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.

Walker-Silverman exhibits the sensibilities of a master storyteller, capable of making his splendid writing seem effortless in its construction and then molding it into warm magic via the cast’s remarkable talent. He’s an absolute revelation among emerging voices.

At the Ready plays like a frightening but necessary exposé of state-sanctioned copaganda targeting young people from marginalized backgrounds to groom them into instruments of their very oppressor.

As with “Summer Hours,” Non-Fiction traffics in ideas and concerns without handing out leaflets; first and foremost, this is an empathetic and charming character piece, featuring top-notch actors (Binoche revels in a rare opportunity to be funny) enjoying richly clever dialogue.

It’s a history lesson you can dance to, and at times it’s an unexpectedly mournful and moving portrait of a city that has an intimate relationship with death and damage.

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

Beach Rats has an experiential, almost docudrama aesthetic whose lived-in authenticity is in keeping with that of the film as a whole.

An indispensable watch, Banua-Simon’s first feature focuses on the island of Kauaʻi and the history of its exploitation as a colony, which endures under the guise of statehood.

The most impressive thing about “Barbarian” is that Cregger keeps developing his twisty plot well after he sets everything up. Messing with viewers seems to be his guiding dramatic principal, from playful camerawork to unpredictable plot twists. Bless ‘im.

It’s particularly sad that viewers can’t spend more time in Casey’s world, since newcomer Cobb is this film’s greatest asset.

An exercise in riveting restraint and painful poetry, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an emotional knockout.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a remarkable achievement that in a way hijacks the flagship story of the horror genre and turns it into a tale of forgiveness.

Ultimately, Sorry to Bother You does what every great first film should: it heralds the arrival of an exciting new talent and generates enthusiasm for what’s going to be in that second feature.

The movie is more successful as a thriller than as a thoughtful examination of war and its horrors; Mendes seems less interested in bigger ideas about the nightmare of battle and its effects on his characters than he is in Hitchcockian audience manipulation.

As summer movies go, Logan Lucky is especially tasty bar food, slung by a master.

Parmet’s strong script and surety behind the camera navigate the audience through this complicated story of religion and sexuality, patriarchy and power, brought to eerily accurate life by the ensemble of excellent actors.

It begins in a lush, green garden, but High Life, the quiet, bracing and ultimately moving first English-language film from acclaimed French director Claire Denis, is the antithesis of a creation story.

This Count Orlock is a gruesome monstrosity, gnawed on and gnarled, as repulsive as movie monsters get. But he is now also that sexual creature, a hypermasculine 1970s porn star, as virile as he is virulent.

The degree of difficulty here is steep, and Davies has not been entirely successful in making Dickinson’s milieu come to full and convincing life.

My Darling Vivian is an unmistakably loving and sensitive portrait, an imperfect but impassioned attempt to makes the case that the easy Johnny Cash narrative is missing an important figure, that the shadow his legend casts left at least one person in the darkness who ought not to be there.

A deeply personal film about the crisis in reproductive rights that manages to be even-handed, insightful and deeply moving.

Lest you think this is all a bit much for one family to endure, Rasoulof’s storytelling acumen is firmly in the realm of propulsive, detail-driven ethical thriller built on its character’s actions, rather than mere punching-bag melodrama. And it goes somewhere, most importantly, with its ideas, leaving you after its final, devastating image with something to think about instead of simply abandoned with your rage or pity.

The film skims over much of MacGowan’s post-Pogues career and doesn’t include any old bandmates talking about him. It’s not the Shane MacGowan chronology; it’s the Shane MacGowan experience. And that’s a tough, heartbreaking and inspiring experience.

Iannucci has fun with the classic serial-turned-novel and throws in a bit of defiant color-blind casting for kicks, but it takes some getting used to a gentler, less biting Iannucci.

At once an affecting celebration of a truly peerless icon and a critique of the industry that almost broke her, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It has the enormous responsibility of synthesizing the grandeur of a life well lived, bumps and all, and the unbreakable, giving spirit that took to get her to the pinnacle of respect and recognition.

