After Maria is an affective, personal film that humanizes a persistent national tragedy.

Whose Streets? vitally offers — despite its birth in sorrow and its many war-zone-like stretches — is a tale of alertness and awakening.

Nearly free of gore, the film taps into the deep and always welcome vein of the opulently bizarre things that rich, emotionally stunted people get into when they’ve got too much money. Stacey Menear’s script is careful and clever about revealing what Brahms really is, for he’s certainly got a mind and will of his own.

A movie that, if never exactly a cathartic experience, carries you along in its clenched grip with an undeniable power. It’s sad and funny and real.

It’s a wealth of information The Ivory Game vitally offers, and action it means to incite. That may well be enough to get audiences involved.

Waves isn’t an easy film to digest, and it’s not without its flaws — Emily’s narrative at the end makes it a bit disjointed, and Tyler’s story never feels resolved — but it stays with you mostly because of its shattering performances that bolster Shults’ story.

Logan is more interested in psychological horror than in the typical slice-and-dice of slasher movies, and in several scenes here he achieves a remarkable intensity.

No one’s going to accuse Goodbye Christopher Robin of subtlety or of rewriting the biopic rules, but it does dare to go darker than most films like it.

It’s made with campfire-spooky care rather than an abiding need to impress you with his gifts.

Though the strong performances of Nélisse and Wiggins are key to convince you that they not only care for each other but are capable of thinking on their feet, it’s Paxton who must deliver sufficient menace to propel the story — and he’s terrifying.

The movie is not going to make anyone forget “Jaws,” but it delivers the kind of breathless tension that justifies its existence.

Soul is perhaps the most existentially ambitious film ever attempted by Disney and yet it pops with colorful visuals and gentle wisdom while the story clips along despite the dizzying height of the concept. Only in the final stages do the knots of plot complexity get the better of the characters, but audiences will have been well won over by then.

With everything a little bigger and the film significantly more beautiful — the wonderful Robert Richardson (‘Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood,’ ‘Casino’) behind the camera — the stakes feel worthy of their larger-than-life star.

Kahiu gives the film a brightness and vibrancy that works to counterbalance the perilous waters into which Kena and Ziki are venturing.

Masterminds is kinder to its characters than most comedies about the bumbling and under-educated, and that’s Hess’s strength.

Larson excels at determined despair, simultaneously evincing vulnerability and fearlessness. It’s an exciting, tour-de-force performance by an actress who announces herself as one of the best of her generation. If only the film around her were as bold.

Braverman’s approach, in which he mostly relies on Kaufman to tell his own story through extensive and deftly edited vintage footage, is the right one.

Whether he’s expounding upon his fear of wild animals or recounting how he sweated his way through his first experience trying to order something at Starbucks, Hart is a natural raconteur, alternately arrogant and self-deprecating, worldly and juvenile.

You can love “Gloria” and still think that Gloria Bell is an admirable reimagining that stands on its own while paying tribute to the original.

At a breezy 90 minutes, Copa 71 makes its case succinctly, dropping interesting tidbits while letting the event itself serve as a revelation.

Earl and Hayward developed these characters first as a live stand-up show and then in a short film, and natural chemistry and cheeky rapport make “Brian and Charles” a laugh-out-loud comedy.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets might well represent the apotheosis of Besson’s singularly loony brand of filmmaking. It’s bonkers and gorgeous and confusing and thrilling and tiring and overflowing with ideas.

The filmmakers know that one drops into fare like Extraction 2 not for feelings and tears but for the fast-on-its-feet action, one they deliver in heaps.

Zax’s gentle, fly-on-the-wall perspective keeps us primarily in the present, reminding us that all we need is right there inside the shop.

Strong casting keeps the film thriving through its many winding subplots.

Cunningham is valuable as an introduction to the work of this major artist, who is sometimes seen dancing himself in archival footage, unfurling his long legs and arms and exploring the most eccentric movements without fear or physical roadblocks of any kind.

Though it’s an intoxicating blend of modern and vintage romance, The Photograph, while flawed, is most intriguing when it peels back the layers between a mother and daughter who never really knew each other in life, but whose stories eventually intertwine in ways they could have never imagined.

