Van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) is returned to his human dimensions, by a keen script and wonderful lead performance, while still being held up as an example of the artist’s ability to transcend time.

Jodorowsky throws everything and several kitchen sinks into the film, yet it all has its place, and the overall effect is not of the headachey mess it would be in anyone else’s hands, but of a kind of joyous, absurdist melange of highbrow concepts, personal memoir and potty humor.

There are meta-movies, and then there’s Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements.

Obvious Child is well-made and wickedly bold, but I still found myself wishing for a little more subtle maturity on the part of its characters and creators.

While the game Chevalier keeps evolving into something darker, the movie Chevalier is fairly static. The style’s unchanging throughout, holding to a slow pace and a muted sense of humor.

While it's great to look at, Reality is an empty shell. A feature length examination on the artifice of reality programming, Garrone's film itself is superficial and lacking the same depth of artistry and ideas he finds absent on TV.

Bernal continues to put in one good performance after another, and his turn here is no exception.

In its new form, The Godfather Coda is still not a masterpiece. But it’s a fine film and worthy conclusion, and its alterations – the repositioning of several scenes, the cutting of others, and a new opening closing –genuinely improve the final product.

The filmmakers are beyond lucky to have the performances from Smith and Ellis, as well as Venus’ own incredible story, to keep you captivated when it matters most.

At its core, Pray Away is a chronicle of pain. It is a candid, unceremonious study of people who have struggled for years with discovering who they are and who God is; and, perhaps most importantly, it is an exploration in the lasting damage caused by misinterpreting Biblical teachings and misunderstanding the Gospel’s message.

One of the masterstrokes of Sarah Gubbins’s screenplay is how deftly she underscores the differences in the perception and presentation of the sicknesses within this marriage.

mother! is something truly magnificent, the kind of visceral trash-arthouse experience that comes along very rarely, means as much or as little as you decide it does, and spits you out into the daylight dazzled, queasy, delirious, and knock-kneed as a newborn calf.

Black Souls is a solid example of the recent string of Italian mob dramas that utilize a somber and reflective tone as opposed to the more flashy and stylized approach of American crime epics.

Dosch, though she’s been appearing more and more in French films of recent years (including Maïwenn’s “My King”), will make heads turn in the role of her career thus far. Her Paula is instantly charming, never too outrageous, hilarious and supremely sympathetic. She will steal your heart.

What We Do In the Shadows is the type of little movie that you watch and feel like you've discovered something really special. It's a total surprise; a silly, scary delight.

It’s [Trachtenberg's] measured hand with tone that's really noteworthy, never over-reaching with each twist of the plot, keeping the tension on a simmer, and even when things boil over, “10 Cloverfield Lane” gets feverishly exciting but not hysterical.

What makes Birdboy: The Forgotten Children so effective is the ability to turn the innocent into the macabre.

Holler succeeds at putting a human face on large-scale economic trends, telling a suspenseful coming of age story that shows the true cost of lost opportunity.

Ulman’s black and white freshman feature is an absurdly and assuredly packed jack-in-the-box that’s short, sweet, and, incidentally, a quirky sharp, vainglorious commentary on these post-crisis, Robinhood Redditor times.

Mud is as unmoving as it is because it doesn’t aspire to be anything other than a competent anti-fairy tale in which the paint-by-number morals are enforced by equally obvious main protagonists.

There’s tremendous social and moral texture throughout the drama, but the socio-economic commentary of the movie is fabric, not heavy handed accessory. And the provocative ethical breaches—savage and scathing in the latter half—give the movie its delectable and wicked bite.

The Woman King is more than an action movie. It’s a film that depicts a side of African history that is rarely told and an opportunity for Black people to assert their humanity and regality.

Brügger’s movie plays mostly like a real-time thriller, to be honest, but whatever hybrid of non-fiction you want to categorize Cold Case Hammarskjöld, it’s nothing short of groundbreaking.

The minor problem of it all is while what Anderson is trying to say can be read across the sky like a beautifully glistening moonbeam; it does often lack the craterous depth of feeling we know he’s capable of when doing his best creative and emotional astrography.

Catching Fire is a monumental achievement, a massively entertaining crowd-pleaser that is thought-provoking and personally inspiring in all of the ways that it aspires to be.

