There’s no other way to say it than to say it: Roma is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and one of the most moving. If Norma Desmond had been able to see it she wouldn’t have worried about the pictures getting small.

Green Book warms the heart, then numbs the mind. It’s a broad-brush lesson in racism, a sermon on the power of empathy, a user’s guide to tolerance packaged as a mismatched-buddies comedy.

This clearly qualifies as a heist film, and a hugely entertaining one, notwithstanding a few plot perforations and a running time of two hours plus that might have been trimmed a bit.

The production’s shrill insistence on scandal-mongering as the poison of our political process is trivializing, too. Given the profound currents and countercurrents that have transformed — and menaced — the news media in the last few years, this story plays like quaintly ancient history.

The stars were misaligned from the start for this frantic, turgid thriller. That’s no knock on Ms. Foy, who might have surprised us if she’d had a different director working from a different script under a different set of studio imperatives that didn’t involve extracting blood from a very cold stone.

The whole film feels magical in the way it gets at intangible, invisible, ineffable things without naming them, and tells a gripping story of obsession at a poet’s pace, without need of conventional explanations.

The most compelling reason to see A Private War is Rosamund Pike’s stunning performance as Marie Colvin, the American war correspondent who died in a bombardment while covering the Syrian government’s 2012 siege of Homs.

The film is all the more powerful for its grounding in fact. How powerful? Sufficiently, during most of its length, and extremely during several eruptions of searing drama.

The good news is twofold. Ms. Foy, an accomplished performer, is appealing throughout. And Keira Knightley, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, gives the film several desperately needed jolts of edgy energy.

The whole thing devolves into such highfalutin silliness that it’s impossible to care what happens to whom. In Mr. Guadagnino’s previous film, “Call Me By Your Name,” the tone was romantic, and sustained to the very end. In Suspiria, style stomps fun into submission.

Border may not be everyone’s idea of a fun night out, but it takes you to places you won’t forget, and that’s nothing to sniff at.

In the realm of documentary films, as in the news media, polemicists are ascendant, but Frederick Wiseman isn’t one of them. For the past half-century, since his first film, “Titicut Follies,” he’s been an observationist. Not an observer, which carries a passive connotation, but a filmmaker who’s made a distinguished career of observing in a particular way — closely, calmly, shrewdly and systematically, with an eye to the institutions and social structures that shape and reveal people’s lives.

It’s full of music that makes the case for its subject’s pre-eminence—he played with the intensity of a highest-category hurricane—and has an interesting slant on the issue of cultural appropriation; Butterfield was white, and the blues he played were, and remain, indelibly black.

The film is not only not unpleasant but a genuine, authentic and honest-to-goodness pleasure.

An affecting coming-of-age drama based on a superb book and directed by an exceptional actor in his directorial debut.

This fine debut feature by Elizabeth Chomko dramatizes well-worn themes — degenerative illness, family dysfunction, anguishing choices to be made in the face of implacable decline. Yet the cast is exceptional, the performances are extraordinary, the writing and direction are heartfelt, and the film is, consequently, stirring, frequently funny and consistently affecting.

The root problem is repetitiveness, the seemingly endless cycle of progress and relapse that causes heartbreak in real life and induces déjà vu in audiences — even dejà déjà vu, since there’s repetition within the already familiar pattern. The mosaic structure is simply, though not successfully, an attempt to hold our attention.

However inward the hero may be, the movie around him is thrillingly outward, not to mention poundingly onward and relentlessly upward.

What Sadie brings most importantly to Private Life is the lovely, sometimes loopy and always infectious joy she takes in living. She’s a bright, welcome presence in a film that can be startlingly dark, even polemic, and she represents another side of Ms. Jenkins, whose previous films, “Slums of Beverly Hills” and “The Savages,” were overflowing with life.

The simplest thing to say about A Star Is Born is that it’s all right. Not all right as in OK with a shrug, but thrillingly, almost miraculously right in all respects.

Free Solo would be an exceptional piece of filmmaking if it confined itself to the physical poetry of Mr. Honnold’s achievements. But it gets at his inner life too, and goes a long way toward answering the unspoken question of what makes — or allows — him to do what he does.

In a word, The Old Man & the Gun is enjoyable; that’s all it means to be and that’s what it is.

It’s hard to overstate the pleasures of this film or, more precisely, this encounter with its subject.

A two-hour documentary that feels like three, it certainly has a worthy subject, and a charismatic one; it commits a trove of valuable cultural lore to posterity. But it also commits a sin in never finding its rhythm, or a through-line on which to hang one of the great stories of American popular music.

Colette is not really a coming-of-age story, except as regards France itself. It’s a liberation story, one witty enough to be worthy of its subject.

