The performances are uniformly fantastic, but I was most impressed by Wright Joseph and Nyong’o, both delivering distinct and completely unique work. Nyong’o gives a master class in acting in dual roles and is almost unrecognizable as her doppelgänger persona.

The film’s compassion for everyday Americans...along with its energetic determination to entertain, enlighten, and infuriate make it a laudable surprise.

Moana does what it does so well that you wish its makers had imbued it with some X factor that separates the classics from the merely beloved.

A marvel of cinematic craftsmanship, Shadow acts curiously as both a return to form for Zhang Yimou and a perceptible departure. Not only are his characters more physically grounded, but his writing also seeks more ties to emotional reality even if the stories are still far from commonplace.

In laying out the facts, Costa is, for the most part, posing a series of sad questions rather than supplying the answers; in truth, she may not know whether she’s documenting a stormy political era or chronicling the end of something.

Premature captures that unexpected, earth-shattering moment in life when you realize adulthood, real adulthood, is not so simple and cute. It’s difficult, it’s scary, and it’s heartbreaking at times. That’s what Howard’s beautiful performance conveys.

It’s a shame that Lessin and Pildes don’t tell us what these amazing women went on to do after the Collective ended. But they all remain, half a century later, passionate and eloquent and thoughtful and fierce.

The best surprise in A Fantastic Woman might be how lived-in Marina’s existence feels despite the tenuousness of her housing, her romantic fulfillment, and her legal rights.

The Go-Go’s tackles the seminal all-female ’80s rock band with such honesty, openness and effervescence that it not only rises above that clichéd, almost telegraphed arc but transcends the ranks of other music documentaries to offer a story you desperately want to keep watching, even when you already know where it’s going.

The film is not alienating; it does not obfuscate its intentions. Pizzi knew what he wanted to make, and what he has made is a touching yarn about the pangs of familial maturation.

It’s powerful, provocative and devastating, blending the incisive power of dramatic emotion with the immediacy of the evening news.

Come See Me in the Good Light is a tender expression of love conquering all despite the burden of needing to go against the wind.

As crushing as it is stirring, the gritty fable co-written for the screen by Clapin and Laurant (“Amélie,” “A Very Long Engagement”) finds an ideal visual medium in the filmmaker’s evocative animation.

Johnson freely bounces around buzzwords like “disruptors” and “influencers” with dripping mockery, but he stops way short of satire. He never entices us to take an active interest in this new cast of characters, and there isn’t much suspense or high stakes to speak of even when things start to head south.

Anchored by a pair of extraordinary child performances and titled like something you’d scrawl fondly under a faded photograph in a well-thumbed album, Summer 1993 is a delicately brushed memory of confusion and joy, as if the movie itself can only smile awkwardly — and eventually, tearfully — as it looks back trying to make sense of it all.

Breathing rare emotional truth into on-screen depictions of small children and the parents who raise them, Hosoda’s unassumingly sumptuous Mirai is a hand-drawn miracle, rivaling Pixar and Ghibli’s efforts to devise family entertainment with a complex and humanistic edge.

The team behind this new “Mission: Impossible”—like the makers of all the installments that came before it—seem to know on a deep level why viewers flock to this group of action movies: the indispensable big-screen proficiency and collective soul of the series first and the plot of individual chapters, second.

The act of writing has tended to be flagrantly non-cinematic, but with these last two films, Davies proves that the internal life of the mind can indeed be explored and portrayed in a visual medium. With every scene a stanza, Benediction is a lyrical triumph.

Writer-director Tobias Lindholm knows how to keep a human perspective in his storytelling, no matter how outsized the drama or the dilemmas facing his characters.

Deliciously disjointed and dreamlike, it eludes easy tracking and relies on the odd beauty of its imagery; at first, it makes you wonder how David Lynch might tackle a film about depression.

With its aura of melancholic humanity and last-minute grace, Living reminds us that we’re all susceptible to a personal “infrastructure week,” but that it’s never too late to do something about it.

