Watching large chunks of this film feels like being transported into a trance-like reverie, albeit a reverie that quite often has nightmarish contours.

For all its narrow focus, this is a pleasingly personal breakdown of a fascinating episode in recent European history, tightly composed and crisply edited, with an appealing undertow of dry humor and some cautionary lessons for modern voters.

In the end, this passionate indictment of present U.S. policies stirs both sadness and outrage.

A blend of cornpone commentary and tongue-in-cheek exposition, Nuts! is consistently very entertaining.

Smart, seductive and bristling with sexual tension, Challengers is arguably Luca Guadagnino’s most purely pleasurable film to date; it’s certainly his lightest and most playful.

Pig isn’t the gripping mystery Sarnoski might have intended, but as a crawl through the underbelly of a hipster city’s glamorous foodie culture, it’s a gutsy narrative recipe, even if the final dish is less than the sum of its ingredients. Through it all, Cage plays the enigmatic central character at the perfect simmering temperature, and without a shred of ham.

Mikhanovsky and Austen train an affectionate gaze on their characters, both as individuals and as part of distinct groups that intersect and overlap with uplifting results.

Even at its most sorrowful, Marjorie Prime is suffused with warmth, the core of it emanating from Smith in two complementary iterations of the same character.

A drama of such searing human empathy and quotidian heartbreak that its powerful climactic scenes actually impede your breathing.

Three hours long yet anything but leisurely, the doc is charged with energy, anger and disappointment.

Racing in high gear from start to finish, Danny Boyle’s electric direction tempermentally complements Sorkin’s highly theatrical three-act study.

Marley is sure to become the definitive documentary on the much beloved king of reggae.

Compelling.

Factoring in Mike Eley's breathtakingly vivid photography and a virtuoso sound mix that completely envelops the viewer, it's enough to make you never again want to poke your head into the freezer.

It is an engaging and often touching comic drama that builds power as it moves toward its immensely satisfying conclusion.

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

An intriguingly structured, multilayered road movie in which an ordinary working-class dude looks back over a nation-wandering decade of his life, this second collaboration by the writer-directors is a cumulatively engrossing and ultimately very moving work of clear-eyed political intent.

A film about the sudden onset of deafness that is too attentive to specifics of character and setting to ever feel like a rote disability drama.

If the film runs a tad too long, especially in its second half, Embrace of the Serpent is still an absorbing account of indigenous tribes facing up to colonial incursions, revealing how Westerners are in many ways far behind the native peoples they conquer.

A pure-bliss celebration of Paul Simon's landmark album Graceland coupled with an interesting if not unbiased look at the controversy surrounding its release.

Kaphar, who also wrote the screenplay, draws many fine, if familiar, conclusions about the corrosive nature of generational trauma.

It is absolutely fascinating to watch how Puiu X-rays his characters to show how every single person onscreen belongs to several groups or affiliations at once...and how every one of them is either willing or forced to compromise parts of who they are to continue belonging to all these groups.

Even if Da 5 Bloods at times seems to be morphing into an entirely different movie, its playfulness, as much as its raw power, keeps you glued.

Tracing the rise of digital movies via a wealth of charts, clips and candid testimonies, this Keanu Reeves-produced and narrated investigation offers a thorough analysis of what's very likely the most important cinematic development since the advent of sound.

All the dramatic components have not only been well thought out by Talbot and co-writer Rob Richert, but they’re adorned, for the most part, by a sense of reality that keeps pretentiousness at bay. To be sure, this is a highly calculated and worked-out story, but the humor and lively playing of the entire cast keeps the film aloft across its two hours.

With strong visuals and even stronger emotions, Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory makes a powerful war film about a particularly unique subject.

Some of the metaphors are a bit too literal but the director largely succeeds with his story and the surprises are convincing. Best of all the film has a terrific sense of humor and the young actresses exploit it delightfully.

The unique charm of Isle of Dogs is its bottomless vault of curios, its sly humor, playful graphic inserts and dexterous narrative detours.