Jordan Hoffman

These were two women who reached a state of balance thanks to an almost aggressive honesty.

Seth Rogen’s naughty food cartoon Sausage Party is, like much of his best work, deceptive packaging.

First with the telephone, then early cinema, the magic of wireless radio and, finally, television, Dreams Rewired bombards the senses with a thorough and clever montage of found footage from the 1890s to the pre-war era.

What makes this such a striking film is how the larger scope works perfectly in tandem with the very specific time and setting.

We get the playfulness of seeing quirky magic powers mixed with the familiarity of how a time loop plays out. Add in Burton’s authorial visual stamp and what we’ve got is an extremely pleasing formula. It gels as Tim Burton’s best (non-musical) live-action movie for 20 years.

This is a film that loves its subjects and only someone with a biological revulsion to catchy pop or grand rock theatrics will dislike the film.

It’s a quiet, deliberately paced film, but exquisitely shot, with nuanced performances and visual invention.

One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.

It isn’t nearly as deep as it thinks it is, but it is marvellously entertaining.

A smart and beautiful meditation of fathers and sons (and the Father and Son) that is slow but never boring.

Either you are one of the devoted or you’re not. You won’t know what camp you’re in until you see it.

Song to Song is, once you root around for a story, the best of a recent trilogy.

What’s terrific about The Duff is that Casey and Jessica may not have intentionally befriended the less attractive Bianca as a way to make themselves look better, but they don’t exactly deny that she serves that purpose.

To make the movie work, the audience needs to put in a little effort, but a philosophy of connectedness is present.

Maddin’s zeal for old cameras and stocks is matched only by his revelry in evoking an entire genre with a single image. The film’s apogee literally opens up The Book of Climax in a sequence of pure, knowing cinematic joy. Film-lovers, this ludicrous movie is for you.

The Cakemaker is more of a petit four than a belly bomb, but it’s striking in its particularity.

Don’t Breathe is a master class in tension, and while its script could have been written on the back of an envelope, its editing and use of sound design is a triumph for film theorists.

[A] touching, insightful and, at the end of the day, extremely well-meaning film.

Zero Motivation is a shot of honesty, in which short-term goals are far more important than larger geo-political ones. Perhaps because they are the only ones over which we have any control.

The point of this film is the spell it weaves and, by and large, it is successful. It’s the music, it’s the cinematography, it’s the score, it’s Casey Affleck’s hollow speaking voice — they all add up to something that resembles a fever dream facsimile of an eventful movie.

If Burden has any fault, it’s that it is overly straight, but perhaps for a subject with which it is so difficult to relate, that is necessary.

Eat That Question does a good job of giving us just a taste of nearly every era in Zappa’s multifaceted career.

The Oslo Diaries is a striking document, mixing never-before-seen footage shot by the negotiators themselves and current reflections from participants, including the final interview of former Israeli president Shimon Peres.

A few small hiccups aside, 13th is very much not a Michael Moore film. It is organised, detailed and powerful.

So many documentaries about artists just want you to accept that their subject is an innovator. De Palma breaks it down and shows you why he is.

Borgman‘s crafty, trickster-ish screenplay, always two steps ahead of you, keeps you rooting for clues, enough to put your ethics on temporary hold.

In addition to being a funny, invigorating and inspirational ode to being the cleverest kid in the room, it’s a remarkable testament to the suspension of disbelief.

Finding Fela does an exemplary job of explaining, in musical terms, what made Fela standout, a simple enough step that most music documentaries ignore.