

This film is so unabashedly, so unflinchingly evil that it is extremely impressive and extreme unlikeable.

The story is a simple one, and sometimes it might feel a little too slight for it own good, but Paulson carries it all the way through with bravado acting.

It’s a so-so affair offering momentary pleasures.

Make no mistake: Pott and Coleman’s stories are unquestionably worth sharing. But presenting them in a routine march of interviews spiced up solely with occasional animated reenactments does not do those stories justice.

Roth interacts well with Michael Cristofer and Robin Bartlett, who play David’s two primary patients in the story. But outside of their performances and Franco’s ever-tasteful approach to the subject matter, Chronic is frustrated either by convention or its own coldness.

It is an odd story, mixing haute couture, small-town gossipry, romance, dark secrets, an old murder mystery, and multiple random deaths. And yet it’s also not nearly odd enough, delivering all of this with a disappointingly straight-laced sensibility.

Not managing to be as icky as it wants to be, Raw makes one long for the days of exploitation films that compensate for the lack of technical craft with pure, idiotic chutzpah.