Eric Kohn

Suspense is rarely delivered with such distinctive patience.

The filmmaker’s best and most personal movie in years.

The visual collage retains a consistent melancholy, resulting in an experience that's both deeply affecting and-since José never actually appears on-camera-utterly detached.

Extraterrestrial can be forgiven the tangents into melodrama due to Vigalondo's seamless ability to navigate those soapy waters.

Nomadland relishes the nomads’ expansive universe, emphasizing the contrast between gaining freedom from society while feeling estranged at the same time.

The typically great Binoche conveys a tantalizing mixture of confidence and unease as she considers her glamorous past and undetermined future.

Potiche successfully satirizes the gender politics at its core. At the same time, it knowingly mocks the obsession over debates about the suppression of women that pervaded the culture during the movie's setting.

Though anchored by a affecting and sullen turn by Channing Tatum, the movie derives its primary discomfiting power from Steve Carell in a revelatory performance as a monster of American wealth.

Kim's movies are generally grim, disturbing affairs, but "Pieta" leaves much to the imagination in favor of its unsettling implications.

The Safdies have stood out over the last few years for continually challenging audience expectations even while seeming to adhere to conventional storytelling traditions, and that's certainly true here: You've never seen a sports movie like this before.

A brilliant home-invasion thriller laced with cultural reference points stretching back to the late ’80s, and a smorgasbord of first-rate visceral cinematic scares. Think “Funny Games” collided with Cronenbergian body horror and Hitchockian suspense, and you’re maybe halfway there.

Building to the potential of a confrontation with the wedding climax, The Farewell threatens to melt into sentimentalism, but Wang dodges the obvious pathways to a tidy resolution.

The movie’s conclusion pits religion against personal desire in remarkably visceral terms.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's mesmerizing Once Upon a Time in Anatolia plays like "Zodiac" meets "Police, Adjective."

Endlessly charming and sneakily wise, Everybody Wants Some!! epitomizes Linklater's unique ability to magnify human behavior with levity.

There and gone with the fleeting nature of its youngest character's attention span, Little Feet ultimately feels more like an insightful sketch than a full-fledged movie, but it nonetheless leaves a major impression.

Atmospherically, Spring Breakers is an elegant evocation of noir storytelling, littered with misdeeds with girls and guns at every turn.

The House That Jack Built is an often-horrifying, sadistic dive into a psychotic internal monologue, with intellectual detours about the nature of art in the world today, and puts considerable effort into stimulating discomfort at key moments. If you meet the work on those terms, or at least accept the challenge of wrestling with impeccable filmmaking that dances across moral barriers, it’s also possibly brilliant.

White Reindeer eagerly pokes the mythology surrounding the holiday season narrative to find something hauntingly beautiful lurking beneath it.

Ultimately, Contemporary Color captures the essence of the event in question with expert craftsmanship, and the filmmaking prowess doesn’t overwhelm the show.

Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother marks the emergence of an exciting new filmmaking talent. The Montreal actor, a mere 20 years old, displays a startlingly mature perspective on human behavior in his triple threat position as writer-director-star.

Sleepwalk With Me calls to mind Judd Apatow's "Funny People" for its focus on the eccentric, obsessive nature of the wannabe comic's mind.

Teller's rough, uncomplicated filmmaking style does little to elaborate on Jenison's story, as the subject's unending curiosity singlehandedly carries each scene.

By making the inanimate animate, they make nature come to life, and so does Convento.

MLK/FBI reveals shocking behavior by the American government, but the most troubling aspect of its revelations is that nobody had to answer for it.

Serra's typically cerebral direction has a more vibrant quality due to the clarity of his images, though certain drawn-out sequences have an alienating effect on the drama. Still, Story of My Death manages to connect its profound aims with a devious atmosphere to match the turn of the century backdrop.

A gigantic physique hides the fragile man beneath and Matthiesen ably follows the journey of that persona as it tunnels through mounds of muscle to reach the surface. In essence, the lion finds his courage.

Unrest works particularly well once Brea looks beyond the limitations of her own bedridden experiences to document other cases worldwide, providing a stirring collage of stories to illustrate the destructive impact of the disease and why it remains widely neglected by the medical community.

The only certainty is Tsangari has delivered another intriguing and thoroughly original character study, which this time serves as an apt metaphor for Greece's larger problems.

A stitched-together combo of outlaw energy and bittersweet romance that gives the impression of Little Rascals in the big city. Like the graffiti art it documents, it's a lovingly handmade affair.

The movie isn't political so much as philosophical, trashing the notion of the American dream as anything more than fodder for an endless rat race.

There are moments when Tragos and Palermo run the risk of transforming their subjects into tools exploited for the sake of the movie's artistic vision, but the best part of Rich Hill is that its participants rise above the limitations of the material.

Artistically, however, the movie delivers on a surprisingly effective scale, no matter how Lonergan sees it. Alternately perceptive, subversive, tragic and profound.

Above all else, however, Mortensen gives Captain Fantastic its underlying credibility.

Story comes second to Russell over the rhythms of well-timed bickering, which is a blessing and a curse in American Hustle.

A personal work not because the director chooses to make himself a part of the story, but rather because he implicates all of us in it.

With each new twist, Sorrentino is always one step ahead of his audience, building a narrative that skips along at an enthralling pace.

