For a feature debut, Una is bursting with exceptional confidence and style. The aesthetic is Jonathan Glazer meets Andrea Arnold and it assures that some of the script’s more staged scenes hold your attention.

Like Brokeback Mountain a decade ago, Moonlight is a piece of art that will transform lives long after it leaves theaters.

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.

Ford’s attempt to synthesize the two halves of his film into a coherent whole is what sells it all short.

Arrival, the shimmering apex of Villeneuve’s run of form that started back in 2010 with “Incendies,” calmly, unfussily and with superb craft, thinks its way out of the black hole that tends to open up when ideas like time travel, alien contact and the next phase of human evolution are bandied about.

La La Land is a film you simply never want to stop watching. It has wisdom and joy and sadness and such magic, from the evocative power of music to the transportative power of movies.

A lovely, but uneven moral tale of love, forgiveness and heartrending misdeeds, Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans is conceptually sound, and at times, beautifully gut-wrenching. But the plaintive picture often becomes engrossed in conveying at all times just how precious life and love is.

[Chan] brings energy to a film that desperately needs any kind of life, but there is only so much Chan can do.

It’s sillier and more free-wheeling than you’d initially expect, but it never quite finds a sense of drive to give it purpose.

Humanity permeates Cameraperson, thanks to Johnson’s presence, so as experimental as it is, it’s also stirring and poignant, with a tangible sense of empathy intact in every frame.

Imperium, at its best, is a film about the ideological crisis of seeing the principles your worldview is built upon repurposed for hate and bigotry. But once it reaches these highs, the third act mostly squanders them.

There seems like there could have been quite the stylish biopic in Rapkin’s version of events, but the telling is underwhelming, making this film a continuous stream of possibilities that are never opened or explored.

An unsavory, underdeveloped and uninspired bore, it takes too many blows and doesn’t give nearly enough counterpunches. It doesn’t cut. It doesn’t bleed. It doesn’t even hit. Hell, it barely puts up a fight. It comes out the gate frail and disoriented, already down for the count before the picture has started.

In spite of its various imperfections, Ben-Hur always manages to entertain, proving the timelessness of epic structure and scale. And even if nothing about the movie particularly stands out on its own, when all the pieces come together, one cannot help but feel immersed in the world and ideals presented.

There’s an immense amount of promise on display in Ahn’s film, from the performances and the direction, to the more technical elements.

The People vs Fritz Bauer successfully uses the moral importance of its themes and the strength of its performances in order to build a riveting procedural that efficiently covers for its lack of visual pizzazz.

As Farah, first-timer Baya Medhaffer is a revelation, managing to combine a zest for life with teenage naiveté.

As a whole, the film is enchanting even if certain aspects of it are not.

Kubo and the Two Strings feels like a miracle, evoking joy, surprise and wonder in its audience.

While War Dogs won’t go down as one of the great films about misconduct on a national level, it’s undeniably a decent enough popcorn ride.

It’s thematically rich, and confidently directed with a clear point of view, set against a backdrop of relevant socioeconomic and cultural issues. But it’s also a deeply relatable and affecting depiction of the heedless beauty of a first love.

As underground and DIY as the kiki scene might be, it’s still highly organized, and part of what Kiki expresses is this community organization as a strategy for survival. The struggle is real, and it’s hard to imagine how they keep pushing that boulder up the hill — being fully themselves in the face of so much hardship — but they are tough, and united.

Even as a late night Netflix viewing for fashion aficionados who enjoy a scandalous bit of melodramatic trash, The Model doesn’t offer anything new, interesting, or engaging.

Alvarez’s visual flair and handle on tone can only mask his paper-thin characters and motivations for so long.

With its sensational production designs, lavish costumes and Grant providing one of his best performances in years (if not one of his best performances ever), Florence Foster Jenkins is appealing if ultimately slight.

The Lost Arcade suffers not because it lacks an egalitarian heart, but because Vincent makes his arguments through a myopic lens.

Here is a film about truly extraordinary events that is mostly autobiographical and true to the lives and experiences of writers and directors Joe Syracuse and Lisa Addario which never manages to feel personal, and instead is reduced to coming off as just another raunchy comedy.

If Ellis and co-screenwriter Anthony Frewin’s attention to historical detail hinders Anthropoid initially, it breathes life into what turns into an action packed and inherently cinematic second half.