Even though it chronicles the sad tale of the breakdown of a marriage, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (A) is bittersweet bliss. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson give career-best performances as the couple in the story’s center, a director and his actress muse, respectively, who find themselves separated by an emotional gulf and soon a geographic one as his NYC career flourishes and as she moves to L.A. to film a pilot. Their characters’ drift away from each other is less the result of a bombshell than simply desiring different approaches to matrimony and how they live their lives. And although they have become too closed-off from one another to thrive as a functional unit, the complicated mechanics of divorce – and what it all means for the couple’s sole offspring – become the trigger point for high drama. Ray Liotta, Alan Alda and Laura Dern are magnificent as acerbic orbiting attorneys, with Dern in particular delivering mightily as the woman empowering Johannson’s character to strike faster and harder. Baumbach makes his audiences deeply care about the proceedings with endearing and intimate close-ups, flashes of humor and a brilliant take on human relationships. The acting is so good, it feels like a documentary. Tragedy is tough, but this ensemble demands attention. Even Randy Newman’s sometimes spry, sometimes sanguine score is a delight, although it’s pretty much the opposite of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” The film is searing and sensational and will likely be absorbing must-see viewing in your queue. Prepare for the streaming, especially from your eyes.

This hypnotic, hallucinatory horror-type tall tale is a keeper for sure! Director Robert Eggers casts an absolutely enchanting and unsettling spell in the gothic black and white square aspect ratio wonder The Lighthouse (A-). Set on a mysterious New England island in the 1890s, a career-redefining Robert Pattinson joins a startlingly gifted Willem Dafoe in a cunning and claustrophobic battle for supremacy. These dynamic co-leads are on high alert in the acting department, with some King Lear-level soliloquies and super-trippy visuals. Each of the two “wicks” harbors secrets, and it’s a game of oneupmanship to see who will rule the rock. It’s not always clear where this narrative will take you, but the film pulses with the verve and variety of a pulpy novel. And oh, that gorgeous camera work! Like There Will Be Blood, this is a film sure to shake and spark discussion.

The true wolves of Wall Street have arrived, and they’re adorned with bling and chinchilla. The latest addition into the hall of fame of superb real-life crime dramas is Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers (B+), buoyed by outstanding performances from Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez as exotic dancers who devise a scam to drain the credit cards of Wall Street clientele in the aftermath of last decade’s financial crisis. Scafaria’s visceral storytelling and exciting camerawork puts viewers directly in the action and elicits sympathy from characters who exhibit mixed motivations. Lopez delivers a performance of a lifetime as the queen bee of an unlikely hive of gangsters. She assumes the demanding role with brute force physically and emotionally. The film’s unapologetic glimpse at a transactional culture and its effect on friends and family gives it a pedigree to be remembered as awards season gets underway.