The resulting adrenaline-packed vehicle delivers a multi-directional sugar rush. It moves so quickly that the bells and whistles blur together.

Helms plays angelic insurance agent Tim Lippe with gentle nobility and hilarious naivete.

McQueen’s gripping true-life drama compensates for some of its more heavy-handed beats thanks to Boyega’s staggering, career-best performance and the fiery tone that surrounds it at every turn. The movie is both a ferocious indictment and a call to action that embodies Logan’s cause, even if it’s doomed from the start.

The Forgiveness of Blood examines the barriers of ritual and the passage from youth to adulthood in Albanian society with the perceptive detail of a grand literary feat. At the same time, it retains the simplicity of a parable.

He's still cultivating his storytelling abilities, but Wheatley has clearly found his sweet spot: a darkly funny place with serious potential.

Elle doesn't always maintain the clever balance of naughtiness and dramatic confrontations that make it such an appealingly unconventional romp.

Brainy and exciting at the same time, Interstellar invalidates the need for mindless Hollywood product. No matter its shortcomings, the movie achieves an impressive balancing act. It turns the mysteries of the universe into a cinematic playground, but for every profound or visually arresting moment, it also encourages you to to think.

Indignation doesn’t break any fresh ground, and at times plays more like a series of engaging moments than a cohesive whole, but its craftsmanship is impeccable.

Commissioned as propaganda, Under the Sun instead documents life inside its grip.

The suspense comes and goes, but A Single Shot always maintains a firm grip on its sad, deteriorating environment.

Bodied is pure zany fun disguised as a pure provocation, and sometimes vice versa, mainly because any attempt to characterize its narrative as problematic proves its point.

The movie has a loose, almost amateurish quality to its production that suggests another rush job from a filmmaker unwilling or unable to slow down. But the movie reveals its deeper layers with time, congealing into a perceptive and often charming bite-sized study of smart women contending with a series of annoying men.

Without breaking a lot of new ground, the result is one of the more positive depictions of millennial community-building in recent cinema. None of the group’s fancy flips or grinds top the degree to which “Skate Kitchen” turns its subjects into a fascinating microcosm of American youth.

Savagely assaulting the desperate state of a blue collar family man, the comedic thriller Cheap Thrills establishes a ridiculous premise early on and takes it to various extremes, again and again, until you just have to accept the crazy venture on its own terms or simply give up.

While Mudbound is rooted in a precise historical moment, it’s also a sobering commentary on timeless struggles.

If Joe marks a new beginning for some of its characters, the same description applies to its director and star.

As relentless, eager-to-please genre filmmaking goes, it marks the rare occasion where too much of a good thing is just good enough.

More blatantly an exercise in style than anything on par with the director's crowning achievements, and suffers to some degree from the predictability of its premise.

City Hall doesn’t just deserve an audience; it deserves a conversation. Even as Wiseman celebrates the sophistication of American ideals in practice, his movie illustrates just how hard they are to grasp.

As the portrait of a relationship meltdown involving two eccentric creative types prone to self-doubt, July's sophomore feature bears a strong resemblance to husband Mike Mills's upcoming "Beginners," although July's version of the story has a more experimental edge.

The Treasure may not be a major work from Porumboiu or his filmmaking tradition, but it proves that even cerebral formalism has its soft side.

With War for the Planet of the Apes, technological wizardry and first-rate storytelling combine into a bracing action-adventure that concludes the best science fiction trilogy since the original trio of “Star Wars” movies.

Above all, Last Flag Flying illustrates a fascinating link between Ashby and Linklater, two filmmakers from different eras who both explore American society’s capacity to alienate the same people contributing to its identity. That gloomy proposition finds a fresh tone in Linklater’s hands, where angry, disillusioned people still manage to find room to laugh.

Gabriel never entirely compliments its eponymous subject with a story that can match his erratic mentality, but Howe's restrained approach is refreshingly unsentimental, never once creating the possibility of an easy resolution to the situation.

The result is relentless and involving even when it stumbles. Jolie may not be a full-fledged auteur yet, but she unquestionably possesses a singular aesthetic that courses through her work and exists completely apart from her high-profile acting career.

The Iron Ministry turns the chaos of modern China into dense, frantic poetry.

Rock's savage wit comes through in the wry screenplay, which is loaded with topicality as it pokes fun at subjects ranging from Tyler Perry movies to Angry Birds.

This admittedly uneven first feature stands out for the way it sneaks up on you.

The climax feels a bit under-realized, but never less than genuine. More than anything else, Morris From America excels at conveying the inherent power of companionship in a largely indifferent world.

It runs too long and drags a bunch in its final third, but make no mistake: This is Spielberg’s biggest crowdpleaser in years, a CGI ride that wields the technology with an eye for payoff.

Loaded to the gills with thrill-inducing mayhem, Hobo with a Shotgun feels almost tribal in its commitment to violence.

While the contradiction of punk rock parenthood may not have a solution, The Other F Word successfully has fun with the mystery.

7500 takes a familiar scenario and doubles down on its claustrophobic potential to make it fresh.

While it remains a fascinating character study driven by Cummings’ striking delivery, it also falls back on conventional twists. The resulting drama showcases a remarkably strong vision in the confines of more familiar story beats, but it’s a testament to Cummings’ maniacal performance that he manages to keep us engaged.

