Eric Kohn

Reichardt crafts a highly textured narrative that both invokes the mythology of the American frontier and cleverly transcends it.

Maoz maintains such a riveting formalism that everything seems to fit together.

The unexpected love child of Wong Kar-wai and Andrei Tarkovsky, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” transforms from a lush, slow-burn pastiche to an audacious filmmaking gamble while maintaining the pictorial sophistication of its earlier section. It’s both languorous and eye-popping at once.

Potrykus’ movies are fixated on the self-destruction inherent to all capitalist systems, and there may be no better avatar for this concern than a brain-dead dude playing video games until the end of time.

Haunting and celebratory at once, Heart of a Dog ultimately amounts to a contemplation of mortality.

Shot in gorgeously expressionistic black-and-white and fusing multiple genres into a thoroughly original whole, Amirpour has crafted a beguiling, cryptic and often surprisingly funny look at personal desire that creeps up on you with the nimble powers of its supernatural focus.

Epic in scope yet unassuming throughout, Linklater's incredibly involving chronicle marks an unprecedented achievement in fictional storytelling.

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.

Melancholia hovers in ambiguity with riveting aesthetic prowess.

The excitement in The Soft Skin, however, gives way to an intense tragedy that's INFORMED by the thrills.

Taking its time to let the world take shape, Short Term 12 builds to an involving series of mini-climaxes without tidying up every loose end.

As with every beautiful, unearthly segment of "Pigeon," the only certainty is life's endlessly puzzling nature.

Moonlight transforms rage and frustration into unadulterated intimacy. In this mesmerizing portrait of a suffocating world, the only potential catharsis lies in acknowledging it as Chiron so deeply wishes he could. Despite the somber tone, Moonlight is a beacon of hope for the prospects of speaking up.

Roma is by far the most experimental storytelling in a career filled with audacious (and frequently excessive) gimmicks. Here, he tables the showiness of “Children of Men” and “Gravity” in favor of ongoing restraint, creating a fresh kind of intimacy. Like a grand showman working overtime to tone things down, he lures viewers into an apparently straightforward scene, only to catch them off guard with new information.

The Mole Agent may not look like a documentary, but it builds to a poetic finale enmeshed in emotional authenticity.

Flee becomes his cinematic catharsis, as Amin recounts his journey in fits and starts, while the animation turns his memories into a bracing adventure that doubles as modern history.

It’s a powerful look at the durability of parent-child bonds as well as a fascinating psychological thriller about what it takes to heal such a rift when it seems irreparable.

The Irishman is alive with Scorsese’s trademark style.

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.

A nuanced tale of mutual attraction that reflects a filmmaker and cast operating at the height of their powers, rendering complex circumstances in strikingly personal terms.

The filmmakers have instead provided a brilliant window into the impact of the contemporary media circus on public life. While not exactly a figure of sympathy — he lied, after all, more than once — Weiner nevertheless maintains the charisma and drive to provide the movie with one of the most compelling anti-heroes in recent memory.

Rather than relish in the stark proceedings, Manuscripts Don't Burn preys on its viewers' imagination, leaving several deaths and other dreary outcomes off-screen. In the unbearable tension of its final moments, the movie arrives at an expected destination, but the outcome stings more than anything preceding it.

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.

First Cousin Once Removed benefits from the clarity provided by Honig's published poetry, which surfaces in voiceover narration and words on the screen, rendering the undulations of his life in sweeping abstractions.

Despite the ongoing momentum, Sleepless Night never loses touch with its story.

The director’s most outwardly accessible movie in ages, Phantom Thread is at once an evocative period drama and a magical fable about lonely, solipsistic people finding solace in their mutual sense of alienation.

A wholly original and thoroughly surprising fusion of sensory overload and liberal philosophy bound to confuse and provoke in equal measures.

Heinzerling's beautifully shot, painfully intimate look at the aging couple's struggle to survive amid personal and financial strain is both heartbreaking and intricately profound. This is a story about creative desire so strong it hurts.

It's a frantic microcosm of life itself.

The Troll Hunter offers high-caliber entertainment despite a low-budget production.

Compared to "The Act of Killing," Oppenheimer's technique with The Look of Silence is deceptively simple, but it applies a more traditional style of documentary storytelling to extraordinary goals.

The cumulative impact of The Arbor is one of claustrophobia; at times, the endlessly downbeat adventures of Dunbar and her offspring grow almost unbearably morose.

The Tiniest Place calls to mind Patricio Guzmán's brilliant "Nostalgia for the Light," which focuses on the remnants of Chilean atrocities strewn about the Atacama Desert. Huezo, however, relies more on irony, juxtaposing the wartime setting with storybook images, acknowledging her distance from the events in question.

Visually scrumptious and slickly told, Creative Control illustrates the power of groundbreaking technology while also indicting its extremes.

