It’s in transporting viewers into the heart of this jungle, where the moths calibrate the ecosystem, that Nocturnes most its most compelling case for protecting these exquisite creatures and our planet.

As a woman who has pushed away a lot of hard truths, Louis-Dreyfus delves into a sphere of emotion that she’s never before explored onscreen. She gives us not just the psychology but the feelings of fear, loss and resilience that infuse Tuesday, a story with the sensibility of an Eastern European fairy tale.

Sugarcane’s sensitivity to the ongoing pain of its subjects is one of the film’s principal achievements. NoiseCat and Kassie offer an affecting portrait of a community that endures in spite of colonial genocide.

Bursting with passion, sly humor, satirical swipes and the inescapable heartbeat of insurgency — most of the film was shot in 1968 San Francisco — it’s the life-loving tale of a wise innocent abroad, and the not exactly warm reception he receives

It’s subtle but resonant, intimate but emotionally expansive and at every step crisply unsentimental.

Diop folds the poetic into the political, without ever becoming didactic.

The film stays close to its subjects and testifies to the resilience of the Masafer Yatta community. It takes courage and conviction to rebuild after every act of destruction.

Out of all the film’s many achievements, perhaps the most impressive is the ability to keep the tone balanced just on this biting point between tragedy and comedy in scene after scene.

Desert Road will surely invite repeat viewings to discern its hints and untangle its logic. More than that, within its very specific subgenre, this unlikely intersection of Memento and It’s a Wonderful Life just might prove an enduring classic.

Tragically, The Truth vs. Alex Jones doesn’t deliver any closure. What it does provide is a disturbing reminder that the fight against evil will likely be never-ending.

This tightly focused character study is a tiny film, with an emotional effect in inverse proportion to its size.

This sequel to 2016’s smash hit Oscar-winning animated film proves more than worth the lengthy wait, knocking it out of the park with its dazzling visuals, sophisticated humor and doses of genuine emotion.

There’s plenty of sadness here, but also lots of humor and female camaraderie.

Perhaps what’s most impressive about On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is Nyoni’s respect for subtext. Her film doesn’t aim to be a guide, a balm or an ode to forgiveness. The director rejects the ease of over-explanation and allure of an exclusively reverential tone. She reaches for honesty, and what she uncovers is at once disquieting and deeply absorbing.

As Rasoulof intercuts real footage and fiction, we realize that what the family is going through is an extension of what the entire country has been facing.

Filled with beauty and fury, the film offers an immersive portrait of an endangered community.

Directed with razor-sharp, naturalistic precision and set over one sweltering Corsican summer, amid stunning Mediterranean vistas that provide a backdrop to all the bloody vendettas, The Kingdom marks the arrival of a bold new talent who’s able to spin a gripping crime thriller while channeling real emotion on screen.

In exploring how the ruptures of the past map themselves onto relationships in the present, [Quy] elegantly approaches a familiar theme: how war reverberates throughout generations, imposing on witnesses and their successors.

It would be easy, at quick glance, to dismiss their mischief as youthful self-absorption. It’s youthful self-absorption, to be sure, but something serious, vibrant and compelling courses through the levity.

There’s an achingly palpable, playful chemistry between Pugh and Garfield that leaps off the screen. But they also refuse to shy away from letting their characters’ less attractive qualities bleed through.

There’s swaggering confidence in the filmmaking to match that of the title character, along with adrenalized visuals, fine-grained production design and scrupulous attention to casting, down to the background players.

In Hamnet . . . the two always go hand in hand: joy and fear, love and loss. One feeds into the other in a cycle as old as life itself, and unavoidable. But just as her William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) turns the pain of being caught between the two into the masterpiece that is Hamlet, Zhao harnesses those elements into something gorgeous and cathartic.

Love, to quote that woozy old ballad, is indeed a many-splendored thing that takes many forms — a multiplicity that Love the film is quietly alive to.

Vengeance Most Fowl is a brisk and well-paced escapade, in which Gromit proves himself to still be one of our best screen actors and Wallace’s absentminded behavior still endears.

