Winterbottom and cinematographer James Clarke use the gloss of both food porn and travel porn to occasionally distract us from the darker elements of the story, in the same way that Coogan and Brydon will turn to humor to lighten up their roiling inner conflicts. In this case, however, both the sugar coating and the bitter pill are a treat.

Sauvage/Wild is dependent on Maritaud, who shows no fear or restraint when it comes to giving his entire body over to every one of his scenes, because this is a film partly about using your body as a commodity and how that commodity can decline and break down very early.

My Dead Friend Zoe' is a noble film, seemingly honest and open. It’s not a terribly exciting one, and it struggles to justify its modest length, but plot isn’t everything.

Stokes recorded every story she possibly could, from 1977 to 2012. By then, it had become a lot easier to chronicle both the minutiae and the magnitude of life in the 21st century. But has that been an improvement? Wolf leaves it to his audience to decide, after gently pushing us past any instinctual answers.

It gives Steve Coogan one of his finest screen roles to date and for Reilly, it’s another triumph right on the heels of “The Sisters Brothers.” Whether you adore Laurel and Hardy or have never seen them in action, this film celebrates both the artist and the tenacity it takes to remain one.

Undine allows for the magical while keeping its eyes firmly on the painfully real, making a valiant, full-hearted attempt to break the bonds of history.

It escalates past the point of absurdity, but all you can do as an audience member is shake your head and laugh.

The way in which tradition and progress convenes amid such challenging circumstances becomes Meirelles’ tribute to his subjects. The fact that we fully believe in this apparent impossibility feels like his gift to us.

It’s hard to watch Notturno at times, but to the director’s credit it’s also impossible to look away.

No matter where Ferguson goes, he finds a way to sit someone in a chair and point a camera at them, resulting in a movie whose stultifying dullness works against the urgency of its message.

A sadistic delight, just like its predecessor.

The result is hugely impressive and awfully scattershot, a wry piece of art that is always entertaining but also so excruciatingly detailed that you wonder if it will connect the way the more emotional, more fully drawn stories of “Grand Budapest,” “Moonrise Kingdom” or “The Royal Tenenbaums” did.

Conroy wrote the book upon which the film is based and serves as the film’s central mouthpiece; full of twitchy, animated energy, he makes a terrific storyteller who’s boosted by Martin’s selection of found footage along with a minimum of jangly re-creations.

Fever Dream delivers its jolts with a whisper and not a scream, and its enigmatic final shot vibrates with a deep sense of dread, one that won’t leave after the lights come up.

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.

The film is deliberately and at times deliriously scattershot, jumping from one subject to another and rarely slowing down to draw connections or make larger points.

The performances are strong across the board — all the scenes between Theron and Davis, in particular, overflow with empathy and understanding — and Cody’s writing has never been better.

The subject matter is already horrifying; we hardly need to see its fictional illustration staged for maximum impact and set to insistent and foreboding music.

It’s not an exposé on what pornography does to women as much as a harrowing examination of what the workplace expects and allows from women and men.

Oldman treats Churchill’s words the way a Broadway virtuoso would: as the showstopper. And who can blame him? It works.

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.

The film’s two-plus-hour running time is a patience-tester.

It’s Dyrholm’s performance that anchors everything.

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.

Spy would be a standout if only for its ability to keep me laughing while also keeping me from figuring out who was really double-crossing whom. Add to that this extraordinary ensemble of actors (who knew Jason Statham could be this funny?), and you’ve got another memorable offering from McCarthy and Feig.

Carpignano once again uses a tight, intimate character focus to take a wider look at larger political and cultural issues in this region. In the poetically, humanistically crafted A Chiara, he also manages to flip the Mafia movie on its head, and in doing so, challenges the mythology that keeps these shadowy systems in power.

John Wick’s world is elegant and vicious, full of slaughter and courtesies and, if “Chapter 2” can’t quite replicate the original’s sense of discovery, its ending still made me wish “Chapter 3” could start right away.

No matter where you think Send Help is going, you’re probably wrong. Thankfully, that’s a huge part of its appeal. It’s not a mystery, by any means. But it is a story rooted in the exploration of human nature and exactly who we become if it means survival both in the literal and figurative sense.

The film feels true in the way it must be exploring Branagh’s memories of a tumultuous and confusing time, and the way it pays tribute to a vibrant community as that community is irrevocably changed.

It is a film about journalistic ethics and, in its own way, the interpretation of images is grounded in [Dunst’s] outstanding performance. It isn’t an easy role to inhabit, but she does so perfectly.

Co-stars and co-writers Daveed Diggs (“Wonder”) and Rafael Casal have a lot to say, much of it funny and/or provocative, but neither they nor first-time feature director Carlos López Estrada can figure out a way to shape all this material into a cohesive film.

Pike, giving the kind of transformative performance that puts her squarely in the awards-season conversation, manifests Colvin’s brazen outspokenness with candor, and her irreparable brokenness via a cocktail of rage and subdued anxiety.

“Until the Wheels Fall Off” works better as a humanistic exploration than it does as a biography, making its Hawk focus occasionally feel like a weakness.