At 127 minutes, Giannoli’s script feels overlong and a bit repetitive in its heroine’s disastrous performances. Lucien, the critic who helps propel Marguerite and her story forward, disappears for a large chunk of the film, only to randomly appear toward the end. Other than these missteps, Marguerite is worth watching with a well-earned grimace, largely for Frot’s pitch-perfect performance.

This pleasingly mellow portrait of a bunch of kids making movies is also an instance of defanged nostalgia — when it was an occasion to highlight the economic, political, cultural circumstances that made this kind of creativity possible.

Despite Herzog’s efforts to keep it as entertaining as possible, “Inferno” does feel like it overstays its welcome a bit. That being said the access and footage they’ve compiled coalesces into a truly cinematic experience. One that would be hard for anyone else to even fathom attempting to duplicate.

There’s the potential for melodrama, but despite the misleadingly grandiose title, The Truth is not in the business of the grand, tormented revelation. Instead, it’s an accretion of little moments, often very funny, sometimes a little sad, but always embedded in the reality of these sharply drawn, idiosyncratic characters.

Flimsy logic notwithstanding, Pearl is the superior of the two heavily-stylized slashers, partly because it dedicates so much time to building the eponymous antiheroine from the ground up.

Full of fresh faces and unique stories, Paris, 13th District makes a case for genuine connections in a culture bent on transposing them into commodified products.

Dead Man’s Burden (the directorial debut of Jared Moshé) demonstrates just why film is important, simply by being beautiful. But beyond that, it’s also a moody, violent, classic, yet modern Western.

To his credit (and without affectation), Gondry doesn’t cloak the fact that he is often perplexed by his subject. Because of his confusion though, we are able to learn quite a lot.

As it did with the actual case, Happy Valley will divide audiences and create heated discussions over the many contradicting reactions given by its subjects. However, there’s one point that won’t be controversial: It’s one of the best documentaries of the year.

A Hard Day is a film that sets itself fairly narrow ambitions, achieves all of them and then some and yet has no pretensions to importance, weightiness or artistic self-expression.

The characters in The Lovers and the problems they face and struggle with feel entirely authentic, as does the magnetic chemistry between the leads.

Depriving “Nothing Compares” of any mention of O’Connor’s more recent life irreparably wounds the film. Had Ferguson bothered to cast aside her rose-tinted gaze, the documentary might have, akin to O’Connor’s rebellious spirit, broken the mold of what’s expected from cinematic works of biographical nonfiction.

Like many Vietnam stories, the film openly contends with the futility of the war, questioning the larger purpose behind it and how it affected these specific men. The film’s greatest strength, then, is in that specificity and its historical corrective.

What could have easily been an overstuffed confluence of ideas – a haunted house, a ghost, a witch, a murder, oh my! – comes together so effectively because of McCarthy’s masterful command of what scares audiences.

There’s a noble search for meaning in the grass, sea and mountains, but it couldn’t hurt to have characters vocalize their feelings even just once. There is a story here, though Pálmason only really alludes to it.

A vibrant and vital tribute to a piece of recording and rock history that could have been lost to the ether, and Grohl packages the story of this little studio with a detailed celebration of the craft and skill necessary to this kind of recording, all with a killer soundtrack (which should go without saying).

Ill-defined, overlong and wandering with unlikable leads (even Alan is too feeble and useless to sympathize with), The Mend would be a disaster if it weren't for the fact that the lack of vision is marginally absorbing in a kind train wreck, “will this movie ever reveal what the hell it’s about?”-like manner.

Well-drawn and intimate, Miller’s best observations come incidentally; Five Star explores ideas and relationships rather than spelling them out.

Unless you have truly transcendent performances or unforgettable cinematic moments, it’s difficult for this genre of sports story to really throw a unique punch.

In a movie as visually stunning as Encanto, it’s the depth of its empathy that might be its most miraculous feature.

In embracing the disorienting quality present in Frank’s work, 'Don’t Blink' is but an abstract portrait, muddled by a jarring messiness.

Yourself and Yours lacks the narrative intricacy of the South Korean filmmaker’s most celebrated work but nonetheless serves as a charming introductory point for unfamiliar audiences.

The Bad Kids falters due to a lack of focus.

Cedar’s smart dialogue and direction lift Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (hereby just referred to as ‘Norman’) above expectations.