Winslet delivers her most powerful, emotionally resonant performance in more than a decade.

It’s a welcome return to form for a filmmaker whose form is all about the slippery search for truth.

Going Clear delivers an efficient overview of Scientology's dark history with a cohesive focus on the precision of its corrupt motives.

At times a bit too enamored of these loose conceits, The Nowhere Inn sometimes registers as a cheap fuck-with-the-audience provocation that might have been better suited for a viral short (or several), but at its finest moments the movie conjures a singular vision steeped in zaniness, but not devoid of purpose.

Slickly paced and carried by mature performances, Flight embodies one of the finer strains of Hollywood filmmaking in recent years.

While We're Young is a clear-eyed satire of intergenerational tension that derives much of its comedy from a series of moments in which its mid-forties couple attempt to mesh with a younger crowder.

The movie juggles a few too many subplots and not every joke lands, but it’s loaded with capricious details that shimmer with the exuberance of inspired social commentary at hyperspeed.

DAU. Natasha is haunting and effective, but not always the sum of its parts, and sometimes has a tendency to drag. Even so, the spell lingers long after the credits roll, and the opportunity to consider the many sides of DAU. Natasha is a unique intellectual exercise.

Even as Brad’s Status doesn’t overextend its reach, Stiller gives the material a touching, soulful core.

This minuscule but affecting hourlong story is an extension of the “Small Axe” mission to fill a historical gap deserving of greater scrutiny, and achieves that goal by serving as a kind of education itself.

Its atmospheric sophistication holds strong throughout, channeling a wonder for the natural world reminiscent of Terrence Malick with an air of existential dread straight out of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Equally a slick political thriller, intelligent period piece and sly Hollywood satire, Ben Affleck's Argo maintains a careful balance between commentary and entertainment value.

A Band Called Death lacks the thrill of mystery but makes up for it with pathos.

Fruitvale is largely sustained by Jordan's career-making performance and the way Coogler uses it to analyze his subject...It's a fascinating investigation into the contrast between media perception and intimate truths.

By positioning Shakespeare within a chatty tale of young adulthood — and giving it a feminist slant — Piñeiro proves the vitality of the material without becoming subservient to it.

Abbasi grounds the narrative in an emotional foundation even as it flies off the rails.

Krisha snaps into focus whenever Shults' camera remains trained on his extraordinary lead, whose fierce commitment easily recalls a similar portrait of middle-aged alcoholism in "A Woman Under the Influence" — and, at under 90 minutes, matches its intensity in half the time.

The vivid palette of Liu’s animation conveys a comic book-like exuberance to the proceedings, but the underlying socioeconomic frustration is very real.

Baring all and radiating an affability that defines the movie's tone, Hunt delivers her finest performance since "As Good As It Gets."

Even when that story drags, Moonrise Kingdom could be appreciated on mute.

Make no mistake: Mickle wants to make you jump and scream, but death only arrives in this movie once its world comes to life, which makes each sudden turn all the more intense.

Unfolding as a series of tests in 1958 as NASA prepared for Project Mercury, the experiments on the eponymous 13 women have received far less exposure than the stories surrounding the NASA excursions themselves, but this straightforward, informative documentary provides an efficient historical revision, arguing that the bracing stories of the first men to enter space aren’t complete without an acknowledgement of the women stuck on Earth.

This is a measured, richly ambiguous work about the subjective process of grief — masquerading as a ghost story — that experiments with the minutiae of film language as only a master of the medium can do.

An alternately wise, melancholic and good-humored look at people surrounded by support but nonetheless alienated by their incapacity to confront their problems.

This is a heckuva stimulating cinematic achievement for a relative newcomer. The Human Surge offers a shrewd commentary on the dissonance of technological connectivity and personal communication.

The filmmaker has made a rather soulful look at what it means to grasp onto life in its waning moments, and invites his audience into the center of that dilemma.

One could argue that Patti Cake$ doesn’t break any new ground, but that would ignore the infectious attitude of its determine young heroine, and how much it stands out from conventional variations.

For all the energy of Gerwig and Kirke's shared chemistry and the lively dialogue that compliments it, the story of Mistress America never keeps pace, ultimately sagging into formula to the detriment of the potential displayed by its compelling protagonists.

The extensive two-hour running time only slightly hinders a simultaneously amusing and powerful encapsulation of Brand's journey from outrageous provocateur to enlightened zealot preaching for social change.

Compelling in a larger sense even when lingers it on its goofier ingredients (the scenes where the pair stage the moon landing drag a bit), Operation Avalanche generally manages to make its outrageous premise stick.

Much of the movie operates as a playful nostalgia trip, and at two hours that’s asking a lot, but Beastie Boys Story is also imbued with a moving sense of purpose: The story doubles as a tribute to beloved multi-hyphenate Adam “MCA” Yauch, whose 2012 death from cancer catalyzed the dissolution of the group.

Pribar’s subtle movie eschews sentimentalism for a patient and inquisitive character study, mining familiar territory and rejuvenating it with emotional impact that worms its way into the material from unexpected places.

Chapiron stubbornly avoids an uplifting message, portraying his dangerous setting as a demonstration of virility that leads to madness.

