As both writer and director, Jenkins pushes us to rise above judgment by steadfastly refusing to indulge in it herself. Deep empathy suffuses the screen, enveloping every one of the characters.

Neither obtuse nor obvious, Spa Night finds the perfect balance in communication. It shows enough, but not too much; it articulates its ideas, but it doesn’t asphyxiate the audience with them.

A well-acted, inspiring story of female empowerment, the captivating “Roxanne Roxanne” is as much about survival and the bonds of family as it is about busting rhymes.

Damsel is viciously whimsical, if such a thing is possible, and it’s thrillingly subversive. But the punchline comes early, and it’s only repeated as the film progresses.

The tone of Ideal Home can be very sharp, and some of the satirical scenes have real bite. Fleming’s writing is at its best here when he is sending up the exaggerated sensitivity of liberals when they are dealing with a minority and not sure what might offend them.

DaCosta uses a range of thoughtfully considered media to shape their already-sharp script; the film’s violence is equally startling whether it’s depicted graphically and up-close, or through old-fashioned shadow puppets and oral traditions.

Lifshitz envelops Sasha and her family in a sort of visual cocoon, as if to cradle them, shooting them in gentle afternoon light when they’re outside and in protective shadows when they are inside their house. His touch here is so delicate that it makes most American talking-heads documentaries look particularly crude and formulaic by comparison.

As filmmakers, Covino and Marvin are singularly committed to each bit, pushing all premises to the comic extreme. Their characters, however, are less than steadfast and true.

The men are slightly forgettable, but the woman is not. Far from the flawless fembot in “Ex Machina,” Vikander’s slight gawkiness is highlighted here, allowing her to look like a real girl, absolutely the right decision by Kent.

To see Rob Garver’s affectionate documentary about her career,“What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, is to be once again swept away by the excitement of cinema as she experienced it.

Teen Titans GO! to the Movies never wears out its welcome, from the hilarious skewering of some of DC’s most sacred cows (Kryptonite, Crime Alley) to a range of musical numbers that include an 80s-style you-can-do-it anthem (compete with sax solo) and hip-hop-flavored self-aggrandizement.

In a landscape with few movies for families, and even fewer for tween girls, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a fantastic entry. Heartfelt, compassionate, funny, and frank it has the makings of becoming a new classic in the film canon.

The Infiltrators is eye-opening on both sides: It delivers an encouraging example of the power of a united people, and it opens a window into the abuses and inhumane separations that are carried out under the guise of protecting the nation.

An ugly and frequently hilarious descent into all things repellent, the debut feature from director Jim Hosking plants itself firmly in a world of filth and shock.

This film, though not formally revolutionary, is the type of defining, delicate portrait that moves beyond the often tiresome trend of music documentaries that simply shower praise on their subjects.

A witty, intelligent, and entertaining view behind the scenes of a late-night talk show.

Stolakis is not afraid of complication.

It Comes at Night is not a horror film, though it is horrifying, mining the depths of paranoia and fear when unknown forces intrude on domesticity and create desperate rats out of otherwise reasonable human beings.

A Ciambra is intimate and documentary-like, approaching and then backing away from larger issues of marginalized and immigrant communities, showing rather than preaching, and most importantly, prioritizing Pio’s adolescent face and the way his eyes scrutinize his surroundings as they constantly look for opportunity, weak spots to break through.

In its happiest moments, The Movie Teller is glorious and yes, a little corny; in its darkest ones, it’s still lovely and sad.

Unhinged and witty, Slack Bay is one of those rare movies that looks like it was fun to make, and is even more fun to watch.

It’s hard to say the name "Captain Underpants” without smiling, and the big-screen debut of the skivvies-clad superhero (the film’s subtitle is “The First Epic Movie”) maintains that same goofy, innocently naughty nature for nearly its entire running time.

Small Things Like Things is a modest gem.

If “Greece” is the end of the “Trip” saga, as all involved say it will be, it’s a satisfying and even touching way to wrap up a decade-long demonstration of the proposition that all it takes is conversation to be entertaining.

Willfully empty but wildly entertaining, The Equalizer stands out from its peers like a wolf among lapdogs, as Fuqua and Washington bring out the best in each other for the benefit of the audience.