Clemency is a film that is just almost great. The level of restraint Chukwu has in her writing and execution, while admirable, is the very thing that prevents it from truly soaring.

As with most documentaries drawn from books, it feels like you’re getting the Reader’s Digest condensed version, handy for those who have 90 minutes to spare but no substitute for the real thing.

Affecting at times and downright tear-jerking at others, their story is tied to the saga of gay life in America over the past 70-plus years. Still, it ends up feeling less like a history lesson and more like a universal acknowledgment: growing old with some kind of grace and peace should not be this hard.

Deadwyler doesn’t just evoke Mamie’s speech patterns (which are very specific to Black women in the city trying to shed vestiges of the rural South) or capture her mannerisms, which remain precise at all times; she embodies every single inch of Mamie, body and soul, bringing her to life and making her real in both our minds and our hearts. . . This magnificent performance elevates Deadwyler to the ranks of the great actors of our time.

Delicate and restrained, the film offers the messages of redemption and renewal we so often crave from a Christmas movie without wrapping its themes and characters in tinsel.

There are times when its soap opera trappings struggle to exist along its goofier aspects, but with a collection of upbeat tunes and colorful animation, KPop Demon Hunters, makes for a charming little Netflix movie.

A deadpan crime story with eccentric and fantastical touches, and a healthy sense of the absurd, “Have a Nice Day” makes a bold argument for Chinese animation as a fertile outlet for exploring the country’s more desperate, constricted lives, and the choices these people make.

Because the Zero Days subjects who are best positioned to provide new information are also the least likely to talk, much of the movie is devoted to rehashing previously published reports, which Gibney does with both cogency and style.

This ultimately feels like four very promising movies mashed together, with spectacular highlights bumping into each other in a way that’s ultimately lacking, even as they all demonstrate the prowess and bravado of the filmmaker.

Miraculously, Makridis doesn’t undercut the seriousness of Giannis’ plight with humor. The laughs derive naturally from Drakopoulos’ pitch-black performance.

The prime takeaway is of an irascibly charming, wounded and forceful genius both having the time of his life and sensing the gathering dusk.

Finding Dory never quite hits that sweet spot of sadness. The film definitely pushes our buttons as it portrays loss and separation, but it never slows down enough to let us ache. Even so, Finding Dory is rousingly entertaining.

The beauty of Ai’s epic imagery feels like a perpetual challenge: Are you looking? Are you listening? Are you responding?

What’s clear is that as a stylist, Perkins is at the top of his game. Maybe even the top of anyone’s game. As a storyteller, he’s either a bold innovator or just slapping dream logic onto old-fashioned pulp.

Nothing here feels cheap or hasty, which is why the horror, when it comes, is all the more chilling and grim. Slick, sharp and legitimately terrifying, The Gift is a truly brilliant thriller — and, one hopes, the first of many features from Edgerton to come.

Every Body is about a serious and under-reported topic, yet Cohen makes it fascinating without ever exploiting the trio of people she’s documenting. It’s the purest form of documentary, wherein the goal is to educate and inform without falling into prurient interest.

Concurrently, as Maitland provides pockets of warmth and humanity in the legacies of a handful of letter-writers, he relays through archival footage and interviews the fallout for Brody himself when the sheer volume of outstretched hands and scrutinizing eyes became too much for him to handle.

This uneven but funny and engrossing drama is less about Victoria than about time itself: how it slows down in the bleary middle of the night, how it speeds up relationships between strangers when no one else is around, how capacious it is in containing the most unexpected of swerves and stumbles.

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.

There are plenty of laughs — and nothing that goes over a kid’s head to an adult funny bone is smutty or smarmy — and the sentiment never feels strained or artificial.

Polley strikes a hypnotizing rhythm amongst the women, who attack despair with cheeky humor (Women Talking is unexpectedly funny in parts) and uncertainty with astute deliberation, respectfully challenging each other on a course of action as much as lovingly braiding one another’s hair.

Mississippi Grind winds up being that rare beast: the buddy comedy where you’re not tired of the buddies well before the credits roll.