The downside to the Zellners’ uncompromising approach is that they sometimes hold an inspired moment for too long. Certain scenes drag, and some banter has an airless quality that causes a few gags to fall flat. But it’s often rescued by nuggets of hilarious dialogue...and the steady realization that the movie always has been one step ahead of audience assumptions.

The result is an endearing and liberated explosion of Andersonian aesthetics that doesn’t always cohere into a satisfying package, but never slows down long enough to lose its engrossing appeal, and always retains its purpose.

Leave it to Walken to upstage Beethoven.

Grounded in lively performances by Chris Pine and Ben Foster as a pair of bank-robbing brothers, with a capable assist from a no-nonsense Jeff Bridges as the sheriff on their tail, Hell or High Water tries nothing new but delivers a fun ride.

Combining first-rate skate video footage with a range of confessional moments, Minding the Gap is a warmhearted look at the difficulties of reckoning with the past while attempting to escape its clutches.

In Green’s world, every moment is an unsolvable mystery that requires debate.

Diop’s first feature doesn’t always fit together from a narrative perspective, but it musters such an absorbing vision of an alienated seaside life that not everything needs to add up for the atmosphere to take hold.

At its core, The Double Hour is a classic noir story of deception.

Sweetly funny and relatable, Happy Christmas builds on the director's previous work by channeling its strong aspects — naturalism and self-effacing, true-to-life humor — into a relatively straightforward but utterly enjoyable character study.

A surprisingly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek New York comedy from "Clueless" director Amy Heckerling, Vamps teeters on the brink of not quite working and yet still routinely lands its laughs.

Transitioning back into a scripted dynamic after his quasi-documentary performance excursions with "Bruno" and "Borat," Baron Cohen loses none of his edge, combining slapstick inspiration and social commentary into a hilariously provocative blend.

The closest Brügger comes to explaining his style is an early statement on the duality of his mission to go "beyond all moral boundaries known to man while still being a respectable member of society." It's a goal enacted less with a coy wink than with a violent elbow jab to the ribs.

As Hold the Dark sputters to an unsatisfying finale, Wright’s character promises to explain everything that came before. The movie’s great punchline is that he’ll never be able to sort it all out — and we’re right there with him, reeling from a disquieting saga that has no patience for anyone in need easy answers, but keen on leaving us gasping for breath.

Users lacks clarity, sliding along in moment-to-moment beauty with such confidence that it never seems too concerned with building a cohesive argument. But it’s never less than enthralling to get lost in this particular ether.

The curious thing about C.O.G is that it doesn't play like a straightforward adaptation. Much of the mood comes from ingredients that have nothing to do with story or dialogue.

With its palatial setting, Borgman shows how money can buy luxury, but it can't salvage the corruption that comes from within.

Black Death embraces its horror roots with ample bloodshed, at which point the silly costumes and anachronistic dialogue no longer seem so absurd.

This elegant and surprisingly fast-paced blend of horror and suspense overcomes some of its more ridiculous ingredients thanks to endless invention.

The movie works best when probing the nature of human interactions with Nim: He appears to form a close friendship with the stoner psych major Bob Ingersoll, not only foraging for food with him but also sharing joints.

In Sundance terms, Like Crazy qualifies as this year's "Blue Valentine," but it's more observational about the details of a doomed relationship than relentlessly bleak like the aforementioned Derek Cianfrance movie.

While Muhi develops a remarkable window into its main character’s predicament, it doesn’t push beyond the limitations of its classically cinema verite approach, and the assemblage of scenes from the hospital and beyond fall short of crystallizing into a complete analysis of Muhi’s situation.

Director Janicza Bravo’s zany road trip comedy about a pair of strippers on a rambunctious 48-hour Florida adventure embodies its ludicrous source while jazzing it up with relentless cinematic beats.

Macdonald's movie is a kind of fairy tale. While in the Marvel franchises, the good guys always win, The House I Live In explores the far more tangible process of simply remaining alive at all costs -- and finding, against impossible odds, justification for living through another day.

It's impossible to look away -- not only because the sense of anticipation is so vivid, but because there's no other way to follow the bizarre plot than keep with it.

Though forged in a meticulous 1930s backdrop that merges historical detail with the style and tone of that era, “Mank” is hardly a playful throwback. Fincher has made a cerebral psychodrama that rewards the engaged cinephile audience in its crosshairs, but even when cold to the touch, the movie delivers a complex and insightful look at American power structures and the potential for a creative spark to rankle their foundations.

The movie lulls you into its unpredictable rhythms, and a striking poetry creeps into the material, finally overtaking it.

Though Braga's performance sometimes outshines Mendonça's leisurely two-and-a-half hour narrative, in its better moments the two work in marvelous harmony.

Combing a memorably gritty Ryan Gosling performance with the breakneck tempo of the getaway cars his character handles for hire, Refn churns out a hyperactive love letter to road rage with unapologetic glee. It's a total blast.

Brimming with constant new ideas and visual innovation, Shaw’s work captures the flurry of thought and motion at the center of dangerous times, and even dares to make them fun.

The Big Sick plays less like a great movie than a platform for its appealing tone, but it’s so well acted and dense with insights into the culture clash at its center that nothing about the central dynamic is strained.

The Old Man & the Gun eschews pastiche for a sweet, affable character study that resurrects Redford’s original star power with a wet kiss. The entire picture amounts to a low-key cinematic resurrection.

