It’s an elusive film, in its plotting and allusions, but is still potent and immediate, as resonant as any of our own late-night quests toward the far reaches of our self-conception.

Armageddon Time is a damning moral drama that is in thoughtful dialogue with complex matters of race and class.

Uncut Gems is a movie that lives in the gut, where shit makes a name for itself, where anxiety, folly, and instinct are borne out without morality or restriction.

At its best, the film is indeed piercingly clever, proud of its peculiarity to a degree just shy of smugness. Though, the 140-minute film does begin to wear out its welcome in the last third, when the jokes have mostly all been made before and the only fresh additions are cumbersome matters of plot.

In The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the West isn’t a source of nostalgic pride or a place we ought to willingly, lovingly reinhabit, like some auteurist-friendly Westworld. Rather, it’s where our great American myths go to die. Buster Scruggs isn’t an act of mourning; it’s laying all that to rest.

The thrill arises from the way Seimetz constructs and juggles everything, the balance between what she provides (feelings, memories, sensations) and denies (hard answers, explicit philosophy).

Amazing Grace is a rare object: something truly mythical, something we’d only ever told stories about, that having finally arrived somehow lives up to its name. That’s saying something. The film is just as exhausting and beautiful as the recording sessions it documents, just as overflowing with those inexplicable qualities—that unquantified ability to reach directly into the soul that only the greatest art approaches.

It handles a tricky topic with so much persuasively unadorned compassion that it has the genuine potential to change hearts and minds about one of the country’s most contentious battles.

Mangrove is not a lecture, or a polemic. There’s a gracefulness to McQueen’s technique that gives the film a poetic lilt; even when the worst things are happening, or the biggest speeches are being made in court, McQueen manages to avoid the starchy stuff of so many political and legal dramas.

Mank taps into a vein of feeling that reaches farther than mere family tribute. The film also serves as a political cri de coeur, one that inspires as much as it dismays. In making a film that’s sort of about the making of another film, Fincher has many metatextual layers to work with, which he does with trademark precision and unexpected gentility.

In Sciamma’s gifted hands, the film escapes cliché and becomes something glorious—a study of forbidden love that grandly highlights how much has been lost under the crush of hetero patriarchy.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On both gets on little ones’ level and lifts them up to give them a better view out the window, presenting a world of thought and feeling to go along with the giggles and “aw”s of the film’s endearing landscape. Maybe quirky earnestness is back—so long as it’s done with as much care and insight as this rather marvelous curio.

When it hits its highest, most resonant notes, Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born—starring the director alongside pop icon Lady Gaga—achieves a triumphant, romantic ache that is often just what we want to experience at the movies.

The Father is an act of understanding, radical in its toughness and its generous artistry.

It manages to be about a great many things—but above all, it’s a movie about two men, two bodies, and the masculine, economic codes of the West. Which, in retrospect, feel so much more moveable and introspective than our usual depictions of the period allow.

Thomas Kail’s direction finally has a chance to be seen as an extraordinary enhancement and exposition of Miranda’s book. The movie shows off not just Hamilton’s primary performers but its spirited ensemble, who, through Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography, shape-shift into the American public, a hurricane, and a pistol bullet.

All Light, Everywhere is a tremendous work that anyone merely curious about the various relationships the government has to both private industry and an enormous public ought to see.

There’s a host of great performances too, from Evans’s sad and weary nonagenarianism to Johansson’s watery mettle to Brolin’s lumbering and alluring villainy.

Aaron Paul scintillates, once more, as his Breaking Bad character.

While the show is exquisite, Renaissance isn’t afraid to show us something less than perfection.

It’s not a subtle movie, but it’s an uncommonly affecting one—a film that, like Pixar’s best, manages to be whimsical and bone-deep, all at once.

Mills makes this genre feel new and insightful, as if he’s one of only a few filmmakers who has tackled the complex dynamic between adult and child.

The Favourite is a pleasure to watch. It’s weird without being alienating, dirty without being cheap. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a better acting trio this fall. What fun The Favourite is, while still striking a few resonantly melancholy chords here and there.

[A] quiet and lovely film.

Granik works simply, but she doesn’t forego artistry. She’s made a film of grace and power, a story of people lost and found in America that often shows us at our noble and humble best. How rare and refreshing that is these days.

Queer is meant to be prickly, withholding, enigmatic. To want anything more from it might simply be repeating Lee’s mistake, grasping for something that could never be ours.

The wonderful thing about Skate Kitchen is how inviting it is, welcoming you into its community and showing you around with cheery spunk. Skate Kitchen is a warm movie.

Mann’s film is all the more pleasurable for its thoughtfulness and restraint.