The baseline is a drama of criminality and redemption, but then there’s an unforced current of Almodóvarian humor, along with moments of melodrama, noir, social realism, a hint of telenovela camp and a climactic escalation into suspense, ultimately touched by tragedy.

There are times when Black Phone 2 wears its stylistic influences — including not only the Nightmare on Elm Street films but many other horror movies from the ‘80s — too heavily on its sleeve. But the extensive borrowings are easily forgiven when the set pieces are delivered with the sort of panache that they are here.

As Santosh closes in on the suspect, who has absconded for another town, Suri’s film embraces the nail-biting aesthetics — dark and shadowy locales, heart-racing music — of a classic procedural. This assured sense of direction coupled with controlled performances make Santosh a compelling drama. But it’s Suri’s screenplay that renders the film immersive.

At its heart, the film is really a classic story of redemption, taking lots of unexpected turns as it follows a down-and-out hero toward recovery.

What makes it truly compelling, however, is its willingness to step outside that perspective and reconsider the phenomenon from a broader context with the wisdom of age.

I Am: Celine Dion abandons tricks of the eye for an unflinching look at the subject’s new reality.

Despite that ominous theme, The Great Lillian Hall is a lovely tribute to life in the theater, with all its personal compromises, and a showcase for Lange, who deftly shows the character as a vulnerable woman and also displays the distinct style of Lillian the bravura actress.

Rankin seems to be seeking out the universal language of cinema itself. In his own very weird way he manages to find it, turning an everyday place into something momentarily special — which is what all good movies are meant to do.

A realistic and very humanistic look at one immigrant’s grueling daily life in Paris, where he struggles to make a living and obtain legal status.

The clashes between Afghan women and the Taliban forces oppressing them is captured with clear-eyed honesty and a compassionate eye in Bread and Roses

Stone and Plemons are both in top form, clearly vibing with the director’s idiosyncratic sensibility and upping each other’s game. And newcomer Delbis is a sad-sack delight, a sweet-natured naïf caught in Teddy and Michelle’s ferocious battle of wits.

A sober and sincere refugee story.

The movie deals with familiar subject matter, but in sneakily appealing fashion. Credit goes to Colia’s cast for creating that subtle magic; the committed performances are energizing to watch.

Collaborating again with The Unknown Country cinematographer Andrew Hajek, Maltz plays with close-ups and other snug camera angles to make viewers co-conspirators in Jazzy’s adventures. There’s an endearing clumsiness to the film, too, reflecting the awkward pauses and missteps of real life.

Working without much in terms of visuals but talking heads and screens, Klose manages to make his film feel both suspenseful and informative.

Intriguing characters and elements of crime fiction prevent the film from being a dour slog, but there’s not much hope to be found here, especially for victims who, due to payoffs and court-ordered silence, can never share their trauma with an outraged public.

Julian Fellowes’ typical witty script proves a pleasure throughout.

Director Parkinson has lived with this story for so long now that he knows exactly how to ratchet up the tension and manages to make the action visually compelling even though much of it takes place in dark and murky underwater conditions.

Commercials director and artist Dan Covert’s absorbing documentary Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life is the first feature-length film to reveal this introspective, consistently innovative creator who’s developed a career on his own terms while remaining engaged with a wide variety of audiences.

Unicorns traces their twin journeys toward self-acceptance with empathy, curiosity and a refreshing disregard for constricting labels.

Of course, there are some unrealistic elements in F1, moments that might have sticklers raising an eyebrow, but the film doesn’t feel any less dramatic than the real thing.

Although Coup! has a small cast and unfolds mostly in a secluded mansion during the 1918 influenza pandemic, it packs a lot of flavor, suspense and droll comedy into its slim 97-minute running time, making it fun enough to deserve an exclamation point in its title.

The artisanal spirit and abundant creativity of the enterprise is undeniable, immersing us in a vivid world crafted from clay, wire, paper and paint, without a single frame of CG imagery.

It’s perverse, juicy fun of a kind we don’t get much of anymore.