No matter its oddball turns, Kiwi director Ant Timpson’s wild, unpredictable debut manages to deliver a gory hilarious father-son reunion saga with a surprising degree of confidence in the silly-strange nature of the material.

Dancing around melodrama rather than confronting it head-on, Uncertain Terms hides its revelations in the textures of each scene. It places drama in the context of everyday life.

Rise to the challenge, and payoff awaits on the other side: a formulaic story transformed into something more perceptive and profound. If only more family dramas took such care to get the details right.

Inherent Vice constantly teases at a complex meta commentary on the other movies it brings to mind, but never totally gets there.

Five years after his rambling "Capitalism: A Love Story," the filmmaker bounces back from one of his worst films with one of his best — a surprisingly endearing set of suggestions for a better tomorrow.

The filmmakers have crafted seriously derivative fun that plays like "Scream" molded with "Cabin Fever" in the twisted universe of "Final Destination." It's a familiar ride, but a relentlessly wild one as well.

The filmmaker sticks close to the theatrical roots of the material, sometimes stumbling on wordy, overzealous monologues that might land better on the stage. But the cast goes to great lengths to sell the premise.

You've never seen anything like Chico & Rita, simply because that jubilant palette and likeminded jazz soundtrack embraces its predictability with such vitality.

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is particularly suspenseful for the way it recollects the past through the prism of a murder mystery, brilliantly fusing an archival history with the elements of a detective story.

Creepy implications keep Super 8 engaging, but the cast makes it click.

American Dharma delivers a suspenseful and upsetting showdown between one man confident of his cause and another mortified by it.

Santana was cast prior to making her gender transition and had never acted before. Her personal experience brings such legitimacy that she would probably succeed in the role even if she sucked at line reading. Fortunately, she doesn't.

It's Lonergan's masterfully subtle writing, littered with awkward exchanges that speak far louder than any cohesive monologue, that gives "Manchester" its humanity.

Progressing with a coldly observational pace, Rapt often strains its drawn-out structure, creating a lethargic experience despite essentially taking the form of a Bressonian suspense-thriller.

Despite its ludicrous turns, the movie benefits from the far-fetched events for its sheer willingness to go there, not unlike Smith's goofy, self-deprecating public persona.

While the rules of her conundrum never quite coalesce and some of the twists feel shoehorned, The Intruder generates so much intrigue to maintain a breathless pace and unsettling atmosphere at every turn, with Rives’ layered performance fusing the strange trip together.

The closing minutes are a completely original sort of survival drama, one that defies precise explanation even as it delivers significant payoff.

The Meaning of Hitler doesn’t have to make sense of this decade’s chaos to clarify just how much it remains vulnerable to the same complaisant attitudes exploited by the German leader decades ago. The movie isn’t just another cautionary tale; it’s a jagged intellectual wakeup call that cuts deep, and America can’t hear it enough.

In its revelations of Salinger's flaws, the documentary capably strips away the fanaticism associated with his books to create the impression of a human being.

While hardly reinventing the wheel, Donald Cried spins it faster than usual, taking cues from its memorably irritating protagonist. Beneath its entertainment value, the movie also hints at the tragedy of aimless adulthood.

So much of Welles’ history has been relegated to scholarly texts that it’s a thrill to see this final chapter laid out with such clarity and charm.

Chukwu maintains an impressive command over her material, but Woodard herself becomes the movie’s central storyteller.

Director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ exciting and unpredictable look at a pair of Mexico City police officers blends documentary and narrative techniques to deliver a refreshing and innovative look at the challenges of modern-day police work — as well as the underlying corruption that makes the most earnest officers vulnerable to a system rigged against them.

The movie deals less with awkwardness of this comedic scenario than the emotions it creates for its central duo, and the psychological struggle when words can only go so far.

Amazing Grace is soulful ear candy. But Franklin’s sweaty, impassioned delivery, which galvanizes her audiences with an electric charge, extends her awe-inspiring musical convictions beyond religious euphoria. It’s a rousing portrait of creativity as a unifying force.

Estevez treats the drama with a straight-faced, utterly earnest approach with dual respect for the material and the audience's awareness of how it can go wrong. By playing it straight, The Way never goes off the deep end.

This is pop art by way of lowbrow slapstick, with a premise that suggests "Cast Away" meets "Weekend at Bernie's," but really feels like a lunatic's idea of a big, broad studio comedy — or maybe a mad scientist's.

No matter its overarching ridiculousness, The Handmaiden remains a hugely enjoyable dose of grotesque escapism from a master of the form.

Magic Mike XXL keeps its aspirations low enough to satisfy only the simplest of expectations; at the end of the day, it's just another party, but sometimes a party is just good enough.

The movie presents its plot like a ridiculous gamble, and keeps pulling it off, somehow managing to justify its existence.

Cold-blooded killers rarely look this pathetic, which testifies to the impressive balance of Skarsgård's amusingly low-key performance.

Blue Jasmine belongs to Blanchett, who appears in almost every scene and frees it from the limitations of Allen's style, pushing it to far sharper results than any of the more traditional movies, good and bad, that he's churned out in the past dozen or so years.

