Halfway between fiction and documentary, Last and First Men is a visionary work about the final days of humankind that stretches the audience’s ability to imagine not only an immense time frame reaching over billions of years, but huge steps in human evolution.

Delicate, droll and imbued with a haunting, understated wistfulness, Bergman Island wears its layers so lightly it may take you a while to notice just how much it’s got going on.

Aida's Secrets unravels its complex scenario in compelling, page-turner mystery fashion, proving yet again that truth can be much stranger than fiction.

Barbie is driven by jokes — sometimes laugh-out-loud, always chuckle-worthy — that poke light fun at Mattel, prod the ridiculousness of the doll’s lore and gesture at the contradictions of our sexist society.

In his first narrative feature, documentary maker Jeremiah Zagar (In a Dream, Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart) captures the feel of the novel with uncanny precision, notably in the visceral charge and physical heat of tightly wound bodies almost constantly moving in close proximity.

Pure dead gallus (that's Scots for 'wonderful').

It's caustic, irreverent, constantly amusing and a tiny bit rude. Not a lot, though. This isn't the "Beavis and Butt-Head" or "South Park" movie. It's almost -- dare I say it -- charming.

[A] minor but enjoyable doc.

Even if the film could be accused of lacking subtlety and overloading on whimsy, it spreads a sobering message in a lucid story that remains visually alive and inventive throughout — its aesthetic keeps constantly shifting yet remains fluid.

Finders Keepers charts out a screwy insight into humanity that is usually only captured in the minds of twisted cartoonists.

An English cousin to the earlier Jamaica-set films "The Harder They Come" and "Rockers" that is vastly superior in cinematic terms and just as valuable as a cultural document.

Nutty, arcane and jaw-dropping in equal measure, this is a head-first plunge down the rabbit hole of Kubrickiana from which, for some, there is evidently no return.

In the end, it plays a little too often like an academic pastiche of horror tropes even though its emotional core rings with resonance.

While its stylings are purposely retro, its aims are very much of the here and now. This is a film that digs deep into Chile’s colonial past — especially during a closing section that transforms the story into one of historical reckoning.

It’s a documentary of sterling musical moments and clever connections between culture and the city that all the principals here so clearly adore.

The film maintains a certain level of suspense as it leaps between various epochs, often without warning. But, like many of Bonello’s movies, it lacks forward momentum and a sharp edit, lumbering along as it reaches into a grab bag of thematic and aesthetic concepts.

There’s no question that Hanks is perfect in the part, as the actor’s amiability and unquestionable sincerity make for an ideal match with the unique television personality. Marielle Heller's film itself, however, is a rather more modest achievement, sympathetic and yet entirely predictable in its dramatic trajectory of making a believer of an angry, cynical journalist.

The 40-Year-Old Version is a beautiful achievement, one that ultimately calls attention to the huge gaps in representation of different kinds of black characters on film. It’s a gap that Blank clearly intends to fill; I can’t wait to see what she does next.

As dour as it often seems with its reek of stale booze and cigarette smoke, there’s joy here for patient audiences willing to find it, and to forego the easy consolations of a more conventional outcome.

It feels like a gift from one outstanding character actor to another, but never one that indulges the thesp at the expense of the film.

Through a pointed script and propulsive storytelling, Moratto smartly makes the stakes of living within such a perverse system clear.

A "little" film with a great reach.

On his third feature after "Tower" and "How Heavy This Hammer," Radwanski hits his quiet stride here, and the directing matches Campbell’s intuitive approach. Ajla Odobasic’s delicate, fast-moving editing reflects Anne’s uncertain hold on reality, while the open ending lets the viewer decide whether Anne or reality wins in the end.

Quiet and carefully made but cryptic, it relies on the viewer to complete its metaphors.

A deeply dispiriting portrait of the systemic persecution of the LGBT community in Uganda, the country that seems to be ground zero for homophobia.

Thanks to the script which invests the smallest scenes with dramatic significance, Tokyo Sonata enthrals audiences for the first hour with the pacing of a thriller.

A film that can be somewhat conventional in form, including a score that overdoes it on the pathos, but one that still provides a fascinating deep dive into organized failure.

It’s a nightmare, and not one a mainstream audience would relish. But aficionados of this nearly extinct form of special effects will relish the chance to see a labor of love whose roots go back to circa 1987.