Brian Knappenberger’s urgent new documentary Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press is the sort of movie that impacts your viewpoint long after it ends.

It’s silly and makes little sense, but it’s such a fun time at the movies.

The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic brings up the continued need for disabled directors and screenwriters. There’s certainly enough charm to spare from the film’s leads, but the storytelling too often relies on disabled people in peril and other tropes that simply regurgitate what we’ve seen.

As Mama Weed makes deliciously apparent, where its iconic star goes, we will gladly follow.

Even as it’s not Ramsay’s best film, even a minor work from the filmmaker is still better than just about any other director. There remains a haunting power that she’s able to wield over her audience.

Even when Ford strongly foreshadows future revelations, Strong Island holds narrative jolts, many fueled by shocks of betrayal. In losing William, the family also lost their faith in their country, their community, and in themselves.

While Christine the movie may leave you in a coldly analytical space about sad people — even its dollops of humor have a chilliness — Christine the woman stays with you, thanks to a career-best performance from Hall that’s stark, thoughtful, and mesmerizing.

Is it enjoyable to watch? Hell no – there’s a reason why everybody on the screen is either screaming or crying for it to stop. But you have to hand it to Noe, because it is kind of mesmerizing in its perverse single-mindedness, and the fact that “Lux Aeterna” is only 50 minutes long makes it more endurable.

In the hands of lesser performers and lesser filmmakers the premise could have fallen apart quickly. The Idea of You, however, has performers who know exactly what they need to bring to deliver a believable, compelling romance worth getting swept up in.

Flawed writing doesn’t mean A Lot of Nothing has no value. McRae certainly shows promise as a director, if not a writer, with Noel, Coleman, Anderson, and Scott demonstrating they can handle complex portrayals well. It’s just unfortunate the story doesn’t live up to all their talents.

This is a film worth grappling with, even if Baldwin’s own talent has a diva-like way of pulling the focus back to his book and away from what we are seeing on the screen.

Levy and Till prove to have chemistry together despite their predictable romantic arc. Wedge (whose other previous credits include “Robots” and “Epic”) knows how to keep the proceedings generally casual and breezy. The action sequences unfold with an air of lightness and youthful irresponsibility.

It’s an invitingly austere movie, designed for both searching believers and curious others. The film can be cinematically rigorous, but it’s never ritualistically flashy.

Co-directors Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed and writer Peter Jones manage to cover a lot of territory in a compact 83-minute running time, while striking the same balance between sexy and peculiar that makes the catalog such a hard-to-parse artifact of its era.

If you’re looking for a quick medicinal shot of how we got to Trump in the White House, the bracing “Divide and Conquer” feels like one of the more alarming civics courses you’ll ever take.

The biggest challenge of an actor in any live-action update of an animated character is to make an audience that is already loyal to the original fall in love with a newer rendition. And that’s exactly what Moner does; her Dora has the DNA of everything that made the original so special while offering a fresh take for newer generations experiencing the character for the first time.

It’s a solid chronicle of (the first part of) a fascinating life and career.

It’s incredibly effective and culminates in one of the best closing shots of any film to show at this year’s festival. Without ever once overplaying its hand, it ensures the smallest act of resistance and compassion hits like a train.

Didion speaks very bluntly here, and sometime shockingly.

A work of impressive investigative cinema. ... Their choice to focus so tightly on a micro-scenario here does strand us, occasionally, in the weeds of detail. But it’s tough to watch such a flatly incriminatory report without taking a macro view of society’s villains and heroes.

Too many heartwarming comedies, especially those with mature leads, eventually expose themselves as cynical contrivances. The same could be said for some of the based-in-truth dramas that have started to feel inexorably churned out. In its affable sincerity, The Duke is both their opposite and their antidote, a feel-good entertainment for feel-bad times.

The movie never feels like an attempt to recapture past glory as much as fit Evans’ style onto a well-trod narrative. It’s a B-actioner elevated thanks to a singular director, and while I know “Gangs of London” has plenty of fans, I hope we won’t have to wait another seven years for Evans’ next action film.

