If The Nightingale doesn’t quite fulfill the high expectations for Kent’s sophomore feature, it still shows a director with a muscular handle on her craft, though in this case she could have used a script collaborator to address the weaknesses.

It is a grimly exciting film that is picturesque and brutal by turns.

There's admirable frankness, intelligence and sensitivity here. Additionally, the film is a thoughtful, funny reflection on the gains and losses of growing old.

As the documentary vividly illustrates, it's what's motivating that evangelical support that proves problematic.

This is an enormously satisfying watch for haunted house movie fans, favoring sustained anxiety over big scares and practical effects over digital trickery.

I, Tonya spins a convincing yarn despite, or maybe because of, its surfeit of unreliable narrators.

Williams is to be commended not only for his filmmaking skill, but also for pulling back the curtain on a most disturbing situation.

With her sophomore effort, Evolution, the writer-director delivers another disturbing mélange of experimental genre filmmaking and adorable, tortured French kids, offering up a trippy visual feast that satisfies on an aesthetic level, if not always on a narrative one.

If you were keeping score, it would be Quentin Tarantino 1, Robert Rodriguez 0.

This is a looser, grittier film than their work of late, and while it’s more successful in the sequences of bold theatricality than in the faux-cinéma vérité of the surrounding scenes, the mix is nonetheless an interesting one.

Uplifting without a drop of sap, the tale of a boy's obsession with a glittering swimming pool and how it changes four lives offers numerous pleasures and one of the most satisfying and resonant conclusions to be seen in recent cinema.

Most magically, if one were to listen to their music but not know anything about their heart-wrenching situation, their compositions sound as if they've come from the luckiest and happiest performers in the world.

The jokes are often ridiculous, as is pretty much everything else that happens, but there’s a palpable energy and visual inventiveness on display that keeps things watchable.

The latest in a series of big-screen documentaries dealing with the conflict, and it does so in a particularly involving, fly-on-the-wall manner.

Amplifying its force with thrilling use of the subject’s music, this is a layered examination of a relationship that might be grossly over-simplified today as that of a closeted gay man and his “beard.” But Cooper and co-screenwriter Josh Singer dig deeper to depict a unique union, fraught with conflicts yet unbreakable — even when it’s broken.

Writer-director Rachel Lang and star Salome Richard manage to craft an intriguing feature debut filled with keen observations and slices of dark humor.

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.

An original, unexpectedly affecting tribute to two distinctive comic performers.

A slow-burn haunted house movie becomes a disturbingly effective allegory for the ravages of dementia, which spreads like insidious rot from the afflicted into the family members witnessing her deterioration in Relic.

It’s sobering and heart-wrenching.

At one point, Tsemel describes herself as a member of an occupying force and defines her mission in life as to somehow rectify the resultant power imbalance. The only way to get there, as the film's pointed final image suggests, is to keep on trudging.

At just a fraction over an hour, the film doesn't match the narrative scope of Mangrove or Red, White and Blue. Nor does it have the enveloping intimacy of Lovers Rock, the only Small Axe entry not based on a true story. But its understated celebration of resilience and hope makes the compelling snapshot very much in keeping with the deeply personal nature of this project for McQueen.

Even if the now-veteran director lays everything on a bit thick, repeatedly makes many of the same points and lets things go on too long, he's still found a lively and legitimate way to tackle urgent subject matter that other filmmakers have found excuses to avoid.

The film reflects on issues of aging and autonomy with a mostly light touch, its protagonist making a strong case for the enduring spirit of elderly folks too often infantilized by both society and their loved ones.

Though never hard to follow, the discussion can sometimes challenge an unwonky viewer's attention span. But it contains big insights for those who wade in.

Love Lies Bleeding is a hallucinatory trip down the darkest byways of Americana. It’s too blunt to be as unsettling as Saint Maud but it will leave no one indifferent.

When it’s cooking, which is most of the run time, this is a smart, sophisticated and incisively acted adult entertainment that savages the crumbling institution of marriage, dangles the promise of sexual rescue and then brings the walls crashing down in a bitter reckoning that seems irreversible — until a window of hope and healing gets cracked open.

Girls State, like its predecessor, benefits from strong casting and ample access to the pint-sized political proceedings.