Kolirin has a sense for the bleakly surreal, and an ability to balance even the darkest experiences with empathetic shades of gray. Everyone here is bound by bars of some sort, and everyone has the freedom to make certain choices within them.

Wild Tales represents the work of an exceedingly skillful storyteller.

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.

A fitting tribute to a woman worthy of one.

The most brilliant aspect of the script, penned jointly by Green and Oscar Redding, is its flair with sketching out the ups and downs of Hanna and Liv’s friendship.

"The Story of Film" is long (though not by Cousins’ standards), it’s infuriating at times (entirely by design) and it overstates its case with defiant glee (again, it meant to do that), but you can’t love movies and not love a good chunk of what Cousins puts on the screen.

The news is only important insofar as it helps us understand the world. Best of Enemies, though, is only interested in zooming in to gaze lingeringly at the media’s navel.

The ugly truth is that society has routinely failed to protect poor women and children, and it’s still failing. Guzzoni uses all his talent to amplify this sad reality and, in turn, solidifies his position as a leader of the New Wave of Latin cinema

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.

If Personal Shopper doesn’t spell everything out for its viewers, it’s no more accommodating to Maureen; she, like us, must use her skills to intuit what’s happening around her and what the future will hold. It’s a captivating swirl for all involved.

Caught between exalting the glory of his titanic accomplishments and their indelible mark on Black American culture, and figuring him out with only the available pieces of his intimate puzzle, Ailey does succeed at painting him as a complex figure.

Does it all work? Not quite, but you can’t fault a film for its ambition, least of all one that does manage to bring it all together for a deeply moving home stretch.

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.

A timely, thorough and truly inspiring documentary about the financial and marketing imperatives that lead academic institutions to deny their students safety and justice.

Inu-Oh may get messy with its plotting, but that never dulls its impact. It’s a siren scream of a musical: angry and beautiful, rapturously animated and highly infectious.

This is a full character that Dillane and Dickinson have built from the ground up, where the little details of how he reacts to things can tear right through when you least expect it.

This is more than just a career-best for Collins — it’s a career-redefining performance. His talent for profundity was always there but previously untapped to this extent. Now the hope is that this won’t be a zenith for him, but instead a revitalizing rebirth.

Gracey may film Better Man through a thick veneer of showbiz glitz but — thanks in large part to the fact that, again, the star is a CGI chimpanzee — the film’s heaviest scenes sneak up on you and pack a wallop.

Even when the film can get tangled up in subplots that don’t quite have the same impact as all the moments we get with the main trio finding a new path forward, it still mostly holds together.

Arcel has created a film that is big, bold and over-the-top, but it has the right guy at its center to hold everything together – and, in a touch we didn’t know we needed, that guy has the right person by his side.

It’s a movie that viewers might find difficult to love but slow to forget.

Grandma is both smart and sweet, mature and bawdy, knowing its characters’ flaws yet open to the possibilities of people acting upon their best instincts. It is without a doubt one of the year’s best films.

Each time we are thrown into something new, the film teases out moments of humor built around the family’s dysfunction just as it draws out a growing feeling that something bad is coming.

Bustling with manic energy, I, Tonya attempts to cobble together a variety of perspectives — including that of the filmmakers — to create a portrait of, and perhaps rejoinder to, history’s assessment of the record-breaking athlete as little more than a ’90s tabloid footnote.

Like any good conductor, Cooper knows that the smallest of gestures elicits the most thunderous response.

Watching Grace and Rocky talking science, doing science and exploring the parallels between their cultures evokes the very best parts of Star Trek.

Even as its lead character endures physical and psychological torment at the hands of authorities, the film is very much of a piece with the ebullience of “Small Axe,” as the ongoing themes of community, music and defiance play a huge role in the story.

If the film’s pinning much of the world’s problems to sex at times seems excessive, silly or reductive, Lee justifies it with moments of unexpected grace.

Thelma is a totally pure delight that gives June Squibb a much-deserved leading role. Her and Roundtree are fabulously paired and Margolin’s script is breezy and sharp in equal measure. You’ll want to see this with your best friend, your parents, and, yes, your grandma.