It’s a very entertaining trip, but it doesn’t really go anywhere: If you go in loving Kenny G you’ll come out that way, and if you go in hating him you won’t change your mind.

Gianolli’s grand adaptation isn’t just a wicked send-up and a sensual period piece; it’s a poignant reminder that everyone who thinks they’ve cleverly sussed out the wickedness of mass media is hundreds of years behind the rest of the history class. Like the best stories told about earlier times, “Lost Illusions” feels remarkably contemporary.

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

The implications — ethical and otherwise — that the film raises are too vast to be papered over with a closing plea for tighter gun control. The sentiment is fair and true and absolutely valid. But delivered as sober end titles at the end of “Nitram,” one can’t help but notice a certain irony in such small white letters barely hiding a much darker abyss.

Woman at War is a beautiful hoot.

Though it’s bolstered primarily by the charisma of Bale and Damon’s performances, the soulless yet thrilling Ford v Ferrari doesn’t provide much more than huffy banter, corporate rivalry, and an adrenaline rush. The real-life characters deserve more than that.

Ben Hania shows little interest in agitprop. By burrowing into the granular details of this one tragedy on this one day, she arrives at an extraordinarily far-reaching articulation of an acutely contemporary emotion.

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

What Ray & Liz offers is the opposite of exploitive or vengeful enumeration of parental failure. Billingham finds grace for his ruined family, even if he refuses to save them, and it feels like an act of forgiveness.

Schwarz piles on more than enough damning interview footage to support his and Katz’s case, making Tantura a better-than-average work of docu-agitprop.

Nia DaCosta’s smart, freaky sequel zooms in on the ongoing battle between sense and senselessness until it finds strong, connective tissue between science and religion.

Western Stars goes far deeper than the usual performance document, to sensitively explore what he sees as the state of his, and our, lives. It’s a ruminative, almost elegiac look at Springsteen’s life and career, filled with moments of uncommon beauty that makes it of a piece with this latest, most introspective phase of his career.

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.

Perhaps most importantly, not only does the film stress the importance of using math and physics and botany and chemistry to solve problems, but it also makes a plot based on scientific inquiry and audacity just as exciting and even more unpredictable as the movies’ usual brand of problem-solving, the kind that involves punching everyone and then blowing everything up.

Liu points his lens at life and life does the work, guided by a masterful screenplay and tender performances.

Although “Wake Up Dead Man” is the “Knives Out” movie that’s most preoccupied with existential questions surrounding death, writer/director Rian Johnson’s third film in the series is also the one that’s most full of life.

Where a lesser film could fall into feeling like it is just hitting issues without exploring them, Young Mothers always grounds the bigger issues in real characters. It finds genuine emotion in capturing how this is not something abstract, but a reality with which they’ll have to contend.

The Testament of Ann Lee is a loud film about the quiet within, almost always choosing to impress rather than entertain.

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

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.

Not unlike the candidates it portrays, Knock Down The House puts in the necessary work towards a payoff that earns both cheers and tears.

As the movie turns more conventional, it struggles to retain the freshness it once had.

It’s the story of the conflict between Robbins and Mostel that unveils another layer of how the odds were truly stacked against the show.

The writing in The Wound can be conventional and overly explanatory, but this doesn’t matter because the subject is so fresh.

Perfect Days has plenty of amusing scenes and plenty of touching ones, but it would be stretching the definitions to describe it as either a comedy or a drama.

As great as Rogowski is to watch, though, Passages is all about Adèle Exarchopoulos, who turns in a better performance than she did in “Blue is the Warmest Color.”

Saving endangered animals is not a matter of sentimentality and lifting one up above another. It involves facing hard facts and brokering some compromises, and Trophy makes us fully aware of this.

The good news is that this continuation is a similarly rousing and savvy adventure that energetically serves up more of what we love — from the sleek retro-futurist designs to the ticklishly severe Eurasian super-clothier Edna Mode — and yet wisely, wittily, reverses the first film’s accommodating traditionalism to make for an even richer, funnier portrait of its tight and in-tights family.

