Though a vengeance riff, it remains a Farhadi film all through, so dancing around each other means a lot of talking about action instead of doing action. And that’s fine – the former playwright is uncommonly gifted in writing third acts, where each line of dialogue and simple gesture are imbued with meaning.

Jordan Peele has made an extraordinary leap in genre here, and he’s also crafted a horror film that has more blistering observations about race than half a dozen well-intentioned Oscar-bait dramas.

Spielberg and Kushner clearly revere that history, but they’re also not intimidated by it; there are any number of instances where viewers can point to this song placement or that bit of character backstory as a new idea that the two have brought to the property, but this is a take on “West Side Story” that’s both reverent and exciting.

Amy is both biography and autopsy, an exhaustive chronicle of her rise to the top of the charts and a bare-knuckled indictment of the vulturish men who took advantage of the emotionally vulnerable singer.

Birds of Passage weaves a tale that is both familiar yet unique, yet it is so culturally tied to the Wayúu, it would be impossible to move it outside the Guajira. The film fits very comfortably in the genres of a gangster movie and an epic, with supernatural forces forewarning what’s to happen in the earthly realm.

With his latest, the crime romance Ash is Purest White — once again spotlighting a superb performance by his longtime creative partner and wife Zhao Tao — Jia’s vision makes for a heady brew of love, loss, and loneliness over three time frames that coincide with huge changes in China.

Spiritual and earthy, forged in curiosity yet fortified with empathy, The Rider is why we go to the cinema, and it affirms Chloe Zhao as one of the most gifted new movie artists of our time.

Varda by Agnès makes a fascinating roadmap to a life and to a career in art, offering inspiration both for viewers and for fellow creators.

What’s absolutely clear is Hadaway’s stunning eye and control of the camera. Her direction is not just steady but highly evocative, and the cinematography from Todd Martin, making his feature debut after shooting dozens of shorts and music videos, is just breathtaking. What a wonderful debut from them both.

Save for a few standout scenes of carefree elation and daring camaraderie, Girlhood is largely a grim and stilted study of oppression.

Yes is a tortured film, from a tortured artist, about a tortured man, meant to torture us with a kaleidoscope of anguish and a coterie of grotesques. Formally, the film nearly bursts at the seams, as Lapid’s camera spins fast and frantic and out-of-control, with the color contrast and soundtrack turned all-the-way up, keeping the film forever on assault mode.

I cried, dear reader. I cried so much. Not just because the story and characters were wonderful, but out of the joy of discovery.

While the movie is simultaneously a day-in-the-life farce, a cri de couer for working-class women and a testament to the strengths (and the limitations) of created families, it is more than anything an opportunity for the great Regina Hall to shine in an all-too-rare leading role.

All the inspirational, kitschy parts of your favorite nostalgic fare in a mature, sensitive motion picture with indie credibility. Sure, it’s cheap, but it wears its cheapness like a badge of honor. If this is the future of cinema, I say bring it on.

The result is one of Hong’s most emotionally generous films. In a career full of small triumphs, it’s a beautiful gesture of family love, of non-specific spiritual awakening, and self-possession meant to create outward waves of goodness.

Its powerful moments are too often swamped by melodrama that undercuts the director’s skills as a storyteller.

For all the technique that she demonstrates in Passing, it’s the way Hall mines praiseworthy turns from her cast that will earn her the most acclaim. Mannered in varying degrees, the actresses’ performances strike a delicate balance of emotional nuance and period-specific affectations.

Once Wang gets into the murky waters of the hoaxers here, one wishes she could dig deeper and examine the evolution of those fringe factions at length. That unfortunately doesn’t happen — likely given how much ground there is to cover with this story — yet her hard-hitting doc, both explores complex ideological battles and maps how a humanitarian calamity morphed into a political one in both countries.

Instead of making us feel that these boys are meant to be together, God’s Own Country unintentionally suggests that Gheorghe should get himself to a city where his silky dark hair, bedroom eyes and developed aesthetic sense might be far better appreciated by others.

