The year’s barely half over and already it’s been an unusual one for moviegoers. Gen Z filmmakers have scored megahits with their feature debuts (“Obsession,” “Backrooms”), expected megahits have done just OK (“The Mandalorian and Grogu”) and established hitmakers like Steven Spielberg have proved divisive.

I asked our chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and our movie critic, Alissa Wilkinson, to recommend releases you might want to catch up with this summer.

‘Disclosure Day’

In theaters.

The story: In this Spielberg blockbuster, Josh O’Connor is an Edward Snowden-like figure who has stolen files with evidence of extraterrestrials. Emily Blunt is a weathercaster with the sudden ability to speak other languages, including one that aliens understand. The two team up when they find themselves on the run from the authorities who are desperate to prevent the truth from being revealed. Online, commenters have taken issue with some of the plot twists, but both of our critics wanted to include it in this list.

Manohla Dargis’s take: “Spielberg isn’t straining to wow you. He reached the summit a while ago, which gives you latitude to get in his groove and have a good time.” As for the performances, “O’Connor’s yielding softness works contrapuntally with Blunt’s crispness.” Read the review.

‘The Christophers’

Rent it on most major platforms.

The story: The title refers to a series of paintings that made the artist Julian (Ian McKellen) famous. Now that he is in his twilight years, his children have a scheme involving Lori (Michaela Coel), an artist in her own right but one who can’t make a living from her work. They want her to sign on as Julian’s assistant and forge new paintings under his name. Steven Soderbergh directed.

Alissa Wilkinson’s take: This is “a sparkling, funny, wise movie about two painters, both of whom consider themselves failures.” The performances especially stand out: “I have rarely enjoyed watching two actors’ rapport the way I loved watching McKellen and Coel; it could have gone on forever and not been long enough.” Read the review.

‘Exit 8’

Rent it on most major platforms.

The story: A zoned-out commuter who wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings finds himself trapped in the labyrinthine halls of a Tokyo train station. The film, based on a video game, recalls movies as different as “The Shining” and “Groundhog Day.”

Dargis’s take: “‘Exit 8’ is a pip and as fun to watch as it is to mull over. Smoothly directed by Genki Kawamura, who shares script credit with Kentaro Hirase, it will be familiar to anyone who’s a fan of puzzles, has watched Christopher Nolan’s movies, read the myth of the Minotaur, knows something about cognitive behavioral therapy or has just watched a lot of genre movies.” Read the review.

‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’

Stream it on Netflix; rent it on most major platforms.

The story: The director Nia DaCosta picks up the saga that began in 2003 with “28 Days Later,” when a viral pandemic caused the breakdown of society. This installment focuses on two figures: Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who thinks an infected man may be curable, and Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), an evil trickster figure inciting his followers to horrific violence.

Wilkinson’s take: “DaCosta’s talents as a director are a terrific, confident match for this material,” and the film relies on “some good old-fashioned gore, plus a few scenes I can only describe as fully, pyrotechnically metal. (One in particular, and you’ll know it when you see it, provoked a near-standing ovation at my screening.) The actors are going full throttle, too.” Read the review.

‘Yes’

Rent it on most major platforms.

The story: In this vicious satire of Israeli society from Nadav Lapid, the ambitious Y and his wife, Jasmine, are entertainers so eager to get ahead that they cozy up to the country’s power elite as war rages in Gaza.

Dargis’s take: “Again and again, Lapid has turned his pitiless, diagnostic gaze on Israel and Israelis and, again and again, he finds fault, sometimes with humor and often in anger. ‘Yes’ is an unsparing movie and can be hard to watch partly because Lapid’s raw fury and maximalist approach can border on off-putting excess.” But she adds, “he inexorably pulls you in, forcing you to bear witness alongside him.” Read the review.

‘Blue Heron’

Buy on Amazon Prime.

The story: Told in part from the point of view of 8-year-old Sasha, the film follows her family’s move from Hungary to Vancouver Island in the 1990s and her older half-brother Jeremy’s increasingly precarious behavior. This debut feature by Sophy Romvari blends her own history with fiction.

Wilkinson’s take: “It can be tempting to tell stories about broken families and mental health struggles with a gloss of romantic fatalism, but there’s none of that here — just an aching desire to understand what Jeremy was experiencing” and why Sasha’s “parents made the choices they did.” Read the review.

‘Pompei: Below the Clouds’

Stream it on Mubi.

The story: This documentary by Gianfranco Rosi focuses on the area around the Italian volcano of the title. Though there is no narration, individual voices including those of an archaeologist and a prosecutor, help paint a picture of the region.

Dargis’s take: Rosi “has an unerring compositional sense and his images are harmoniously balanced without being fetishistically precise. He shot the movie himself in exquisite black-and-white (he also did the sound work), a choice that summons up the past, yet, because his approach is dynamic, never tips into nostalgia.” Read the review.

‘Seeds’

In theaters.

The story: This black-and-white documentary focuses on the plight of Black farmers like Willie Head Jr. and Carlie Williams, who struggle to make a living. Though it explores issues like the slow rollout of a federal fund for them devised by the Biden administration, the film is really about a way of life and includes scenes of singing at church and time spent at home.

Wilkinson’s take: “Brittany Shyne’s extraordinarily beautiful” film isn’t journalistic. “It’s something more like a softly sung ballad, handed down from generation to generation. For men like Head and Williams, the struggle to keep land in the family and make a living is about preserving the past and creating the future.” Read the review.

‘Miroirs No. 3’

Rent on most major platforms.

The story: In the director Christian Petzold’s loose variation on “Vertigo,” a woman who has survived a deadly car crash in the German countryside convalesces at the home of a stranger, who begins to remake her in the image of another woman.

Dargis’s take: Such “cinematic allusions are catnip to film lovers, and while they’re pleasurable to consider, they’re so delicately woven into the story that they never distract from the characters or the emotion, or edge into directorial cleverness.” Read the review.

‘Everybody to Kenmure Street’

The story: Set in Glasgow in 2021, this documentary looks at what happened when immigration enforcement authorities tried to arrest two Indian nationals who had lived in the community for a decade. Neighbors and other protesters, eventually totaling some 2,000 people, showed up and demanded the pair be freed.

Wilkinson’s take: Directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra, a resident of the area himself, “‘Everybody to Kenmure Street’ is an exceptional documentary, both in the story it tells and in the way it tells it, about what happened that day. Read the review.