Deborah Young

It is a searing and topical indictment of racial prejudice and hatred in America that makes for uneasy viewing and is not easily forgotten.

Magnificent in its simplicity and its relentless honesty about old age, illness and dying, Michael Haneke's Amour is a deliberately torturous watch.

Tensely action-packed and muscularly directed by Kathryn Bigelow, this tale of an elite U.S. army bomb disposal unit in Baghdad is a familiar story in new clothes, targeted at the young male demographic.

In Collective, Nanau's observational style of filmmaking reaches emotional depths.

This small film is a thoughtful addition to his parables about happy and unhappy families (Nobody Knows, After the Storm), studded with memorable characters and believable performances that quietly lead the viewer to reflect on societal values.

While there are implicit references to the horrors of the Soviet and post-Soviet state and to the 20th century in general, this monstrously overflowing film seems to aim even higher.

The film’s methods are boldly unorthodox and its constantly alternating moods and shifts in tone from drama to humor, joy to tragedy can be disconcerting. It’s not a film for all audiences, but despite its eccentricities it is always watchable, thanks to strongly drawn characters and the soul-stirring poetry of its imagery.

The film’s minimalist aesthetic makes little concession to the usual forms of cinematic expression and extends to the set design: living spaces devoid of furniture, the nondescript hotel room, the typical street scenes. The two actors are similarly inexpressive, their faces blank as though personal interaction was a major risk.

A fine cast brings the believable, sometimes humorous characters to life and gradually draws the viewer into a well-crafted, well-paced story.

The imagery is epic and dreamlike at the same time, the battleground covered in mist, grain stubble, snow.

The Look of Silence is perhaps even more riveting for focusing on one man’s personal search for answers as he bravely confronts his brother’s killers.

Never talking down to his audience, he rather pulls them up to an intellectual level where other filmmakers fear to go.

Amazingly, Panahi turns the utterly simple, economical format of a camera inside a car into something relevant to his own artistic state and full of eye-opening insights into Iranian society.

What comes out of this unlikely comparison between astronomy and history is a totally new perspective, something broader, with glimpses into deeper meanings.

Scorsese's heartfelt love letter to Italian movies up to 1961.

Blurring the confines between documentary and fiction, it takes the empathetic viewer on an incredible journey that can be almost as painful to follow vicariously from a theater seat as it must have been on the pilgrims.

An extraordinary ride through Bollywood’s spectacular, over-the-top filmmaking, Gangs of Wasseypur puts Tarantino in a corner with its cool command of cinematically-inspired and referenced violence, ironic characters and breathless pace.

A remarkable first feature from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, The Town is a strikingly original, vibrantly sensitive look at an extended family living in a remote Turkish village.

Elusive and elliptical as it is, this is one of the most accessible films in Oliveira's recent repetoire.

The final half-hour is a joy to watch, as turning points follow in rapid succession.

Maoz doesn't seem to worry about losing some puzzled viewers along the way with comprehension issues. For those who reach the end, the story makes perfect sense.

A long, leisurely drama directed with self-assurance.

Seems destined to go down in film history as a technical tour de force.

Where journalism leaves off, Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) begins. It takes a unique documentary filmmaker like Gianfranco Rosi to capture the drama through the periscope of his camera focused on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

The famous dreamlike lighting and mise-en-scene are always perfect in capturing human foibles. But the offbeat sense of humor that characterized the trilogy is less evident than ever.

A taut, involving drama centered around the mysterious disappearance of a young woman, About Elly confirms director Asghar Farhadi as a major talent in Iranian cinema whose ability to chronicle the middle-class malaise of his society is practically unrivaled.

Re-shuffling footage from films he has shot over the last 23 years, Jia Zhang-ke places his awe-inspiring cinematic mastery on full display in Caught by the Tides, though its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story.

A tightly plotted and paced thriller whose not-so-hidden agenda is to expose the bad conscience of the world's haves toward its have-nots, "Hidden" is one of Austrian helmer Michael Haneke's most watchable and pungent works.