David Rooney

The unique charm of Isle of Dogs is its bottomless vault of curios, its sly humor, playful graphic inserts and dexterous narrative detours.

It’s the work of a director in full command of his gifts, from the kaleidoscopic vignettes of family life that make the first half such a constant delight through the supple modulation of tone midway, when shocking tragedy prompts a shift into a more ruminative mood.

Poetic in its simplicity yet crafted with as meticulous attention to detail as Hujar’s reflections on his day, this is a singular meditation on the life of an influential artist for whom major recognition came only after his death. It has the feel of a rare find plucked from a dusty archive.

The Killing of Two Lovers is a transfixing drama without a wasted word or a single inessential scene.

Lee's knack for distilling the energy of live performance is no secret, for example in his terrific 2009 film of the unconventional Broadway musical Passing Strange. But the synergy here between filmmaker and subject — from the avant-funk grooves to the spirit of inclusivity and the urge to heal a broken nation — is simply spectacular.

This is a wondrous and moving account of a remarkable life that puts us right there with Goodall to share directly in her discoveries.

Tár marks yet another career peak for Blanchett — many are likely to argue her greatest — and a fervent reason to hope it’s not 16 more years before Field gives us another feature. It’s a work of genius.

The passage of time is somehow both fluid and jagged in Clint Bentley’s soulful film of the Denis Johnson novella, Train Dreams. It flows or ambles or bumps along, passing over moments of joy, shock, discovery, lonesomeness or devastating sadness, but just as often over seemingly mundane experiences that only later reveal their significance when we look back.

This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios. It fully embraces the contradictions of an intellectual giant who was also a deeply flawed man, his legacy complicated by his own ambivalence toward the breakthrough achievement that secured his place in the history books.

It's both a pulse-pounding depiction of the deadly attacks that shook Norway in 2011 and a sober investigation of the aftermath, evolving into a gripping courtroom drama and a tremendously emotional personal account of one family's struggle to move on.

The movie is a small marvel of impeccable craftsmanship.

This is a wonderfully odd consideration of those questions about love, pain, solitude and human connection we all ask; its emotional power creeps out from under the subtle humor and leaves a subcutaneous imprint that lingers long after the movie is over.

Where many filmmakers would have underlined the bleaker, harsher aspects, Girlhood presents the characters' grim reality without surrendering its lightness of touch, its compassion or its hope.

With A Real Pain, [Eisenberg] demonstrates impeccable judgment and great skill at balancing sardonic wit with piercing solemnity in a movie full of feeling, in which no emotion is unearned.

In Queer, Luca Guadagnino meets William S. Burroughs on the iconoclast’s own slippery terms and the result is mesmerizing.

Alternately haunting, inspiring and dreamily meditative, this is a visually majestic film of transfixing moods and textures.

Barry Jenkins' Moonlight pulls you into its introspective protagonist's world from the start and transfixes throughout as it observes, with uncommon poignancy and emotional perceptiveness, his roughly two-decade path to find a definitive answer to the question, "Who am I?"

Visually, intellectually and emotionally, McDonagh’s film is one to savor.

Equal parts ethnographic and poetic, this eloquent drama's stirring soulfulness is laced with the sorrow of cultural dislocation but also with lovely ripples of humor and even joy.

Mike Leigh is at the peak of his powers with Vera Drake, a compassionate, morally complex drama that stands easily alongside his best work, "Secrets & Lies" and "Topsy-Turvy."

One of del Toro’s finest, this is epic-scale storytelling of uncommon beauty, feeling and artistry.

This is a compassionately observed story told with unimpeachable naturalism and without a grain of sentimentality, propelled by a remarkable performance from Charlie Plummer that's both internalized and emotionally raw.

At this point it doesn’t seem a stretch to say that Jonathan Glazer is incapable of making a movie that’s anything less than bracingly original.

Sentimental Value is uncommonly rich in emotional rewards and contemplative in its reflections on the places where we live becoming a permanent repository for our memories, remaining there even after we move on. The movie’s poignancy accumulates gradually, every supple turn expertly modulated as the presence of generations past becomes more tangible.

Crafted with unforced humor, ravishing visuals and commanding maturity, Decision to Leave intoxicates with its potent brew of love, emotional manipulation — or is it? —and obsession.

The rich vein of unsettling darkness and psychological unease that ripples like a treacherous underground stream beneath the absurdist humor of Yorgos Lanthimos' work becomes a brooding requiem of domestic horror in his masterfully realized fifth feature.

The three-and-a-half-hour running time is fully justified in an escalating tragedy that never loosens its grip — a sordid illustration of historical erasure with echoes in today’s bitterly divisive political gamesmanship.

An infectious blast of funky jazz played by a terrific cast and a director at the top of their respective games.