There is more of Fuller’s memoir that might be a source for other adaptations. It is hard to imagine any would be more beautifully realized than this.

September 5 doesn’t skimp on any of the technological details — we also learn that Jennings reported events over a telephone, with the receiving end rigged to a studio mic — but Felhbaum steps back often enough to help viewers see the bigger picture at play.

In its mix of remarkable archival material, the film is both tender and galvanizing, summoning up what New York felt like in 1972 (yes, I would know) and offering a fresh slant on a country’s upheaval and a generation’s countercultural awakening.

The Order is the kind of tense reflection on American violence that Hollywood rarely puts on the big screen anymore.

I’m Still Here is a gripping, profoundly touching film with a deep well of pathos. It’s one of Salles’ best.

On Swift Horses is about the shapes love can take, the varied lives we live and the many different ways one can make a home. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking and demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Here’s hoping it brings the romantic epic back into fashion.

What makes Tropics so riveting is the way Costa constantly shifts between the epic and the intimate, the macro and the micro.

As much arthouse as grindhouse, it’s a blood-drenched mix tape that shouldn’t work. But it does, thanks to Coogler’s muscular direction, a terrific cast, enveloping IMAX visuals, body-quaking sound and music that stirs the soul while setting the pulse racing.

Flow is a joy to experience but also a deeply affecting story, the work of a unique talent who deserves to be ranked among the world’s great animation artists.

Tedeschi’s film is a declaration of love for the Beatles, but what distinguishes it is its curiosity about the America of that time, beyond the bubble of the four Scousers who can hardly believe they’re drinking cocktails in Miami.

The tyro director steps up to the plate beautifully, delivering an ingenious, fast-paced horror-thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat while also featuring generous doses of mordant humor.

Throughout Night Is Not Eternal, Wang models an urgent and necessary type of critical thinking. Her questions become one of the most striking elements of this project, which takes a surprising turn.

As courageous as the platoon members are, Warfare is not to be confused with a movie about heroism; it’s a movie about hell that leaves you shaken.

This superbly acted drama’s refusal to serve up tidy epiphanies might leave you wanting more. But the inchoate nature of the central characters’ self-reflection is partly the point in a smart movie with a lot on its mind.

We don’t always know what, exactly, we’re watching in Architecton, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is how the movie offers us a new way of seeing — not only seeing our planet of stone and cement, of rocks and ruins, but seeing movies in general.

A terrific blend of farce and personal stories, "The Wedding Banquet" is no mere slapdash slapstick. With its graceful, character-driven screenplay and sympathetically zippy lead performances from Chao as dutiful gay son, Chin as the immigrant artist and Lichtenstein as the longtime companion, "The Wedding Banquet" is a tender feast of wit and charm. [04 Aug 1993]

Something more complex and rewarding than surface tension is at play here, and it builds to a conclusion of breathtaking openheartedness. Sometimes a blip on the road is magic in disguise, the root of a dazzling new constellation.

As evidence mounts, The Perfect Neighbor steadily and deftly builds momentum until its crushing apogee.

Kudos are due to supervising editor Mark Becker and his team, who never put a splice wrong. That deft level of craft is maintained throughout, while the aching musical bed by contemporary composer Nico Muhly adds just the right tone of plangent despair tinged with hope.

A kinetic blend of a fictional Afro-futurist narrative, archival research on decades of Black visual and multimedia work, and personal history.

In less assured hands, Cactus Pears might have edged into trite territory, yielding to the familiar beats of trauma-laden queer love stories, but Kanawade’s considered direction and spare storytelling keep the narrative refreshing.

Blue Moon is a deceptively modest project, but it’s beautifully executed and fascinatingly nuanced despite being quite straightforward in terms of plot.

What’s remarkable about The Blue Trail and makes it such a delight is that despite all the oppression in the air, it’s a movie filled with hope and faith in human resilience at any age. The closing image will make your heart soar. And no, it’s not the one you were expecting.

Playwright turned filmmaker Celine Song’s assured second feature is a refreshingly complex look at modern love, self-worth and the challenges of finding a partner in an unaffordable city, which once again treats three points of a romantic triangle with equal integrity and compassion.

