Leslie Felperin

One of Wiseman’s best, a summation of sorts of a career’s worth of principled filmmaking from a director in his ninth decade.

It is immaculately performed by Zischler and especially Hüller, grounding the film throughout with an uncanny, expressive stillness.

Lisa Rovner’s superb documentary pays a deeply deserved, seldom-expressed tribute to the female composers, musicians and inventors from the brief history of electronic music.

If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.

This densely packed, exquisitely executed and just a teensy bit batshit film is peak Pixar. It's a vintage mix of the company's intricate storytelling, complex emotional intelligence, technical prowess and cerebral whimsy on dexamethasone.

According to the most basic laws of cinema, Toni Erdmann, Maren Ade’s third feature as a writer-director (she has five times that many credits as a producer), shouldn’t work. It’s practically one long string of nesting, oxymoronic self-cancelling paradoxes: here is the world’s first genuinely funny, 162-minute German comedy of embarrassment.

Simultaneously a modern essay on suffering, an open-ended thriller, and a black social comedy, it is most importantly of all a thinly-veiled political parable drenched in bitter irony that takes aim against the corrupt, corrosive regime of Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan harkens back to the heroic, journalistic roots of documentary-making and yet feels ineffably modern and formally daring. It’s a tiny marvel of a movie.

Anchored by a masterful performance by Timothy Spall in a role he was born to play, and gilded by career-best effort from DoP Dick Pope, working for the first time on digital for Leigh to bridge the gap between the painting and cinematography, Mr. Turner manages to illuminate that nexus between biography and art with elegant understatement.

Putting aside the worthiness of its politics, this is also a crackling, tense thriller, graced with beautifully measured performances, that explores with wisdom and sorrow the best and worst in human nature.

It’s a lovely piece of work.

This works well just as simple drama, directed and performed immaculately, and as a glorious promise of films to come from Lin.

It’s too soon to know for sure, but this may end up being ranked as one of the best nonfiction films of the year.

There will be viewers out there who will recoil from these two crazy kids' wild, exhibitionistic carnality, their druggy hedonism and their cavalier attitude toward interior decoration. But anyone else who's ever been in a relationship like this — especially the kind of that starts to feel like a codependent bipolar disorder trapped on a rollercoaster by the end — will painfully relate to Monday's sensual, funny and above all honest look at amour fou.

Pure dead gallus (that's Scots for 'wonderful').

This at first slow-moving and then wildly kinetic actioner possesses a cool classicism that will appeal to offshore audiences as well as those at home.

I feel tempted to say there’s a leaner, stronger film inside this that could have been coaxed out, but in the light of the film’s message about accepting people as they are, maybe we shouldn’t be shaming this film either. It is what it is, and that’s perfectly imperfect.

In the Fog explores the moralities of wartime with restraint and exacting execution.

Miraculously, it manages to unpack this perplexing issue with precision and intelligence but without any moral panic-mongering, condescension or dumbing down the complexity of the science stuff.

Out of all the film’s many achievements, perhaps the most impressive is the ability to keep the tone balanced just on this biting point between tragedy and comedy in scene after scene.

This impeccably assembled and argued film represents a brave, timely intervention into debates around the organization that have been simmering for some time.

What’s quite novel about this work, as opposed to any number of well-made docs about (mostly male) war photographers, is that it directly addresses how Addario’s job impacts her as a mother.

Offering further proof that the latest 3D technology is good for a lot more than just lunging knives and fantastical storylines, Wim Wenders' dance docu Pina reps multidimensional entertainment that will send culture vultures swooning.

Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski's latest film, is bittersweet and unbearably lovely, a sad ballad of two lovers who can't stand to stay apart but also sometimes can't stand each other either.

Visually ravishing, emotionally wise, and kinky as a coiled rope, writer-director Peter Strickland’s third feature The Duke of Burgundy is a delight.

Clearly rejuvenated by his collaboration with producer Peter Jackson, and blessed with a smart script and the best craftsmanship money can buy, Spielberg has fashioned a whiz-bang thrill ride that's largely faithful to the wholesome spirit of his source but still appealing to younger, Tintin-challenged audiencs.