Almost the entire movie is lifted from other sources, and then edited in a way that makes his enemies (do they know they’re his enemies?) look as foolish as possible. The punditry is trite. The snark is boring.

Museo is in part a caper film, a heist film, and while it leans on such classics as “Topkapi” and “Rififi” the robbery has its own signature and is done in a visual style that’s hypnotic.

The most serious flaw, and one that will irk a lot of Bel Canto enthusiasts, is the too-obvious lip-syncing of Ms. Moore to Ms. Fleming’s glorious singing. They simply don’t match up, and the music takes place at points in the film when viewers really don’t want to be thrown off. But thrown off they will be.

That the circuitous international influence of the western should manifest itself in South Africa is no surprise. Neither is the fact that someone as charismatic as Mr. Dabula should be the star of such a story, which is ripe with indignation, injustice, righteous violence and, ultimately, a shootout of cosmic resonance.

Making his film debut, Richie Merritt plays Rick as a sullen, evidently stupid and certainly uncharismatic schemer in possession of a modicum of animal cunning and perhaps a hint of personal insight. But there’s no life in his eyes. And little life in his acting. Which is too bad for Matthew McConaughey, who gives yet another terrific performance.

It should be said right off that this provocative off-black comedy, starring the Gen-Xer’s dream cast of Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, is not for everyone. And the people it is for will have to be in the mood.

A serviceable thriller, kind of an “Argo” in Argentina, replete with ornate preparations, plans gone awry and narrow escapes.

The unlikely, bittersweet, bristling comedy Support the Girls is easily one of the best films of the year, and the most sympathetic to women, despite having been made by a man. How can this be? Luckily, Andrew Bujalski’s remarkable movie — with its killer performance by Regina Hall — is not just about women. It’s about men being idiots. And no one is arguing ownership of that narrative.

Ms. Clarkson is always fascinating; only on second viewing did I notice how much Ms. Mortimer was doing while Mr. Nighy was stealing a scene. In the end, though, it’s his movie. And likely wasn’t supposed to be.

Mr. Malek gives an eccentric performance, but he won’t make anyone forget Dustin Hoffman, whose original Dega was an endearing coward, a fatalist and a masterpiece.

It has its moments, several of which are provided by Ms. Rudolph, putting a spin on the girl-friday role. She has one scene of utter hilarity that shouldn’t be spoiled, and can’t be printed anyway, but may lead to “pilafing” becoming the word of the year on Urban Dictionary.

Every once in a while a movie grabs you, unsuspecting, and hustles its way into your heart. Jeremiah Zagar’s We the Animals does that. This exquisite debut feature, based on a poetic debut novel by Justin Torres, is a tumbling evocation of a volatile family, narrated by one of three young brothers living in upstate New York with their Puerto Rican father and white mother.

Bright, buoyant and hilarious, though far from flawless, this romantic comedy, directed by Jon M. Chu and based on the popular novel by Kevin Kwan, is also a cultural milestone.

Ms. Howard is nothing less than mesmerizing. She seems to be giving a master class in unswerving focus and absolute simplicity. It’s a superb piece of acting about acting, and a harbinger of great things to come in this young actor’s future.

This freewheeling account of an African-American cop who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1970s is problematic as narrative drama, but stunning as provocation.

Luckily, there are jokes, like little lifeboats, floating all around, rescuing “Like Father” from anything resembling gravity.

It’s the work of a contemporary master who arrives at the philosophical by way of the playful, ironic and lyrical.

The star of Susanna Nicchiarelli’s freely fictionalized biopic, Trine Dyrholm, finds fierce beauty in the woman Nico has become. I’ve never seen a performance quite like it — unsparingly harsh, but also graceful, droll and tender, a portrait of soul-weariness laced with a yearning for salvation.

Mr. Tyrnauer is a serious filmmaker — his “Valentino: The Last Emperor” was a first-rate documentary portrait of the legendary fashion designer Valentino Garavani. His new doc, which was based on Mr. Bowers’s memoir, “Full Service,” combines tell-all appeal with a seriously significant story of prejudice and hypocrisy on a literally mythic scale.

This episode is something special, because the dance is so smashingly gorgeous.

Puzzle is less puzzling than exasperating. What’s good is exceptional — a meeting of minds, and then more, between two jigsaw-puzzle prodigies — while the rest is perfunctory or lifeless.

This new film, though, is mainly appalling, and not instructively so. It’s all over the place, to the point of inducing numbness or suffocation. In the end it comes out in favor of love, which is good, but getting there may leave you glassy-eyed, unless you’re deeply into bling porn.

