Caryn James

There are great concert movies and great socio-political documentaries, but Summer of Soul combines both in one gloriously entertaining and intellectually astute film.

American society, in all its strengths and missteps, has been a major theme for both Pynchon and Anderson, and it grounds Anderson's dazzler of a film, giving it an emphatic, unmistakable political charge.

[Mr. Gerima's] film is ambitious in its depiction of slavery and accomplished in its visual command.

Throughout, White is filled with exquisite scenes that don't press too hard...and those moments are all the richer for their understatement.

Gerwig’s smart, delightful film seems on its way to becoming a classic.

Like other love stories of the period, Gueule d'Amour has a melodramatic surface, yet it hits a nerve in anyone who has ever spent too much time thinking about the wrong person.

This may be Miyazaki's most expansive and magisterial film. If it is not the most instantly stunning, that might be because he takes the time to deliver worlds within worlds, layers under layers, to create an overwhelming experience by the end.

Haigh and his cast, including Paul Mescal as Adam's new lover, give this film about loss, enduring love and hope for the future such truth and poignance that it is easily among the best of the year.

It's boldly imaginative and his most mature work yet.

Marty Supreme has such scope, ambition and humour that its flaws, as with those off-screen Timmy exploits, are easy to overlook.

The Seventh Continent is one of the most stylish films in this year's New Directors/New Films series. With its fragmented pattern of beautifully composed and repeated images from middle-class life, it rejuvenates a 1960's style that would seem to be exhausted by now. But the Austrian writer and director Michael Haneke pulls viewers through a good portion of the film on the sheer strength of his visual flair, avoiding the classic trap of how to create a film about boredom that is not boring.

An eloquent meditation on loss, memory and how film can shape them.

Leigh's strategy of taking us into his characters' world without prelude or explanation, letting the revelations and backstory waft out, help make his films feel authentic. He seems to have a magical ability to make the everyday captivating to watch

The film takes place largely in two down and dirty rooms, the recording studio and a basement where the band rehearses, but it doesn’t feel stage bound. Wolfe finds the right balance between letting Wilson’s trademark monologues flow and shooting them in a cinematic way that keeps the film moving.

Full of eye-opening musical performances, the film also sparkles with tongue-in-cheek humor, and features contemporary interviews that are often far from what they seem. You have to go back to After Hours to find a Scorsese film with a similarly mischievous wit.

McDormand’s commanding, deeply empathetic performance holds the film together. She is so convincing and unaffected that it feels as if Fern is another non-actor whom Zhao magically gets to be natural on screen.

In poetic fashion, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt asks for interpretation, making ordinary explanations unnecessary.

The Color Purple is a big, brash spectacle, an extravaganza blending the styles of Broadway musicals, Hollywood studio movies and music videos, with a mix of gospel, pop, blues and ballads, all of that coming together smoothly in one exuberant film.

If Nobody's Fool is often heartbreaking in its sense of loss, it is also hopeful in the strength of its emotions and the sheer beauty of its performances.

The predictable surface of Say Anything is constantly being cracked by characters who think and talk like real people and by John Cusack's terrifically natural, appealing Lloyd.

The story has its moments of suspense, especially when Nina's child wanders off from the beach. But the soul of the film exists in the small exchanges and tensions between characters.

Full of energy, wit, passion and tragedy, looking backward and forward at once, it is one of the most moving films of the year.

This is the old, old trading places gag, and while a good idea can always be reinvented, invention is precisely what Taking Care of Business lacks.

Josef Kubota Wladyka, the director and co-writer, shifts from poignant emotion to comedy to surreal scenes that take us inside Haru’s fantasies just as gracefully as the dialogue shifts from Japanese to Spanish and English.

It is a small movie with steep odds against it, but it is also extraordinarily accomplished.

Fayyad and his cinematographers and editors wield the cameras and shape the scenes in the documentary so beautifully that The Cave is both intensely real and a carefully wrought work of cinema. A kind of counterpart to Last Men, the new film is perhaps more wrenching and even more ambitious in its visuals.

[A] delicate, lovingly photographed, strongly acted coming-of-age story.

Mixing archival material and fresh interviews with Edwards and her crewmembers, Holmes creates an engaging, suspenseful story with layers of social resonance. Maiden is gripping and effective even if — maybe especially if — you have absolutely no interest in sailing.