Any way you slice it, and even if you're not entirely in agreement with the various subjects' positions on Medicare for all or the Green New Deal, this film is a winner by a landslide.

A richly rewarding but often very disturbing, even harrowing work.

Utterly absorbing all the way through, this showcase for Bercot’s skill with large casts and intellectually rigorous storytelling may be her best yet.

Noisy, joyous and as exhausting as the multi-generational bash at the heart of its story, Totem packs a hefty wallop for a film that’s only 95 minutes, and should further solidify Aviles’ reputation as an auteur with a unique vision and remarkable skills with actors, especially non-professionals.

Shinkai never skimps on the human level. Suzume, who at first seems like just another standard-issue anime ingenue, grows and becomes more interesting throughout.

This outstanding, muscular feature debut for French-born, British-based director Yann Demange almost never puts a foot wrong, from the softly underplayed performances to the splendidly speckled cinematography and fine-grained period detailing.

An exquisitely realized adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel. In a rigorously subtle performance as a woman coping with the horrific damage wrought by her psychopathic son, Tilda Swinton anchors the dialogue-light film with an expressiveness that matches her star turn in "I Am Love."

It’s an altogether strange but astonishing work of craftsmanship.

An inventive, meaty distillation of Le Carre's 1974 novel, picture turns hero George Smiley's hunt for a mole within Blighty's MI6 into an incisive examination of Cold War ethics, rich in both contempo resonance and elegiac melancholy.

Dhont and his team know just how to turn up the emotional dials with stunning magic-hour lensing that gives golden-haired Dambrine a halo of backlit suffering as he stands in fields of nodding dahlias, that most gloriously domestic and benevolent flower.

The lonely, uncanny and sometimes unthinkingly violent world of childhood is explored with chilling candor and exceptional skill in writer-director Eskil Vogt’s arthouse horror feature The Innocents.

Andini and her collaborators, especially lead actor Happy Salma, offer a precisely calibrated, emotionally nuanced exploration of one woman going through a mid-life crisis in rural Indonesia during the 1960s that both looks and sounds stunning thanks to above-and-beyond craft contributions.

Striking an elegantly sustained balance between intimacy and historical scope, director James Kent's WWI-set epic Testament of Youth encompasses nearly all of the virtues of classical British period drama and nearly none of the vices.

Audaciously cerebral and unabashedly granular, writer-director Scott Z. Burns' political thriller The Report, a dramatization of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 probe into the CIA's use of torture in the wake of 9/11, is practically pornography for policy wonks.

With his devastating, finely layered new drama Loveless (Nelyubov), Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev once again demonstrates his remarkable gift for creating perfectly formed dramatic microcosms that illustrate the bred-in-the-bone pathologies of Russian society.

Given the chemistry between the two leads that could restart a dormant nuclear power plant, viewers are likely to come away sated with pleasure after seeing this delightful work.

If Asteroid City was a too-rich 20-course tasting menu, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a deliciously calibrated amuse-bouche.

For all its playfulness, there’s an intellectual heft to A Useful Ghost that exerts its own gravity.

Repulsive and sublimely beautiful, arguably celebratory and damning of its characters, it’s hideous and masterful all at once, “Salo” with sunburn.

Every bit as perfectly tuned, cruelty-free funny and kind-hearted as its predecessor, maybe even more so.

Kitty Green creates something powerful, provocative and dazzlingly original with her second feature.

The use of sign language, deafness and silence itself adds several heady new ingredients to the base material, alchemically creating something rich, strange and very original.

Adams displays terrific range and an incandescent screen presence as she effortlessly incarnates Shante over a 10-year period, from puberty to young motherhood.

A shocking but ultimately galvanizing work of reportage that meets the same high standard of their previous collaboration, The Invisible War.

Akhavan elicits finely layered performances from her cast. Moretz digs deeper than she has in years for a sensitive lead turn that harmonizes especially well with her co-stars.