Morris From America shines a deserved spotlight on Markees Christmas, who will hopefully be given more opportunities to command the screen, and it allows Craig Robinson a framework in which to deliver a career-best performance.

Thankfully, even when sudden exposition about past trauma lands clunkily, the rest of the film remains light on its feet and properly fun as we observe the couple being tormented by whatever is drawing their corporeal forms together.

Ozon manages to instill a measured touch into every argument, outburst, and testimony, matching the naturalistic cinematography (by Manuel Dacosse, “Let the Corpses Tan”) and bestowing on us the most important and assured movie on this treacherous topic made this decade.

“Civil War” strikes that admirable balance: serious-minded action that never forgets to indulge in serious fun.

Instead, the film skewers and sympathizes in equal measure, mocking the pipe dreams suggested by its title and stirred by even the faintest hint of recognition, while still making clear that Ed’s literary gifts are genuinely worth the fuss.

In Gutierrez’s vivid and moving film, Kahlo is in no less than full, glorious view.

Does great justice to an extraordinary astronaut and reluctant icon, but also repeats the error made so often by media of Ride's era, in centering other people’s perspectives over her own.

The performances are impeccable, and the film’s structural elements are deftly handled across the board.

Whitney is at its most powerful when it focuses on reminding us what we all lost, because the more you think about how outstanding her gift was, the more tragic her absence feels.

While there are fun moments and a continuation of the franchise's main idea — Professor X's peace, love and understanding vs. Magneto's fight the power — Days of Future Past ends up feeling more exhausting than exuberant.

Land of Mine is a powerful epic, superbly acted, tense and unsettling, but also poignant and occasionally tender.

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!

If you don’t mind your movies nasty, brutish, and slight, you couldn’t ask for a more delectable chocolate-covered razor blade.

It’s a tricky balance to build a world where characters are both absurd and believable — and on top of that, exist in a world where musical numbers can break out at any time (even the Wonder Wharf carnies get a song) — but Bouchard pulls it off.

Bring Her Back, like many great horror movies, hardly needs to dip into the supernatural to shred our nerve-endings.

The Lego Batman Movie, for the most part, very skillfully keeps the wackiness from overwhelming the plot and vice versa. And while the various Bat-vehicles take us through vertiginous zooms on land or through the air, McKay keeps the action rousing but never jumbled.

The result is artistically uneven in structure but emotionally powerful throughout.

The chief virtue of “Monica” is its restraint and its patience.

It sidesteps saccharine wistfulness to flow without pretense, consistently putting its finely-drawn characters before other concerns.

While her debut as a screenwriter and leading lady doesn’t quite reach the outrageous heights of her TV work, Trainwreck remains hilarious and provocative, heralding what we can only hope will be a pot-stirring new voice on the big screen.

The writer-director is aided immeasurably by lead actor Emma Mackey (“Death on the Nile”), whose wide eyes and expressive features convey a torment and vivacity being held in constant check by a repressive society.

It’s unlikely that any documentary could make us feel half as bad for the poachers as we do for their prey, which might not even be Kasbe’s aim. He succeeds in bringing shades of grey to a situation usually thought of in black-and-white terms — not enough to change many minds, perhaps, but at least enough to open some.

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.

It’s a life — and now a film about a life — built from disparate strands of experience, but one that makes sense exactly because she is Grace Jones, and being Grace Jones means synthesizing Grace Jones from all available material.

The film has its twists, turns and resets, simultaneously giving the audience more information while also keeping it off balance. It can be riveting and at times repetitive, but it does what it sets out to do: It drops you in the middle of a crisis and it keeps you there.

Seo excavates universal truths that transcend all generational and cultural divides. The many geographical, social and emotional pains these young people are grappling with are ones everyone faces down. As they find ways to fight this, coming to realize all the many ways they may not be so easily able to, there is something both genuinely heartfelt yet quietly haunting about it.

Ducournau’s follow-up to “Raw” is more than comfortable in its genre trappings, offering grab bag nods to past masters and positively delighting in sex, violence and grisly prosthetics as it chants “Long live the new flesh” from the film world’s toniest perch, inviting all gathered to join along.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation never pretends to be anything but a solidly entertaining collection of fighting, chasing, driving, falling and going-to-the-place-and-getting-the-thing. But at that level, it delivers completely. Choose to accept it.

It is subversive, stomach-churning and visionary, a body-horror film that doubles as a fable of femininity gone wrong.

Viswanathan’s resounding, yet quiet performance allows the audience to see Hala for who she is — a smart, funny, intelligent, angsty, confused, and completely normal teenage girl.

This picture feels fated to be remembered as the “giant fluffy puppy soccer movie,” and both the giant fluffy puppies and Cotta provide enough laughs to make it worthwhile.

There is a terrible majesty to the landscape and to the story, and Kurzel gives it room to breathe.

For Dupieux, there seems to be no moral here at all, other than perhaps that life is a trajectory of mishaps and easiest for people who don’t linger over the fallout of their actions. This isn’t necessarily surprising for a filmmaker who once wrote and directed a movie about a sentient tire that commits serial murder.

