The Birth of Nation is hitting theatres at just the right moment. While I’m not entirely certain the lessons of Turner’s rebellion are ones that should be applied now, it’s just as clear they should still be looked at and analyzed. Whether Parker, considering his own complicatedly sordid history, was the one to bring the story to the screen is an entirely different question, one that I don’t think any of us will feel comfortable answering for quite some time to come.

Moorhouse’s willingness to push the envelope and dive into the darkest aspects of the tale with such macabre relish allows the emotions swirling within this maelstrom to resonate all the deeper, The Dressmaker an haute couture Aussie barnburner that’s dressed to the dark comedy nines.

But it’s all for naught, and even with the unhinged lunacy of the climax proving to be a cringe-worthy force of unintentional, and uncomfortable, hysterics, The Girl on the Train is so leadenly paced and so blandly shot even its great moments sink underneath the surface like a lead balloon.

Beautifully animated in its own, eye-popping, stylistically colorful way, Long Way North is like some blissful combination of early Studio Ghibli crossed with the writings of Jack London. It is a timeless tale, one universal in scope and in resonance, building to a heartfelt conclusion that had me wiping away tears while at the same longing to rise to my feet in lively ovation.

What can sometimes feel like nothing more than a supercilious descent into poverty in all actuality ends up being anything but, Arnold’s sights set a heck of a lot higher and as such American Honey ends up being all the more essential because of this.

A thrilling recreation of an event that’s still fresh in the public mind, Deepwater Horizon is superbly staged action-drama that uses the tragedy of that 2010 April tragedy as a springboard to tell a story about the triumph of the human spirit and selfless courage under the most unimaginable of circumstances.

Masterminds is messy and unfocused, its satire never as pointed or as effective as it should be, while its more absurdist comedic beats are portrayed with such tongue-in-cheek certainty the laughs they generate aren’t exactly massive. But with a cast this strong there’s still plenty about this effort to applaud, and admittedly I spent much of the film’s 90 or so minutes grinning ear-to-ear, the crazed ridiculousness of it all winning me over more often than not.

I’m not sure how Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will be received by the masses, but for my part, even with a handful of strong reservations, Burton’s interpretation of Riggs’ source material kept me suitably intrigued for just about all of its rather enthralling two hours of narrative eccentricity.

Expertly chronicled in 2012 by writer Tim Crothers in an ESPN Magazine article, the true story at the heart of Disney’s Queen of Katwe is an instantly powerful one. Phiona’s story grabs the viewer by the throat, our collective desire as an audience to see this child succeed palpable on an unimaginable scale.