Farran Smith Nehme

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film combines allegory, brutal melodrama, black humor and strikingly beautiful compositions, each frame dense with meaning. Leviathan stays absolutely gripping, right up to the O. Henry twist that slams the film shut.

Each scene is breathtaking, such as a long shot of a river at a key moment, and an unforgettable soccer game played with no ball. Timbuktu deserves every accolade it gets.

Making a movie this warm, funny, and rigorously truthful about lovers trying to remain partners is even harder.

The cumulative impact is devastating, and very far from a simple Western condemnation of another country’s brutality. In forcing viewers to hear the boasts of genocide’s perpetrators, The Act of Killing puts a harsh spotlight on all celebrations of bloodshed, from Hollywood to the op-ed pages.

Without any preachiness, this magically beautiful film urges us to take better care of the bees, and honor the irreplaceable things that they do for us.

Such is literature’s power that the cast is more at ease portraying ancient Romans than speaking as versions of themselves.

More than a thriller, Phoenix is a ghost story, made plain in an extraordinary shot of Nelly’s terror at a passing train.

The surreal images, offbeat jokes and pointed human-rights allegory make this an altogether different experience from most American animation. It’s dreamy, poetic and not to be missed.

A Hijacking is Lindholm’s second feature as director; he’s also worked with such austere Danes as Thomas Vinterberg of Dogme 95 fame. What he’s learned, it seems, is how to strip away distractions, and let character become suspense, as well as destiny.

The actors in Compliance perform with thorough and chilling sincerity.

The sharpest, least sentimental and possibly the best version of Austen yet.

Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves is the purest, boldest re-imagining of silent cinema yet.

Petzold raises questions of honor and builds the romance with an absolutely rigorous lack of sentiment, moving Barbara to a sweeping finish as emotionally satisfying as any this year.

About Elly shows that the ethical dilemmas of ordinary adults can, with this level of talent, become as gripping as any thriller.

“The past is past. I don’t want to remember . . . the wound is healed,” says Kemat, an Indonesian man who survived the massacre of more than 10,000 people at the Snake River in 1965. As this documentary shows, nothing could be further from the truth.

The filmmaker doesn't speculate about why these men are talking, but he leaves you with an excellent guess.

Philippe Béziat’s documentary focuses on how Sivadier and his Violetta, the French soprano Natalie Dessay, fuse acting with the music. It’s an incredible view of artists at work.

The cast is excellent, particularly Timur Magomedgadzhiev as a conscience-stricken co-worker, but it’s Cotillard who’s in nearly every scene. Desperate, downtrodden, but grasping at each shred of hope, Cotillard — who won an Oscar playing Edith Piaf in 2007’s “La Vie en Rose” — carries the whole film.

The story is ornate but easy to follow. It's the dreamy look and sound of Tabu - half old, half modern - that give the film its haunting strangeness.

Ivo’s farmhouse looks leftover from another century, which gives a timeless feeling, as does the regal bearing of Ulfsak and the dry humor of the script. The film telegraphs its pacifist message early on, but it’s still deeply affecting.

There is something both mischievous and moving about a world-famous director who, closing on his 10th decade, designs a movie that celebrates his actors: their varying ages, their versatility, their heart.

The friction between a couple of still-struggling artists sounds rather depressing, but in fact the film is often funny; it shows that love is present in even the couple’s harshest exchanges.

If Like Someone in Love frustrates, it also has ineffable grace in the framing of Kiarostami’s long, languid shots, the changes he captures in the light, and the way the actors’ smallest movements become fascinating. This enigmatic study of identities built on social deceit offers more than easy answers ever could.

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s latest film has its roots in the notorious death of a teenager outside a Dublin nightclub, later detailed in Kevin Power’s novel “Bad Day in Blackrock.” The pensive, gray-tinged What Richard Did unfolds this downbeat tale in long scenes, but seldom feels slow.

The heart of Dior and I is with these seamstresses and cutters, artists in their own right.

The film fragments into an emotionally devastating parable about what enforced silence does to an artist.

More likely to play well with older children, due to its split-up story line, Ocelot's creation is like nothing else they are likely to see animating the multiplex.

When Uprising shows masses of Arabs marching for freedom, and using Muslim prayer as a form of peaceful protest, that in itself is a bit revolutionary.

Solomon and Genovese remind us that all witnesses can be unreliable, in one way or another. The emotional impact comes from the gentle way the film reveals Kitty Genovese as a loving, vibrant person, and not as a symbol.

This is the sort of movie that gets called “hallucinatory,” but it is strongly grounded in the New York in which 99 percent of us live. Fleischner gets his uncanny effects simply by showing what this city looks like to a child who has a different filter.