Rather than building towards the finality of a single climax, Leviathan injects several of them into the tapestry of its elegant design.

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

Ornette isn't just a love letter to the liberty of jazz rhythms; it excels at expressing them.

Byington excels at turning the edict that time waits for no one into a sensory experience. No matter how sly it gets, Somebody Up There Likes Me still retains that fundamental truth.

Buzzard is among the first great American satires of the 21st century, its scathing indictment of capitalism delivered as a prolonged, disorienting punchline.

Carried by an appropriately low-key Adam Driver and Jarmusch's casual genius for capturing offhand remarks, Paterson is his most absorbing character study since "Broken Flowers" -- and far more grounded in real life. There's no context necessary to recognize it as his most personal work.

By the end of I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin’s words have transcended the boundaries of their era and become timeless, functioning as both a celebration of cultural survival and a warning that the battle for its survival won’t stop anytime soon.

The Academy of Muses draws viewers in and forces them to take sides along with Pinto’s skeptical apprentices. By its end, the movie has transcended the boundaries of the classroom to become an educational experience in more ways than one.

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

As with "Shotgun Stories," Nichols assembles a tense portrait of blue-collar life, while deepening his thematic interests and working on a bigger scale. Burrowing into the subconscious of a damaged man, he delivers a modern American epic with extraordinary restraint.

More than a powerful elegy, 12 Years a Slave is a mesmerizing triumph of art and polemics: McQueen turns a topic rendered distant by history into an experience that, short of living through the terrible era it depicts, makes you feel as if you've been there.

The beautiful desolation of Bombay Beach makes it difficult to describe as a documentary. Alma Har'el's directorial debut takes a nonfiction setting and displays its haunting qualities in poetic terms.

Before Midnight is the rare cinematic achievement that implicates alert viewers in its mission to understand the mysteries of intimate connections.

At first galvanizing in its depiction of survival amid dire circumstances, "The Overnighters" transforms into a devastating portrait of communal unrest.

If Uncut Gems leaves people rattled, disoriented, grasping for clarity in the chaos of one man’s hectic routine, that all speaks to the sheer precision of a visionary achievement in full control.

While adhering to an internal logic that makes each punchline land with a satisfying burst of glee, the movie nevertheless stems from genuine fury aimed a broken world. It's the rare storytelling endeavor that manages to be laughably absurd and profoundly tragic at the same time.

Bigelow delivers an acute realization of the mission's execution that's eerily in sync with the way it played in the popular imagination. Visually, the events unfold as a mashup of shadowy movements with flashes of green night vision. It's simultaneously predictable and tense.

Lyrically involving and deeply sensual, Neon Bull showcases a full-bodied artist in command of his form.

The endless chaos of nature embodies the abstract threat of imminent destruction; by imbuing these shots with a combination of mystical allure and darker possibilities, Diaz creates a haunting atmosphere that makes it possible to absorb the story even when it slows to a crawl.

From its opening moments to the devastating finale, Collective plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of “Spotlight” with the paranoid uncertainty of “The Manchurian Candidate” as it explores the national fallout of a tragedy that won’t let up.

Stories We Tell marks the finest of Polley's filmmaking skills by blending intimacy and intrigue to remarkable effect.

With up-close footage of police beatings and hordes of angry protestors calling for the country's president to resign, Winter on Fire features the intensity of an action movie and the fury of a clear-eyed polemic.

In constructing its gripping overview, After Tiller maintains a generally straightforward roundup of talking heads, but its unassuming construction gradually generates an authoritative voice. Only once the arguments have been plainly established does the emotion truly take hold.

The Descendants constantly hovers on the brink of a dark comedy. But it never takes the big plug. By treading carefully, Payne has created his warmest, most earnest work, if not his best.

Showcases Jones' ability to provide ample entertainment value with sharply drawn characters in a minimalist setting.

Omar maintains an unsettling rhythm of suspense and sociopolitical critique throughout.

While blatantly topical, this is not a political film of the moment, but rather a calculated meditation on self-defined purpose in the midst of societal confusion.

Using a remarkable personal lens, the film examines the reverberations of propaganda on broken families across multiple generations. The cumulative effect creates the sense that its destructive effects continue to be felt well beyond China’s borders.

Although Madsen's survey of warning strategies has an aimless structure prone to repetition, he creates an effective mood that transcends his time-travel gimmick and eventually becomes topical.

This searing brand of humor has never felt more essential. Blending activism with entertainment, Baron Cohen’s best movie to date gives us new reasons to be afraid of the world, but also permission to laugh at it.

It's an unflinching update to media scholar Neil Postman's prophetic claim about the deadly impact of television on cultural identity: Smartphones in hand, we face the danger of filming ourselves to death.