Everybody Wants Some!! may not achieve the lasting status of some of Linklater’s more acclaimed work, but there is something wonderful in watching a movie remain joyfully plotless, as intentionally lacking in direction as so many college students manage to be before society harangues them about the importance of responsibility.

The film moves slowly but relentlessly, with each new moment showing just how dangerous the lead character’s idealism really is.

Kinky as hell and also extremely romantic. That’s not a combo a lot of movies go for nowadays, let alone pull off this beautifully, and that makes Pillion something of a miracle.

Human weakness is 'Black Bag’s' greatest strength. It’s an insidiously great spy movie, mature and satisfying.

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

Richly dramatic and at times confounding, it’s a gorgeous piece of work that has the ability to move you in one moment and leave you cold in the next.

It feels a little too light and even occasionally uncertain in the early going, but picks up steam, becomes deeper and more moving and absolutely nails the ending.

All Is Forgiven is engrossing, yet it is only after it is over and there is time to think about it that the film starts to really seem dazzling, as an unfolding portrait of loss that leaves us with many questions.

As Salles shows us, such a seismic loss spans many generations just as it does entire histories that are still being written. We must then always remember the people, their individual stories, and what it was that they endured so that others may never have to do so again.

Every detail, be they the mirthful jokes or the melancholic meditations it taps into, comes together to create a vision that’s existentially resonant. It proves Boonbunchachoke is not just an exciting new voice who pays respect to the ghosts of cinema’s past, but one who finds distinct beauty as he brings them all to joyous life.

Heslov, making her debut, therefore largely does an impressive job balancing the contestants’ deeply disturbing stories...with the near giddiness they express while getting dolled up. It’s infectious.

Black Is King doesn’t exactly stand with the best of her previous work — it’s a pleasure but not a landmark — but the Queen Bey goes through it with her head up and her crown intact.

Though The Work leaves a lot unanswered about this unusual program (run by the Inside Circle Foundation), and the characters who participate in it, it’s an often tense and exhilarating glimpse into a moment in time that lets men prioritize honesty and tears over superficial displays of strength.

It’s an exciting picture, a smart picture, a fascinating picture, and a wonderfully weird picture.

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.

Magnetic with righteous fury, Kaluuya plays Hampton with steel-plated conviction that has no time for half-measures. The gifted actor maintains a strict demeanor in scenes speaking truth to the people but a more calibrated mien in the ones exhibiting Hampton’s diplomatic skills, like a meeting with the Crowns, a fellow revolutionary group.

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is big, brash, ridiculous, too long, and in the end, invigorating.

Talk of accepting truths and moving on will knot your stomach; inevitably, you’ll reflect on your own station in life and weigh whether or not you feel like Ryota, who tells his son, “I’m not who I want to be yet.” And isn’t such evocation the point of all art? With this measure in mind, Kore-eda has created a masterpiece.

It’s a sweaty, intoxicating, all-nighter of a movie, and its allure cannot be denied.

McQueen is formally traditional, and guided by a respectful approach to a complicated man. It’s lovingly told, even as it refuses to gloss over ugliness.

By putting a mirror to Gia and placing us in her feet, shoes or not, Leaf beckons viewers to contemplate how contemporary society fails its Gias every single day, to face how this cycle of poverty continues, and to understand that Gia and women like her can’t conquer it alone.

Booksmart is, by far, one of the most perfect coming-of-age comedies I have ever seen.

It’s a slower burn than those other two “Small Axe” entries, but it builds to a final scene between Boyega and Toussaint that’s quiet but shattering.

Marx Can Wait is a crucial and profound addition to the filmography of one of the greatest living filmmakers, and it ends with a loving reconciliation with the past that is so moving and so convincing because it is so hard-won; this is a movie that has a rare kind of final cathartic authority.

