Beware of top 10 lists in which all of the films mentioned were released mainly in the fall or early winter. They either reveal a lack of imagination or a forgetfulness of the preceding nine months, or both. Although there are exceptions, many critics’ lists swap and trade off the same titles. (It’s yet to be seen whether Vice would be in the awards conversation if not for opening so close to the end of the year.) There are also more films being released theatrically now, whether on only a few screens nationally or as many as 4,000. As such, for all of your ROMAs and A Star Is Borns, there is plenty else to discover.

In compiling the list, it would have gone against the objective of this site not to have taken a second look at films that might have slipped between the cracks over the course of 2018, either in small theatrical runs or as one of many DVD or streaming options newly available on any given week. It also would have been foolhardy not to take a closer look at a burgeoning genre, the social justice documentary, as one way of taking the year’s pulse. Though the following reflect the times we are living in, they also stand out as above-average movies, with popcorn or without. Kent Turner

Officer Eric Winston in Charm City (Film Society of Lincoln Center)

This past year was an especially strong one for documentaries about our nation’s police, beginning with Marilyn Ness’s poignant Charm City, set during an especially deadly three-year stretch in Baltimore, beginning in 2015. Unsolved murders are on the rise, as are tensions among residents who feel the city’s police department is not adequately protecting them. Ness follows the struggle to hold Baltimore together from the front lines, alternating between the impoverished minority communities that are suffering the most and several good cops who want to do right by those they have sworn to serve, even when the latter are becoming increasingly hostile. The end result is a portrait of those living through their darkest days, during which their integrity still shines through. (In theatrical release) Phil Guie

Stephen Maing’s Crime+Punishment is a gritty examination of a broken system, profiling New York Police Department officers who resist pressures to hand out citations and make a minimum number of arrests each month to meet their precinct’s quotas. Through a combination of secret audio recordings and hidden camera footage, we witness the film’s subjects being harassed by their fellow cops and superiors, who are attempting to intimidate them into line. Maing also draws connections between the quotas—which the state of New York had declared illegal in 2010—and some of the biggest public-relations black eyes the NYPD has suffered of late, including the 2014 choking death of Eric Garner. This is a powerful work of investigative journalism as well as a potent call for reform.  (Available on Hulu) PG

Thomas Gioria in Custody (Kino Lorber)

Custody, an explosive drama about a family imploding, brings back memories of the stellar work of Albert Finney and Diane Keaton in Shoot the Moon from 1982. (Remember that one?) Actor-turned-director Xavier Legrand, in his feature debut, lavishes his focus on his fellow actors within a tightly structured and straightforward story. Initially, viewers are not sure who’s telling the truth. In a custody hearing, Miriam (Léa Drucker) accuses her ex-husband, Antoine (Denis Ménochet), of abusive behavior, which he denies. Presumably based on the evidence at hand, the female judge awards joint custody to the parents, and what follows is also a portrait of a particular belligerent type of masculinity, threatened by loss of control. Besides the great performances, the 90-minute drama also has technical flair, with a tracking shot that Martin Scorsese would envy, in which Legrand builds suspense at a party scene where the music is so loud that the dialogue can’t be heard—we only see characters panic. The ending is also a nail-biter. Legrand is a director to look out for, no question. KT (DVD/YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu)

Fernando Cardona in En el Séptimo Día (Cinema Guild)

Over the course of a week, José (Fernando Cardona) has to choose whether to risk losing his job or play in a championship soccer game—he’s his team’s MVP. Although the plot sounds simple when summarized this way, Jim McKay’s En el Séptimo Día uses this apparently straightforward conflict to provide a portrayal rarely seen about Latin American immigrants in the United States, specifically Brooklyn; José is Mexican and works as a delivery guy in hopes of bringing his pregnant wife to the country. This particularly bittersweet story is told with tenderness toward its main character and provides an entirely different vision of the city and those who exist far outside the movie canon. Guillermo López Meza (DVD/Blu-ray)

Ethan Hawke in First Reformed (TIFF)

Director Paul Schrader has said it has taken him 50 years to write First Reformed as an outgrowth of his book Transcendental Style in Film, which chronicled international art house masters Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer. The greatest influence on his latest film, though, is Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light. In a small upstate New York town, Rev. Toller (Ethan Hawke) comes up against a crisis of conscience (to put it mildly) after meeting a man who has become unglued over the planet’s environmental crisis. The film is at times shocking and provocative, and it speaks to the times we live in. Hawke is as good as he’s ever been, and Amanda Seyfried and a strong Cedric the Entertainer round out the supporting cast. Additionally, the ending is an emotional scorcher that goes down one way and then comes back up sharply. This is a film made by someone who is a master with fire in his heart and mind. Jack Gattenella (DVD/YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu)

