Tea With the Dames, from director Roger Michell (“Notting Hill”), is as cozy and satisfying as its title suggests.

Formally, Tsai’s approach is as spare as possible while still maintaining a loose sense of narrative.

Thanks to Crip Camp, we can all get a window into how a struggle is unified, people are emboldened, and differences are made.

This is a documentary that feels confident and intentional at every turn. It’s a story we need to know now, and it’s an essential warning for future generations.

It’s not an easy story to stomach, but in this staggering documentary playing in competition at Sundance, the journalist-turned-filmmaker crafts a stunning, effective tale of reclaiming victimhood and the fight for justice.

Half the Picture is maddening and enlightening and, most of all, necessary, as much as I wish it weren’t.

That the film remains witty and wise throughout its most lurid stretches makes the Venice Golden Lion contender one of the year’s most unexpected heart-warmers. That the filmmakers lavish commensurate attention on all those bawdy embellishments also guarantees you a bloody good time along the way.

If Lanthimos’ gloom-vision is decidedly more blunt, it’s no less accurate an assessment of every heartless thing human beings already inflict on one another. His is a wild, sad, mordantly funny dystopia, but one that gives sexual desperation the bad name it deserves.

The Lost Daughter is a masterwork in perception and all that society places upon mothers and motherhood.

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 recent proliferation of gray-haired cinema is a welcome development, but it hasn’t yielded very many notable pictures. “Dreams” doesn’t just buck that trend; it points a new way forward by being frank about living one’s final years and confronting that fact every day.

This is history from the inside, told by people who don’t always look like they’ve gotten past it, and it’s what makes “Let it Fall” so memorable.

Hers is a lot of life to try to capture in one movie, but Jane Fonda in Five Acts certainly covers her emotional arc with thoroughness and compassion.

A gut-punch of a debut that examines race relations in America with unabashed force, Johnson’s present-day interpretation proves, disgracefully, how pertinent Wright’s text remains.

Measured in its pacing but never stagnant, The Chambermaid quietly fleshes out Eve’s subconscious with actions rather than words.

Ridley is simply extraordinary, and she and MacKay give us a younger, lustier Ophelia and Hamlet than we usually get on the big screen.

A stronger structure underpinning these emotions run amok would have benefitted the film, but then what would feelings be without a little messiness? For many viewers, giving their own Joy and Sadness a workout will be enough to make Inside Out a valuable experience.

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.

The editing is ruthlessly efficient, and some of the talking-heads scenes are dramatized via lively comic-book renditions that lend visual panache. All the characters grab you, not just the kid.

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.

It’s filtering Vera Drew’s autobiographical story through the lens of contemporary popular culture, transforming her own life into myth while transforming corporatized IP into punk rock anarchy.

I’d say if The Plague wasn’t nominated for Best Original Score there’s something terribly wrong with the Oscars, but The Plague didn’t even make the short list, so there’s just something terribly wrong with the Oscars.

Pawn Sacrifice is intelligent, absorbing, never boring, and skillfully tense when it should be.

You can’t call a film as lurid and alive as Benedetta a closing statement, but there is something valedictory about the erotic religious drama, which finds time to explore questions of voyeurism, sadism, masochism, systems of power, perversion, repression, rebellion, storytelling, divinity, irony and belief. Oh, and sex — plenty and plenty of nun-on-nun sex.

Exit 8 isn’t just one of the best video game adaptations. It might actually be the best so far.

If Overlord was a video game, it would be a great one. It just happens to be a movie, and it’s a great one of those too. It hits all old-school genre tropes so hard that they make new noises, and infuses cheesy grindhouse thrills with all the “you are there” intensity of a great interactive experience.

As cozy farm animal detective stories go, it simply can’t be bleat.

Origin is so rich, expansive and wildly varied that one could easily see how DuVernay could have turned it into a mini-series. How great that she instead chose a compact and coherent feature, with articulate editing, buttery cinematography (by Matthew J. Lloyd) across various visual palettes of different time periods, and opulent costume and production design.

I Swear is the real deal, that rare biopic that doesn’t just tell a real human being’s story — or worse, give you the superficial, reassuring gist — but invites you into it.