Sirât is bold in its depiction of a decaying world in which some people can still find release. But its insistent brutality feels less bold than exhausting, and the question asked by one of the characters – “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” – has an easy answer: Hell, yeah.

Full-hearted, albeit conventional ... That long first act feels, at times, punishing. ... The drama that plays out in the film’s second half is much more engaging, the script gaining momentum alongside Leslie.

Pixar could easily retire this series with a clean sweep of films that have been lovely to look at and moving and funny to watch. But if they can maintain this level of wonderful, keep ‘em coming.

It does what so little of the dialogue has managed to do: implore audiences to embrace black female survivors and to understand the cultural and painful dilemmas they continue to endure along their avid fight to heal the wounds of the entire black race. Though it’s at times a gutting watch, it’s ultimately about hope and sisterhood.

Like “Crazy Rich Asians,” not everyone is going to feel represented when they watch In the Heights. That’s an impossible task for any movie. Yet In the Heights can represent many things for many different viewers. It can be a story about ambitious, hard-working people chasing their dreams. It can be a reflection on the immigrant experience and the struggle to find where you belong. It can also be a tribute to our parents’ sacrifices.

Fire of Love is a wholly satisfying, overwhelming documentary, as disarming as it is explosive.

With extraordinary performances, Hamnet not only tackles grief but also explores single parenting, the lustful love that turns sour due to absence, and what it takes to revive love in its original form.

This is the kind of serious horror movie that will live in your head for days afterward, like a bad dream that’s difficult to shake.

One of this generation’s most interesting filmmakers still has plenty to say and an impressive dexterity at saying it.

It’s not a flawless movie, but there’s real magic in it, and that’s more important, and no less rare, than perfection.

Complemented by the eerie work of sound designers Johnny Marshall and David Rosenblad and music by Erick Alexander and Jared Bulmer, The Vast of Night sells its mystery as a package deal, firing on all sight-and-sound cylinders to immerse its viewers in its story.

For all of its meticulous construction and often masterful craft, the film remains something to coldly admire rather than easily embrace, often playing more as a collection of accomplished filmmaking moments than as a fully enthralling whole.

It’s a strange, sad, fragile little thing that should make us snicker, but instead it fills the screen with grace and beauty.

While Widows can be powerful and dramatic, the director doesn’t seem all that interested in the complicated heist that is theoretically driving the plot.

Filmmaker and subject also share a disdain for restraint, shouting and jostling to ensure we’ve gotten their point. But while their parallel passions aren’t exactly subtle, they do make their mark.

Though it has its inspirational moments, Boys State is definitely not the feel-good story you might be expecting: It pays lip service to finding common ground but winds up illustrating how impossible that has become. Maybe they’re producing better potential leaders over at Girls State?

Overall, it’s an impressively mounted film, from the seamless visual effects to the score by Justin Hurwitz, which is flexible enough to accentuate both the film’s tension and its earthbound humanity, to the always exquisite editing by Tom Cross (“Whiplash”), which plays a key role in establishing the characters, the stakes and even the passage of time.

In superlative previous films like “The Host” and “Mother,” Bong elevated, then transcended, the humble genres of the monster movie and the murder mystery by refashioning them into exquisitely heart-wrenching human drama. Disappointingly, then, his alchemical touch is absent here. Snowpiercer warms the heart, but doesn't penetrate it.

The information presented in “Lowndes County” is absolutely vital, but all the archival interviews it surfaces make one wonder if a better documentary on the same subject exists.

Kriegman and Steinberg’s incredible access allows you to ride the whole roller coaster.

If having pure fun at a “Star Wars” movie is wrong, I don’t want to be right. So for me, The Last Jedi falls right behind “The Empire Strikes Back” and maybe the original film in providing the thrills and the heartbreak, the heroism and villainy, and the romance and betrayal that makes these films such a treat even for those of us who can’t name all the planets or the alien species or even the Empire’s flunkies.