I had to see the new version twice to realize that there's so much to appreciate about this multilayered production.

Not every moment stimulates a belly laugh, but that’s part of the point. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea is more thoughtful than meets the eye, a cockeyed ode to what it feels like when nobody takes you seriously.

Mackenzie (whose previous credits include "Perfect Sense" and "Young Adam") applies a sharp kitchen sink realism to this haunting setting and directs it toward an ultimately moving family drama that just happens to involve vicious convicts.

It may go without saying that Poetry adopts a lyrical tone, but this forms the crux of its appeal. In this case, the title says it all.

In Tamhane’s dreamy, transcendent character study, the undulating raga melodies serve as a transformative portal to self-discovery that places the audiences in the confines of its entrancing power.

Think "Death of a Salesman" with demons.

Sister may not arrive at a happy ending, but the lack of resolution -- capped off by the powerful last image --completes its journey to a place of rousing emotional clarity.

The movie makes a strong case against the captivity of killer whales under sub-circus conditions, but the stance is made even more horrifying because so little has changed in the history of the organization. Blackfish is less balanced investigation than full-on takedown of a broken system.

A rich, almost impermeably strange example of Costa's slow-burn approach to abstract storytelling, Horse Money is more subdued and cryptic than its predecessors, to the point where it might be more appropriately described as a cinematic tone poem.

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.

Gunda may be a meditational slow-burn, but as it unfurls its immersive audiovisual tapestry it hovers between non-fiction observation and lyrical insight, and to that end feels like an advancement of the nature documentary form.

Director Jeff Feuerzeig tracks Albert’s bizarre scheme in her own words, constructing a fascinating treatise on creative desire, internal grievances and fame as compelling as anything the writer herself dreamed up.

If Beale Street Could Talk stalls about halfway through with less involving developments and stilted roles for supporting characters...but it always regains its footing with another entrancing observation.

While not aspiring to the heights of the texts underscoring his work, Piñero displays a daring formalism that transcends its many inspirations to find its own unique rhythms.

By favoring mood over plot, "Myth" explores what it feels like to transition into youth adulthood and face harsher truths.

With Smith's memories as the subject, Fetzer constructs a compelling cinematic experiment that turns the actor's monologue into a feature-length movie, and the result holds as much appeal as the solitary member of the cast.

Memoria is more meditation than movie, a transfixing deep-dive into the profound challenges of relating to people and places from the outside in.

Upstream Color is routinely confusing but not oppressively so; its final exquisite moments explain little yet still manage to invite you in.

American action movies are almost entirely defined by cutaways, blaring music cues and grunts. The Raid: Redemption, a hyper-energetic Indonesian martial arts movie, delivers an effective rebuke to that meek norm. Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since "The Bourne Ultimatum" to instant shame.

Burning keeps twisting back on itself, charting the path of a man waking up to the world, only to find that it won’t stop messing with him.

It's the closest thing to a magnum opus in Arnold's blossoming career.

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

With its bouncy soundtrack, deadpan humor and good-natured disposition, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre is an endearing affair.

Never indulging in outright scare tactics or loose improvisation, the movie primarily works like an awkward narrative that plays with perspective.

Lady Bird is both snarky and sincere — a touching, markedly feminine ode to growing up that never takes its familiarity for granted. Gerwig earns the ability to make this rite-of-passage saga her own.

Jacobs, working from a script by Patrick de Witt, takes a conventional coming-of-age story and does it proud, enlivening the plot with an almost experimental portrait of alienation and despair.

The conflict in The Attack is less about the reasoning behind immoral behavior than the problems involved in any cursory understanding of it.

You couldn’t ask for a better match between filmmaker and subject.

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

Once again, Shults has delivered a top-notch psychological thriller, but It Comes at Night builds an unnerving atmosphere around unspecified sci-fi circumstances.

In "Adventureland" and this summer's "The Way Way Back," disillusioned teens have worked through their issues in the weeks leading up to college by taking on quirky summer jobs. However, Carey's wacky sensibilities retain a notably fresh quality by using the same framing device as an excuse to bat around one funny idea after another. The story transcends the derivative scenario through a noticeable lack of verbal censorship.

Mangrove is a taut and thrilling judicial drama that transcends the genre even while acknowledging its barriers.

Imagine "Harold and Maude" directed by Eric Rohmer with shades of film noir and doused in philosophical chatter enhanced by ample white wine. But Domain isn't pure formula, because the subversion of expectations is its centerpiece.

Support the Girls is a humble, restrained movie, at times aimless as it moves along, but never devoid of keen observations.

In Oculus, the horror is at once deceptively simple and rooted in a deep, primal uneasiness. Its scariest aspects are universally familiar.

With its intimate focus, Menashe avoids indicting the strict logic that stifles its anti-hero’s individuality (though secular viewers can reach their own conclusions). Instead, it succeeds at showing how his challenges are more universal than judgmental viewers might think.

