A teenage boy must deal with his mother's complicated response after his father temporarily abandons them to take a menial and dangerous job. "This is an accomplished, moving piece of filmmaking, one that cares about its characters and trusts its performers. It comes from a relatively old school of dramatic storytelling but connects emotionally because of Paul Dano’s tender, confident work and what he’s able to draw from two of the best performers of their generation." -Brian Tallerico 'rogerebert.com'

Celeste is a 13-year-old music prodigy who survives a horrific school shooting in Staten Island, N.Y., in 1999. Her talent shines through during the memorial service when she sings a song that touches the hearts of the mourners. Guided by her sister and a talent manager, the young phenom transforms into a rising pop star with a promising future. Eighteen years later, Celeste now finds herself on the comeback trail when a scandal, personal struggles and the pitfalls of fame threaten her career. "'Vox Lux' gripped me from its first sequence and didn't let go until the end. I was left drained, but also feeling a little bit empty. This is not a complaint. The hollowed-out sensation 'Vox Lux' gave me, especially its final sequence, was far more interesting to me than something clearly laid-out, with a message or a resolution. "I don't want people to think too much. I just want them to feel good," says 15-year-old Celeste. It occurs to me that the effect of 'Vox Lux' was exactly the opposite." -Sheila O'Malley 'rogerebert.com'

Follow Alex Honnold as he becomes the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite's 3,000 ft high El Capitan wall. With no ropes or safety gear, he completed arguably the greatest feat in rock climbing history. "I did not suffer too much vertigo while watching 'Free Solo,' a gripping documentary about Alex Honnold, a celebrated climber who rather frequently goes up cliff faces thousands of feet high without any climbing equipment. It’s just him, his hands and feet, and a little pouch hanging from his belt, which contains powder that dries his hands to enable him to grasp on to the rock face better. While the high vistas shot by filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi are indeed potentially dizzying, I spent less time looking at those than I did looking at Honnold, hanging on an entirely vertical surface, and saying, perhaps a bit too loudly in the screening room, “Will you get off of there … ”" -Glenn Kenny 'rogerebert.com'

In 1956, four years before Jane Goodall ventured into the world of chimpanzees and seven years before Dian Fossey left to work with mountain gorillas, in fact, before anyone, man or woman had made such a trip, 23-year old Canadian biologist, Anne Innis Dagg, made an unprecedented solo journey to South Africa to become the first person in the world to study animal behavior in the wild on that continent. When she returned home a year later armed with ground-breaking research, the insurmountable barriers she faced as a female scientist proved much harder to overcome. In 1972, having published 20 research papers as an assistant professor of zoology at University of Guelph, the Dean of the university, denied her tenure. She couldn't apply to the University of Waterloo because the Dean there told Anne that he would never give tenure to a married woman. This was the catalyst that transformed Anne into a feminist activist. For three decades, Anne Innis Dagg was absent from the giraffe world until 2010 when she was sought out by giraffologists and not just brought back to into the fold, but finally celebrated for her work.