A lighthearted, music-driven comedy about friendship, self-love and boldly defying expectations, “Dumplin’” is the modern-day small-town Texas answer to the stage musical “Hairspray.” Somehow, however, it was conceived as a book and adapted into a film for purposes of streaming on personal devices despite its clear Broadway desires.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s catapulting from venerated Supreme Court Justice to cultural icon and patron saint of liberalism has unsurprisingly led to the release of two films about her in 2018, the documentary “RBG” and now the feature film “On the Basis of Sex.”

A real-life South Dakota cowboy stars in a film based on his personal story in Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider,” an exquisitely shot portrait that shows just how powerful film can be when it blurs the line between fiction and reality.

Futuristic Dystopias are exciting to imagine, and there’s a certain thrill to seeing filmmakers execute a vision of what could be. Alfonso Cuarón, however, ruins all that fun in “Children of Men.” The world in 2027 is bleak, chaotic and hopeless, and the Mexican-born, London-based director puts us in the thick of the mayhem. Based […]

The Coen Brothers return to the West (following 2010’s “True Grit”) with “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” but what seems like a gleeful and glib anthology inspired by tall tales and dipped in their signature dark wit turns out to be fraught with darkness, unpredictability and arguably nihilism.

Gimmicky concept films such as “Searching” — a mystery that takes place “entirely on a screen” — bravely put themselves out there. They aim to be the first to uncharted cinematic territory while opening themselves up for scrutiny. Aneesh Chaganty’s feature film debut dares to be a pioneer in the category of films that reflect our digitized lives, and while it will take a lot of deserved fire, it does a few things exceptionally well.

“Call Me by Your Name” recounts a magical whirlwind of a summer young romance in the ‘80s, but shares very few qualities of most films that have told a similar story. Luca Guadagnino’s film fits squarely in the definition of arthouse rather than in the mainstream or even “indie” mold of nostalgic romantic comedy.