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

Tales from the Grim Sleeper concludes by offering up the haunting possibility that even if the killer has been caught, the systemic failures that let him get away with it for so long remain firmly in place.

The reality-show aesthetic pervades the movie as well. Garrone's roaming camera style draws you into each moment with extreme close-ups and long takes that wander through each scene and get lost in it. Luciano's plight is crushing because Garrone renders it with such detail.

Greene's patient, understated portrait renders a universal rite of passage in strangely alluring, poetic terms.

In Another Country is a paragon of any given Hong movie's intrinsic charms, and yet it also manages to break from the pattern by including an English-speaking character as one of its leads.

Ever as it casts their future prospects in doubt, Virunga concludes by envying the apes’ perspective most of all.

The movie is an impressively realized work of minimalist storytelling that foregrounds Redford's physicality more than any other role in his celebrated career. His performance defines the movie to an almost shockingly experimental degree.

The Witch becomes a focused portrait of fixed rituals crumbling in the face of inexplicable forces, evoking the fear of change lurking in the shadows at every moment. Despite the setting, its scares are uniquely contemporary.

Smart in spite of its irreverence, "Future Folk" is the weirdest, most enjoyable fusion of genres you'll see this year.

A disorienting puzzle of a movie with many exhilarating pieces, Anomalisa nevertheless maintains a straightforward trajectory involving Michael's internal strife.

It’s a striking combination of analysis and creative innovation that communes with the past and present, uniting them as a beautiful, absurdist tone poem about the struggles facing those dealt less fortunate hands in life.

The story transitions from a believable portrait of young culture junkies into a showcase of Matt's burgeoning rage so well that it practically implicates viewers in the process.

Thru You Princess develops a fairy tale quality that calls into question the nature of its production. However, the air of manipulation throughout the story only helps to pronounce its themes.

The tense, involving result confirms Sciamma's mastery over the coming-of-age drama, a genre too often reduced to its simplest ingredients.

Kedi is a playful and poignant look at the complex nature of the creatures and their inherent appeal to humankind.

The first-time director's refreshingly credible portrait of a boho character with Middle Eastern origins rectifies the aforementioned canonical gap in a witty, naturalistic generational snapshot.

Seimetz has conjured a beguiling narrative so tapped into the current worldwide panic that it might have been made in its aftermath.

After such powerful momentum, the brothers don’t quite stick the landing, but it’s a thrill to watch them try.

Despite the unruly music at its center, the filmmaker has crafted a uniformly gentle ode to growing up.

With a keen eye for the capacity of fine art to address a complex range of attitudes and experiences, Museum Hours effectively applies Cohen's existing strengths to a familiar scenario and rejuvenates it by delivering a powerfully contemplative look at the transformative ability of all art.

At every turn, the movie casts a haunting spell.

With its persistent inventiveness and a lack of unearned sentimentality, the movie provides an antidote to a lot of lazily produced dramas about death, American or otherwise.

Film Socialism is a weighty, intentionally cryptic product that's easy on the eyes and heavy on the mind.

Mills fashions the set-up for an overwrought, thoroughly depressing character study into an oddly charming comedy. It's a midlife crisis gently portrayed with sympathy rather than grief.

Weekend builds into a powerful encapsulation of an identity crisis over the course of three passionate days.

Pull back from the moment-to-moment thrill of Inside Out and it gets very deep: The scenario implicitly questions standard definitions of free will by suggesting that we're all slaves to ghosts in the machine.

“REC” delivers a steady stream of frights because its camera man never knows quite where to look — and by the time he figures it out, it might be too late.

It’s a stunning showcase for Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe to unleash their wildest extremes, by positioning them at the center of a two-hander about a descent into madness in the middle of nowhere. It’s the best movie about bad roommates ever made.

Portraying a generation so energized by possibilities that it was bound to be let down, Eden offers a wise assessment of the interplay between fantasy and reality on the path to adulthood. The seductive rhythms are a perfect match for a movie that analyzes the unstoppable flow of life.

'71 constantly thrills without sensationalizing its surprises. The war-is-hell ethos drives it forward, so that the movie retains its suspense in conjunction with its dour outlook.

The movie works as a fascinating psychological dissection, and avoids any precise judgement of Carman’s habits.

Nathan never condescends to Pug or his cohorts, instead smartly allowing their brazen maneuvers to run the show.

A remarkable refashioning of the Holocaust drama that reignites the setting with extraordinary immediacy, Son of Saul is both terrifying to watch and too gripping in its moment-to-moment to look away.

Director Denis Villeneuve goes beyond the call of duty, with a lush, often mind-blowing refurbishing of the original sci-fi aesthetic that delves into its complex epistemological themes just as much as it resurrects an enduring spectacle.