When films are made about straight men in this predicament, they’re often considered explorations of a “midlife crisis,” but Denis’ film poses the questions: What if crises aren’t limited to a certain age, and what if love itself is the crisis?

There is truth in this story, even if the ending becomes unwieldy.

It’s a film that engages with the dour without becoming bitter, and a film that allows for redemption but only through the hardest possible work. It’s a film that’s built on a lie but sees only the underlying truth. What an astounding religious drama, and what a beautifully realistic morality play.

If there are any takeaways from Grodner’s film, it’s that we are all powerless to stop the passage of time, and, as Future Music owner Jack Waterson says, “Be truly loved or truly hated, man, cuz anything in the middle is garbage.” I think you’ll truly love or truly hate this film, but I’m firmly in the “love” camp for this remarkable Los Angeles time capsule.

Captain Marvel, the first Marvel adaptation both to star a woman and to be co-directed by a woman, is an obvious, crude, and transparent film. And it’s also quite enjoyable and evocative — most of the time.

What sets The Eight Mountains apart is the degree to which co-directors van Groeningen and Vandermeersch strip away so much pretense and artifice, leaving nothing but a strong central question: What makes and prevents people from meaningfully connecting? The filmmakers then strike a refreshingly unsentimental tone when answering it.

Well, it sounds a bit obvious to praise another Cate Blanchett performance – when is she not on fire? – but in this case circumstances force our hand. More otherworldly than Galadriel, more regal than Elisabeth, and more devilishly unrepressed than Carol Aird, Tár might just be the actor’s signature role.

Sweet and sharp and exciting and hilarious, Big Hero 6 comes to the rescue of what's become a dreaded movie trope — the origin story — and launches the superhero tale to pleasurable new heights.

An audacious film that completely obliterates the expectations of the musical biopic genre.

Natalie Morales’ directorial debut Language Lessons creates a warmth that so often gets lost in these virtual meetings. With her gentle guidance and two very heartfelt performances, the result is a warm, lovely film about platonic affection and the human need for connection.

Few movies this year will be as quietly sizzling as German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s “Afire,” a novelistic and sophisticated character study that kindles inside a chamber piece, as languid as a relaxed summer day and as heartbreaking as the end of a short-lived summer love.

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.

Begin Again is as uncynical and unironic a film as I've seen in a while, which will no doubt be a turn-off to many. But like a catchy summer jam, it doesn't need to apologize for being exactly what it is, nor do its fans have to feel guilty for getting it stuck in their heads.

The Book of Life manages to be genuinely surprising and engrossing.

Hoppers' isn’t just James Cameron’s Avatar if it had feelings, it’s also James Cameron’s Avatar if it was good.

The only annoying thing about Summer of 69 is that this is the exact kind of laugh out loud, emotionally satisfying, share-it-with-a-friend comedy that would probably find a sizable audience in theaters — and instead it’s a Hulu exclusive.

Road Diary takes a Springsteen concert as a template of sorts, which means it mixes joy and dread and love and regret and exuberance and silliness and seriousness; it’s intoxicating and it’s sobering, and it rocks like hell but confronts what’s been lost during Springsteen’s 74 years on the planet.

Get on Up belongs, as it must, to Boseman, who delivers the kind of charisma, showmanship, sex appeal, and tireless energy that allows us to believe him as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

One of Ozon’s richest and most satisfying works in years — that rarest of literary adaptations, one that honors a foundational text precisely by finding something new to say.

The jokes are consistently hilarious, with enough variety to tickle the funny bones of old salts and young fishies alike.

Screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (“Love, Simon”) are no strangers to the subversive rom-com, and capable directing and editing by Jason Orley (“Big Time Adolescence”) and Jonathan Schwartz (“Stuber”), respectively, set leads Jenny Slate and Charlie Day up for maximum hilarity. The film ultimately feels a bit underdeveloped, but this seems a small price to pay for a romantic comedy with zero misogyny and relatively realistic characters.

The film makes a good case for [Cohn's] legacy being entirely negative, leading to today’s cutthroat, divisive and lie-packed politics. But it also, crucially, makes a case for Cohn being a fascinating subject, a bundle of contradictions in a slick and soulless package.

