Carlos Aguilar

Invoking genre narrative devices, the entrancingly evocative La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) walks between fact and myth to engender a shrewdly frightening piece of political horror.

A towering filmic achievement, “Monos” pulsates like an inescapable vivid trance, cosmic and terrestrial at once, fantastical and violently stark, about victims and victimizers. Like all dualities, those in this excursion are two bends that belong to the same river.

Convincingly creepy while also slightly thought-provoking, it warns about deceiving facades, because what hides underneath masks is possibly much worse.

A master class in endless narrative inventiveness and an ode to the resourceful and collaborative spirit of hands-on filmmaking, One Cut of the Dead amounts to an explosively hilarious rarity.

Solemn in tone and indispensable in significance, the latest from an artist with a track record for surveying marginalized Americans is structured like a collage of incendiary and heart-wrenching moments that toe dip into social justice issues without staying long with any one idea.

Killerman lacks personality both stylistically and in its overall story construction.

What’s never visible, through the monologues and hackneyed one-on-one chats, is a desire to use lighting beyond flat luminosity. Visual delivery matches the insipidness of the material.

The resulting film is tenderly provocative and markedly vital.

In animation, Simó finds the ideal canvas, one that allows him to recount the most gruesome instances of strenuous filmmaking in more palatable form while also ingeniously enlivening the surreal sequences with glorious hand-drawn work.

End of the Century is a sublimely haunting experience that will make you sigh in recognition of the what-ifs in your own life.

A heartrending survivalist saga positioned in the proximity of Debra Granik’s indie darling “Leave No Trace” and Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic novel “The Road.”

The writing by the director and co-scribe Thayná Mantesso is deft and pithy, and there’s a rawness of spirit in both the stellar central performance and the film’s social realist aesthetic.

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

Vertigo-inducing set pieces help shape Korean disaster movie Exit and its distinctive threat into a simplistically digestible and ultimately predictable big-budget outing with a slight edge.

A remarkable truthfulness shepherds Benjamin Gilmour’s tightly written and conscientiously produced drama Jirga as it renders an image of Afghanistan not as a ravaged battleground but as an arrestingly rich land.

Schindel succeeds at creating unnerving ambiguity aided by an ear-piercing score.

Its stylish features overpower its many attempts at philosophical depth.

The cultural subtleties Wang inserts purposefully elevate The Farewell to have not only emotional impact but also revelatory social significance.

One of the most genuinely fear-provoking movies of the year, Luz shines for the calculated sensory stimulation it inflicts and its contained intent, as if it had been built to prove omnipresent evil lies unnoticed. It’ll render you unexpectedly rattled.

Rojo is a sophisticatedly entertaining reminder of our propensity for malevolent apathy.

Meant to feel either lived-in or spontaneously passionate, these poorly written relationships don’t project the effervescence of living in the moment nor the fickleness of what’s to come.

Think of Promare as a vast feast with too many flavorful offerings to taste in one seating, and where all the intricate details of how everything was put where it is are less important than the overall sensory overload you’ll experience.

Measured in its pacing but never stagnant, The Chambermaid quietly fleshes out Eve’s subconscious with actions rather than words.

Lighthearted in tone yet intellectually intriguing, the L.A.-set film ponders valid queries about identity, even if they’re almost entirely sustained by dialogue.

Rifkin’s crafty determination to embellish production value constraints with campy transitions and an eerie use of colored light is commendably spirited. Ultimately, however, its aesthetic ambitions trample the substance that occasionally shines through.

Like a humble gift, In the Aisles makes up for its lack of opulence with quotidian magic.

Displaying writing barely apt for an outdated sitcom, ludicrously trite dialogue, prosaic execution and overacting galore, this pseudo-romantic all-nighter unsuccessfully attempts to wax poetic in regards to second chances, Catholic guilt and personal reinvention.

Even if slightly overwrought, the storyline functions as an amusing dual coming-of-ager.