Ann Hornaday

Accompanied, appropriately enough, by Bach piano pieces, The Children Act is an unmitigated pleasure to watch and listen to, primarily as a showcase for Thompson’s incomparable gifts as an actress.

An absorbing, illuminating film.

A film that feels like something conjured out of memory and magic, a poetic, often ecstatic re-creation of childhood that captures its ungovernable pleasures as vividly as its most threatening terrors.

A handsome production that delicately skewers literary-world pretensions and Great Man mythmaking. But primarily, The Wife offers viewers a chance to observe one of the finest — and most criminally underpraised — actresses of her generation working at the very top of her shrewd, subtle, superbly self-controlled game.

The result is a movie that feels both hard-edged and dreamy; punk-rock and lyrical; wised-up and unbearably tender.

If Bowers’s present-day life has slowed down considerably, his memories haven’t, and the subject of Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood exerts his luridly voyeuristic pull, as he shares name after name of his most shocking exploits.

Like the finest forebears of the rom-com genre — including its urtext, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” — Crazy Rich Asians indulges in the escapist pleasures of aspirational wealth, obscene consumerism and invidious judge-iness.

Accompanied by an expressively lush jazz-blues score by Lee’s regular composer Terence Blanchard, BlacKkKlansman announces from the jump that viewers are in for a lush, sensory treat as Lee plays with the film vernacular he’s manipulated so adroitly and expressively for three decades.

One of the great gifts of Far From the Tree is simple visibility, whereby viewers are given the opportunity to watch people live their lives, share their wisdom and flourish within the loving care of their family and friends.

In Puzzle, Macdonald has finally found a movie that she doesn’t need to steal, because it belongs to her completely.

Even its most irritating parts don’t fatally damage a whole that works amazingly well, despite its own excesses.

Thanks to Burnham’s exuberant, alert writing and Fisher’s masterful command of vulnerability, anxiety, resilience and steadfast self-belief, Kayla emerges as an icon of her own — just by being herself.

The best films teach you how to watch them within the first few minutes. Blindspotting is no exception. The film gets off to an exhilarating start, with split-screen images of Oakland, Calif., unspooling to the tune of a soaring aria.

Uplift winds up getting the better of “Don’t Worry,” in which Phoenix delivers an impressively committed performance that nonetheless can’t overcome the movie’s worship of Callahan’s most immature, solipsistic and self-dramatizing foibles. A movie that’s supposed to inspire winds up being irritating instead.

This crafty sociological thriller, set amid the pristine townhouses and lawns of a quiet Reykjavik suburb, builds slowly but surely into a film that feels utterly of a piece with a much wider world.

The director tries to infuse Shock and Awe with the taut procedural drama of “All the President’s Men,” “Spotlight” or “The Post.” But he winds up demonstrating just how difficult it is to make shoe-leather journalism entertaining, much less artful.

This is a movie of myriad worthy, even urgently necessary, ideas; when it reaches its climax, it goes completely haywire in a preposterous, increasingly scattershot sci-fi pastiche.

Although Whitney follows a familiar structure, Macdonald infuses it with artful editorial choices, marking the chapters of Houston’s life with brief but vivid montages of the times in which she lived.

In Damsel, sibling filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner have created the perfect western for the #MeToo era, delightfully twisting and torquing the traditional woman-in-jeopardy narrative to create a clever, comical and uncannily relevant allegory.

As “Guardians” and, later, “Deadpool” doubled down on the snark, “Ant-Man” kept things light, its playfulness made all the more endearing by the boyish, twinkle-eyed persona of its star, Paul Rudd.

The mopey, midwinter atmosphere of Nancy becomes increasingly and oppressively bleak, leavened only by Smith-Cameron’s spot-on portrayal of her character’s trembling, painfully fragile optimism.

This handsomely staged production plays like a soothingly thoughtful balm.

The best way to appreciate this fitfully funny collection of japes and jests is to treat it like any teenage boy in your midst: Focus on the positives and know that even its worst is only a phase.

Benefits from a sensitive, even-tempered tone, as well as terrific supporting performances from Spencer, Ann Dowd (as Alex’s status-obsessed mom) and a scene-stealing Amy Landecker, who plays an ambivalent therapy client of Greg’s.

Creepy, creepy, creepy. Writer-director Ari Aster makes an impressively unnerving debut with Hereditary, a meticulously crafted horror thriller.

Neville has created a film that operates both as a dewy-eyed nostalgia trip and stirring appeal for civility.

Filmworker is a tribute to the unsung artisans, assistants, best boys and girl Fridays whose indelible contributions make movies not just possible, but magical.

At its best, The Gospel According to Andre gives viewers the rare chance to get to know someone who, until now, has mostly been known as that impeccably turned-out gentleman who seems to know everybody at the annual Costume Institute gala.