Most of all, the chance to spend 90 or so minutes in Fonda’s orbit offers a welcome reminder of what cancellation actually means. For her, and for F.T.A., it means silence. Bravo to the folks responsible for putting the film under a spotlight at a moment where a lesson in genuine cancellation is so desperately needed.

Baumbach’s sharp examinations of the limitations of the callow arrogance of youth and the fatuous nature of egocentricity are pointed and riotously enjoyable.

"Look at Me” provides a fascinating overview of Onfroy’s meteoric rise in the music industry, while also broadly touching on the various legal issues, including appalling allegations of abuse, that dogged his career.

Unique, unforgettable and cathartic, Border is an oddball, but poignant cult classic in the making. Abbasi’s sincerity wisely avoids caricature and mocking his marginalized characters and in doing so he crafts a surprisingly humanist and artful story of love for the diminished and dismissed outsiders of the world.

There are definitely some logical gaps in Ford’s screenplay and perhaps the consequences could be slightly more dangerous (intriguingly, guns barely appear throughout the proceedings), but as a filmmaker, he displays a keen awareness of racking up the tension when necessary and not overdoing it when it’s not.

This terrific and sublime experience, and strikingly original film, is mandatory watching for the adventurous viewer.

Swims forward with tenacious shark-like energy and therefore is sleek, efficient and utterly engaging.

Colangelo’s adaptation continually feels like it’s missing something.... Luckily though, Collangelo has Gyllenhaal, who is exceptional at times here, to carry it through.

While Try Harder! is an important tribute to these kids and their work, it’s also a rebuke of college apps in general.

With an eye for staging and composition as well as an ear for absurd dialogue, Schaffer brings boundless energy to bear that proves electric and infectious to watch unfold. The film never lets off the gas for a second, jolting a dormant franchise back to life—and, hopefully, the entire practice of theatrically-released studio comedies along with it.

Topics such as race, poverty, masculinity and politics are tackled in thought-provoking ways. It all makes for an entertaining, if not slight, ride that proves Kahn has the chops to graduate into feature films and maybe has a genre classic in him just screaming to get out.

It merits being counted as one of the decade’s best and most wildly original animated triumphs and one of this awards season’s most unforgivable snubs.

Overall, this is astute, fascinating filmmaking from Hawke who believes the small details are all part of the bigger picture, the deeper experience of knowing who Blaze Foley was.

Not only does Ostroy contextualize her life outside of filmmaking, but he also centralizes Shelly’s steady and progressive growth from actress-for-hire to independent filmmaking force, noting how creative autonomy allowed her to develop her own projects but also slowed down the development time in-between movies as she scraped together financing.

Matt Shepard Was A Friend Of Mine is a stirring, sometimes tough-going piece of documentary filmmaking: pure, honest and undiluted by hyperbole.

This Is Congo is not an easy documentary to watch. And anyone who knows anything about the tumultuous, war-torn country would understand that from the get-go. Still, despite expectations, it is an engaging, if unsettling, film.

[Kurzel's] depiction of the action scenes is as close to a filmmaking tour de force as you can get. Even for those who know the fate of The Order and its members, Kurzel and editor Nick Fenton will keep you riveted. Until, alarmingly, they don’t.

The Punk Singer brings dimension and real shape to a band, era and scene that is often compartmentalized into one or two categories. That it'll get you wanting to start your own musical rebellion is a bonus.

Capharnaüm is not without its issues. The director over-relies on the courtroom scenes and the movie’s message is heavy-handed at times. Yet, the sheer force of the filmmaking and its artful delivery overpowers sappy overreaching.

It’s fun, has two engaging actors giving two fantastic performances, and may even scare you once or twice (though I kinda sorta doubt it).

By the time the curtains draw to a bittersweet close, you’ll walk out feeling rejuvenated, satisfied, well replenished in humor and culture, and already planning your own trip to Italy.

Sauvage captures the multitude of emotion or lack of, that come with Leo’s tricks. There’s jealousy, pain, excitement, cruelty and even monotonous apathy where you’d least expect it.

A gorgeous and grave anti-epic, Pacifiction proceeds in scenes that serve as pristine containers for Serra’s idiosyncratic style, slow and digressive, full of flabby jokes and windy talk. It’s like watching a tropical aquarium slowly fill with algae.

Thankfully, ‘Recorder’ salvages its lack of narrative control with enough emotional weight to earn its memorability.