If The Past doesn’t equal the masterpiece that preceded it, it’s still an exceptional film from a man who is clearly one of the best working directors.

At age 76, Loach also decided to offer his characters, and audience, some hope — at the bottom of a glass.

What a trippy delight it is.

The Law in These Parts more than accomplishes its goal of provoking a discussion about imposing laws on people who have no say in making them.

What makes the movie so delightful is that Wadjda isn’t trying to make trouble; she’s just being herself. A shot of the system of wire hangers attached to her radio so she can pick up Western music stations sums up her can-do attitude.

The film works to rescue Arendt and her phrase “the banality of evil” from years of cliché, and largely succeeds.

As Viviane, Elkabetz is fascinating, wielding an incredible variety of contemptuous looks.

Both actresses are extraordinary, but Kulesza — bitter, sarcastic and tragic — carries the movie’s soul.

It only seems plotless. Momentous things happen, one of them tele­graphed in a single heartbreaking shot. The sense of time and place is so intense that Jules’ way of life seems to be disappearing even as we watch him.

Bhalla’s advocacy gets its force above all from the oddly similar personalities of the two main subjects — Wallace and Sumell — zealous reformers possessed of astonishing optimism, even as Bhalla closes by noting that there are 80,000 prisoners in solitary in the US.

Much of the plot stretches credulity, but the way it's constructed keeps tension high.

At some point in her 50-year career, Rampling became one of the world’s great actresses. Driven by her and Courtenay’s work, and by director Andrew Haigh’s limpid style, the film is devastating.

Showing the personal toll that produces a star in any field could be a soggy, predictable drag, but the documentary A Man's Story never slides into easy sentiment or bromides.

You may or may not connect Brinkley to a certain presidential candidate, but, either way, this is one of the most entertaining documentaries to come along in some time.

Morales’ spin on the old ransom plot is fresher and more gripping than most big-budget Hollywood products.

White God has been compared to “The Birds,” but there are also echoes of “Lassie Come Home” and even “Dirty Harry.” Director Kornél Mundruczó goes big with allegory, violence, drama and sentiment, and the results are riveting.

Panh’s technique achieves things a conventional documentary could not, as when he pans across dozens of the clay figures jumbled in a box, in a shot that calls up both the toys of childhood, and graves.

Like Father, Like Son has earned its right to reduce a person to a sobbing wreck.

Director Grímur Hákonarson excels at building tension through long takes, and the actors are excellent.

Nuclear Nation is likely to attract those who already oppose such power plants. But supporters should see it, too, if only to hear the opposition’s arguments. The film raises issues that aren’t going away.

What this means is that at times the pace of Beyond the Hills is nerve-wrackingly slow. But Mungiu has his own way of creating suspense, and he has a gift for making a known outcome as shocking as a twist.

French director Stéphane Brizé films in lingering takes, with Lindon in almost every shot, and the actor is wonderful, able to convey Thierry’s conflict even when his back is to the camera.

A delightfully immersive look at how a ballet is created, Jody Lee Lipes’ documentary is a stark contrast to the psycho theatrics of something like “Black Swan.”

The movie reveals some of the most stunning landscape cinematography imaginable, while everyone on the isolated ship waxes philosophical — as who would not?

This sounds like a comedy, and in its slow, deadpan way, that’s what The Treasure is; the film is an unusual mixture of joy and cynicism.

There’s a superficial resemblance to the Dardenne brothers’ “Two Days, One Night,” and like that film it has a strong lead; Gosheva’s Nade is prickly, and no suffering saint.

Hamer’s style is what might happen if Ulrich Seidl liked people, with immaculate balance in each shot, but the emotions in focus, as well. 1001 Grams is wise about both grief and the need for romance.

Candis gets some wonderful performances from his impressive cast.

Despite a too-tidy wrap-up, it’s a humane film, one that sees the war as a tragedy for the Afghans, not just Western soldiers.

The film is hard on the eyes, having been shot in a low-budget style with the ubiquitous digital palette of gray-beige-taupe. Fortunately, it’s also hilarious, full of humor that is understated, wry and dependent on familiarity with interests as wide as Houellebecq’s own.

The result — directed by Rufus Norris and setting words collected by Alecky Blythe against music by Adam Cork — is mesmerizing.

Archival footage is combined with somewhat affected-looking re-enactments, but the film achieves its purpose: to remind us that we still have thousands of bombs, and neither they — nor we — have gotten that much smarter.

Garrel’s ideas on both are pretty old-fashioned. But he wraps it up with a pleasurable O. Henry-like twist, and a moment of what feels suspiciously like true love.

