Despite its nearly three-hour runtime, it never overstays its welcome and plays out beautifully, maintaining a gripping tone and complex narrative about an ordinary family that doesn’t fall into cliches or repetition. Roustaee’s filmmaking is subtle yet leaves a lasting impression, solidifying him as one to watch.

It’s a lovely, charming, vibrant, sad, bildungsroman tale and roman-fleuve that pays small tribute to Maradona. But more importantly, it manages to both memorialize this agonizing turning point in his life and warmly reminisce on the bliss that came before it.

Still Scott’s greatest film and better than James Cameron’s sequel, the director’s sci-fi horror is an exercise in minimalistic terror, manifesting it in the most unknowable, terrifying extraterrestrial creature ever seen on screen.

Return to Seoul begins as an intimately off-the-cuff stranger-in-strange-land story and becomes a sprawling epic of personal discovery. It’s one of the best films of the year.

That ending, poetic and beautiful, is the chronological conclusion of Days; emotionally, it crests a few minutes earlier, as the two men go on a modest dinner “date” after their encounter.

Aligning itself with the director’s prior works, Costa’s cinematic dissertation on the impermanence of life, love as a sacrificial commitment and the existence of God requires a refined attention span and a liberal tolerance for a slow-burning narrative flow, but viewers in search of a visually masterful and emotionally desolate arthouse feature could find Vitalina Varela to be one of the most thought-provoking international features to debut in quite some time.

Featuring two exceptional lead performances from these two boys, first rate beauty-in-ugliness photography and an unusually extraordinary command of tone, Carbone’s picture skillfully articulates the inexpressible.

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.

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.

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.

This is a brilliantly constructed, whip-smart, and laugh-out-loud-funny romp from a filmmaker whose precision and craft is nearly unparalleled. It’s hard to think of a movie this year that has been as singularly delightful, one that, with each passing moment, reveals something charming or odd or real.

Fearsome and fearless at the same time, Palm Trees and Power Lines practically dares viewers to watch what’s happening on screen without flinching.

Mostly this is a thrillingly compassionate, deceptively simple, and wholly invested look at a capable older woman with a lively mind coping with a series of common misfortunes. Where that could be depressing, or at least overridingly melancholy, here it is strangely hopeful.

Scream VI builds to a powerful third act of grisly mayhem that is one of the best in the series.

Charm City Kings is beautiful and important, unabashedly Black, yet rarely traumatic, and almost always determined statement. Soto has crafted an incredible empathetic narrative, one mile of road at a time.

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

The Lego Movie is an absolute blast—a whip-smart, surprisingly emotional family film where the toy property is seen less as a concrete template than a tool for seemingly limitless potential.

Sightseers homicidal holiday isn't just a pitch-black comedy made with skill, will and brains; it's also another demonstration that Wheatley is, to use an all-too-appropriate phrase, going places.

For a movie about government incompetence married to government malfeasance, Costa Brava, Lebanon is surprisingly funny.

A stirring testament to the necessity of empathy for surviving with any kind of dignity in a particularly undignified time.

Wuthering Heights is a model of how to bring a classic novel kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

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.

At its heart, Jane is powerful feminist statement about a woman’s passion for and dedication to her career in the face of structural opposition.

The movie is zippy and funny...and more emotional than the man himself would ever allow himself to be. It’s a triumph.

Its message is timeless. Its performances? Flawless. And if The Killing of Two Lovers can be described as anything more than a must-see film, it can best be defined as a cautionary tale dedicated to the fragility of the family structure in the United States, a showcase of a radically talented filmmaker and a dedication to the painful reality of love.

Colin West’s Linoleum is the kind of movie that’s all but impossible to review with any specificity, because so much of its achievement lies in its surprises – how it seems to be doing one thing while slyly doing another, without deception, and then revealing its ultimate intentions with grace and style.

For a production founded on a tried and true indie formula – start with your characters, add in existential malaise, substitute plot with antics and awkward conversation – Pet Names is made with remarkable urgency

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.