It’s not a terrible time at the movies, but after Coogan & Pope’s previous collaboration on “Philomena” proved to be such a genuinely satisfying example of this kind of drama, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something of a missed opportunity here, a film truly deserving of the excellent performances at its centre.

Petzold’s unsettling film is awash with wonderful ambiguities and strives to challenge both its audience and filmmaking conventions. They’re incomparable and largely succeed through their independent nuances.

With suburban normalcy ultimately derailed by a suitably cynical, albeit humorous resolution, the final actions these neighbors take contribute to a far more meaningful message regarding the unsympathetic tendencies of humanity. Moreover, the measures taken by these feuding characters underlie the ruinous ways in which grief, hysteria and mental illness as a whole continue to be approached by society, especially by our own family members and neighbors.

The filmmakers squander a boundlessly fascinating figure in service of yet another paint-by-numbers info-doc with all the dramatic heft of a book report.

As an sensory experience, 'WOWS' is mostly a terrifically visceral one, a full throttle fast and furious bacchanalia of drug-fueled madness. But as a scathing indictment of American rapacity, it isn't particularly deep or resonant beyond the exterior.

Zombi Child is the rare film that’s both rich in ideas and fun, a reckoning with forces colonial powers would like buried, but that won’t stay dead.

Diamond Tongues is refreshing because it isn't an indictment of a demographic, or even of Edith, but is a portrait of a young woman whose ambition has curdled into something more nasty along the way.

Often echoing a thriller — Logan Nelson’s nervy score doing a lot of the heavy lifting — Nothing Lasts Forever is both concise and wide-ranging.

What Blair is trying to do is quite ambitious for his first feature. He alternates moments of high comedy with serious tension and a touch of magic realism for kicks. For the most part, the tone works.

Dark Horse is crowd-pleasing and rousing, but its biggest problem is that no successive part of the documentary can sustain the power of its opening prologue.

Somehow the filmmakers found lightheartedness and – gasp – laughs in a story of political intrigue at the top of the notoriously buttoned-up Catholic Church.

While Muscle Shoals and its presentation doesn't reinvent the wheel—this is your standard talking heads documentary—the treasure trove of stills and found footage makes for a compelling and effortlessly watchable film that even the casual music fan should find themselves totally engrossed in.

For all its minor faults of under-developed characters and disjointed scenes, “Honey” is worth seeing not only for the compelling performances from the two leads but for the incredibly effective use of light, reminding us just how much other films take it for granted.

An enigmatic and perhaps occasionally overly deferential documentary about one of the all-time great character actors, Sophie Huber’s Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, is slow out of the gate, but gently, ever so gently, builds to a thoughtful portrait of a thoughtful man.

The Art Life is more concerned with the art rather than the life of Lynch, and this is the only true weakness of the doc. While informative to a certain degree, there’s always a sense that something is missing here. That there’s more to Lynch than the film cares to explore.

The frustration of watching Drew’s journey unfold makes for a unique viewing experience, and whatever it is he seeks in life, I hope he one day finds it.

In being such a simple, unshowy film, it avoids asking too many questions or digging for the larger truths writ large in the story of Fyre about our society, about celebrity and influencers and Instagram, and the patently manufactured lives that we’re taught to believe we can have.

Breillat’s film is devastating because it exposes at the heart of a seemingly normal family a black hole where empathy should be.

Godard's full length take on 3D is bold, brilliant and exactly what the format needed — a iconoclast taking it and making his own, and almost every time he frames a shot in three dimensions, from opening credits to the final moments, there's something attention-grabbing going on.

Arguably the most persuasive and compelling of Ferguson’s films to date, Time To Choose is an imperative, essential essay on our climate change crisis, and if it ever feels didactic, it’s counterpointed by its very real and very human nature.

A work of such unparalleled Andersonian wit, that at times the sheer level of detail – mobile, static, graphic and typographic – that bedecked the screen was enough to make your correspondent’s jaw slacken. Which meant curtains for the carpet as I was smoking a cigarillo.

Fever Dream never delivers on its promises and eventually collapses due to its cluttered narrative organization, unintentionally sluggish pacing, and an unbridled assortment of themes

If Benedetta is a joke that Verhoeven is in on, and that is designed to play to those in on it too, we can at least be thankful that it’s a good joke – not that there’s anyone up there to be thankful to.