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.

Blade Runner 2049 isn’t about what happens; it’s about what this terrifying and beautiful world — how could it not be, with Roger Deakins behind the camera — tells us about life and perception and reality.

Overall, it’s an impressively mounted film, from the seamless visual effects to the score by Justin Hurwitz, which is flexible enough to accentuate both the film’s tension and its earthbound humanity, to the always exquisite editing by Tom Cross (“Whiplash”), which plays a key role in establishing the characters, the stakes and even the passage of time.

Even if you think you’ve seen this movie before, Headland’s gift for outrageous dialogue... and Sudeikis and Brie’s comic chemistry make Sleeping with Other People a treat from start to finish.

When all the puzzle-like pieces come together, the movie’s characters, story, score and emotions soar. The pace of that progress may feel slow, but things never get too quiet. It’s a movie with a racing pulse, and you can feel its heart in every frame.

As Motherless Brooklyn reaches back in time to explore racism and New York City’s history, it also brings us urgently back to right now — how we look at politics and leadership, what offenses we’re willing to accept, what ideals are still worth fighting for.

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.

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

Louis Leterrier’s installment does an impressive job of making all the old nonsense make a little bit of sense again. It’s got the absurd action sequences we’ve come to expect, but instead of following a small army of unstoppable heroes, Letterier’s film casts them as underdogs against an even more unstoppable villain.

Many of the mile-per-minute quips and hilariously biting remarks in Theater Camp will surely enter the collective consciousness once the general public has access to them.

Soberly shifting from war thriller to apocalyptic drama to oddly sentimental buddy film, “Onoda” bears the weight of its many filmic forefathers. But as it pulls off such moves with such quiet force, it also represents a different kind of emergence.

Cooley’s movie feels like what the Transformers films always should have been — adventure films the whole family can enjoy regardless of any pre-existing affection for the world of Transformers.

Hou’s brand of reserve might not be for all audiences, but arthouse admirers of cinematic stillness will find themselves enraptured by this hypnotic tale.

Beautiful Boy is family calamity writ large, a harrowing and horrifying (and yes, overly-long) exploration of the depths of addiction.

Even the quietest moments of 'Flow' are tainted by existential threat. It’s suspenseful and pensive and painful in a way few films strive for, and fewer still achieve.

Ms. Purple is a gorgeous film about one of the worst moments of many people’s lives, but isn’t the act of living just learning how to survive these irreplaceable losses?

If The Killer is chilly-to-the-touch and anchored by a quiet and intensely physical performance by Fassbender, the filmmakers nevertheless wring an awful lot of wit from this frigid world.

“Super/Man” is emotional, resilient, and inspiring, opening up private battles to the general public.

What a delightful discovery this movie is, and what an incredible collection of impeccable performances. Ahn’s film finds the drama in the intentionally quiet life of introverts and lulls his audience into peaceful, wise, contented security.

Trueba excels at those well-meaning, exquisitely realized, vividly acted human dramas. “Memories” translates those sensibilities to South America, and even if the product can’t exactly be seen as rousing, one can’t entirely resist its affecting charm.

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.

Ammonite is spare and hushed. Its pleasures are subtle, but they linger.

David Lowery‘s ease with actors and command of tone make Pete’s Dragon one of the best remakes in recent years.

The White Tiger illustrates the extremes to which the poor are driven to violate the rigid class structure of India, with the implication that our hero and his methodology is perhaps the face of post-superpower capitalism itself.

If anything, and this is a compliment, the film frequently feels like a charming teen road-trip comedy that occasionally turns into a superhero movie.

A psychological mystery laced with environmental disaster and alien-scary juju, Alex Garland’s elegantly unsettling Annihilation is here to shake up your night at the movies in the most mind-bendy way possible, but without foregoing the pleasures of an ambitious sci-fi entertainment.

The film moves slowly but relentlessly, with each new moment showing just how dangerous the lead character’s idealism really is.

In Bruckner’s directorial hands and David Marks’ editing, more information is delivered than ever before, but no plot point is over-explained. Mysteries are allowed their ambiguity.