Eric Kohn

The magic of Uncle Boonmee is that it makes all viewers feel like the strange ones.

Director Bennett Miller has produced a warm and generally agreeable character study about the pratfalls of athletic institutions and the willingness to think outside the box.

Strickland generates a discomfiting quality that keeps the mystery of his world in play. Above all else, he taps into the intangible elements of sexual attraction by bathing them in ambiguities.

Baker once again manages to match underrepresented faces in American cinema with material that lets their personalities shine.

Director Lenny Abrahamson seamlessly translates Donoghue's work into cinematic terms with his relentlessly compelling adaptation. However, the drama owes just as much to its two stars, Brie Larson and newcomer Jacob Tremblay, whose textured performances turn outrageous circumstances into a tense and surprisingly credible survival tale.

It's a sad, thoughtful depiction of midwestern eccentrics regretting the past and growing bored of the present, ideas that Payne regards with gentle humor and pathos but also something of a shrug.

No matter how much Mascaro reaches into the future, Divine Love retains an immediacy steeped in questions about the nature of faith, physical attraction, and the factors that can transform the personal into the political.

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.

What Now? Remind Me sketches out the tragedy of living a full life and being aware of it slipping away.

On the whole, Manakamana succeeds by creating the ongoing anticipation of something, anything to happen next, a wholly unique sensation specific to its inventive design.

Herzog naturally plays up the enigma at hand with epic grandeur, occasionally overdoing it but usually hitting the mark.

This is a quiet little masterpiece of images, each one rich with meaning, that collectively speak to a universal process.

It’s at once a celebration of individuality and its potential to unnerve those who resist it.

While not the same league as “Leviathan,” Zyvagintsev’s latest slow-burn look at anguished people tortured by problems beyond their control displays his mastery of the form.

The movie's stakes are alternately personal and political, but Petzold's skill truly comes into focus in the tense climax, when those two aims come together with a powerful act of defiance.

Ignore the precise religious context and it stands perfectly well as a restrained look at personal convictions in the face of certain death.

More traditional in terms of atmosphere and plot, Drug War nevertheless features a tense, unstoppable momentum, a morally ambiguous protagonist and hugely involving action scenes.

As Vitalina Varela proves, Costa empowers his subjects by framing them as majestic storytellers and letting their stories take charge.

Allah has loaded Black Mother with so many remarkable faces and observations that viewers can hover in its details with ghostly ubiquity, and he only breaks the spell with the recurring image of a nude woman holding a coconut to ground us in some kind of structural trajectory.

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.

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.

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.

Equal parts journalistic investigation and family portrait, Ford’s delicate project transforms the source of his frustrations into an absorbing cinematic elegy.

Steve James's The Interrupters runs long, but earns its heft.

The movie never lacks for insights into the nature of the disconnect.

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

The director’s most ambitious work to date is a wildly successful romantic heist comedy, propelled from scene to scene with a lively soundtrack that elevates its slick chase scenes into a realm of musicality that develops its own satisfying beat.

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.