The Encampments is not just critical in capturing the real-time makings of a movement, but in laying bare the consequences of this response.

It’s a juicy piece of entertainment that also engages sincerely with its painful, topical subject matter.

The director is in the role of the flashy, panache-y showman here, and he plays it to perfection, delivering a big, highly polished chunk of movie that’s pure enjoyment.

If you tap into The History of Sound’s soulful undercurrents, the soaring spiritual dimensions of the music — in songs more often about people than Divinity — and the depth of feeling in Mescal and O’Connor’s performances, this is a film of lingering melancholic beauty.

Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge.

Vibrantly felt yet impressively controlled — and blessed with a stone-cold stunner of a central performance — The Little Sister is indeed an instant classic of the genre, as moving in its humanism as it is sexy.

Pillion is less about the shock factor of some very graphic gay kink than the nuances of love, desire and mutual needs within a sub/dom relationship.

Panahi’s latest feature is a straightforward 24-hour narrative staged with his usual attention to realistic detail, and backed by a terrific ensemble cast. Subtly plotted like a good thriller, the movie slowly but surely builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power and its long-lasting effects.

The movie captivates early on with several scenes of physical and mental mayhem, before settling into a more classic comic formula — albeit one with plenty of twists to come.

From the pastoral beauty of its opening sequence to the gut punch of its last, Hadi’s film is an exceptional screen debut, as perceptive as it is kinetic and, with one eye on the bombers overhead, brimming with life.

For all its playfulness, there’s an intellectual heft to A Useful Ghost that exerts its own gravity.

[An] exquisite and gripping documentary.

By the director’s standards, this is a sober and distinctly mature film, centered by the unwavering composure of Servillo’s De Santis. But it’s not without the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished Sorrentino’s best work.

Clever, funny and visually appealing, Daniel Chong’s nutty action comedy zips along, driven by rambunctious energy and a spirited Mark Mothersbaugh score. Its tenacious protagonist is flanked by a cast of amusingly anthropomorphized creatures that will thrill the core audience of kids while keeping the grownups entertained.

Hedda is a delightful, sexy ride made that reminds us that Thompson is a star and DaCosta has many more tricks up her sleeve. It’s good to hear her unique narrative voice again.

Vanderbilt’s commanding Nuremberg couldn’t have arrived at a more consequential time.

A searing and detailed chronicle of murder, bigotry and robbery on a massive scale that also marks the director’s first feature-length documentary.

Ben Hania lights a connective fuse between documentary and drama.

As a documentary subject, Hersh is thoroughly engaging — by turns charming, surly and vulnerable. He opens himself to the attention of filmmakers Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus with a sense of purpose, a bit of squirming, and occasional flares of regret.

Remake is certainly a movie about memory, especially bad memories, but in a Proustian sense it’s a movie in search of lost time — both the time McElwee spent with his son and the time slipping away as the director and his peers grow old and die.

Its humane message is potent even though it comes in the offbeat package of this gleeful, violent but entirely successful dark comedy.

Packed with visual gags and a cast of gifted comedic actors, Maddie’s Secret straddles the line between comedy and melodrama, creating a wholly unique cinematic experience.

Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quotidian foibles, in a film that explores our mysterious relationship with both the green world and one another.

The Currents never comes off as derivative. The elegance and, especially, empathy with which Mumenthaler captures the gaping chasm between how we present and who we are give the film a voluptuous pull all its own.

What makes Obsession so fun, and so disturbing, is how it takes typical aspects of dysfunctional romantic relationships to initially comic and then horrific extremes.

The precision, beauty and emotion in the film is built on strong writing (the screenplay is by Ghaywan and the story is by Peer, Ghaywan and Sumit Roy) and superb performances.

Sam Raimi’s darkly comic horror-thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien boasts an audacious concept that is superbly realized by Raimi’s filmmaking, which milks every bizarre situation for all it’s worth.

What’s quite novel about this work, as opposed to any number of well-made docs about (mostly male) war photographers, is that it directly addresses how Addario’s job impacts her as a mother.

