Haywood brilliantly subverts her audience’s expectations at every step of the way. She introduces characters as tropes and steers them into the opposite direction.

If “Planet B” is less than a sum of its parts, ending before the Webb is launched, and lacking overall closure, it’s still a wonderfully observational portrait of exploration.

Where “Becoming Cousteau” frustrates at times is its thin treatment of Cousteau’s work. The films and shows are represented with plentiful footage but not truly discussed or differentiated. It’s an odd choice, given Cousteau’s cinematic obsession.

By focusing entirely on Zappa’s outlook on his own work and the way it related to the outside world, Schütte manages to form a tight narrative around this fascinating man.

Kendrick leans more into the dark comedy and general dread of the situation, winding the picture tighter the deeper she goes, and her work here is ambitious and impressive.

A paean to the unsung, Hidden Figures is also a romanticized tribute to everyday problem solvers who, in the movie’s eyes, are their own kind of superheroes.

This affectionate portrait avoids the major pitfall of comparable docs like Asif Kapadia‘s “Amy” or Kevin Macdonald‘s recent “Whitney” in that it steadfastly refuses to make Williams’ death the defining aspect of his life.

Excepting a strangely off-key final scene, A Gray State is a compelling, highly dramatic piece of documentary filmmaking.

Though its verité aesthetics are often more serviceable than inspired, and its vague who-what-where-when-why set-up neuters some of its lingering impact, the film’s depiction of entrenched prejudice remains astutely realized.

While it’s great to see an example of a filmmaker refusing to rest on his laurels or stay inside the nearly defined box of his cultural reputation, a film must be a film – not just a concept. Un Couple never quite manages to transcend its origins as a precious pandemic project.

For decades, cryonics were believed to be the key to immortality, with mind transfer pioneers such as Ray Kurzweil eventually leading the charge in a different direction, but as ChatGPT becomes as commonplace as a text message and the path to computer-based divinity continues to shorten at a shocking rate, films such as this become even more vital.

Above all, I Used to Be Funny is a fine showcase for Sennott’s considerable gifts.

Lowery is the real deal and understands filmmaking, and this is abundantly clear in this searing, romantic crime drama and love story.

A wholly illuminating look at Muhammad Ali in all his complexity, providing a surprisingly fresh and vivid portrait of a man who played rope-a-dope with history, religion and sport and emerged from the ring as an inspiring, and flawed icon.

Hara marries biography to observational and slapstick humor, plus a healthy dose of supernatural rumblings, and in so doing produces something altogether fascinating and endlessly entertaining.

Nash’at may have started the filmmaking process looking for something resembling humanity in the Taliban fighters, but what he found instead was a shocking level of resolve that we, and the US military, underestimated.

After Tiller is not an important film just because of its political and cultural relevance, but because of its humane and compassionate approach to telling the stories of these doctors, their work and the women that they seek to help.

Father, Soldier, Son doesn’t show bias toward the highs or the lows. Rather, it depicts Brian’s life as a mixture of love and loss, pain and recovery, birth, death, and rebirth. What emerges is an unforgettable portrait of a life in flux.

In the end, it doesn't matter if you believe Alexandrovich's story that a $7 billion weapons system was ultimately the cause of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown; what matters is that Alexandrovich believes it so completely. And through his eyes (which seem to bug out outside of his skull), the entire Russia/Ukraine relationship takes on a vivid, personal immediacy.

In the end it’s really Eastwood who makes sure the film transcends the typical biopic tropes. At a spry 86 it’s unclear how much longer he’ll remain behind the director’s chair, but “Sully” proves that with the proper material and actors he can still stir emotions with the best of them.

Promising outer-space majesty and deep-thought topics like some modern variation on Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Interstellar instead plays like a confused mix of daringly unique space-travel footage like you’ve never seen and droningly familiar emotional and plot beats that you’ve seen all too many times before.

On both a political and a personal level, the film is pessimistic, yes, but it feels truthful, and never lapses into easy cynicism.

Watching Georgie embrace what’s making her vulnerable and realizing that doesn’t make her powerless is moving, and seeing this father and daughter connect is sweet. She, of course, will never let go of her fast-talking, hustling nature, but she now doesn’t have to do it alone.

The concept of the film could have been played several different ways, from farce to high-drama to Hitchcock-ian thriller. Ozon decides to try it all, but in the end doesn’t pull off any.

Enemies of the State is powered by a sense of momentum – it’s a story filled with unexpected twists and turns, and not just in terms of “plotting.” Kennebeck finds herself wrestling with the prickly proposition of unraveling where, exactly, the truth lies; it’s the job of any good documentary filmmaker, of course, but in this particular case, it’s a journey of discoveries and often disturbing ones.

Over the course of three and a half hours, Bang both refutes and affirms the criticisms over working conditions for these workers, many of whom are migrants, traveling hundreds of miles (or more) to make money for their families back home.

It is simply a great, traditional Western: the language and cultural details may be different, but the sparse elegance and moral conundrums are familiar and as resonant as ever.

Erlingsson has delivered an attractive slice of Icelandic oddness that confirms many of the cliches about that country’s offbeat outlook, but in a good way.