India Sweets and Spices works so well in part because Ali gives her character the authenticity of someone trying to do the right thing while still figuring out how to handle her privilege and tradition.

An easy-going film that coolly ambles forward as a series of short sketches and vignettes, while maintaining a fairly detached tone.

There’s enough good-naturedness and cultural specificity here, alongside a slight deviation from the usual immigrant narratives, to render it a dollop of sweetness and novelty that goes down easy.

This switching-places comedy warmly and trenchantly sends up the telenovela genre’s swooning melodrama and oversexed-but-prudish contradictions.

Demolition strikes a tricky balance; it’s a comedy of manners that never judges its hero’s bizarre behavior. Had it stuck to its emotional guns, it would stand much taller, but even its ultimate flaws can’t erode its sturdy foundation.

What sets it apart from other overpraised festival indies is its tremendously gifted lead.

It’s excessive and exhausting and elusive, and entirely in keeping with the curious career of the Mael brothers.

Jolt won’t be the talk of awards season, but it knows how to entertain, offering the enjoyable spectacle of watching one woman taking down everything and everyone in her way, using what the world has told her (and so many other women) to get rid of — her feelings and her demand to be heard.

If you’ve ever watched a classic movie and wondered why no one else seems uncomfortable with its portrayal of female characters, you’ll want to see “Brainwashed” as soon as possible. And if you haven’t — well, that may be all the more reason to seek it out.

It Chapter Two is a much grander project than the first film.

Sure, young star Trevor Jackson (“Grown-ish,” “American Crime”) can’t fill O’Neal’s effortlessly dapper, achingly world-weary shoes, and few movie soundtracks can rival Curtis Mayfield’s legendary album for the first “Super Fly.” But this is a remake worthy of its original.

It hasn’t always been easy trying to figure out what’s going through the mind of the 44th president of the United States, but Barry is a satisfyingly curious, honest attempt to make his inner struggle a beautiful part of this groundbreaking statesman’s biography.

While the minions are certainly little, yellow and different, Minions has probably mined them for about as much comedy as they can provide as leading men.

Since making his debut with “Zombieland,” director Ruben Fleischer has developed an aptitude for cheerful proficiency (if not a ton of discernible personality) that he deploys to great effect in this brisk pastiche, especially with Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg bickering their way through one set piece after another.

Perhaps this is Gilroy’s way of working out his own idealism. It’s a nice thought even if it doesn’t entirely work dramatically.

The tone and the plot take some time to settle, but once they’ve hit their stride (and adults decide to surrender their senses and go along for the ride), the bird and pig unit become almost affable in their daftness.

The best that can be said for 'Day One' is that if this is your first A Quiet Place, you’ll probably get swept up in it, and want to watch the other two.

Gripping, smart and genuinely thrilling, Black Sea elevates itself above most other thrillers by how wisely and well it brings you down to the depths alongside its crew.

He offers glimmers of what lies beneath the near-mythic, elegant exterior, but Larrain’s take is more impressionistic than revelatory, more presumptuous than knowing.

Sleight is slight in the good way, because it floats along and draws your attention instead of yanking it by the collar.

It is rare to find a film that reflects its subject so insightfully, in both an artistic and thematic sense.

There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s a perfectly enjoyable continuation of the story that introduces new players into the ensemble and literally expands the world of Zootopia in a mostly entertaining and meaningful way.

The Ghost of Peter Sellers is a movie that seems to have been made by Medak, for Medak. It’s a mildly interesting footnote in cinema history, and worth watching for Sellers fans, Medak fans and aficionados of obscure cinema (you know who you are).

With this determination to eschew simple explanations, to avoid being reductive about the cause and effect of an artist’s work and life, and to remain true to the cloudy circumstances surrounding Pasolini’s murder, comes a troubling directorial decision to turn the man’s death into a symbol — of what is unclear.

Lady Boss offers the story of a woman with a lot going against her who struck a blow against the sexual double standard and struck a blow for women seeking pleasure for its own sake. Her fight to achieve that goal often makes for a compelling story in its own right.

