If anything, Sing Street is a rollicking pop music extravaganza with so much life and heart enjoying it is a virtual impossibility, the director stealing my heart with such confidently raucous abandon I almost don’t even know where to start.

Phoenix is a revelation, an old-school post-WWII thriller that recalls the glory days of Carol Reed and Fritz Lang yet also gloriously stands on its own as a dynamic, one-of-a-kind sensation. Featuring a performance for the ages by the gifted Nina Hoss, Christian Petzold’s latest is an outright stunner, and as such Criterion’s Blu-ray release should be added to any world cinema connoisseur’s hi-def library as soon as possible.

A Hologram for the King is a quiet film, one that doesn’t shout at the audience, doesn’t jump up and down ecstatically clamoring for love and adoration. Tykwer is confident in his presentation of the source material that he is happy to let the journey of his main character speak movingly for itself, and in the process the veteran director brings forth a motion picture I’m going to happily treasure for a long time to come.

Green Room is writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s explosive, gut-wrenching follow-up to 2014’s masterful Blue Ruin…One part horror, one part thriller, one part brutally bleak black comedy of errors, [this] is like some sort of cinematic Gordian Knot of death and destruction.

I honestly don’t know why The Huntsman: Winter’s War exists. I can’t say I have a clue if audiences are interested in seeing it. What I do know is that, even filled with flaws and missteps aplenty, I got a serious kick out of this sequel, enjoyed it far more than I imagined I was going to…There’s still a bit of magic here, and for that I am understandably delighted.

I have this sneaky feeling I’m going to want to watch Louder Than Bombs again, that one second viewing many of the parts that aren’t sitting particularly well with me right now might become ones I have a whole new appreciation for when the film is given another look. All the same, Trier’s latest amazes far more often than it disappoints, the emotional highs it generates ones that caused the hairs on my arms to stand straight up in awe every time I was lucky enough to experience them.

This is more than a simple impersonation, although it’s obvious Cheadle has done his homework. No, the vaunted character actor digs so much deeper than just being content to become Davis’ modern day mirror image, his constant emotional virtuosity a sensational counterpoint to the nonlinear story beats being presented in their own, eccentrically individualistic fashion.

Not so much a sequel to My Sex Life as it is a look at Paul Dédalus’ life and times from a more evolved perspective, there is a melancholic urgency to this recollective melodrama that is undeniable. My Golden Days isn’t perfect but, much like our memories of our own youth I’m not entirely certain it is meant to be, and as such the film becomes a far more emotionally powerful endeavor because of this.

As a movie, there’s plenty here to respect. As entertainment, however, this is tough one to enjoy, all of which makes Criminal (2016) a vexing spectacle that’s hard to watch all the way through to its end.