Besides the raucous, de rigueur action sequences, Transformers One provides numerous witty jokes of both the verbal and visual variety and — surprise, surprise — genuine emotion. Consider this a franchise revitalized.

Whether the characters are forthright or devious, all the performances are in sync with the rugged seclusion of the setting, as is the rustic-meets-old-timey aesthetic of the production design (by Adriana Bogaard) and costumes (Charlotte Reid).

In massage parlor reception areas and backrooms, working-class restaurants and karaoke bars, Tsang and her strong cast, with superb contributions from production designer Evaline Wu Huang, have captured something evanescent and life-giving, and grounded it in kitchen clatter and workplace chatter, the gritty day-to-day.

It’s not hagiography when the subject’s generosity of spirit infuses the entire doc.

The battle sequences in particular are stunningly rendered, and will certainly benefit from being viewed on the largest possible premium and large-format screens.

Part of the appeal of Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareisa’s subtly powerful second feature, Drowning Dry (Seses), is that you never know if what you’re watching is taking place in the present, past or future.

One of the strengths of John McDermott’s film is that it breaks the rock-doc mold by not relying on a starry roster of talking heads.

The surreal bolt-on doesn’t work all that well, but the limpid cinematography and more quotidian dramatic elements are impactful and striking enough to distinguish this as one of the stronger films to emerge this fall festival season.

This is a fresh, unsentimental yet touching story.

With this prickly, piercing new film, the writer-director presents an intriguing challenge, pushing the bounds of our empathy and asking us to look, really look, at someone from whom we’d surely avert our gaze if we had the misfortune of crossing her path in real life.

A gleefully discomfiting portrait of male bonding that delivers some of the year’s biggest laughs.

The unapologetic sentimentality doesn’t make this bittersweet comedy-drama any less touching or insightful in its observation of spiky family interactions when end-of-life issues and questions of inheritance cause sparks.

If making a film is challenging under fortunate circumstances, one can only imagine the obstacles faced by filmmakers trying to survive annihilation.

The film is not merely an observation of aging. It is also about how this process echoes the emotional dramas of adolescence, and Friedland liberates the story of older adults from the confines of melancholy.

Harvest stands strong and tall, a work solid as an oak. Full of a sensual love of nature and a distinctive vibe, it’s tangy like a home-brewed ale.

The film is exceedingly funny, even in translation, right up to the point where the tone shifts dramatically. Deeply endearing on every level, from its anti-authoritarian politics to its body positivity to general joie de vivre, this is a crowdpleaser through and through (unless the crowd happens to be made up of moral policemen and dogmatic clerics).

The animation, too, is consistently delightful, densely crammed with visual gags and imaginative flourishes.

What saves this from being just best-of list bait for upmarket film critics is the sincerity of the performances, especially from the core trio of Wu, Lee and Panna, each of whom projects a profound loneliness that’s never more apparent than when they’re in the middle of a crowded place. Which, this being Singapore, is just about everywhere.

Any thoughts about the violence we’re seeing are strictly our own, never fed to us by the filmmaker. That makes Afternoons of Solitude, in its uncompromising way, a doc as muscular and ferocious as the poor creatures being ritualistically slaughtered in those bullrings.

TWST is set up like a concert film, but instead it’s a combination of two nonfiction categories — the tone poem and the city symphony — that are used as fallback catch-all classifications for critics and scholars. Ujica blends them with archival rigor and effective whimsy to create a movie that’s dreamy and clear-eyed at once.

Hardcore Ozon fans will have fun arguing about where exactly this falls in the ranking of his substantial body of work, but it’s surely somewhere in the top 10 or even the top five, a rock-solid demonstration of his control over storytelling, technique and ability to get the best from actors.

The subject matter alone could be enough to trigger geysers of tears in viewers, but what makes Le Fanu’s direction especially impressive is its lack of sentimentality. Instead, she focuses on daily rituals — the little murmurs of gratitude and kindness, and the sense of exhaustion that stretches out for hours, days and weeks as one waits for someone to die.

At times the movie feels so raw and unedited, it’s as if Loktev dumped all her footage onto the table without shaping it into a definitive cut. Perhaps a leaner two-hour version would have yielded something more dynamic, though the point of My Undesirable Friends isn’t to entertain us, but to capture every detail of a democratic movement that was doomed to fail.