The Sisterhood of Night is too messy to qualify as a great film, especially when it begins introducing, in passing, peripheral characters who survived rape and incest, but it certainly isn’t muddled.

Gelb’s documentary gives viewers an overview of who Lee was and what made him tick, but mostly within the context of comics.

It’s a mostly enjoyably overstuffed model kit of adventure ingredients: talking dog heroes, an intrepid boy aviator, an outspoken girl reporter, garbage playgrounds, mechanical worlds, robot peril and mischievous humor. It’s even, for this director, tantalizingly political, venturing into dark territory about such utopia-bursting ills as bigotry and authoritarianism.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo move their many playing pieces around with as much grace as possible, and they offer up jolts of pleasure throughout.

The cast is just as game for the broad humor as it is for the emotional beats; the latter’s familiarity doesn’t detract from its poignancy.

Despite having an emotional arc that becomes evident within its first few minutes, Luck registers as original enough conceptually to maintain one’s interest as we follow the formulaic structure of its screenplay. The resulting fable feels like a typical case of “you’ve definitely seen this before, but not precisely in this manner.”

Renoir is a coming-of-age story that doesn’t care much about lessons learned or milestones reached. Instead, it meanders for its two-hour running time, filled with lyrical moments that are belied by grim undercurrents.

The more commercial way of doing this story would have been to make Pat into a flinty and sassy guy no matter what, but Stephens chooses the more realistic path of making him into a person with flaws and a great deal of vulnerability, almost to a fault.

Annabelle: Creation is a professional jitters-fest, made with deep-seated esteem for the genre rather than cynicism about a box-office sure thing.

It’s a well-intentioned comedy with funny performances and a handful of great humorous set pieces. If it feels as though it’s three or four different movies fighting each other for dominance, then at least those movies are all, in their own separate ways, relatively entertaining and amusing.

Part throwback, part update and a little bit creaky, it’s all-in-all an excellent showcase of Izzard’s wonderful talents.

Sedgwick and Bacon are visibly delighted to be together, and we buy Cynthia and Stan’s connection even when it feels underwritten.

Ritchie’s reunion with leading man Jason Statham delivers the scheming, the shooting, and the swearing that the director’s fans have come to expect, by the bucketload.

Awash in bold colors, bright patterns and ebullient kids, director Ava DuVernay’s new take on A Wrinkle in Time dazzles its way across time and space even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing.

Good Boys is a snappy comedy that pokes fun at those painful pubescent years and, by the credits, grows up into a somewhat mature comedy about friendship.

Gifted finds a collective of competent people making a perfectly competent movie — nothing more, nothing less.

Hardcore horror audiences won’t find much that’s frightening in Insidious: The Last Key — there’s not even that wonderfully unsettling shriek of violins under the title this time — but as a delivery system for more great work from Lin Shaye, it more than accomplishes its mission.

As a film, Minamata is more than just a biopic, reflecting the important social impact of photography, although — as a slideshow of images from pollution disasters, oil spills, toxic waste poisoning and more are shown over the credits — one has to wonder what true change has been made.

In Haynes’s psychologically and atmospherically astute compositions and careful nursing of the emotional impact on Bilott and wife Sarah (Anne Hathaway), it’s more a brittle ache of a quest than a righteous melodrama.

Granik took a big risk here, making a purposefully small film that rejects familiar notions of dramatic conflict. But her approach works well enough that the most jarring note becomes Foster’s movie-star presence.

The Jesse Owens to cheer on here is, sure, the fastest man in the world, but also the canny would-be celebrity who knew exactly how to bet on himself in a world that had little use for his dignity and intellect. If that’s not an inspirational story, I don’t know what is.

Both ludicrous and ludicrously entertaining, John Wick's stylish look, B-movie vibe and less-is-more, longer-takes-are-stronger-takes approach to action make it a standout.

The film is both a deconstruction of myth and a twisted origin story for a slapsticky form of puppetry that was quite popular a couple hundred years ago, but it’s also a gory little bit of provocation that makes fun of bloodthirsty audiences but might appeal to some of them as well.

The most impressive thing about this film of The Seagull is that every role has been ideally cast.