Moore’s compassionate performance confirms the strength of the original and its beloved heroine’s universal appeal. More than that, Gloria Bell proves that the best stories can be told endlessly, so long as they’re told well.

A labyrinthine descent into the grotesque extremes of a Disneyfied society, Escape From Tomorrow is surreal for many reasons and wholly original because of them. It's also a daring attempt to literally assail Disney World from the inside out.

A less controlled and slapdash character piece than "In Bruge," McDonagh's new movie benefits greatly from a plethora of one-liners that toy with crime movie clichés in the unlikely context of writerly obsessions.

Hyams delivers a remarkably satisfying action-thriller hybrid that constantly pushes ahead. It's one of the best action movies of the year simply because it keeps hitting the right beats.

Certainly his most deeply felt achievement, Her is both distinctly Jonze-like and something altogether different, as if the filmmaker has gone through a software update not unlike his artificial character.

Mind-blowing in the best possible way, The Ornithologist may not work for everyone, but those willing to embrace its puzzling ingredients will find a rewarding solution: further confirmation of a genuine film artist.

One of European cinema’s most unclassifiable auteurs has delivered the bitter pill we deserve.

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

More meditation than movie, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is bound to mystify, awe and exasperate in equal measures.

With time, the filmmaker achieves a small miracle by stringing together the movie's concise segments into an emotional whole.

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.

Incredibly heartfelt to a large degree because of its cast.

A dense collection of inquisitive, unpredictable and often life-affirming responses to the pandemic from some of the most astute directors working today, Homemade is pure filmmaking talent in bite-sized pieces that doubles as a lively, scattershot collage of the world in 2020.

Striking a complex tone of tragedy and uplift at the same time, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter both celebrates the escapist power of personal fantasies and bears witness to their dangerous extremes. It's the rare case of a story that's inspirational and devastating at once.

Once the movie arrives at its brilliant climax, the cumulative effects of passing details lead to sweeping payoff.

Although not exactly heartwarming, Amour has a more contained vision of human relationships than Haneke's previous films without sacrificing its bleak foundation. It's his most conventional movie about death -- and the most poignant.

While it has many familiar ingredients — from the atmosphere to the ensemble of Anderson regulars in nearly every role — in its allegiance to Anderson's vision, everything about The Grand Budapest Hotel is a welcome dose of originality.

It's incredibly uneventful and devastating all at once.

Gandolfini deserves an Oscar for Enough Said not because it's the culmination of everything that came before it but rather because it goes in a completely different direction. And his least characteristic achievement is also one of his best.

Suleiman's most poignant moments are largely wordless. Nothing feels more affecting than Suleiman's ubiquitous frozen stare. Although he never utters a sound, his silence speaks volumes about the inability to resolve the social ramifications of Middle Eastern strife.

Nobody else could fit the role of a crestfallen rocker that Paul Dano embodies in director So Yong Kim's remarkable For Ellen.

Aided by “Under the Skin” composer Micah Levi’s thunderous score, Landes delivers a suspenseful encapsulation of alienated youth enmeshed in pointless battles that can only lead to further destruction.

At once a gripping jungle survival thriller and an alluring sci-fi puzzle, Garland’s heady gambit confirms he’s one of the genre’s best working filmmakers.

A comedy of remarriage buried in intellectual abstraction and cinephilic obsessions, Certified Copy wanders a bit but never loses focus, with the only certainty being that its gimmick is genuine.

Under the fastidious guidance of writer-director Johnson, The Last Jedi turns the commercial restrictions of this behemoth into a Trojan horse for rapid-fire filmmaking trickery and narrative finesse. The result is the most satisfying entry in this bumpy franchise since “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980.

Moment to moment, Birdman manages to shift gears, its roaming camera revealing new surprises as it glides along. That degree of unpredictability provides it with the ultimate response to the sea of formulaic mediocrities at the center of its critique.

Under the Shadow smartly observes the emotions stirred up by a world defined by restrictions, and the terrifying possibility that they might be inescapable.

Guided by Jóhannsson’s ethereal score, this dazzling apocalyptic immersion blends cosmic 16mm black-and-white images of Yugoslavian architecture with a deadpan Tilda Swinton voiceover, resulting in a profound lyrical rumination on the end of days.

Brilliantly combining archival material, voiceovers, contemporary interviews and a variety of hand-drawn animation, the movie deconstructs the process of self-mythologizing from the inside out.

In Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the touching and insightful survey of Rogers’ decades-spanning career from Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville (“Twenty Feet From Stardom”), the filmmaker highlights Rogers’ capacity to explore complex themes through the lens of a kid’s program that took a dead-serious approach to his young viewers’ needs.

On the whole, by ceding control to his subject, Hawke makes a persuasive case for Bernstein's guru-like outlook on the value of finding personal gratification in art above all else.