Miller applies Gerwig to the center of a busy story with simple themes, but it glides along so effortlessly that its reductive qualities barely register. The filmmaker's exceedingly smart screenplay is the real plan, and Gerwig's performance puts it into action.

In its finer moments, however, Lee translates the book's wondrous prose into grand visual conceits meant for the big screen. Posited as a story that "will make you believe in god," instead it has the power to confirm one's faith in the cinematic experience.

In Towheads, every comic bit is weighted with an awkward blend of sadness and irreverent humor.

The movie is a visual investigation into the roots of sexual liberation in societies steeped in repression. Watching it from start to finish is a means of engaging with the inquiry at its center.

Eventually, Soo-hyun's relentless pursuit-and-release approach outlives the director's skill and the premise starts to feel redundant.

The scariest aspect of The Boy is the extent to which Macneill makes it possible to sympathize with the troubled protagonist — even as its haunting final shot hints at the horrors yet to come.

Drawing on interviews with 10 experts and internet theorists with an endearing mashup of film clips and trippy 3-D animation, A Glitch in the Matrix adapts to the internal logic of its echo chamber until starts to sound pretty convincing on its own terms. If you’re not already one of the diehards convinced we’re living in a simulation, this movie might actually get you there.

“Shoemaker of Dreams” works as well as it does because Guadagnino fills each moment with such delight for his subject that it’s impossible not to end up consumed by that spell.

Treasuring small victories and mood above all else, Land Ho! makes it possible to engage with its subjects' pathos and experience their sense of renewal along with them.

At its core, A Screaming Man emphasizes the strength of family bonds. It's a sad, moving portrait that has nothing to do with its chaotic setting.

If nothing else, this memorable effort eloquently displays Hushpuppy's fragile understanding of her world, where the only certainty is that nothing lasts forever. That makes "Beasts" into a gigantic triumph even when it falls apart.

The Artist plays around with the distinction between silent and sound cinema, resulting in the superficial entertainment value of a high concept film school joke. But it's a charming and supremely gorgeous joke -- sometimes too clever for its own good, other times not clever enough, and always at least an attractive diversion.

If nothing else, Blancanieves offers an excellent case for revisiting the early days of cinema -- and for recognizing how much has been lost in its absence. While "The Artist" recalled the silent film industry, Blancanieves solely pays tribute to the art.

V/H/S 2 smartly contextualizes its nightmarish cavalcade of violence by acknowledging the luxury of enjoying it from a distance.

I’m Your Woman owes much to Brosnahan’s evolving performance as she goes from terrified housewife to trenchant survivalist over the course movie, and the movie consolidates the strengths of Hart’s previous work.

No matter its conceptual intentions, It Follows never ventures too far from visceral horror. Mitchell populates a number of scenes with well-timed jump scares as the being frequently bursts out of the shadows or appears in unexpected forms, while the score provides a screaming punctuation mark.

Shirkers becomes a paean to the pivotal moment when the idealism of young adulthood faces a harsh reality check.

West, who demonstrated a penchant for extensive build-ups in "The House of the Devil" and "Trigger Man," continually makes it unclear if the inn actually harbors a ghost or if his heroine (Sara Paxton) has simply imagines it. Both she and her hilariously frazzled co-worker (Pat Healy of "Great World of Sound") want to believe in supernatural affairs for the thrill factor alone.

Directed by Blume's son Lawrence, this gentle drama based on Blume's 1981 novel works surprisingly well considering the numerous trappings of the material, while demonstrating exactly why it's so difficult to bring Blume's work to the screen.

Sachs skillfully explores dangerous extremes -- not only drug addiction, but the slipperiness of attraction.

Moors isolates a well-known drama with the fleeting nonfiction prologue and explores it from the inside out: It's not an attempted reenactment, but it does aim to get at certain truths.

Schroeder tracks the end of innocence in much the same way that the strip captured it each time out. Unlike "Salinger," he hardly makes a spectacle out of Watterson's secluded tendencies. The pileup of interview subjects speak eloquently on his behalf.

Maintains a funny and sad focus on its single petulant subject.

It renders a global crisis in strikingly intimate terms.

"Dick Long,” which stems from Billy Chew’s script, lacks the same abstract weirdness that made “Swiss Army Man” such an indelible cinematic delight. It has more intimate aims — humanizing a couple of brutish morons by mining substance from the silliness, and arriving at the conclusion that crass white-trash stereotypes have feelings, too.

It's been so long since Lee made such a thoroughly amusing work that fans should have no problem excusing its messiness. But make no mistake... Oldboy is all over the place, sometimes playing like a subdued melodrama and elsewhere erupting into flamboyance and gore.

Political only by implication, Zero Bridge works in a larger sense as a story of universal longing.

Pina is a beautiful, heartfelt ode and a delicious feast for the eyes, but not an essential work of art on its own terms.

Before its spell unravels with overdone theatricality and on-the-nose flashbacks, Caterpillar succeeds as a kind of representational horror movie.

The most intense look at a social media-obsessed loner since “Eighth Grade,” Swedish director Von Horn’s Polish-language feature finds its character wrestling with the nature of her popularity, until she’s forced to confront the disconnect between her public and personal existence in vivid detail.

The filmmaker is ultimately better at constructing nuanced environments and troubled figures than making every piece of the equation gel as a whole. But that's a minor issue in the overall tapestry of Chandor's carefully designed world.