There’s a lyrics-and-melody power to the interplay of sharp observations and visuals that dive deep into archival material — a fitting dynamic for a film about someone with a preternatural gift for infectious tunes. And there’s a playful, irreverent bounce to the film that’s in sync with the Liverpudlian music hall tradition that McCartney, more than any of the Beatles, has held close.

Blue Film provokes and captivates in equal measure, with the naked honesty of a black box off-off-Broadway play. It’s a two-hander chamber piece that doesn’t pull any punches in its dialogue or presentation.

Director Sang-il Lee’s feature is propelled by operatic intensity and visual poetry. It unfolds over three mostly riveting hours, with only occasional jagged lapses in narrative momentum.

An absolute charmer, The Tale of Silyan is an affecting look at the human-avian bond, with all its mysteries, warmth and ungainly practicalities.

With superb performances across the board, particularly from her two young leads, and an adventurous use of visual and aural elements, Djukić has conjured an alluring fusion of spiritual awakening and adolescent confusion.

I doubt any movie, especially any documentary, will make me laugh harder this year, and many of its emotional grace notes land fully. Even with my high expectations, The History of Concrete is a small triumph.

What makes Segan’s movie so intoxicating, however, is not just the depth of its inside-and-out central character study but the granular textures of the world Harry inhabits and the incisively drawn secondary characters played by a deep bench of very fine and impeccably cast actors.

The title role in the austerely beautiful character study Rose is such a thrilling fit for Sandra Hüller — her flinty manner, her fierce conviction, her steely charisma and her incredible economy of means — that it becomes impossible to imagine any other actor nailing the part.

Decidedly dark, though not necessarily bleak, Bertelli’s hybrid docu-fiction is an unflinching look at the trials and travails of contemporary sports. It’s also a visually seductive meditation on the many ways in which science — whether biological or technological — now plays a pivotal role in any serious athletic endeavor.

It’s a great feeling to know from a movie’s first frames that you’re in the hands of an assured genre auteur. The rare action thriller that takes place almost entirely in broad daylight, Hope pulls you in immediately with its virtuoso camerwork, pulse-pounding score, adrenalized pacing and sharply drawn characters.

The director declines to get too specific about his allegorical intent, which could be sexual trauma or gender identity or just a mysterious body-snatcher nightmare. Either way, this is a spellbinding psychological puzzler led by a typically fearless performance from Léa Seydoux.

This rigorously well-made, grippy-as-a-live-squid, toska-steeped work is Zvyagintsev’s most openly critical commentary on the motherland’s current political, spiritual and moral malaise, a denunciation never said in so many words but expressed with intricate layers of irony.

The film feels fresh and off-the-cuff, as if someone traveled back to 1940 with an iPhone and hit record, chronicling the dark years of far-right obedience and moral decadence.

All of a Sudden is an odd but audacious film in the way it favors the thematic over the dramatic. Those not attuned to Hamaguchi’s wavelength may find it overstretched and desiccated. But if you can get on board with its leisurely pace, there’s transcendant beauty in its view that all lives are of value, no matter how diminished.

An intense Mel Gibson performance anchors this brutally effective crime thriller.

Pitched cannily at World Beat fans as well as martial-arts zealots, this Luc Besson production aims to please and nails its targets with more speed and style than most of its higher-priced competition.

Sensitive and stylish.

The film belongs to Jarvis, however, and she makes the most of it with expressive features that convey Mia's mixed-up emotions from raging temper to sweet vulnerability. She will go far.

As Precious, Sidibe is superb, allowing us to see the inner warmth and beauty of a young woman who, to her world's cruel eyes, might seem monstrous.

The always surprising Coen brothers have finally made a very serious movie with A Serious Man. It's about God, man's place in the world and the meaning of life, so naturally it's one of their funnier movies.

Arriving amidst a tidal wave of overblown and frequently charmless big studio efforts, Sita Sings the Blues is a welcome reminder that when it comes to animation bigger isn't necessarily better.

Marks Disney's rediscovery of a strong narrative loaded with vibrant characters and mind-bending, hilarious situations.