It’s infinitely more fascinating as a personal exorcism of old demons than as a piece of documentary filmmaking. That said, despite its cliched stylings, it succeeds through its intimacy and emotionality, as well as the smart arrangement of its footage.

The end result is often so insightful and entertaining that it makes you immediately wonder what subject matter Jefferson will tackle next.

The experience of Leviathan is wholly singular, without context, enveloping and immersive. In some ways, it might very well be the most terrifying picture of the year.

An acutely defined, starkly realized and profoundly unsettling debut if ever there was one.

Before there was such a thing as a “Fellini” movie, “Variety Lights” established what that would look like as he moved up the ladder in Italy’s movie industry, through humor and melancholy.

It’s difficult to classify The Things You Kill properly, a film drifting into the revenge genre as much as it possesses an undeniable overtone of mystery, simultaneously knocking on the door of a slight psychological element.

Riders of Justice ties together gun fights seamlessly with melancholy and masculinity, putting them on similar footing without one gobbling up the others. The effect is complimentary. Remove one theme and the others crumble. Jensen quietly, and nearly constantly, adjusts his filmmaking to suit varying tones, softening for moments where the subject is human suffering and then hardening around muscular elements

As usual, Strickland’s latest is delirious, deeply delicious in sumptuous form and sly humor. It’s an oddball film, even for the unusual filmmaker.

Sister is as bleak and as beautiful as its snowy, mountainous setting.

It's not particularly funny or moving and it's terribly self-indulgent. Flamboyance and cartoonishness rule, there's hardly a moment of genuine emotion, and most overtures in that direction are superficial. As a picture ostensibly about love, revenge and the ugliness of slavery, Django Unchained has almost zero subtext and is a largely soulless bloodbath, in which the history of pain and retribution is coupled carelessly with a cool soundtrack and some verbose dialogue. Though it might just entertain the sh.t out of the less discerning.

It's a new vampire classic, one to treasure endlessly.

As a sleekly-directed, crowd-pleasing horror film, it’s efficient, terrifyingly thrilling and a lot of fun. It’s the kind of movie that will be discussed and debated for decades to come, and perhaps thirty years from now, as things continue to descend into utter chaos, Us will be looked back in retrospect as prophetic. As it stands now, it’s fascinating, a little maddening, and entertaining.

The Big Short ends up an energetic, absorbing version of these events, marked deeply by its director’s uniquely surreal vision.

The film is generally undramatic. However, that’s hardly a criticism — while Closed Curtain digs deep into the psyche of an artist, it also is full of the ordinary, organic life moments that have populated Panahi's work since the beginning.

An inspired, spellbinding, wonderfully-realized tale and a dazzling, visually/morally beautiful treat for the eyes, ears, heart and soul that richly weaves an all-inclusive journey based in culture, heritage, friendship and self-importance.

It is a thoughtful and intelligent film, and it finds a gifted actor doing some very tricky things quite well.

The film is a bullet train of laughs, gore, frights and folklore, making the two-and-a-half hour runtime feel like a couple of minutes. Blink and you might miss the whole thing.

This is a filmmaker in total command of every visual element — his compositions more compelling than ever, the production design almost verging on steampunk, and a special mention has to go to the extraordinary costumes — but it doesn’t feel stifling or precious either.

Gimme The Loot involves drug-dealing, constant foul language and vandalism, but Hickson and Washington, both attractive and charismatic enough to be stars, carry the film with an air of lightweight pleasure, keeping it light and bouncy.

In a movie landscape cluttered with coming of age stories, it’s worth asking what distinguishes a straightforward example such as Premature. Two things do – authenticity and Zora Howard. Howard is a breakout talent and she endows this story with grace and passion.

The force of originality felt in the narrative is only matched by Bellocchio's execution.

After years of being a long-lost gem, Cousin Jules has finally been found and is receiving its due as an innovative, meditative case study of rural life.

Best of all is the bad guy. Javier Bardem was always a tantalizing choice to play a Bond villain, and his Silva is a terrific creation, and certainly the most memorable villain in the series in decades.

Don’t expect the film to live up to its title. Don’t expect Marczak or his subject to find a way to tie up every loose end. Take in a difficult period in the life of a grieving father, unable to let go. It’s straightforward, sad, and somehow beautiful.

Paper Tiger may be built from recognizable Gray pieces, but he keeps finding new variations inside the same mournful blues. The result is familiar in outline, but authentic, poignant, and quietly devastating.

While it is great that the documentary gives their commitment to direct action proper respect, it sometimes downplays exactly how important the work of activists who got abortion legalized in states like New York, or who got Roe through the court system was. Where it does succeed well is in showing the socio-economic disparity in access to safe abortions, which cost roughly 5 times as much as a month of rent.

The superb Vega’s steady, liquid, fathomless gaze is so direct that we come to understand that behind it, behind the barricade of defenses she’s built up against an unfriendly world, she is no enigma at all: she is completely known to herself.

You may not be able to figure it out, but that's part of the point of this sensually-directed, sensory-laden experiential (and experimental) piece of art that washes over you like a sonorous bath of beguiling visuals, ambient sounds and corporeal textures.