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.

Clay Tweel’s Gleason documents the agony and the ecstasy of its subject’s life, and is similarly exceptional in its avoidance of the cliches so common among inspiring documentaries.

In its swirl of ingenuity, purity, and achievement, Paper & Glue can’t help but feel self-serving for its traveling, ever-creative dynamo, even when the tale JR has to tell is unquestionably riveting and inspiring.

A remarkably stylish and fascinating space drama.

Like Wilson’s cornball “California Girls,” Love & Mercy is by no means a complicated portrait, and yet it’s a curiously satisfying one.

Mounia Akl’s debut feature film Costa Brava, Lebanon is valiant filmmaking. Using the beauty of cinema to show the destruction of man’s cruelty to the environment is not just effective — it’s heartbreaking.

There’s a great movie buried somewhere in American Honey — heck, there might be two of them. But at its current length, it resembles nothing so much as fine spirit overly diluted with water. The care and quality is all there, but in this iteration they ain’t coming through.

A Hidden Life is certainly the director’s best movie since his 2011 Palme d’Or winner “The Tree of Life” — it’s his most monumental film since then, and perhaps his most sentimental film ever. And it is also slow and meditative, requiring viewers to sink into and surrender to that particular Malick style that some find maddening.

Baumbach’s films may reflect a prickly brand of humanism, but they’re humane all the same. In an era of untrammeled cynicism, each new release feels like an all-too-brief moment of hope.

End of the Century is a sublimely haunting experience that will make you sigh in recognition of the what-ifs in your own life.

The characters may cut into the cinematic canvas with a knife, smother it with glue, and just generally wreck it, but they can’t destroy what Soderbergh has achieved.

For those looking for regrets or profundity, Iris doesn’t dig particularly deep in that regard. But if you want merely to revel in the life of a singular figure who approaches her look and her life very much on her own terms, you’ll be charmed and delighted — and maybe even inspired to try something risky next time you get dressed up.

Abrams had the benefit of learning what didn’t work in Lucas’ prequels, and he’s gone in the opposite direction. He’s also set an interesting course for moving forward with this engaging cast playing new characters making their way through this beloved universe.

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound is a practically perfect primer for anyone interested in the history and craft of filmmaking, answering most of the pertinent, baseline questions while leaving plenty of room for supplemental research.

The anguish and determination that Plummer can display with just a look or subtle motion is heartbreaking; this is the kind of naturalistic acting that can just kick you in the stomach.

Perhaps it’s a way for Hansen-Løve to show the way artists pick from their own lives, or maybe it’s a way to muddy the meta waters even more. That ambiguity does not always work to the benefit of a film that always teeters on the brink of self-indulgence, mind you.

It’s hard to say that any WWII film can feel fresh after decades of documentation, but Apocalypse ’45 finds a way to trade in the typical war-doc toolkit for something more personal and more striking.

Thanks to Gerwig’s imagination, this Barbie is far from plastic. It’s fantastic.

This movie version sometimes feels evasive or incomplete, partly because you can describe some things in a book that you cannot show on a screen, but it is in most ways an admirable adaptation that does look and sound like memories of a particular childhood.

Ultimately, of course, it’s Buckley who makes Rose-Lynn soar off the screen. It’s a dazzling, raw, intoxicating performance, and when she sings, it’s simply electric.

The lead performances are so genuine and the dialogue, with tones ranging from unbridled glee to utter hatred, is so pure that you think at times that you’re watching a documentary. Babylon is a vivid, though flawed, story that offers no clear villains or angels. Instead, it gives you the truth.

After the youthful splendor of last year’s The Souvenir Part II, Hogg returns with a magnificent achievement of a more inconspicuous kind: a striking phantasm of affection, regrets, and remembered accounts that might be factually inaccurate but emotionally unfeigned.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood finds a gentle state of grace and shows the courage and smarts to stay in that zone, never rushing things or playing for drama.