While Grappe ultimately finds an ending that’s a bit pat, the power of the Ukrainian spirit comes through beautifully, underscoring the stakes of what is, and always will be, at hand for the country, now more than ever: identity, safety, and freedom.

Glass is always aware of what might disgust her audience and make them squirm, a delightful and intriguing addition to this psychological thriller that is anything but subtle. It’s an impressive directorial achievement that compliments the work of Glass’s equally stirring cast.

It not only introduces another side of this democratic activity, but does so at the perfect time to highlight its inconsistencies and inequalities, giving these girls the extra opportunity for reflection and growth.

Kikuchi’s strong, singular presence immerses the viewer in her character’s whimsical imagination and confusing emotions. She makes Haru a character worth rooting for — even, or perhaps especially, when she’s making all the wrong decisions.

It’s a well made and, at times, innovative film about the fame and fortune beckoning ordinary people in China’s live-streaming culture, but it plays like a scary science-fiction story come to life.

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.

The horses magnificently do their part, too, as co-stars in this redemption saga, mostly because de Clermont-Tonnerre gives them plenty of screen time to be irritable, sad, manic, desperate, but also begrudging, friendly, spirited, and at peace.

Everything about La Flor — that financiers agreed to bankroll it, Llinás and his team were able to complete it, and festivals, distributors, and exhibitors are now screening it — is a marvel. Anyone with a disdain for the studio system’s endless parade of franchises (and with 14 hours) to spare would do well to give it their undivided attention.

As a documentary, The Apollo is an illustrative tour through its hallowed backstage, its history and an exploration into its current mission as a cultural institution. It’s a place whose present will always be tied to its past and to how we preserve that history for future generations.

Clara Sola mixes religion, mysticism and sexuality in a way that feels simultaneously odd, disquieting and richly rewarding. It starts out beautifully restrained and ends up somewhere else entirely, but it’s all the more interesting for its split personality.

Changing the Game is that rare documentary about a social issue that is not preaching to the choir. If someone is uncertain or on the fence about this issue, this movie should allow them to make a logical conclusion about it, and that is not only a positive thing but also a stimulating one.

Gray does show some amusing facets of this world, such as prostitutes dressed up as society figures like the Rockefellers and Astors, for instance, but mostly The Immigrant is a bleak affair.

Detroit has a vital sense of authenticity, rooted as it is in history, conveyed via Bigelow’s meticulously crafted cinema vérité style that, essentially, thrusts the viewer into the tense events. She is an expert at managing suspense and deftly blending sensitivity with a journalistic sense of details.

Whether or not the “Wolverine” movies have a future — Jackman swears this is his last go-round — Logan is an exceedingly entertaining one.

The fight for equality rages on, but historical snapshots like Nationtime remind us of both the long road to justice and the hard work that goes into paving the way.

The filmmakers haven’t redefined the zombie genre, but they’ve refocused their own culturally significant riff into a lush, fascinating epic that has way more to say about being human than it does about (re-)killing the dead.

What ultimately works most profoundly for the film is that its intimacy, its specificity, feels less like the culmination of Joan’s life experiences and more like an epiphany, or maybe an origin story, for what’s yet to come from her.

If there isn't enough to feel, at least there's a lot to look at. Thanks to the superb 3-D direction by DeBlois, we swoop through the air, whoosh down dragons’ tails, and juuust baaaarely squeeze into small crevices, but still, those experiences are only like being on a really great rollercoaster — they don't mean anything.

Though Dheepan is another triumph for Audiard, it could have just as easily not worked had its leads not been so affecting

Think of Promare as a vast feast with too many flavorful offerings to taste in one seating, and where all the intricate details of how everything was put where it is are less important than the overall sensory overload you’ll experience.

Aside from the undercurrent of pathos, it’s James Franco’s impeccable comedic timing that is the film’s ace in the hole.

Many of Herzog’s recent documentaries have been produced under the aegis of TV channels, and “Lo and Behold” often feels like a miniseries compressed into feature form. Its segments broaden an understanding of the internet’s impact, but they don’t meaningfully interact with each other.