An ode to art for art's sake, Inside Llewyn Davis is the most innocent movie of the Coens' career, which in their case is a downright radical achievement.

TransFatty Lives stands out less for its inherently emotional topic than the appealing personality at its center.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets may not be the straight-faced documentary it looks like, but it’s a sober-eyed document of our times nonetheless.

Cutting between various chilling anecdotes of sinister late night visions and horrifying reenactments, The Nightmare manages a tricky balance of visceral fright and sincere investigation. It's a rare non-fiction achievement that earns the ability to freak you out.

A delicately wrought ensemble piece with first-rate turns by Gillian Jacobs, Keegan-Michael Key, and Birbiglia himself, Don't Think Twice scrutinizes its playful setting and finds an ideal entry point for exploring creative desperation.

While it doesn't always earn its heft, Winter Sleep is both subdued and rich in details, its plot growing slowly over a series of extensive conversations. It's a robust, challenging experience he's been building toward with his previous features, as well as an adventurous step above them.

Even as The Keeping Room plays with formulaic ingredients, it manages to combine them into an eloquent portrait of gender, race and the constant march of time without overstating any of its potent themes.

Bizarre and challenging when it's not outright goofy, Wiener-Dog never feels remotely compromised. Somehow hilarious and gloomy at the same time, it represents a big middle finger to anyone who wishes Solondz would lighten up.

Representing lower-class violence taken to an extreme, the cannibalism cannot be contained by police work. The movie's gradual build to a thrilling, appropriately bloody climax intensifies this disconnect.

This sharp two-hander veers from caustic to sweet with acrobatic filmmaking to spare.

[A] mesmerizing debut ... Sound of Metal injects visceral, edgy circumstances with remarkable sensitivity.

While Zagar doesn’t force the material into many surprising places, it’s a fully realized tapestry, owing much to the complex, layered score by Nick Zammuto that hums through nearly every scene, and frequent cutaways to hand-drawn animation based on the scrapbook that Jonah stores under his bed at night.

As a sociological experiment, Five Star offers plenty of talking points, but its real triumph is that the cast delivers, yielding a story in which the heightened suspense emerges organically from a gritty foundation of realism.

To Die Like a Man deserves your attention for showcasing a filmmaker with the capacity for bold narrative trickery that doesn't come at the expense of emotional investment.

Directors Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews' directorial debut (from Matthews' screenplay) centers on a highly unlikable character who has alienated himself from social responsibility -- and forces you to sympathize with him against all odds.

Lowery manages to find entertainment value and genuine intrigue from his outlandish scenario, synthesizing the magical realism of his earlier films with a tighter grasp of tone.

Gemini resists easy categorization, evades tidy plot points and sometimes lead to frustrating dead ends. But it’s an absorbing world defined by open-ended possibilities, a kind of comedic psychological thriller in which the thrills exist in air quotes.

At times, Frances Ha strains from emphasizing the characters' snarkiness and disregarding plot. By routinely going nowhere, however, the movie eventually finds a distinctive voice that carries it through.

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

Kazan has fun with a silly premise and smartly plays it straight when the occasion calls for it, while keeping the cutesy, fantastical extremes of the material at bay. It's less fairy tale than shrewd exaggeration on the pratfalls of desire.

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

Creed does justice to its roots while trying something new.

Computer Chess excels at conveying the frustrations of feeling trapped by forces beyond one's control, the complexities of humanity irresolvable by any neat code.

Dickinson's hauntingly naturalistic look at disgruntled young adults trapped in the country following an urban disaster plays like "Martha Marcy May Marlene" transported to a post-apocalyptic survival narrative -- with lots of yoga and sex.

In each tense moment, Miss Bala has a lot to say in a few words.

Poitras, an expert filmmaker as keyed into pace and mood as the topic they support, delivers a mesmerizing look at both how Snowden managed to release his information as well as why it all matters.

Love Is Strange is a sophisticated take on contemporary urbanity infused with romantic ideals and the tragedy of their dissolution.

While not designed to entertain on the level of style and spectacle that one expects from a Bond film, this tense period drama from the director of "Man on Wire" presents a far more credible take on the daring exploits of British agents.

Anchored by a sensational Charlotte Rampling as its lead, the movie combines Haigh's perceptive style with shades of Mike Leigh's "Another Year" to create a quietly moving and deceptively tragic look at aging romance haunted by past mysteries.

Like "Afterschool," Durkin's first feature explores the dangerous extremes of youth vulnerability.

McCarthy elevates the material at every opportunity, and whenever the camera lingers on her expressions, she’s a study in contradictions — tough and tender all at once, unsure which side of that spectrum to unleash.

The poetic rhythm with which Hartley brings three movies of events to an end is a tight, gripping expression of closure.