Like a perfect cocktail mixes the sour with the sweet and the bright with the boozy, Focus combines seamless, superbly-crafted filmmaking with the fizz and fun created by its leads.

Made of equal parts mourning and melancholy, mystery, and possibly madness, the striking Tom at the Farm showcases Dolan’s abundant talents at turning seemingly simple material into a taut, tough film.

It may not provide the rush of adrenaline that many people seek from their horror movies but Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is a smart and elegant piece of creepiness.

Things as subtle as how Garland pronounces the word “wonderful” are not missed by the exacting Zellweger, who has brought the legend to vivid, full-color life. Even if she can’t quite match the beauty of that famous voice, Zellweger captures the spirit of how Garland sang.

What’s lovely about the best scenes in This Is Not Berlin is the sense Sama captures of all the possibilities opening up for Carlos.

A few of the self-referential gags get recycled one too many times, but an exuberant buoyancy — and the belly-laugh-a-minute pacing of the jokes — makes 22 Jump Street a hilarious highpoint of an already quite funny summer season.

Given the film’s abridged runtime and its genuine playfulness, even Wes-skeptics might find themselves cracking a wry grin from time to time.

The more we are taken on this journey through Grace’s early foray into adulthood, the more it earns its classic coming-of-age beats while also cutting into something deeper it can call its own.

How to Make a Killing has the acuity to know that even if you are willing to play such a rigged game in ruthless fashion, you’ll still lose. The film’s magic trick is taking this bleak idea and knowing how to find the fun in such brutal sport.

The film boasts all the cinematic strengths we’ve come to expect from the animal-focused nonfic label... But director Mark Linfield’s film is also distinguished by its fascinating focus on the rigid but not immutable social hierarchy of the macaque world, as well as a smartly structured story of repression, rebellion, and triumph.

Fayyad’s cameras roam freely through the hospital and paint an intimate picture of the facility in which many of the patients are indeed children who’ve grown up under the shadow of warplanes. The footage of injured children and malnourished babies is wrenching and hard to watch, to the point where you wonder how Dr. Amani and her colleagues can fail to succumb to hopelessness and rage.

Mickey and the Bear is an impressive feature debut from Attanasio, one that shows a lot of promise in the way her movie explores characters and uncomfortable stories. When coupled with Morrone’s deft performance, Attanasio gives her lead character so much life and vibrancy.

Movies don’t get much juicier, funnier, creepier, sadder, or smarter than writer-director Justin Kelly‘s King Cobra.

This isn't disposable popcorn entertainment, or a winking “war” film like “Inglourious Basterds.” Ayer's aim here is a film that will stick, and stick with you. And he achieves it.

Much about God’s Country is provocative, raising critical questions about boundaries, environmental stewardship, community, inclusion, grief and more. It is, however, a slow burn, requiring patience and attention.

The most impressive element of Wolfgang is the amount of ground it manages to cover in 78 minutes without ever seeming to rush over anything.

With Carousel, Lambert’s new romantic drama starring the excellent duo of Chris Pine and Jenny Slate, she strikes gold yet again.

Though an extension of the same tone that was experienced in his HBO series, this feature is more than just one very long episode of his show. Instead, it’s like Wilson has fully become a funnier, more frenetic version of Frederick Wiseman.

Malignant might not hold up to scrutiny but by the time all its mysteries are revealed, it’s clear that it was never supposed to. It’s an absurdly entertaining frightfest with a heavy emphasis on the absurd, and thank heaven — or hell — for it.

It’s a story of closed borders in Europe, and foot-dragging immigration bureaucracy in safe countries, together spelling ruin for countless displaced victims.

Z for Zachariah feels like a genuine rarity: an American movie that doesn’t tell you what to think or how to feel when the credits start rolling. Contemplating our doom doesn’t seem like a bad idea when it’s done this skillfully.

While initially playing like a fish-out-of-water (or, more specifically, into-the-water) rom-com, Hunt’s Ride winds up being surprisingly satisfying, a film with the guts to talk about the things that really matter underneath what could have been a glib, shallow version of the same tale.

It’s based on historical facts and real-life characters, yet it feels timeless and allegorical. It’s indisputably Harron’s best, and she deftly locates stately classicism amid the crass and the banal, and vice versa.

For all its clear-eyed representation of the fears and horrors of aging, Dick Johnson Is Dead is nonetheless an ultimately joyous experience.