Love, to quote that woozy old ballad, is indeed a many-splendored thing that takes many forms — a multiplicity that Love the film is quietly alive to.

Although laid out with such clarity that any layperson could catch the gist of what's being discussed, Side by Side is not afraid to get nitty-gritty about more technical matters.

Kudos are due to supervising editor Mark Becker and his team, who never put a splice wrong. That deft level of craft is maintained throughout, while the aching musical bed by contemporary composer Nico Muhly adds just the right tone of plangent despair tinged with hope.

As with so many of the best mystery-horror films, the optimum way to enjoy a first viewing of this is try to remain as ignorant as possible about what happens. That said, it also brims with tiny, blink-and-you'll-miss-them details that will repay repeat viewings.

Anchored by two intense, intertwined perfs by veteran Vincent Lindon and relative newcomer Soko, a musician who also composed the pic’s growling, atmospheric score, this period drama offers a coolly febrile study of madness, Victorian sexual politics and power.

Hosoda has a lovely, light touch and leavens the proceedings with dry, well-observed humor.

It’s the audacious austerity of Farsi’s film-making that really makes the material sing.

It’s nice to see the old tension between selling out and staying pure never goes away in any corner of the film-making world.

Director Chad Gracia’s The Russian Woodpecker offers a wild ride through Ukrainian and Soviet history.

The subject matter alone could be enough to trigger geysers of tears in viewers, but what makes Le Fanu’s direction especially impressive is its lack of sentimentality. Instead, she focuses on daily rituals — the little murmurs of gratitude and kindness, and the sense of exhaustion that stretches out for hours, days and weeks as one waits for someone to die.

Edited with minute attentiveness, the film switches back and forth between time periods adroitly in a way that always moves the story forward, while the outstanding performances from the whole ensemble, especially the watchful Vauthier and the fierce Issa, anchor the film.

Remarkably, it never comes across as fawning or hagiographic. Instead, Crosby and his interviewers collaborate to create something that feels honest and insightful.

Somehow it works on every level: as a moving melodrama about maternal sacrifice and grief, as a domestic comedy, and even as a glorious musical.

Creating a highly unusual and welcome look at schizophrenia that neither demonizes those with the condition nor patronizes them as suffering martyrs, the British drama Eternal Beauty pulls off a tricky feat.

As fun as a night in the mosh pit with your best mate ... Directed by Coky Giedroyc with a fizzy vibrancy and supercharged by Feldstein's intense charisma, this crowd-pleasing comedy has smart things to say about class, sex and female identity.

Truly, this covers the whole spectrum of experience, all of it eloquently explained by the subjects, an assortment of women who tell their truths about clients who can’t be honest with themselves, their complicated relationships with friends, family and cis women, the legacy of slave culture, and their favourite portable electric shavers.

It’s a thoughtful, honest and touching work, especially for women who love women, and also love canals.

The film is exceedingly funny, even in translation, right up to the point where the tone shifts dramatically. Deeply endearing on every level, from its anti-authoritarian politics to its body positivity to general joie de vivre, this is a crowdpleaser through and through (unless the crowd happens to be made up of moral policemen and dogmatic clerics).

A charming animated feature.

The Sea Beast gets the balance just right between rollicking action scenes, the inevitable didactic anti-hunting message about respecting other species’ right to exist and family-friendly humour.

Graduation isn’t one of Mungiu’s finest, but even a restrained, emotionally measured work like this is more interesting and provocative than many another director’s best effort.

Aptly enough, it's a work that enlightens and informs but that is also ravishing to behold.

This may be the Dardennes’ most emotionally engaging film in a while — a tragedy told with utter clarity, centered on protagonists entirely deserving of our sympathy, empathy, all the ‘pathies you’ve got.

It’s such a seamless, harmoniously composed work, effortlessly edited and elegantly shot, that it’s almost too easy to just drift along with it, like floating down a river on a canoe, letting its currents take control. This isn’t a grabby, attention seeker of a film, but a quiet, watchful sort of movie that whispers its secrets sotto voce.