It’s understandable that The 40-Year-Old Version is intentionally scattered, because it is about a woman grasping at straws in order to find her place in this very rigid space, both professionally and personally. But the film lacks the finesse to tell that story more cinematically, even running way longer than it should, as it roams towards a satisfying conclusion.

It requires, and ultimately rewards, patience.

Borrowing a few biographical details from Stanton’s life, the virtually plotless drama exudes admiration for its nonagenarian muse, but it’s built so sparely that it doesn’t have much to offer anyone who doesn’t already share its reverence for the “Paris, Texas” actor.

Moratto’s concise firecracker of a movie is straightforward in its soul-crushing blows and an essential piece of social-realist cinema for our times.

Commendably inclusive, Desert One is still one of Kopple’s most conventional documentaries – and it’s one that, like “Coup 53,” occasionally bogs down in details.

As much as the film celebrates his creativity and gazes unflinchingly at his failings, it also functions as a valedictory, almost a requiem of sorts. Think of it as the film version of the final albums made by Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, who made wrenching final statements that they likely knew would be their last.

The moody drama speaks of the inextricable links between Africa and the Caribbean without ever discussing it in academic terms but, instead, illustrating the bond with everyday exchanges between the unexpected visitor from abroad and the locals.

Assayas clearly loves actresses — their spontaneity and their self-doubt, and the mercurial way they can switch from one to the other — and Clouds of Sils Maria offers both a compassionate exploration of their lives and a powerful showcase for three of them to do some of their best work to date.

A Still Small Voice is both universally relevant and as niche as a film can be; only those willing to descend into the depths of grief will seek it out, though it holds wisdom enough to apply to us all.

It is a gem likely to stay with anyone smart enough to seek it out.

In its barbs and visuals, indie vibe and old-school ambition, inside jabs and outsider artistry, it feels both of its time — when Welles’ cachet straddled an old guard who shunned him and young rebels who worshipped him — and like an acidly spit anecdote about artistic humiliation that still feels relevant.

It takes a group that bumped up against the boundaries and instead just operates within them.

The main problem, on the surface, is why would you watch it? It’s certainly not a crowd pleaser, but there is remarkable film craft on display, plenty of moments of wonder and beauty, some heart-melting tenderness and a finale to match “The Irishman.”

In the hands of its filmmakers and cast is a rivetingly good, human journey, full of sparks, flame, smoke, containment, ash, and the terrible beauty that sometimes mystifyingly colors stories of desolation.

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.

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.

Every moment indicates deep compassion for Orna, and anyone else who might be driven to see a multi-layered message movie for the #MeToo era.

Memorable acting, striking cinematography, and a provocative examination of the nexus between entertainment and media and politics — that’s part of what’s kept the legend of “Citizen Kane” alive for decades, and it’s enough to make Mank necessary, if not entirely fulfilling, viewing for film lovers.

The documentary is a testament to the human spirit, to unity in times of depravation, to the ability of common individuals to effect change at the highest level.

A psychological mystery laced with environmental disaster and alien-scary juju, Alex Garland’s elegantly unsettling Annihilation is here to shake up your night at the movies in the most mind-bendy way possible, but without foregoing the pleasures of an ambitious sci-fi entertainment.

It’s this generation’s answer to “Cry-Baby” and also distinctly Early.

At its best moments, Pride makes the chest flutter and the neck hairs stand up with the revolutionary adrenaline that comes from a potent protest song.

Like a sheep in wolf’s clothing, Halina Reijn’s surprisingly genteel Babygirl might bare the occasional fang, but it doesn’t have much bite.

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

The director translates the overwhelming concept of genocide into intimate, daily struggles, and the horror is indisputable, and inescapable; if you ever thought such a historical horror was “unthinkable,” you’ll think again.

The pacing, the performances (Albert Brooks is a stand-out as Abel's lawyer), and every facet of the production serves the story and the film's larger ideas.