The legacy of Reading Rainbow is indestructible, and hearing directly from the people who made it is as inspirational as some of the best episodes of the series itself.

It’s a profound love letter from daughter to mother, an expression of a desire to remain close to her, and in fact, a love letter to all mother-daughter relationships that persist in spite of and because of all the flaws, foibles, and fallibility that comes with being human.

What makes Provaznik’s film most effective, beyond just the care it shows to its young characters and the way it keeps their humanity at the forefront, is the fact that its story, no matter how disquieting it gets, is also frighteningly ordinary.

Grillo is exactly the right man for this role, the thoughtful tough guy who can pull bullets out of his own body and who always looks like he needs a shower, but who can’t stop for such indulgences until he knows everyone else is safe. And the ensemble around him forms a tight, empathic unit. We want the Purge to keep going; we also want this crew to smack it down hard.

By nature of its central subject, it’s a piece of work that infuriates and excites. It’s a deeply upsetting movie, and then, sporadically, a hopeful one.

One Night in Miami shows King to be a filmmaker who’s clearly interested in balancing a variety of literal and figurative textures.

The writer-director is aided immeasurably by lead actor Emma Mackey (“Death on the Nile”), whose wide eyes and expressive features convey a torment and vivacity being held in constant check by a repressive society.

It’s a testament to the total-immersion powers of The Jungle Book, from its visual splendors to its sound design, that the seams never show; even more impressive is the film’s use of its craft not merely to dazzle us but also to further its dramatic agenda.

Precisely because of how ravishingly constructed some of the set pieces turned out, it’s more of shame to see the storytelling’s structural lack of cohesiveness and subplot saturation clutter the view.

Sovereign is some of Offerman’s most complex and disturbing work. It’s a fine film, too.

Tower himself contributes to the film’s appeal. Still elegant in his mid-70s, there’s no doubt of his arrogance, though that seems to be a prerequisite of the trade. He knows that his work has been extraordinary, he’s well-spoken, and he cares intensely about decorum and class.

It sidesteps saccharine wistfulness to flow without pretense, consistently putting its finely-drawn characters before other concerns.

Morgan Neville may have made the latest in a long line of giant LEGO commercials, but he’s made one with real human decency and soul.

Owen Kline’s darkly hilarious directorial debut Funny Pages is a coming-of-age tale that finds the sublime in the grotesque, and the profound in an absurd search for meaning in the basement apartments and comic book shops of Trenton, New Jersey.

Marshall’s Hellboy is a horrifyingly good time. It captures the breathless quality of reading 30 issues of a single comic-book series in one sugar-addled afternoon, shoving as many amazing characters and storylines and images into one film as it can possibly hold. It could have seemed overstuffed and frenetic, but this new “Hellboy” instead comes across as imaginative and freewheeling.

It’s an engaging slasher movie amusement park ride – but just like any amusement park ride, it’s not as exhilarating the sixth time around, it probably won’t impress you with its subtext, and you can usually see the ending coming around the bend.

Final Cut is silly and excessive and completely over-the-top, but it also brings out the lightness and deftness of Hazanavicus’ touch with comedy; the director somehow manages to fling body parts and bodily excretions at the audience for almost two hours, and yet you leave feeling as if you’ve seen a feel-good movie.

The House With a Clock in Its Walls is easily Eli Roth’s best motion picture, and that’s not an attempt to damn the film with faint praise. It’s a spooky and amusing piece of family-friendly Halloween cinema, sharply produced and mostly effective, told with skill and panache.

On the whole After the Wedding is a touching journey through a world where even those with the best intentions leave some wreckage behind, and where forward motion only comes with hard looks into the past.

Fuqua, like Möller before him, doesn’t really give you time to sit back and think about it. The Guilty stays in one place but moves like a tough, efficient action flick; it’s a thrill ride in an office chair.

Writer-director Mariama Diallo’s debut feature Master doesn’t just blur the lines between the horror genre and institutionalized racism; it convincingly argues that there’s no meaningful difference.

Roberts wraps his audience around his finger and then points us in the direction of gruesome, darkly humorous devilry.

Pieces of a Woman is grounded and intensely personal. Much of that is due to the towering and heartbreaking performance by Kirby.

