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.