The rom-com veneer acts as the sugar that lets the film’s more serious medicine go down, and Schrader understands this territory well.

For a debut documentary filmmaker the former 'Xena: Warrior Princess' star makes tough choices and makes them boldly, and her film is more complicated and engrossing for it.

What sets The Eight Mountains apart is the degree to which co-directors van Groeningen and Vandermeersch strip away so much pretense and artifice, leaving nothing but a strong central question: What makes and prevents people from meaningfully connecting? The filmmakers then strike a refreshingly unsentimental tone when answering it.

Walker-Silverman exhibits the sensibilities of a master storyteller, capable of making his splendid writing seem effortless in its construction and then molding it into warm magic via the cast’s remarkable talent. He’s an absolute revelation among emerging voices.

At the Ready plays like a frightening but necessary exposé of state-sanctioned copaganda targeting young people from marginalized backgrounds to groom them into instruments of their very oppressor.

As with “Summer Hours,” Non-Fiction traffics in ideas and concerns without handing out leaflets; first and foremost, this is an empathetic and charming character piece, featuring top-notch actors (Binoche revels in a rare opportunity to be funny) enjoying richly clever dialogue.

It’s a history lesson you can dance to, and at times it’s an unexpectedly mournful and moving portrait of a city that has an intimate relationship with death and damage.

The filmmaker’s outsize, and sometimes unnerving, stylistic choices jump into the frame and vanish just as quickly.

Beach Rats has an experiential, almost docudrama aesthetic whose lived-in authenticity is in keeping with that of the film as a whole.

An indispensable watch, Banua-Simon’s first feature focuses on the island of Kauaʻi and the history of its exploitation as a colony, which endures under the guise of statehood.

The most impressive thing about “Barbarian” is that Cregger keeps developing his twisty plot well after he sets everything up. Messing with viewers seems to be his guiding dramatic principal, from playful camerawork to unpredictable plot twists. Bless ‘im.

It’s particularly sad that viewers can’t spend more time in Casey’s world, since newcomer Cobb is this film’s greatest asset.

An exercise in riveting restraint and painful poetry, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an emotional knockout.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a remarkable achievement that in a way hijacks the flagship story of the horror genre and turns it into a tale of forgiveness.

Ultimately, Sorry to Bother You does what every great first film should: it heralds the arrival of an exciting new talent and generates enthusiasm for what’s going to be in that second feature.

The movie is more successful as a thriller than as a thoughtful examination of war and its horrors; Mendes seems less interested in bigger ideas about the nightmare of battle and its effects on his characters than he is in Hitchcockian audience manipulation.

As summer movies go, Logan Lucky is especially tasty bar food, slung by a master.

Parmet’s strong script and surety behind the camera navigate the audience through this complicated story of religion and sexuality, patriarchy and power, brought to eerily accurate life by the ensemble of excellent actors.

It begins in a lush, green garden, but High Life, the quiet, bracing and ultimately moving first English-language film from acclaimed French director Claire Denis, is the antithesis of a creation story.

This Count Orlock is a gruesome monstrosity, gnawed on and gnarled, as repulsive as movie monsters get. But he is now also that sexual creature, a hypermasculine 1970s porn star, as virile as he is virulent.

The degree of difficulty here is steep, and Davies has not been entirely successful in making Dickinson’s milieu come to full and convincing life.

My Darling Vivian is an unmistakably loving and sensitive portrait, an imperfect but impassioned attempt to makes the case that the easy Johnny Cash narrative is missing an important figure, that the shadow his legend casts left at least one person in the darkness who ought not to be there.

A deeply personal film about the crisis in reproductive rights that manages to be even-handed, insightful and deeply moving.

Lest you think this is all a bit much for one family to endure, Rasoulof’s storytelling acumen is firmly in the realm of propulsive, detail-driven ethical thriller built on its character’s actions, rather than mere punching-bag melodrama. And it goes somewhere, most importantly, with its ideas, leaving you after its final, devastating image with something to think about instead of simply abandoned with your rage or pity.

The film skims over much of MacGowan’s post-Pogues career and doesn’t include any old bandmates talking about him. It’s not the Shane MacGowan chronology; it’s the Shane MacGowan experience. And that’s a tough, heartbreaking and inspiring experience.

Iannucci has fun with the classic serial-turned-novel and throws in a bit of defiant color-blind casting for kicks, but it takes some getting used to a gentler, less biting Iannucci.

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.

Clemency is a film that is just almost great. The level of restraint Chukwu has in her writing and execution, while admirable, is the very thing that prevents it from truly soaring.