Among the books that McCall carries with him is a volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”; we see the cover in pointed close-ups. That can serve as one of the hero’s life lessons. Take a pass on the movie and you avoid losing two hours.

The glee is industrial-strength, and the ABBA-fueled production numbers are so far over the top that the film is at once topless and chaste. Yet there’s a wellspring of genuine feeling in this time-hopping sequel, framed as an origin story.

Skyscraper is a tribute to duct tape, and to Dwayne Johnson’s enduring appeal. The movie is great, outlandish fun because the star makes it so; he’s a soft soul in an action-hard body.

Poignantly funny, wrenchingly wise and meltingly beautiful, Eighth Grade is a not-so-small miracle of independent filmmaking.

Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney is a documentary chronicle of Whitney Houston’s life; it’s tough-minded, unsparing and far superior to the biopic and the nonfiction film that preceded it.

The best thing, though, is the movie’s modest scale. It’s a good-natured epic, dedicated to the nontech principle of dispensing plain old pleasure.

Don’t write it off. You know about good things and small packages; this is a dark and startling thing in a brightly wrapped package, and the brightness is all the more misleading because the action takes place during Iceland’s radiant summer.

This documentary feature is fascinating and infuriating in unequal parts, the latter far outweighing the former, since Mr. Jarecki’s instrument is a shoehorn.

The first few minutes of Leave No Trace are as entrapping as the spider webs the camera notices in passing. They catch you up in a suspenseful wilderness tale that opens out to an urgent drama of conflict, beauty and growth.

Three Identical Strangers is clear about the awful fate that befell its innocent subjects. They grew up as lab rats and didn’t know it.

After a quarter-century the franchise may be terminally long in the teeth; much of this fifth iteration is absurd, both intentionally and un. Yet it’s also funny, intriguingly dark and visually sumptuous.

Tag ends up being good fun, with an unexpectedly sweet spirit that stays with you. It’s really about the persistence of friendship, a vision of adult life as the playground we would love it to be.

Plenty good enough as exuberant entertainment with elegant graphics, plus a showcase for female superempowerment.

A meta-mystery lurks here — how it is that this horror flick can be so shocking and dismaying, so genuinely upsetting in spasms and spurts, yet at the same time so madly entertaining.

This beautiful film celebrates a deeply good man with a great gift for repairing.

The robbery isn’t sophisticated enough on its own to hold one’s interest.

You can consume only so much gooey romanticism before someone gets seasick, and it’s precisely the soggy love story at the center of Adrift — a survival-at-sea adventure directed by the estimable Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur — that prevents this storm-tossed vehicle from achieving maximum upthrust.

A daring little drama with a heavyweight cast, a gracefully delivered message and a hellish problem — specifically, other people.

Ms. Simón, who has used both of her young performers to powerful effect, also wants us to know how resilient children can be. Some creatures are able to grow new limbs. Frida, given more than half a chance after demanding it, achieves something no less remarkable. She grows new joy and hope.

An impressive and self-impressed documentary by Jennifer Peedom, has some of the best speck shots you could imagine—not spec as in speculation, though the film offers plenty of that on the subject of why human beings choose to climb tall peaks, but speck as in the size of a human seen against a stupendous alpine landscape.

The neutral news about “Solo” is exactly that, its dramatic neutrality. Time ticks by at a drifty pace while lots of action of no great consequence grinds on.

It’s overstuffed, and essentially empty.

A chance to see four terrific actresses — let’s not use the gender-neutral term in this context — having varying degrees of fun with matters of sisterhood, sex and hope in a movie that touches on mortality and holds out the prospect of later-life joy.

Grapples with eternal questions of faith, to be sure, but confronts just as powerfully, if not more so, the urgent matter of how to live a good, useful life in the turbulent here and the terrifying now. First Reformed has its steeple in the clouds and its foundation on solid ground.

The Guardians, though, is special in a new way. Imagine devoting several years, as Mr. Beauvois did, to making a reflective, bucolic feature that is organized around the themes of community and evolving culture. It’s all too subtle for words, but perfect for moving pictures.

This film, a formidably accomplished debut feature by Michael Pearce, takes us down familiar paths into a darkness all its own.

What makes the film valuable is its focus on Justice Ginsburg as a champion of women’s rights.

Tully turns out to be a twofer. There’s the movie you see, which is whipsmart, intimate, affecting and fearlessly funny about the mixed blessings of motherhood. And there’s the movie you replay in your mind to sort out its several mysteries. That one is richer, deeper and strangely beautiful.

The first thing to be said of Lucrecia Martel’s Spanish-language film is that it stands as a startling original. Though the story is elusive, the images speak for themselves, and they are stunning. (The cinematographer was Rui Poças ; what does he know about light and color that others don’t?)