Not everyone will be in tune with the movie's sick sense of humor, although it's sometimes hilarious.

The film thwarts any pat expectations you might glean from the town's bad economy and these checkered backgrounds. The teenagers are refreshingly gentle and clean-living; they don't drink, they don't swear and they certainly aren't having sex. All three are religious, a fact that is neither emphasized nor underplayed.

Given that the opening shot shows the heroine on the toilet, what a nice surprise to find that this is a pure love story, told with elegance and simplicity on a low budget.

The adventurous souls who stick with it, however, will find head-spinning images and a cumulative impact that does, in fact, amount to a story.

Pigeon, in its deadpan, hyper-composed way, is often paralyzingly funny, and there is compassion for the gray-faced souls wandering through it.

Omar eventually becomes a sun-scorched neo-noir — and the fade-out is an unforgettable jolter.

Making elegant use of the austere landscape and the rugged features of star Jérémie Renier, the film shows how these doggedly practical and nonspiritual men cope with the eerie events, the cause of which is hinted at but never fully explained.

As pure comedy, it’s a hoot.

It’s an entertaining melodrama of the old school that plays out with the clockwork inevitability of a “Columbo” episode.

A Touch of Sin is by no means subtle, but it is composed with a passion and sinuous grace that makes it far more effective than many other sincere message movies.

Lanzmann, for his part, begins the interview with a sharp, probing manner; by the end, the filmmaker’s questions and body language are conveying something altogether different.

Frankel has a fine eye for telling detail, and the result, while sentimental, is as irresistible as the dessert cart.

In Devos’ hard-charging performance, she’s also fascinating, and that’s all a film requires.

Less tiring than a three-hour tramp through the halls, and considerably less expensive than a plane ticket, National Gallery gives the feeling of having seen everything there is to see.

The Nees lean toward the rat-a-tat comedy of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” presumably knowing they can’t match the profundity of “Huckleberry Finn.” (Who could?)

The film shows how quiet exteriors can mask deep interior lives, and how art feeds those lives. The view of art is richly intellectual, sometimes enthralling. But I confess, I liked Museum Hours best for answering a question I’ve always had: What is that guard thinking?

This is mostly a sad and bloody tale, as the Panthers are decimated first by the machinations of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and then by dissension in their own ranks.

Farhadi brings keen discernment to this unraveling marriage, and a third-act revelation packs a wallop.

Halle Berry’s latest vehicle is old-fashioned as a leisure suit, but better-looking and a lot more fun.

The film’s reckoning, when it comes, is fully as heartbreaking as it should be.

The way the tightrope works is vague, but what the exercise shows is straightforward and marvelous.

It’s a wispy movie that does not end so much as peter out, and it could have benefited from a little more humor and a little less heinous male behavior. Miller and Farahani, though — both sometimes used previously as decoration — give strong performances as women bonding over their delight in both movement and their own beauty.

The young, novice actors are charming, but they haven’t completely mastered the art of natural-sounding dialogue.

In a way, this marvelous movie does show that the Mekons have declined, because they’ve become the one thing punk rockers never ever want to be: lovable.

The Soviet era is more interesting than the NHL years, but still, the film is entertaining even for ardent nonfans.

The movie doesn’t rise above its music-doc formula of photo, clip, talking head. But for fans — like me — it’s a heartfelt, engrossing tribute.

Hoogendijk ends the movie just before the museum reopens; but her last, soaring image is a stirring vision of what made all the agita worthwhile.

There are so many echoes of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” that it starts to feel like a barely disguised sequel. But those reminders, and the rather trite journey-of-self plot, are just decoration. This tender film works to remind us of how much we still love Deneuve, and succeeds in scene after scene.

Lore is the sort of movie you’d already expect to rip your heart out, but that doesn’t diminish the tragedy when it does arrive.

Terry’s talent is so magical that you may wish there were longer snippets of his playing. Still, this is a wonderful portrait of two artists strengthened by friendship.

A groundbreaking, highly influential film, A Man Vanishes is a fiercely brilliant piece of work, but it's more intellectual challenge than pleasure.

The results are remarkably intelligent and entertaining, even for someone who (like this writer) finds Cave’s music rather dirge-like.

Darci Picoult’s script renders all of these characters, if not always sympathetically, humanly and fully.

Hollywood has been yukking it up over North Korea and its comical-looking leader for some years now. There’s nothing funny about either, and Mansky shows why.

Breakup at a Wedding works, because Quinaz has come up with a concept that lets him skewer directorial pretension alongside wedding hysteria.