This is a war movie from the perspective of the losers, visually spectacular but by turns infuriating and heartbreaking. “All Quiet” is excessive, but it probably needs to be; the screenplay by Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell takes a dark story and makes it even darker.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 moves beyond Sorkin the writer of dialogue, or Sorkin the supplier of scripts to the likes of Rob Reiner, David Fincher and Danny Boyle, to Sorkin the filmmaker.

Menashe is a warm, relatable and tender tale about parental love, religion and belonging, told humanely and with vivid authenticity.

Ultimately this intimate, affectionate biography underscores an essential truth about the fashion industry, Talley’s work, and the life that he built out of what might seem like the unlikeliest circumstances: “Fashion is fleeting. Style remains.”

Ultimately, Ordinary Love is a celebration not just of this functional, delightfully average relationship, but also of life itself, risking and wrestling with loss not in spite of the fact it’s shared with others, but precisely because of that fact.

Even when it drags — 169 minutes is a lot of time to fill, even for this masterful crew — the film gamely mixes comedy, action, and drama into one truly satisfying cocktail.

The action climaxes with a truly impressive finale, one that employs time going in multiple directions that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen in a movie before. The effects shots here aren’t just visually impressive; they actually let the narrative go to places it couldn’t without this level of, you’ll pardon the expression, wizardry.

Kelsey Mann was able to expand on what seemed like a complete story in the original film and tell a new and potent one, and that’s impressive and commendable even though — like many Pixar films — it falls apart in the details.

Smile 2 is more of the same. A lot more. But it’s just as scary, and this time it’s feistier and funnier, proving that the premise has legs and also some malleability.

The filmmaker’s outsize, and sometimes unnerving, stylistic choices jump into the frame and vanish just as quickly.

Nobody is more violent lark than probing satire, but between Bob Odenkirk’s smartly underplayed performance, the surprises in the screenplay by Derek Kolstad (the “John Wick” series) and the puckishly brutal direction of Ilya Naishuller (“Hardcore Henry”), it’s a wonderfully paced and consistently clever action movie that ups the ante of a genre that’s been dominated by Liam Neeson clones.

Skyscraper doesn’t change the action-movie game the way “Die Hard” did, but it’s a solidly entertaining summer diversion best enjoyed on the biggest theater — or even better, drive-in — screen you can find. And if you’re afraid of heights, make sure there’s an armrest — or even better, an arm — that you can grab.

Green operates in a smarter mode of storytelling, giving the audience the benefit of the doubt that they'll notice the details, and he's clearly whispered Pacino into giving a nuanced and human-sized turn.

The suspense is perhaps a tad elongated, and the film’s risky, ambiguous handling of a #MeToo case is dangerously open to misinterpretation. But Luce remains a brave, cinematically articulate effort that questions our country’s core failings without ever tidily categorizing its characters.

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.

Director Tom Hooper shakes things up a bit with The Danish Girl, proving that he’s capable of making a movie that’s both steeped in awards-season prestige and in possession of a pulse.

Deadpool is one of those movies that’s all the more successful for how easily it could have gone so very wrong. It’s suffused with an arch, self-aware wit...yet it takes its romance and revenge storylines just seriously enough to keep us engaged.

Marshall deserves credit for knowing how to shoot and cut (alongside editor Wyatt Smith, “Thor: The Dark World”) a musical number, and his work here ranks much closer to his success with “Chicago” than to his dismal “Nine.”

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

The Perfect Candidate feels like a film that both represents a new era for women in the Muslim world and also one that will help push that movement forward.

Cocaine Bear is a thrilling binge of adrenaline that you won’t regret in the morning.

A film about adult problems that preys on adult fears, made for audiences with an attention span and high standards.

All comedy is subjective, of course, and Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar is aggressive in being true to itself and its own vision. Those not on board will roll their eyes and wonder what the fuss is about, while fans will watch it repeatedly, quote it forever, and dress as the characters for Halloween.

With an emotional core it wears on its sleeve, it’s no surprise that the finished product of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is extremely accessible and enticing for non-fans right from the jump, while also satisfying hardcore devotees of the game.