Adriano Tardiolo in Happy as Lazzaro (Netflix)

Here’s the movie to stop a film buff from complaining that there are no exceptional or surprising Italian films any more. Writer/director Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro tips its hat to the neorealism filmmaking of Ermanno Olmi (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) and mixes in otherworldliness—aka magic realism—and religious allegory to make a one of a kind experience, where the country’s past and present commingle. It centers on a holy fool–type figure, Lazzaro (the wide eyed Adriano Tardiolo), who lives with 54 farmhands in an isolated feudal community. Nothing fazes Lazzaro, who aims to please—give him an errand, and he’ll do it. Everyone takes advantage of him; exploitation is the name of the game. Rohrwacher takes stereotypes and transforms them, in the process creating a new folkloric figure. KT (Netflix)

From left, Sana Jammelieh, Shaden Kanboura, and Mouna Hawa in In Between (TIFF)

In Between’s Leila, Salma, and Noor are flatmates and friends, sharing a joshing, needling bond of affection in Tel Aviv. But as Israeli Arabs, the young women have to deal with more than roommate dynamics. They face overbearing families, nagging reminders of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and, most frustratingly of all, hypocritical male partners who are threatened by their independence and feel entitled to have the upper hand. In a witty but questioning mode, Maysaloun Hamoud’s debut feature reveals a very particular back-and-forth between fast, modern lives and traditional ways, with alliances blooming in unlikely quarters. Mouna Hawa stands out in a strong cast as the hard-partying lawyer Leila, skeptical and striking, with a face that can seduce one minute and shut down in defiance the next. Though this film of many moods premiered in 2016, it was released in the United States early this year. Caroline Ely (DVD/Blu-ray, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Film Movement Plus)

From left, Keire Johnson, Bing Liu, and Zach Mulligan in Minding the Gap (Hulu)

Debut director Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap starts off comparing his own breezy skateboarding videos from his days as a latchkey kid in Rockford, Illinois, to a new generation of boys skating together through the desolation of the recession-hit town a dozen years ago. But off the boards, the lives of two teens–not unlike his own–are not so totally tubular. Following Keire and Zack home over the years, we intimately watch them struggle with their parents, girlfriends, child rearing, issues of race, substances, and a string of minimum wage jobs. When an off-camera repetition of negative behavior is shockingly revealed, Liu flashes back to his own suppressed memories of domestic violence and puts his own mother on camera to get more of a women’s perspective on toxic masculinity. Under executive producer Steve James, who modeled this kind of dedicated, longitudinal documentary with Hoop Dreams (1994), we see that as therapeutic as this experience was for Liu, we all can come closer to understanding, sadly, how abuse happens. Nora Lee Mandel (Hulu)

Brady Jandreau in The Rider (Directors’ Fortnight)

In Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), Chinese-American filmmaker Chloé Zhao naturalistically presented the difficult, limited choices for young people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She narrows her focus in The Rider to the (almost) true life of one member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, laconic 23-year-old Brady Jandreau. He casually, yet charismatically, plays a version of himself as Brady Blackburn (his family and friends play versions of themselves, too) as he relives an almost fatal fall off a stomping bronco and faces the entangled repercussions and a future apart from horses. With cinematographer Joshua James Richards again finding fresh images amid the landscape, Zhao blows away the traditional western movie stereotypes of cowboy, Indian, rodeo, horse whisperer—and a century of those American symbols of masculinity. NLM (DVD/Blu-ray, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu)

A scene from Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Focus Features)

Director Morgan Neville’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? sensitively avoids a conventional bio-doc or nostalgia bath in delving into the unique creation, singular purpose, and delicate care that went into the making of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood over three decades on public television. That quiet, slow-paced, daily half-hour of peace, sanity, and advice is revealed as the dedicated ministry of Fred Rogers. He modeled kindness and empathy directly to each young viewer through songs, puppets, and diverse guest appearances (including Yo-Yo Ma, father of the film’s producer Nicholas Ma). Whether talking to preschoolers about the scary confusions of growing up or the noisy, disturbing world of grown-ups (assassination, racism, and terrorism), Mr. Rogers made this difficult mission look gracefully easy—though insiders divulge just how hard the work was. (Neville had full access to the incredible archives of the Fred Rogers Company based in Pittsburgh, with permission and final approval of the family and estate.) Even with clips of the satires and parodies made by those who grew up during the show’s broadcast run from 1968 on, no audience will watch this documentary dry-eyed. NLM (DVD/Blu-ray, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu)