Ella Taylor

This "moving, sympathetic but ultimately frustrating tribute" to Marianne Ihlen inadvertently reveals the male gaze's narrow focus by defining this complicated woman as Cohen's passive muse.

Rose-Lynn (Jessie Buckley) is a scrappy Glaswegian single mom, fresh out of prison, who chases Nashville dreams in this beguiling, emotionally resonant film.

A young man attempts to reclaim a grand home in San Francisco's gentrified Fillmore district in this "wistful fairy tale built from real-life materials."

The writer/director of 2013's crowd-pleasing romance The Lunchbox returns with another heartwarming tale of unlikely love among the crowded streets of Mumbai.

This trifle — about a bunch of plucky seniors (led by Diane Keaton) who form a cheerleading squad — is a "fitful good time," despite infantilizing both its characters and its audience.

Writer-director Olivier Assayas' latest film, set in Paris' literary world, is a "mostly delightful, occasionally exhaustingly word-drunk comedy of manners larded with giddy farce."

Two sisters (Lily James, Tessa Thompson) struggle to navigate the opioid crisis in their small town. Nia DaCosta's first film is a "quietly feminist thriller" that's "modest but intensely empathetic."

This charming musical fable about a teenage girl (Elle Fanning) who competes on a UK singing competition doesn't cover much new ground, but Fanning's terrific.

The debut feature of documentary filmmaker Kent Jones paints a loving but clear-eyed portrait of an older woman (Mary Kay Place) enabling her grown, addict son (Jake Lacy).

A beautiful, headstrong young woman (Juli Jakab) interrogates her past even as Budapest prepares to crumble; director Laszlo Nemes depicts "the soil in which fascism takes root" with cool dispassion.

Two cousins (Jessie Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård) hatch a scheme to speed financial trading with a new fiber-optic cable in this " likably cheeky but rambling and overstuffed" comedy.

Director Karyn Kusama has a history of films where women fight back. But Destroyer, despite its transformation of Nicole Kidman, fails to develop a compelling story to support that transformation.

An aging Bard of Avon (Kenneth Branagh) returns to his hometown to reconnect to the family he barely knows in this touching film about the disconnect between life and art.

Director Josie Rourke's epic, fiercely feminist period piece "does make a powerfully moving case for an uneasy dance between two powerful women hamstrung by male politics."

In this haunting, lyrical Italian film, the true story of a horrific mob-related kidnapping is couched within "a love story [that unfolds] in a fairy tale more Grimm than Disney."

Writer/director Steve McLean's "lovely piece of whimsy" about a gay sex worker in 1970s London examines "the mixed blessings of sex, art, beauty and authenticity."

Actor Joel Edgerton adapts for the screen a 2016 memoir about a teenager undergoing "gay conversion therapy;" he also directs and stars in this "intelligent message movie."

In her debut feature, writer/director Elizabeth Chomko brings fresh insight — and a stellar cast — to the "dysfunctional family" subgenre; the result is "funny and sad, but never mawkish."

Mary Elizabeth Winstead's bracingly mercurial performance drives this film about a New York stand-up who moves to Los Angeles for her career — and to sort out her private life.

Emma Thompson stars as a British High Court judge who becomes embroiled in the life of a teenager brought before her, for reasons about which "it's hard to tell and harder to care."