Manzoor demonstratively disregards the cliches that often define Muslim families in cinema (an act this Muslim critic is grateful for) and on the whole, gives us a lavishly costumed and fully realized cinematic outing whose agile camerawork and charismatic leads demand the biggest screen you can find. What an absolute treat!

Queen & Slim is convincingly and unapologetically multidimensional in its portrayal of its characters; as our perception of them shifts from one scene to the next, we realize they’re not ciphers for communities, cultures, arguments or belief systems, but individuals wrestling with who they are and how they present themselves to the world.

Wine Country shows that women in their 50s are in one of the best phases of their lives, a time to be celebrated, welcomed, and enjoyed with good friends and good wine.

With Pattinson glowering beneath his cowl, Reeves creates a Batman whose psychology is at least as interesting as his crime-fighting activities, for the first time in a long time.

This time around, writer-director Tim Hill steps in, and he’s managed to take the goofy denizens of Bikini Bottom on a road trip that is visually dazzling and almost consistently hilarious, mixing verbal and physical humor, as well as some perfectly chosen cameos, both in-person and among the voice cast.

Though Peterloo brims with 19th century authenticity, from its hardscrabble interiors and stately halls of power to the quiet beauty of its rural scenes, it’s no costumes-and-decor drama — Leigh’s focus is on the rhythms of talk in all the ways it influences: as rant, argument, posturing, strained politeness, open skepticism, and full-on performance.

Del Toro hasn’t had a role this juicy in ages, and he’s captivating at all times.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a mesmerizing hallucination of a film, a journey through one man’s memories for a truth that may not exist.

The Little Hours is no one-trick pony. While the lunacy of nuns who swear like sailors makes a comically boisterous impression, it’s also about women in the Middle Ages forced into religious life for various reasons and how they cope, viewed through a decidedly humorous lens.

While some viewers may find the use of the closet and societal homophobia too heavy for this breezy story, there’s a case to be made that including specifically queer concerns into the language of romantic comedy is another step toward genuine inclusiveness.

The control and confidence of its form, paired with an emotionality that is at once effortless and irresistibly powerful, makes the film feel to the audience the way those pointed and yet somehow ephemeral clips in Yang’s memory feel to Jake. In preying on a sensation that’s only indirectly remembered, the impact it makes becomes unforgettable.

When Black Panther works, it’s thrillingly alive, whether it’s the dazzling colors of the vivid costumes by Ruth E. Carter (“Selma”)...or the eclectic and vibrant music choices.

Heart Eyes seems destined to become a Valentine’s Day favorite, that rare horror movie with a great and charming love story, and that even rarer romantic comedy with a great and savage serial killer.

Despite a heavy-handed cocoon motif that sometimes spells out the story’s themes to a fault, Haynes has done something spellbinding here: heady, grown-up and committed to a refreshing dose of moral ambiguity at a time in cinema where moral pandering sadly seems to be the default.

On the surface a tense investigative piece with Renner as a regular Sherlock of the snow, it also slips in cogent and damning points about the limitations and dead ends virtually forced on many residents of Native American reservations.

It’s a generous production, one that lovingly offers meaningful moments to every member of the cast, even the actors with only one scene.

Nuts! is a brisk, engrossing, tongue-in-cheek film that unfolds at just the right pace — and it’s a piece of American history that couldn’t feel more relevant to modern times.

This is Depp’s show all the way, featuring his best dramatic performance since another organized-crime movie, 1997’s “Donnie Brasco.”

A sick and twisted work of comic genius where the punchlines punch so hard you’ll explode.

Certain Women gives us female characters who are smart and complicated and funny and imperfect, and it never hand-delivers a message regarding what we’re supposed to think about them.

If there’s anything that Active Measures does most effectively, it’s to demonstrate the depths and the breadth of the corruption, the criminality, the immorality operating in contemporary politics.

A fabulously smart and entertaining film whose flaws stem from trying too hard… which are the best flaws a film can have.

The film’s empathy for the unwanted, its frustration at the system, and its uncompromising depiction of people trying to do the right thing when fate clearly has other plans, registers with real power.