The movie is maddening too, just as it intends to be, but you do watch, and care, and learn. What seems at first to be a gallery of narcissistic rogues turns into something else, a study in equal-opportunity romantic folly.

As for everything that happens this time around, it’s a function — or malfunction — of the sequel’s two-part structure. The problem is penultimateness, too much setup and too little payoff. The solution comes, presumably, around the same time next year.

The result is an entertainment of surprising liveliness. It’s also mindbait for Godard fans in which admiration for what the venerable filmmaker has achieved--he’s still turning out films at 87--is mixed with faintly elegiac regret for the stern, remote figure he’s become.

The writers haven’t given her the nuance needed to differentiate confident from crazy, and the directors, who are two and the same, haven’t given the production as a whole consistent verve; the pace drags when it isn’t frenetic.

This poetic, laconic and ineffably beautiful drama has an unerring feel for its subject, a young cowboy struggling against his implacable fate in the American West. That’s notable in itself, and all the more so since the film was written and directed by Chloé Zhao, a Chinese woman born in Beijing.

Mr. Haigh’s previous feature was “45 Years,” a drama of marital distress, starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, in which the strongest feelings went unspoken. The words in his new film are pungent in themselves, but they’re given greater power by Mr. Plummer’s remarkable performance.

Many of the characters are cut from recycled cardboard, while Kennedy himself, played by Jason Clarke, remains a cipher. (Mary Jo is played by Kate Mara.) The movie makes a point of not judging him, but that only highlights the impossibility, after all these years, of penetrating the mystery of his behavior.

It may not make the masterpiece cut, but this taut horror thriller is enormously entertaining, because it’s organized around a terrific idea — the necessity of absolute silence.

Still, the family dynamics work out beautifully, and Jean’s return also leads to a deeply affecting revelation of his father’s feelings for him. As far as winemaking is concerned, Back to Burgundy is rich in vistas of the fabled côtes; stuffed with oenophile info (who knew how directly de-stemming affects a wine’s structure?) and studded with casual tastings of wines that most of us can only dream of. A 1990 Pommard? A 1995 Meursault Perrières?

It misses the point to ask, as some have recently, whether he’s still able to have fun at the age and status he has attained. Sure he is. He must have had great fun making this immense Tinker Toy of a movie, but there’s a fundamental mismatch between artist and material.

Meant to evoke such distinctive examples of the genre as “Shock Corridor,” “The Snake Pit” and, on a much grander scale, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” And it’s also safe to say that whether or not you enjoy Unsane — I didn’t, for the most part — there’s a terrific scene in a padded cell.

This one follows its own goofy rules, fills the screen with astonishing images, tells a touching tale of outcast dogs and a faithful boy, and does so with ultralively deadpan wit. My only regret after seeing it at a screening was that I couldn’t stay and see it again.

This modest drama invokes the power of incipience — fear of what will happen next — and amplifies it with lean writing in the service of flawless acting. Antiwar films don’t have to be great to be worthy; this one is very, very good.

The most touching scene is the most conventional, an intimate moment between Simon and his mother, Emily (Jennifer Garner). Will she or won’t she accept him as the person he is? Love, Simon is many things, but not Greek tragedy.

Ms. Vikander has leapt into the void of a franchise reboot, based on a video-game reboot, that generates no joy, makes negligible sense, and seals its own tomb with a climax of perfect absurdity.

Armando Iannucci’s absurdist comedy reveals this in an extremely loose manner of speaking, with malice aforethought, straight-faced glee and formidable sharpshooting that occasionally misfires. It isn’t history but free-range fiction, a venomous farce containing nuggets of fact, and if its subjects bear any resemblance to present-day dictators and authoritarian mugs or thugs around the world, then the movie has hit its archetypal target.

If there’s a secret to a successful screen adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, it’s still secret. Disney’s version of the Madeleine L’Engle young-adult novel is a magical mystery tour minus the magic and mystery, and a great disappointment, since there were so many reasons to root for the film’s success.

The film suffers, terminally, from joyless direction by Francis Lawrence — no relation — and a monotonous script by Justin Haythe.

That's a pretty good notion, though nothing comes of it because the first-time filmmaker, David Freyne, has so many undigested ideas on his plate-guilt, innocence, bigotry, forgiveness, atonement and, if you please, a replaying of IRA strife.

The result is daringly original and frequently beautiful, a shimmering treat from a singular intelligence.

Austere and magnificent film.

The movie has a beating heart, and a big one; it’s not just sincere, but that rarest of birds in the jungle of mainstream entertainment, a heartfelt epic.