This is the kind of robust entertainment — wholesome though not at all toothless, alternately joyful and heart-wrenching — that doesn’t get made much anymore. . . It’s a family movie in the best sense of the term, a crowd-pleaser with a ton of heart.

A haunting lead performance from Marco Pigossi, steeped in melancholy and raw pain but also in moments of openness, optimism and even joy, helps make High Tide an affecting portrait of untethered gay men seeking meaningful connections.

The movie functions mostly as personal testimony — a riveting, if too often searching, autobiography of a figure whose political transformation is haunted by narrative inconsistencies.

One of Them Days, produced by Issa Rae, is the kind of big-laughs, mid-budget theatrical comedy that used to be more common; it’s a shame TriStar scheduled a January release, because the film had the potential to be a summer hit. Its two charismatic leads alone make it worth seeing in a theater, surrounded by a crowd primed for a good time.

Do stars Shea Whigham and Carrie Coon manage to make the material feel both fresh and engaging? Yes.

One of the chief rewards of 28 Years Later is that it never feels like a cynical attempt to revisit proven material merely for commercial reasons. Instead, the filmmakers appear to have returned to a story whose allegorical commentary on today’s grim political landscape seems more relevant than ever.

The numerous fight scenes, which often lapse into extreme gore, are as amusing as they are exciting.

With its focus on the news gathering process, Waves affirms the importance of independent and ethical reporting.

Questlove shapes an engaging narrative that charts Stone’s undulating career.

The Ballad of Wallis Island breaks no new ground, but it’s an unexpectedly pleasurable, funny-sad watch, full of sweet, soothing music.

The movie arguably takes a little too long to kick in, but once its sense of danger — devious, disturbing, wryly amusing — is established, it never stops.

The place Beecroft stumbled upon is fueled by girl power, and the story she and her collaborators have created is wise and messy, keenly aware of the dark places at the margins as it burns bright with life.

The insights and artistic inclinations that populate Kramer’s work aren’t for everyone, and there’s a good chance By Design won’t connect with most viewers. But the alienating nature of the premise is what makes it fascinating, pushing us to question how we want to be seen and experienced as people in the world.

Through all this, Byrne’s high-wire act remains riveting, scrutinized for long stretches of the film in DP Christopher Messina’s probing closeups. It’s a bruising performance, digging deep into the intense pressure and isolation that can sometimes accompany motherhood.

Whatever the movie lacks in surprise or sophistication, it makes up for in sly comic verve and a soulfulness that sticks with you.

What makes Twinless special and surprisingly compassionate is how this director handles grieving characters.

It’s a moving and intimate narrative about the toll displacement takes on generations of people.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore does offer an engaging, exuberant portrait of the relentlessly likeable Matlin.

Half visceral, first-hand treatment of this particular war and half existential meditation on the ephemeral nature of modern warfare in general, 2000 Meters to Andriivka is perhaps less instantly harrowing than 20 Days in Mariupol. But its haunting impact may go further toward reshaping viewer perceptions of the ongoing conflict.

Come See Me in the Good Light is relentlessly emotional and intentionally uplifting, with an intimate quality that makes it feel like a home movie.

It’s refreshing to see a horror movie that relies less on shock tactics than good old-fashioned dread and revulsion.

Predators isn’t a documentary about closing the door on the To Catch a Predator legacy, but on seeing what shades of gray we can discover now that the door is ready to be reopened.

Funny, sad and uncomfortable in shifting proportions, the film is at once an urgent public service announcement and a documentary memento mori — not always pleasant to watch, but far more pleasant to watch than the subject matter would suggest.

If Sunfish is a vacation, it’s the kind that’s less about escaping into a fantasy than about trying on a different reality: learning your way around the terrain, getting to know the locals, falling into their everyday rhythms.

The Alabama Solution is difficult to watch, and impossible to watch without escalating anger. There isn’t easy catharsis or an easy non-Alabama solution, but it’s impossible to deny that something better must be done.