Edited in a frenzied mashup of concert fragments and off-stage exchanges, The Punk Singer generally overcomes its rough production values by realizing the energy of Hanna's achievements in terms of her passion and physical prowess.

No stranger to crafting excessive anticipation, Reichardt has funneled that skill into thriller clothing. However, like all of her output, nothing is as simple as it looks.

Beyond its surface pleasures, Crimson Peak also confronts the demons of modern entertainment. The movie frightens and surprises us in familiar ways, but at the same time issues a plea for restraint.

The central appeal of The Trip is that it's only a comedy in bits and pieces. Overall, however, Winterbottom constructs a thoughtful and generally sad portrait of Coogan's persona as a man unsure of his next move.

The Divide manages to transcend its numerous flaws while indulging them: No matter where it falters, the underlying purpose stays put.

To the Wonder renders the familiar terrain of romantic dysfunction on a grand scale. Malick haters may not change their tune, but at least they can admit that To the Wonder maintains a consistent thematic focus.

Unlike recent activist documentaries about animal cruelty like "The Cove," Leeman's narrative doesn't feature any real villains. Balding's bond with Flora leaves him in a perpetual state of uncertainty about which possible new home for his elephant would provide the safest habitat.

The sturdiest ingredient in 13TH is the testimony from people who clearly know what they’re talking about.

The appeal of El Planeta lies with a pair of women who prefer to live in the moment rather than considering its consequences.

The Coens get their cake and eat it, too: The lavish period details, paired with marvelous song-and-dance routines, work on their own terms while a firm self-awareness looms over every scene. It's a tricky balance indicative of directors who know exactly what they're going for: An old-fashioned homage to classic Hollywood and a send-up of the very same thing.

Post Mortem portrays the specter of dictatorship through the lens of one man's private hell.

The real triumph of Obvious Child involves its ability to make familiar ingredients work just fine on their own terms. In doing so, it makes up for a lot of lost time in the pantheon of female-centric comedies, and studios would be wise to take note.

Anchored by a funny and especially credible performance by newcomer Miles Teller, Ponsoldt's follow up to his alcoholism portrait "Smashed" has all the hallmarks of a bittersweet teen drama with flashes of realistic comedy on par with "Say Anything" and "The Breakfast Club."

Love & Mercy is an engrossing portrait of Wilson's specific artistic inclinations, which draw from no real precedent.

A totally wacky head-trip with midnight movie sensibilities and a daring avant garde spirit, Glazer's movie is ultimately too aimlessly weird to make its trippy narrative fully satisfying, but owes much to Johansson's intense commitment to a strangely erotic and unnerving performance unlike anything she has done before.

The Ivory Game may be a harsh wakeup call to anyone concerned about the future of the largest land mammal, but it’s also a keen evaluation of the efforts being made to correct the situation.

While it eventually devolves into exploring the terrifying prospects of something hairy lurking about in the shadows, Goldthwait uses that thrill factor to validate the commitment of Bigfoot believers. Willow Creek never feels like an attempt to proselytize, but it's a smart recognition of the dangers involved in doubt.

Wheatley’s commitment to crowdpleasing antics makes it difficult to stop and consider the lack of depth. In a universe of shootout clichés, Free Fire manages to carve out its own niche, where the proverbial last man standing matters less than the journey to get him there.

A bonafide family drama, proof that the noir has humanistic roots. It left me feeling thankful for persistent movie traditions.

Much of this quiet, slow-burn character study inhabits the dreary, remote quality of Doña’s existence, but with time, the movie pieces it together to reveal the emotional solitude lurking beneath that distant gaze.

Showing the uneasiness of a first-time documentarian, Rapaport has a difficult time exploring the drama. That has extended beyond the movie itself and into a long-running media dispute with Q-Tip, who has refused to plug the movie.

As a director, he finally shows a willingness to work on the same wavelength of the material instead of adding distracting bells and whistles that overstate his characters' grievances.

the film isn't always successful at justifying its heft, repeating the central father-daughter tension innumerable times before the pair finally start to make some progress. It's only thanks to the two actors' extraordinary authenticity that the film continues to work as long as it does.

Wright's extraordinary long takes draw you into the universe of Anna Karenina with a seamless approach that a straightforward literary adaptation could never accomplish.

Shelton’s work is understated, but elevates seemingly forgettable scenarios with a wise, humane approach that makes even a lesser work like Outside In a cut above the market standard.

Offers a wry snapshot of self-involved New York lesbians that’s both enjoyably smarmy and unsettling in equal doses.

Writer-director Ari Aster’s first feature culls from a tradition of slick, elegant genre filmmaking, making up what it lacks in originality with an impressive volume of atmospheric dread.

While its main characters are tough-minded, Rust and Bone is itself pure heart.

Pummeling forward from its first diner-set fight scene to a sweeping final showdown on the beach, Haywire is a literal blast.

Piponnier dominates every frame, with a mesmerizing screen presence that pushes the drama well beyond its formulaic premise and visible microbudget constraints.

Oppenheim relishes in the strange beauty of their lives with Rockwellian precision, and the bigger picture remains elusive throughout. Look closer, however, and the movie makes a sobering point, whether or not Oppenheim intended it — that the biggest threat to American identity isn’t confronting the nature of the society so much as the people who prefer to escape it altogether, ending their lives in solipsistic bliss.