Oklahoma City is certainly well made and relatively searching, but it can only scratch the surface of its very disturbing and complex subject.

Things come to a head in a way that is simultaneously slapstick-y and touching, and entirely in keeping with a movie that has never lost its sense of charm through an hour and a half of twists and turns and engaging mountain escapades.

The movie’s points about immigration are made early; much of the rest amounts to good things eventually happening to talented and hard-working people. That might be a story, but it’s not much of a drama.

There’s a confidence to She Rides Shotgun that many other movies can’t match, as though the filmmakers always knew exactly where to put their camera and how long to let it roll.

Appropriate to its teenage milieu, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s breakthrough film isn’t unlike spending a couple of hours with an exceptionally witty high-schooler: It’s entertaining as hell, but you can’t help rolling your eyes a little at its self-satisfied pseudo-profundities.

The intensity with which Porcelain War presents its horrors will knock you down.

Shot in black and white and set mostly in a retail environment, the French-Canadian film gives off a “Clerks” vibe as the trio of protagonists slack off, bitch about pay, and talk about life and love.

At its best — when the flow of voices, archival clips (co-director Pollard being a master at the textural impact of found footage), and nicely blended-in recreations made to look archival, is thematically strongest — "Citizen Ashe" becomes a documentary about how experience becomes voice becomes action.

It’s a lush and intriguing experience that works so well for so long that it can’t be undone by a few flaws.

Deer, a rare filmmaker of Mohawk descent, portrays in Beans the hope and love that help people thrive in the face of such hatred.

Strawberry Mansion dazzles most in its execution. In its own search for creativity and inspiration, the film leans into experimentation and whimsy.

For all its presidential trappings, the movie is most powerful as a straightforward romance with two endlessly charming black leads, of a kind that, as far as movies go, is outrageously rare.

Perhaps it’s not quite the teen movie to define a new generation, but it’s one that gets at something unique about female rage and drive, gifting its young viewers a reset button and a release outlet, however imperfect.

For director Jean-Marc Vallée, the film's smarts and soulfulness give him a leap upward from “Dallas Buyers Club” that puts him head-to-head with Tate Taylor (“Get On Up”) as 2014's Most Improved Filmmaker. The other big surprise of Wild turns out to be Reese Witherspoon, going far from her usual comfort zone here.

If a movie about this band of self-described “f—ing jerks” can make you feel emotional, maybe that’s proof enough that Spike Jonze didn’t need to get adventurous with this one — the material did it for him.

One of the best things that can be said about On the Count of Three is that it forces viewers to dispel any certainty that its protagonists won’t wind up dead at the end, which provides the film with both integrity and unpredictability.

It’s a film with a lot on its mind and plenty of plot and character plates to spin, but the results are both impressive and exciting.

Youmans ultimately grapples with several tough themes that center the black Baptist South in a way that is rarely seen on screen. Even so, the inept editing and screenplay ultimately bring down Burning Cane.

It’s a bit of a mess, no doubt about that, but a fascinating one.

It documents the unexpected timelessness underlying a hopelessly contemporary phenomenon by looking at the very specific ways the current generation of teenagers engage the world around them, pointing out the inevitable, inescapable sameness of the way the world always has, and will, look back.

Catherine Called Birdy only shows that dropping Dunham’s sensibility down into the Middle Ages results in a viewpoint that is suffocatingly small and unenlightening.

A lovingly crafted fantasy on an epic scale, Mary and the Witch’s Flower is a film about transformation made by filmmakers in transition.

Park creates a genuine tenderness that Stella beautifully captures, but the narrative itself paints a habitual tale of retrospect and the enlightenment of being in the present.

As always, what’s so joyously, infectiously funny about “Jackass” is rarely the prank itself, but how funny they all find it to reduce each other to writhing heaps.

Their initial meeting, as orgiastic as it can possibly be, is shot by first-time cinematographer Manuel Marmier without pornography’s genitalia-focused aesthetic tropes, and with as much intimate and magical lighting as any old-fashioned musical sequence.

Genuinely frightening in stretches and with the creep-o-meter jacked up to 1,000 all the way through, “Bones and All” is somehow more and less than a simple horror flick, and not quite a rambling romance.

Finding an enthralling equilibrium between hard numerical data and heartrending testimonials, Dick masterfully weaves together both the expert statements you’d expect in a documentary like this and first-hand accounts from victims; the results are alarming and essential for anyone even remotely invested in their own physical and psychological wellness.

Villeneuve’s Dune is both dazzling and frustrating, often spectacular and often slow. It’s huge and loud and impressive but it can also be humorless and bleak – though on the whole, it tries valiantly to address the problems of taking on Herbert’s complex epic.

A well-acted, inspiring story of female empowerment, the captivating “Roxanne Roxanne” is as much about survival and the bonds of family as it is about busting rhymes.

In animation, Simó finds the ideal canvas, one that allows him to recount the most gruesome instances of strenuous filmmaking in more palatable form while also ingeniously enlivening the surreal sequences with glorious hand-drawn work.