Caught Stealing is an anomaly, a dark soap bubble of an entertainment. And that weirdness makes this unlikely film sparkle.

Without for a minute undermining Ride’s importance, this clear-eyed film doesn’t sugarcoat her sometimes prickly personality.

Final Destination Bloodlines gives its audiences exactly what they expect. Namely, a series of ingeniously designed, diabolical Rube Goldberg-style fatalities that are mostly so within the realm of possibility that you’ll find yourself crossing the street very carefully after you leave the theater.

Franco allows nothing to distract from his actors, observing their characters’ behavior with a forensic detail both transfixing and disturbing.

It’s ultimately Rickards, who handles the intense physical and emotional demands of her role with consummate skill, that gives the film its heart and soul.

The filmmakers keep things moving at such a brisk pace (the film clocks in at a mercifully brief 89 minutes) that you go along for the ride, and there are so many terrific action sequences and injections of mordant, deadpan humor that it proves wildly entertaining.

Anvari’s movie strikes a keen balance between psychological thriller and eerie folkloric horror. Its disturbing ambiguities take on whole new shadings after an unexpected reveal in the end credits.

It’s an introspective portrait of how grief forces Maron, who spent a career metabolizing his feelings into cantankerous jokes, to finally confront his emotions.

For all its fun, F*cktoys isn’t exclusively interested in filth and farce; AP’s search for spiritual salvation is also dotted with more earnest moments about desire and companionship.

Few are going to rate The Christophers as top-tier Soderbergh, but it bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.

Even if Project Hail Mary at times leans into the sentiment to an almost saccharine degree, the movie’s natural sweetness is disarming. And it’s impossible to imagine an actor more adept at striking that tricky balance than Gosling, whose low-key comic timing has never been better.

The subject of mentorship is not treated frequently onscreen, but Mr. Burton may be remembered as one of the definitive explorations of the theme. All the technical credits help to ground the film — cinematography by Stuart Biddlecombe is especially striking — but it is the performances that truly mesmerize.

This is distilled Mamet, peeling back psychological layers and building characters exclusively through chiseled dialogue.

The Smashing Machine’s greatest attribute may be the way much of it doesn’t feel fake at all.

This is the kind of disarming crowd-pleaser for which cringe-inducing clichés like “it will sneak up and steal your heart” were invented. What’s refreshing about Roofman is that it’s never too aggressive about it. It’s sentimental but sincere.

Reichardt has made a genre picture that peels away all the usual tropes to focus on character, on human failings and on the reality that even someone from a comfortable middle-class background can be worn down by struggle and reach for unwise solutions.

There’s a beguiling dichotomy in Kristen Stewart’s accomplished first feature as writer-director — between the dreamlike haze and fragmentation of memory and the raw wound of trauma so vivid it will always be with you.

The strengths of this slender film, which Tsou co-wrote with Baker, stem from its authentic rendition of daily life in a bustling metropolis.

Worley has adroitly assembled the mega-mash-up into an engaging whole, with the help of an amiable cast and a crack technical team.

The true draw in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is Agathe, a compelling protagonist whose passion for literature and love keeps us sufficiently engaged.

Megalopolis, the film, may not be lots of fun to sit through, but its making-of, Megadoc, is a blast, offering a rare inside glimpse at a major movie artist at work.

There’s a hopefulness in Bi’s enigmatic concoction, not necessarily in what it’s saying but in how it’s being said, finding exquisite new forms in old and dead ones so that the cinema can keep on living.

It’s a cinephile’s film through and through — a making-of that won’t make much sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the original movie. But it’s also breezy and relatively entertaining, never taking itself too seriously while highlighting an extremely serious moment in film history.

Movies about depression are tough, but fans invested in the subject during a transitional moment of artistic and personal catharsis will be rewarded.

Predator: Killer of Killers provides the non-stop action that the diehard fans crave.

Urchin would be nothing without a gifted, vanity-free actor (the lead is the son of Stephen Dillane) who has clearly dug deep into the milieu of addiction and homelessness and is willing to go anywhere the script takes his character — from rapturous highs to desperate lows and all their consequent indignities.