It’s not only properly unsettling, making great use of darkness and sound, but also becomes a quietly poetic reflection on loss when you least expect it.

The filmmaking craft on display and the control over the storytelling and suspense is exceptional.

Zeitlin has come up with a second film that goes down many of the same paths as his debut, another film filled with kids rampaging as the music swells — but he puts it on a mythic stage and creates a film that is magical and messy, unruly and otherworldly.

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.

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.

Bathtubs Over Broadway is pure pleasure, both in its exploration of a hidden and uniquely American corner of show business and its portrait of the charmingly nerdy Young and his singular path toward rescuing this sub-sub-sub-genre while many of its executors are still alive to tell their stories.

Aftermath is the work of a stronger and more assured director. It drops mind-boggling revelations about the extent of Russian doping and the lengths to which Vladimir Putin’s administration will go to silence dissidents and whistleblowers, but it’s also a deeply touching portrait of a man whose life was shattered because he got tired of being part of a system that ran on lies.

Shot in anamorphic, with long, silent scenes backed only by Amin Bouhafa’s haunting score, there is not a spare word or wasted image in the 92-minute running time. It should be said that this is not an easy watch, by any means. But it would be fair to call it a revelatory one.

Part fond remembrance of an early-’80s Leningrad rock scene and part glam-rock fever dream, Leto asks an audience to surrender to excess and at times to silliness, and it richly rewards them for doing so.

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.

Fontaine powerfully conveys the religious women’s inner torment, but with restraint, both visually and verbally.

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.