Playing make believe with murderers, Oppenheimer risks the possibility of empowering them. However, by humanizing psychopathic behavior, The Act of Killing is unparalleled in its unsettling perspective on the dementias associated with dictatorial extremes.

Swanberg once again shows a capacity for capturing small moments that exist outside the direction of the plot. At the same time, the effective fragments of "Drinking Buddies" take his oeuvre in a new direction by accumulating into a reworking big picture.

There's no doubting that Holy Motors is an ungodly mess of images and moments, some more alluring than others, but it sure leaves a mark.

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.

Stillness dominates, from the first shots of cornfields at sunrise to the final one that finds Helmer lying among them. When "It's All So Quiet" comes full circle, the title is virtually an understatement.

In the struggle to tell a story, Panahi reveals the redemptive power of art. No longer issuing desperate pleas, he has turned to cinema for the sake of survival.

This is an idea familiar to anyone who has waded through Bigelow's universe of conspiratorial agendas in which no good deed goes unpunished, and might not be a good deed at all. Cartel Land plants that dilemma in our backyard, and ends with the tangible perception that it won't go away anytime soon.

The Florida Project further cements Baker’s status as one of the most innovative American directors working today, but he’s also an essential advocate for the stories this country often doesn’t get to see.

That the movie succeeds both as a high-stakes crime thriller as well as a far quieter and empathetic study of angry, solitary men proves that Cianfrance has a penchant for bold storytelling and an eye for performances to carry it through.

Ultimately, Widows works as well as it does due to the way McQueen juggles substance with entertainment value to such eager subversive ends. The movie engages with topics as complex as sexism, police brutality, and interracial marriage, but it still delivers on the car chases and gunplay.

Rather than smothering the material in bad vibes, the filmmaker uses them to gradually reveal a fascinating world in which anger and resentment becomes the only weapon any of these people know how to wield.

Though at times almost too peculiar for its own good, The Lobster brings Lanthimos' distinct blend of morbid, deadpan humor and surrealism to a broader canvas without compromising his ability to deliver another thematically rich provocation.

This movie unfolds like artwork etched into a cave wall and brought to restless life by an unclassifiable spell that only cinema can muster.

Exhibition infuses its cerebral exposition with a strong dose of humanity.

The best comedy of its kind since "Superbad," Wilde’s slick, unpredictable romp can sometimes feel like several movies at once. This riotous, candy-colored celebration of sisterhood is so dense with anarchic developments it often threatens to collapse into itself, but avoids lingering on any gag long enough to let that happen.

If you can groove with Jarmusch's patient, philosophical indulgences and the wooden exteriors of his characters' lives, the movie rewards with a savvy emotional payoff about moving forward even when the motivation to do so has gone.

Despite the cerebral formalism that pushes it forward, Mond has made a genuine tearjerker.

A viscerally charged movie that foregrounds surface tensions and gripping performances, Ginger and Rosa is the filmmaker's most accessible and technically surefooted work to date.

I Wish embraces blissful ignorance, even celebrating its child characters' naivete.

For American audiences, each gag has added appeal because it contains an uneasy humor that's often explored but never fully exploited in these parts.

You couldn't ask for a more appropriate genre of music to carry a movie. As Didier explains the bluegrass appeal, "the banjo sort of snarls," bringing a primal form of energy that even he can't put into words. It's also the element that manages to rescue "Broken Circle" from the meandering nature of its structural looseness, which sometimes distracts from a thoroughly involving story.

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.

An emotionally riveting documentary that may very well be the most powerful group therapy ever caught on camera.

Unable to express the sorrow of Cory's passing or the larger sense of detachment from the world it represents, most of the people in Putty Hill try to remain disaffected. By pestering them with questions, Porterfield gets under their skin - and, in the process, ours as well.

Mr. Turner is a first-rate match of director and subject. Less an explication of the man's genius than an immersion into its essence.

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? bears the stamp of Gondry quirk but allows it to feel a lot more intimate than anything he's done since "Eternal Sunshine."

Farhadi's new movie confirms his unique ability to explore how constant chatter and anguished outbursts obscure the capacity for honest communication.

Simmien both mocks and provokes the nature of our seemingly progressive times by illuminating misguided assumptions and fears embedded in forward-thinking discourse. But Simien's relentless screenplay is never too self-serious or didactic, instead pairing culturally-savvy brains with a goofy grin.

Oscillating from intimate father-daughter exchanges to surreal meta-fictional tangents, the movie lives within its riveting paradox, reflecting the queasy uncertainty surrounding its subject’s fate.

Gaspar Noé’s remarkable psychedelic ride is his most focused achievement, a concise package of sizzling dance sequences and jolting developments that play like a slick mashup of the “Step Up” franchise and “Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” not to mention the disorienting cinematic trickery of Noé’s own provocative credits.