It is, most importantly, amusing and creative. It may not follow its storylines to the most logical conclusions, and it may not reinvent the action movie as we know it. It’s still an enjoyable blockbuster sequel that tries to infuse the original idea with a couple new ideas, while setting the stage for more exciting adventures to come.

The Eggers Brothers have a canny way of balancing those wildly different tones. We’re frightened for each character, even when we point and giggle at them. It’s a twisted film.

The result is hugely impressive and awfully scattershot, a wry piece of art that is always entertaining but also so excruciatingly detailed that you wonder if it will connect the way the more emotional, more fully drawn stories of “Grand Budapest,” “Moonrise Kingdom” or “The Royal Tenenbaums” did.

There are times when the narrative approach of “Still” — throwing a barrage of film clips at his bio — can become distracting rather than entertaining, but it’s always a kick.

There are no small parts in a Michael Showalter movie. Every actor is a star when they’re on camera.

The film is a dark slice of neorealism with a palpable sense of claustrophobia that Ada feels in her life and in her family. But her relationship to what is essentially imprisonment is odd and complex; she seems desperate to get out and exercise some control of her life, but there are strange cracks in that desperation, signs that she’s terrified of what even a modicum of freedom and control might bring.

Whenever the filmmaker’s emphasis is on the sinful humanity of these men of God, reducing them to Machiavellian backstabbers, it’s a satisfying and absorbing yarn. When it tries to say something profound — while refusing to acknowledge the many elephants who populate the Vatican’s many rooms — it makes cardinal errors.

A sadistic delight, just like its predecessor.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is such an absorbing airplane novel of a movie that you half expect to walk out of the theater and into O’Hare International. Your flight was on time, and the turbulence was totally badass.

Kusijanovic isn’t interested in tipping her hand as this coming-of-age story turns into one more cinematic journey by a young woman through an inhospitable world.

If you strip away the things that make this such an unusual release in such an unusual year, you’ll find a pretty good movie and one that approaches this story with heart and with fresh eyes.

While the film sometimes struggles with disparate tones, it’s a solid, subtle drama that opts in most cases for restraint over excess.

The director is more interested in quietly telling the story of two specific women, and letting the audience grasp the big picture without much prodding.

Although it might promptly be added to your holiday movie rotation as a new staple, The Holdovers doesn’t exactly feel like a new classic—it feels too familiar for that. Still, it does something tried-and-true so well and affectionally.

Greutert’s film brings back the core elements that made these movies work. It’s an uncomplicated, effective horror thriller, even though it’s trapped itself in the past with nowhere else to go.

The new documentary is a colorful force of nature underscored by the fierce soundtrack of life, embodying the best parts of its subject in the name of nostalgic exploration. After all, music can tell beautiful stories, and this journey is no exception.

Alpha comes close to greatness, specifically that rare kind of greatness that we reserve for timeless epics, or at least gorgeous Frank Frazetta illustrations. The story and protagonist aren’t quite rich enough to take it to the next level.

It’s a film about a bleak and cruel universe that is unkind to victims and eager to ignore reasonable pleas, a world that has a conscious and subconscious vendetta against women in general. It’s also a film that thinks it’s entirely possible to destroy that world, as terrifying as it is, and ultimately, it’s the movie’s principled strength that endures.

At times the storytelling may make the story look and feel more interesting than it is, particularly in an ending that feels as if it rushes to find a bit of forced redemption. But Poe is an assured first-time director who has created a high-school movie that feels distinct from all the high-school movies that preceded it.

Wife of a Spy doesn’t necessarily change its tone when the stakes are raised so much as shift its concerns from what’s on the surface to what courses underneath in a time of war.

Clerks III is serious to a minor fault and breezy to a minor fault. It’s got all the same laid-back, chill vibes cinema that Smith is well-known for, and the same immature approach to genuine maturity that he’s also known for, with a new sense of emotional severity that makes it harder to laugh than it probably should be.

This is a story about power, but it’s also a story about place. More than that, you’ve really got to see it to believe it.

Whether the love story completely works or not, ChaO is such a visual wonder that it hardly matters.

You can go to Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles for the delectable excess, but you’ll stick around for the quiet, cautionary notes between bites.

It’s gorgeous, it’s distinctive, it’s quirky, it’s definitely about mermaids, and it might just make you question your sanity.