Chiarella’s film is small in scope but shattering in emotional range, slowly burrowing under your skin. Once it makes its home there, there is no shaking free of its haunting, heartbreaking and surprisingly harmonious vision.

The Ground Beneath My Feet is essential viewing for our anxiety-ridden times.

Between the Temples is not solely about organized and labeled relationships and religion, but the humility behind that faith and the ways in which it is intricately shared, like birds of a feather flocking together.

It handles real-life issues from a place of real compassion and understanding without reducing its characters to mere metaphor.

A carefully staged and meticulously cast presentation disguised as a cinema verité documentary, it’s confounding if you feel compelled to put a label on it but raucously moving if you take it as a day-long adventure with a group of fascinating characters.

Soul is perhaps the most existentially ambitious film ever attempted by Disney and yet it pops with colorful visuals and gentle wisdom while the story clips along despite the dizzying height of the concept. Only in the final stages do the knots of plot complexity get the better of the characters, but audiences will have been well won over by then.

It is not artful. It is urgent and ruthless and horrifying, and it shows the unspeakable.

It’s a film as cuddly as Meimei’s panda form, but it’s also a perceptive examination of how one person’s coming-of-age has a ripple effect on those closest to them.

The director is more interested in quietly telling the story of two specific women, and letting the audience grasp the big picture without much prodding.

What emerges in Fayyad’s gripping underground triage documentary is a compelling picture of compassion, grit, and feminist righteousness in Dr. Amani Ballor

The film is propelled by our curiosity to see what happens more than a deep involvement with the fate of these people. But what really holds your attention is the look on Asger’s face, shot from every conceivable angle.

Full Time . . . depicts the never-ending sprint that is Julie’s life as a struggling single mom, rendering this social-realist drama as a gritty, heart-pounding thriller, with breathless, naturalistic handheld cinematography by Victor Seguin and an adrenaline-pounding electronic score by Irène Drésel.

It is indeed harrowing to watch — to bear witness — and while the film is inevitably heavy with existential dread, Pritz delivers an emotionally engaging story filled with heart, heroes, and a bit of hope to hold onto. There is no more urgent film that demands your attention this year.

The craft is meticulous and the level of detail elaborate, but the story itself is simple as can be.

A gorgeous meditation on girlhood

The movie’s most notable asset is the way it resists sketching any of its main characters with a single, easy-to-grasp definition.

It’s a deliberately paced, ultraviolent, outlandishly stylish delivery system for Nicolas Cage’s wild-eyed acting style, and a thoughtful meditation about why Death Metal totally rules.

20th Century Women mainly overcomes its flaws through the sheer imaginative sensitivity of Mills’s writing.

There are, of course, countless prisms through which to examine the events of 9/11 and their lingering impact, but Come From Away offers one that is stirring and funny, moving but never mawkish. It’s a story that provides hope without turning its eyes from despair.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi is an expert at crafting films that subtly enthrall our minds, and this is just more proof.

Although this is a story about innocence lost, the overwhelming impression left by “The Friend’s House is Here” is one of sweetness and hope.

Hawke is probably too respectful a director and disciple to challenge anything that his subject says, or even query about the vaguest outlines of his personal life.... The title is truth in advertising; “Seymour” really is only an introduction.

One Night in Miami shows King to be a filmmaker who’s clearly interested in balancing a variety of literal and figurative textures.

An aesthetically imaginative and affectingly breathtaking fairytale for our modern world, Belle envelops you first with its clever mechanics and youthful preoccupations. But as the reflective subtext comes to light, it extends an invitation to reconnect with others offline and to beware the comfort of these surrogate identities.

As both writer and director, Jenkins pushes us to rise above judgment by steadfastly refusing to indulge in it herself. Deep empathy suffuses the screen, enveloping every one of the characters.