In another filmmaker's hands, this might have become a message-heavy morass, but Sauper and his co-editor, veteran Yves Deschamps (Bruno Dumont's The Life of Jesus, the 2018 restoration of Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind) work the material with a remarkable fluidity and gracefulness that's consistently engaging and surprising.

If this film were a person, you’d want to give it a big hug, as you would a gawky teenager, and reassure it that it will be tough out there, that not everyone is going to get its idiosyncratic charms, but that’s OK because it’s awesome just the way it is.

The surreal bolt-on doesn’t work all that well, but the limpid cinematography and more quotidian dramatic elements are impactful and striking enough to distinguish this as one of the stronger films to emerge this fall festival season.

This stands as one of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s better but not quite best features in a pretty consistent career, not as scurrilously seedy as him at his worst, or as merciless, but not as ambitious or startlingly insightful as his best.

Taken strictly on its own terms, Saving Mr. Banks works exceedingly well as mainstream entertainment.

This is undoubtedly a work of historic significance, made by a master in his field – but beware that it often feels like a film-making notebook, full of doodles and ideas but not especially cohesive as a story.

Vesper plays like a cult film waiting to be discovered. It adeptly fuses a compelling YA-friendly story about a teenage girl’s survival in a hostile environment with dense, thoughtful world-building, the sort required to draw in nerdy-minded viewers. That savvy combination creates a narrative that breathes and expands, like one of the freaky mycelium-like life forms that populate the story.

Corsage . . . although a late entry to the disaffected royalty subcategory, is arguably one of the most interesting so far, much closer to the ludic, imaginative queen of the genre, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006).

Extensive archive news material is drawn on to explain key moments in the struggle over reproductive rights, but mostly the story emerges organically from the interviewees themselves.

[A] simply lovely comedy-drama.

The Disappearance of Shere Hite ponders this paradox, and while somewhat vexingly it doesn’t fully explain why or to what extent Hite “disappeared” from public view in the decades before her death in 2020, it draws a vivid portrait of a complex, fascinating woman.

Folky music and Studio Ghibli-level flights of eerie fancy are obvious pleasures, but even more subtle and entrancing is the way Moore and his team use echoed shapes to suggest hidden patterns in nature and parallels between the real and the mythical.

As with his previous pics about the brood, Dutch-Indonesian helmer Leonard Retel Helmrich deploys an expressionistic, quasi-soap-opera approach to produce striking results, thanks especially to use of Steadicam. But the protagonists seem to be playing to the cameras more this time round, making "Stars" a less charming effort than earlier installments.

Beneath the crazy candy-coloured palette, there is actually some real human warmth in the love story, and the acting ensemble features some great comic performers in supporting roles.

It’s an immensely likable movie, impeccably acted and wise about the nature of exile.

Energetically lurid, gratuitously violent and a hell of a lot of fun, horror-satire Assassination Nation is a throwback to black-comedy teen flicks of yore, but with a bitingly timely feel.

Aquarela takes a deep dive into watery realms around the world, offering up an experience that can truly be described as immersive.

The result is a sly, often playful but ultimately moving study of community, generational anguish and atrocities covered up by the state that blends documentary technique with originality and polished storytelling skill.

With a Brechtian approach that compels the viewer to question both their own ethical assumptions and tacit complicity in a worldwide consumerist culture that exploits people all over the planet, 7 Prisoners is deeply uncomfortable but utterly compelling viewing.

Newcomer Elsie Fisher offers a breakout performance.

While a certain disarming naivety infuses the work, it nevertheless packs an evocative punch, with a moral message about intolerance and the need to protect more vulnerable species. It’s also one of the few films that could potentially induce a psychedelic trip with its visuals alone.

Unfortunately, the narrative endgame is a mess, and should have been rethought in development, but there’s no denying Ezer has made a bold, audacious debut.

The script’s nuanced treatment of the complex relationships and a feel for the many-faceted, multicultural city in which it’s set – a unique urban blend of hedonism and tradition, bound together by hummus and history – redeem any shortcomings.