While not his best work, Like Someone in Love is a nimble expression of Kiarostami's appeal: He remains one of the few directors capable of pulling you into a narrative and making you question its motives at every turn.

For Godard junkies Goodbye to Language is rich with Godard's temperament—and thus an enjoyable provocation, even if it doesn't all add up. But what Godard movie truly does?

Robot and Frank succeeds where "Ted" fails because, unlike McFarlane, Schreier and Ford render the relationship between the human character and the robot in largely credible terms.

Gibney's narrative drags to some extent when the focus widens to explore the Vatican's overall policy for covering up sex scandals, but he successfully demonstrates the systematic failure of a system designed work flawlessly on the basis of spirituality that never existed in the first place.

This poignant, minor-key work from the only major filmmaker to carry the torch of silent comedy into the 21st century is rich with feeling, even as it enters a self-reflexive zone that sometimes distracts from the legitimate concerns at its core.

Where "Bridesmaids" has plenty of solid gags, it's not much to look at; Submarine always has something impressive to watch even when its plot is on autopilot.

Stearns’ tone involves a tricky negotiation between the melancholy and the macabre. “The Art of Self-Defense” doesn’t always pull that balance off, but it has enough ambition and wacky payoff to make the zany gamble worthwhile.

Nothing about Dead Man's Burden reeks of homage to oaters of yore -- instead, Moshé has made a legitimate entry in a genre he clearly adores.

While the movie risks smothering the heart of its drama in all the movement and noise, the sheer sensory overload often leads to astonishing bursts of emotional sophistication.

Gray's fifth directorial effort is a conflicting experience admirable and powerfully executed in parts, cold and meandering in others.

The grim subtext of The Wind Rises goes largely unacknowledged, leading to a gaping hole in this otherwise beautifully realized narrative that celebrates the power of curiosity as a motivating force.

This is the story of evolving consciousness that leads to the birth of skepticism — and, more specifically, a mistrusting of authorities that yields the desire to seek out a better world.

Dealin' With Idiots is powered by a cast of terrific character actors.

A meditative universe of self-contained artistry, Junun offers no clear-eyed statement on its subject, but develops an enveloping internal logic about the thrill of artistic innovation.

Neruda turns all of the filmmaker's preceding statements on his native land into a unified whole. In essence, the film asserts that even as history passes into legend, it speaks to deeper truths.

It’s a fascinating role in an uneven but frequently insightful movie riddled with amusing asides and enigmatic developments, partly because Huppert doesn’t undergo a radical transformation. Instead, she subtly finds herself at war with her inner confidence, and it’s often hard to tell which side has the upper hand.

While nothing groundbreaking, the story mines a degree of profundity out of the traditional supernatural thriller tropes at its core.

It’s a remarkable educational experience for anyone eager to go back to the basics. In the process, it arrives at a deeper understanding of the underlying impulse, while delivering an emotionally resonant narrative with plenty of cute animals to spare.

Gugino and Greenwood deliver first-rate performances enriched by their characters’ ambiguous qualities.

With its subject still behind bars and the Russian government on the brink of reelecting Kremlin's United Russia party, the biggest triumph of Khodorkovsky is the case it makes for a sequel.

It lacks the same constant surprises of last year's "Gravity" or the visual poetry of "Mad Max: Fury Road," but Kormákur's movie nonetheless marks the rare fusion of effective craftsmanship with focused storytelling.

While at times too over-the-top and operatic for its own good, those same flawed ingredients echo the rough edges that define the movie's iconic subject.

Burton's id explodes onto the screen with a plethora of demonic mutated critters.

By making a satisfactory crowdpleaser that doesn’t overextend itself, Swanberg has delivered his most traditional movie to date — and for this prolific filmmaker, who spent ages defying conventions, that’s nothing short of a radical step forward.

Felix and Meira can only speak in vagaries about their feelings. At times they come across like underwritten archetypes, but the superficial aspects of their scenario are elevated by a pair of deeply empathetic performances. Giroux excels at implying his characters' internal processes.

Decker's narrative work practically celebrates a willingness to follow outright silly pathways in order to arrive at unsettling results.

It’s the stirring chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly as committed siblings that transforms these lively, violent circumstances into a sweet and intimate journey designed to catch acolytes of the genre off-guard.

Even as the movie lingers on the question of whether one woman has more talent than the other, Always Shine is an effective actor’s showcase for both of them.

Big Words at times seems like it's heading towards a microbudget version of "Hustle and Flow," but Drumming aims for a much smarter and subdued look at the various regrets and hang-ups haunting men of a certain age. Their blackness is only one piece of the puzzle.

As with Snowpiercer, this is a story almost too eager to fire in multiple directions, sometimes with messy results, veering from broad satire to softer exchanges with little regard for finding balance between the two.

Berberian Sound Studio constructs a perpetually strange, unseemly series of events overshadowed (and sometimes consumed by) the spooky movie-within-a-movie that hangs over every scene.

A quiet work with major ambitions, The Assistant is a significant cultural statement in cinematic form.

With its dense assemblage of archival materials and candid talking heads, “Roadrunner” gets the job done, yielding a tough, infuriating tribute to Bourdain’s ineffable genius and the tragic inclinations that came out of it.