Invoking genre narrative devices, the entrancingly evocative La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) walks between fact and myth to engender a shrewdly frightening piece of political horror.

The result is a wide-ranging dialogue that manages to be both philosophical and playful, a personal portrait that goes exactly as deep as Cornwell wants it to go but never feels as if the author is getting away with obfuscation.

For those already invested in the “Dune” franchise, “Dune: Part Two” is a sweeping and engaging continuation that will make you eager for a third installment. And if you were a fence-sitter on the first, this should also hold your attention with a taut, well-done script and engaging characters with whom you’ll want to spend nearly three hours.

While it’s great to hear Blume read her own work, such a significant portion of the documentary is focused on excerpting that it might have been more time-saving to assign the books to the audience ahead of time.

Jagged and disorderly, confounding and charming and sometimes irritating — just like the man at its center.

Beasts of No Nation is the kind of sincere, powerful filmmaking that gives socially conscious drama a good name.

Unlike the “memberberries” school of nostalgia that can reduce itself to “I had that lunch box!” Linklater gets granular and specific (and thus universal) about his memories and his perceptions of the world at that time.

By following this group of mediums Wilson doesn’t solve the mysteries of the universe, but she does do something remarkable: unveiling the very human desires and drives that motivate us to reach out for something bigger than ourselves.

Make no mistake, Petrov’s Flu is a formidable piece of filmmaking; it is also an exercise in style that uses its own virtuoso technique as a blunt-force tool against the audience.

Monster manages to sink its claws into one’s conscience, thanks in large part to the movie’s young leads—like Farhadi, Kore-eda is an astute director of children, able to shepherd their performances in ways both precocious and disarmingly innocent.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs will be, at best, a charming footnote in the Coens’ career, a project they enjoyed doing, and possibly even more enjoyed turning into a film so they can keep their résumé free of episodic television.

Despite the descent into madness that appears on screen, the movie is controlled and measured.

I’d say if The Plague wasn’t nominated for Best Original Score there’s something terribly wrong with the Oscars, but The Plague didn’t even make the short list, so there’s just something terribly wrong with the Oscars.

It’s a deeply personal documentary, candidly reflective and disinterested in flattery. It brings titans down to Earth.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Chained for Life will have you rubbing your eyes to make sense of what you’ve just seen.

Selma is one of the best American films of the year — and indeed perhaps the best — precisely because it does not simply show what Dr. King did for America in his day; it also wonders explicitly what we have left undone for America in ours.

So tip your the greasy, dusty, battered hat to George Miller, who is pulling off some kind of ridiculous feat by turning these grungy action movies into a grand saga.

It’s a brutal, blood-drenched story, but also a captivating and poignant generational saga that will stay with the viewer long afterward.

While the filmmaker rightly understands that shock value isn’t the only way to tell a visceral story, its central performance by Julia Garner is what makes the film most interesting to watch.

Not even the most miniscule production design element is left to chance in such a tangible and meticulously conceived technique like stop-motion. Details matter, and comedy often emerges from them combined with great timing. “Farmageddon” is a non-verbal narrative that tells jokes directly to our curious eyes.

For its few visual and many script flaws, however, director Matt Reeves (“Cloverfield,” “Let Me In”) balances the splashy set pieces with quieter moments (sullen teen Kodi Smit-McPhee gives a copy of Charles Burns’ “Black Hole” to a wise orangutan named after Maurice Evans!) in such a way that “Dawn” never feels dull or draggy.

Hustlers is an uneven but mostly entertaining tale of strippers exploiting their exploiters.

When films are made about straight men in this predicament, they’re often considered explorations of a “midlife crisis,” but Denis’ film poses the questions: What if crises aren’t limited to a certain age, and what if love itself is the crisis?

Can you tell it’s a play? Absolutely. Does that mean a damn thing? Not when the writing is this richly evocative, and the cast so often soars with it.

It’s a snack of a movie, not so much a full meal, and that’s OK. There’s a lot of energy in this film; more than enough to get you through your afternoon.

The film could be mistaken as cringe comedy, but it’s much more than that, and Sweeney never lets the film’s delightful twists overtake the emotion at the root of the movie.

Whenever the filmmaker’s emphasis is on the sinful humanity of these men of God, reducing them to Machiavellian backstabbers, it’s a satisfying and absorbing yarn. When it tries to say something profound — while refusing to acknowledge the many elephants who populate the Vatican’s many rooms — it makes cardinal errors.

Vinterberg and Lindholm take a substantive look at substance abuse, placing it in character context and avoiding dramatic hysterics. Another Round is a film of more quiet desperation and a more thoughtful morality, and it goes down with a kick.