In a movie that is stately on the surface and stormy underneath, Jolie’s drawn, almost architectural features and air of enforced restraint is ideal for Larraín’s vision of Callas. She’s a glorious, luminous wreck, looking for peace but drawn inexorably to a world of grand artifice.

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.

Inu-Oh may get messy with its plotting, but that never dulls its impact. It’s a siren scream of a musical: angry and beautiful, rapturously animated and highly infectious.

All the performances are terrific and lend the film a vérité so keen it may leave you as uncomfortable as the titular outcast.

It’s all too rare that audiences are treated to a big-screen examination of a woman’s inner turmoil, let alone a woman in the grandmotherly phase of her life; this one pops with both acrid wit and meaningful drama.

Decker is a superbly imaginative director, which leaves one wishing her creative powers had pushed the film even further away from the constraints of reality. But that’s a downside that comes with working from material written by another artist.

The acting is universally excellent, particularly Fey, who’s shrewdly fulfilling our expectations while playing off them.

Undine allows for the magical while keeping its eyes firmly on the painfully real, making a valiant, full-hearted attempt to break the bonds of history.

My Name Is Pauli Murray more than rests its case on Murray’s brilliance and important contributions.

The act of recreating the voice of others, albeit illegally, ultimately empowered Israel to write the well-received memoir on which this film was based. And the act of playing Lee Israel will, with any luck, empower more filmmakers to think of Melissa McCarthy as an actress whose gifts range beyond broad comedy.

Mississippi Grind winds up being that rare beast: the buddy comedy where you’re not tired of the buddies well before the credits roll.

Fancifully heartfelt, Ride Your Wave doesn’t constitute his top effort, but it’s inviting enough to persuade audiences unfamiliar with him to dip their feet and then fully dive into the profundity of his imagination, where wonder awaits.

I do heartily recommend you see Materialists, and that you see it for what it is, not what it kinda looks like from the outside, as pitched to you by the very sort of romance-commodification salespersons that Celine Song’s movie criticizes.

Enemies of the State is a chilling watch, both for what it contemplates and for the internal path that each viewer will take while experiencing it. That some will come away from the film unwilling to accept its conclusions merely proves the film’s point.

Leon’s New York has plenty of uncertainty, but it hums with possibility, especially the notion that if you miss one connection, another one’s right around the corner. In that respect, Tramps is beautifully breathless.

As with many of the other recent documentaries about abuse, it hits hard, making it difficult to watch without being both heartbroken and enraged by a system that, in the words of one gymnast, “would sacrifice our young to win.”

The many lessons that Wolfwalkers has to share, whether they’re about the relationships between children and parents or between people and nature, are ones you can never be too old to learn.

Paul Schrader has always been a faith-based filmmaker in the truest and most challenging sense, and First Reformed is the sort of stimulating work that a writer-director of a certain age can deliver when he returns to his creative sweet spot; rejoice, Schrader fans, rejoice.

It’s got great heroes, a memorable villain, and more whimsy than is probably recommended by medical science. Which is to say, just the right amount of whimsy.

Appraising her country’s various ills with a healthy dose of Gallic gallows humor, the filmmaker has delivered a kind of screwball comedy full of physical gags, rat-a-tat dialogue and intricate choreography that veers towards a weightier third act while offering plenty of belly laughs along the way.

It’s immediate and specific and painful and impressive.

A deft combination of excitement and thoughtfulness, an excellent and unexpected film.

It’s the little, almost imperceptible twists to the story that make Blockers a worthy entry into the teen sex comedy canon, most notably that girls and women are funny and can play more than the killjoy or the babe.

It’s an acerbic, tough look back, which makes it a rarity in a genre that often (and sometimes effectively) dons rose-colored glasses.

Both actors are riveting in this sad duet, and Lafosse isn’t much interested in giving them a facile reconciliation. Everything is hard in The Restless, a potent drama that never quite succumbs to dread but always keeps it close at hand.

Monstrous offers a strong premise and some fresh twists, particularly in a genre where gimmicky filmmaking has prevailed.

Moonage Daydream is a bracing, gloriously messy (or, more likely, gloriously messy seeming) celebration and immersion in all things Bowie.

The footage, as personal as it is horrific, is often hard to watch.