The Rescue is an enthralling documentary, with a real-life story so spectacular you can hardly believe it. That’s why the film’s overwhelming polish sometimes undermines the real-life story it’s trying to tell.

It’s a film whose magnificence sneaks up on you, delighting in plenty of clever silliness before hitting you with a succession of somber scenes that lay you flat.

The issue, we come to realize, isn’t that Hite disappeared — it’s that she was erased.

It is basically a standard triangle drama that has been stretched out to an interminable length.

You don’t have to love De Palma’s movies to find De Palma a fascinating look at a vital period of American film history, through the eyes of a controversial artist.

A mesmerizing study anchored by three incredible leads, each working at the height of their craft. The material is rife for exploration, rich with nuance and discoveries. And the ending packs a wallop.

Chiarella’s film is small in scope but shattering in emotional range, slowly burrowing under your skin. Once it makes its home there, there is no shaking free of its haunting, heartbreaking and surprisingly harmonious vision.

The Ground Beneath My Feet is essential viewing for our anxiety-ridden times.

Between the Temples is not solely about organized and labeled relationships and religion, but the humility behind that faith and the ways in which it is intricately shared, like birds of a feather flocking together.

It handles real-life issues from a place of real compassion and understanding without reducing its characters to mere metaphor.

A carefully staged and meticulously cast presentation disguised as a cinema verité documentary, it’s confounding if you feel compelled to put a label on it but raucously moving if you take it as a day-long adventure with a group of fascinating characters.

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.

It is not artful. It is urgent and ruthless and horrifying, and it shows the unspeakable.

It’s a film as cuddly as Meimei’s panda form, but it’s also a perceptive examination of how one person’s coming-of-age has a ripple effect on those closest to them.

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.

What emerges in Fayyad’s gripping underground triage documentary is a compelling picture of compassion, grit, and feminist righteousness in Dr. Amani Ballor

The film is propelled by our curiosity to see what happens more than a deep involvement with the fate of these people. But what really holds your attention is the look on Asger’s face, shot from every conceivable angle.

Full Time . . . depicts the never-ending sprint that is Julie’s life as a struggling single mom, rendering this social-realist drama as a gritty, heart-pounding thriller, with breathless, naturalistic handheld cinematography by Victor Seguin and an adrenaline-pounding electronic score by Irène Drésel.

It is indeed harrowing to watch — to bear witness — and while the film is inevitably heavy with existential dread, Pritz delivers an emotionally engaging story filled with heart, heroes, and a bit of hope to hold onto. There is no more urgent film that demands your attention this year.

The craft is meticulous and the level of detail elaborate, but the story itself is simple as can be.

A gorgeous meditation on girlhood

The movie’s most notable asset is the way it resists sketching any of its main characters with a single, easy-to-grasp definition.

It’s a deliberately paced, ultraviolent, outlandishly stylish delivery system for Nicolas Cage’s wild-eyed acting style, and a thoughtful meditation about why Death Metal totally rules.

20th Century Women mainly overcomes its flaws through the sheer imaginative sensitivity of Mills’s writing.

There are, of course, countless prisms through which to examine the events of 9/11 and their lingering impact, but Come From Away offers one that is stirring and funny, moving but never mawkish. It’s a story that provides hope without turning its eyes from despair.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi is an expert at crafting films that subtly enthrall our minds, and this is just more proof.

Although this is a story about innocence lost, the overwhelming impression left by “The Friend’s House is Here” is one of sweetness and hope.

Hawke is probably too respectful a director and disciple to challenge anything that his subject says, or even query about the vaguest outlines of his personal life.... The title is truth in advertising; “Seymour” really is only an introduction.

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

An aesthetically imaginative and affectingly breathtaking fairytale for our modern world, Belle envelops you first with its clever mechanics and youthful preoccupations. But as the reflective subtext comes to light, it extends an invitation to reconnect with others offline and to beware the comfort of these surrogate identities.

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.