The Killing of Two Lovers moves at such an involving pace that it’s easy to get lost in the tension of the moment and forget we’ve seen countless iterations of this scenario before.

While Entertainment lacks the focused critique of "The Comedy," it nevertheless offers a fascinating look at the tension between personal aspirations and the harsh realities holding them back.

The movie provokes the wonder and terror of what it means to live in a world where every resolution brings new questions, and the prospects that a happy ending might carry the greatest risk of all.

It’s “Veep” in the Soviet Union, a welcome expansion of Iannucci’s canvas that keeps his savage comedy intact.

The small miracle of director Andrea Arnold’s experiential documentary is that it enacts its simple premise in straightforward terms, but assembles them into a profound big picture.

Duplass' feisty energy is matched by DeWitt's constant smarminess, while Blunt's shy, fragile behavior balances off the forceful personalities surrounding her.

Once again, Reichardt has crafted a wondrous little story about two friends roaming the natural splendors of the Pacific Northwest, searching for their place in the world. The appeal of this hypnotic, unpredictable movie comes from how they find that place through mutual failure, and the nature of that outcome in the context of an early, untamed America has rich implications that gradually seep into the frame.

With the shift from conventional rock doc into something more sophisticated, As the Palaces Burn remains enthralling all the way through.

Ventos de Agosto presents such an extraordinary portrait of rural life that its textures often overwhelm the narrative.

The contrast between the movie’s traditional execution and Stritch’s domineering powers create the lingering sense that she may be the project’s true auteur.

Even if Lovers Rock hovers somewhere between episode and movie on paper, it’s undoubtedly cinematic art, working small wonders with a sophisticated blend of minor-key storytelling and vibrant choreography that transforms the entire experience into a free-form musical.

Gravity lets you visit space without sugarcoating its dangers. It's a brilliant portrait of technology gone wrong that uses it just right.

Whereas "45365" took the form of a scattered collage, with disconnected events and a vast ensemble of characters stitched together to represent a year of activity, Tchoupitalas brings greater clarity to a similarly diffuse canvas by situating it around a trio of innocent observers.

It portrays the struggle from the inside, from about as far from the filter of mainstream media as one can get, capturing tense shootouts and the extremes of revolutionary spirit in unnerving detail.

It might not change anyone’s mind about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, but Mayor presents a fresh window into the challenges of leadership on the latter half of that equation.

The story arrives at a satisfying emotional conclusion with wonderfully thoughtful ramifications.

Kechiche excels at capturing his protagonist's emergence in the world.

Holiday is a fearless work, anchored by Sonne’s bold, subtle performance, which keeps her motivation unclear until a burst of developments at the startling conclusion.

With an editing approach that seamlessly blends past and present, Central Park Five contains a fluid, engaging storytelling that does away with the dry voiceover commentary and theatrical music choices that typically account for the narrative flow of most Burns films.

From one mesmerizing scene to the next, The Tribe never loses its flow. Even its harshest moments are defined by vibrant motion.

This could be a recipe for excessive self-indulgence, but the meta quality of Red Flag is entirely irrelevant to its low key charm and persistent irreverence -- anchored, as always, by Karpovsky's loopy screen presence.

Possibly the best war movie of the year.

Cheatin' is gleefully enjoyable and loaded with unexpected twists at every turn.

With a dense, often impermeable style and a mentally unstable protagonist, Simon Killer is like watching the disturbed anti-hero of "Afterschool" all grown up.

The brilliance of the movie lies in how it starts from a familiar place, then sneaks into transcendence.

Much of the movie relies on Cotillard's jittery expressions as she veers from tentatively hopeful to despondent and back again, sometimes within a matter of minutes, reflecting the ever-changing stability of job security among the lower class.

Frammartino keeps the material engaging simply by aiming the camera at his subjects and letting the material organically emerge-rather than enforcing the supernatural element with overstatement.

Aferim! amounts to a serious endeavor designed to explore many facets of its era through the lens of people trapped in it. Their crude dialogue, real as it may be, hints at comedic possibilities while offering a shrewd look at people defined by their circumstances.

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

Rampart is co-written by crime writer James Ellroy as a messy, disorienting noir, and shot by cinematographer Bobby Bukowski with an unsettling degree of realism.

Sheil is an ideal vessel for the film's inquisitive style.

In a incredibly contained performance that ranks among the best of her career, Juliette Binoche portrays a woman trapped by mental and physical constraints alike.

Hoss' portrayal of a woman at odds with her surroundings is in a class by itself.

The measured vérité style of Frederick Wiseman meets the visual polish of Terrence Malick in Dragonslayer, a fascinating slice of crude Americana from first-time director Tristan Patterson. However, it stands alone with an infectious hard rock attitude.