Leslie Felperin

Assaying [Sciamma's] first period film, an exquisitely executed love story that's both formally adventurous and emotionally devastating, she sticks the landing like a UCLA gymnast in peak condition. It's so good you'll want to watch again in slow-motion immediately afterwards just to see how she does it.

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.

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.

The camera’s gaze isn’t pitiless but there isn’t a scrap of sentimentality – just an unflinching willingness to look at all of life straight on, without blinking.

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.

It’s a work suffused with emotional tones and shades, surprisingly not all of them sad even though the subject knew at the time of filming he had mere weeks left before he’d die of cancer.

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.

The comic timing and bonhomie of the ensemble is sort of infectious, and (what do you know) some of the songs are pretty darn catchy.

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

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

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

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.

One of the singular aspects of Fox's script is that it honors the messiness of real-life events, even if that means the film itself sometimes feels messy.

Holmer draws confident, luminous performances from the cast that rise to the occasion but never seem over-coached or phony.

It’s a lovely piece of work.

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

The movie goes downhill into predictable territory, finally landing in a soggy quagmire of talkiness and would-be profundity expressed in voiceover at the end. But at least the visuals are nice, with Ceylan’s signature use of snow-capped landscape and wide-angled lensing to the fore.

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.

This exquisite, exemplary science documentary, directed by Irish editor turned helmer Emer Reynolds, recounts the rich and fascinating story of the Voyager mission, arguably Nasa’s finest, noblest contribution to scientific understanding.

The use of music and sound design is very thoughtful throughout, capturing the way music by street performers makes life in the city feel like a musical all the time while the murmur of traffic and general hubbub creates its own atonal backing track.

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

Just as Brenda lives by a credo never to judge another woman, so too does the film, which creates an uplifting portrait of redemption and acceptance.

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.

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.

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.

A charming animated feature.

The picture laudably adopts an intimate, personal approach to a subject -- hardworking Chinese garment workers -- that's been covered in more hectoring fashion elsewhere.

A lot of ideas about class, post-imperialism and spiritual values peek up out of the surface of the text, but they're not developed with much rigor compared to what Diop conjured with more intensity and less time in A Thousand Suns. All the same, this is a striking work.

The assembled dames are so smart, witty and strong-willed, it’s a wrench to have to part company from them at the end of the film.

Packaged as a standalone film, this fascinating and sensitively handled accounting shines a light on the abuse scandal that was exposed by the Indianapolis Star's investigative reporting into USA Gymnastics (USAG).

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.

Stubby’s minimal anthropomorphism makes him a believably doggy sort of dog, whose expressions and behaviour clearly indicate that the animators spent many hours studying the real thing.

The script, by Roderick Warich and Kröger, isn’t quite as nifty as its famous models, but it has its own grim integrity, especially with the jarring last frames.

Like an unusually designed coat featuring quirky details and an interesting fabric choice from a young designer’s first collection, Swedish writer-director Mika Gustafson’s feature debut has raw edges and some sloppy stitching in places, but the whole is fresh, directional and beautifully cut.

Newcomer Elsie Fisher offers a breakout performance.

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.

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.

Admittedly, there are a lot of documentaries like this, made by citizen journalists recording uprisings in their homelands, but this is one of the best of the recent crop, and a timely reminder of a conflict that's slipped out of the headlines of late.

Bring tissues for a doozy of an ending that will have everyone bawling in the aisles.

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

The portrait of a nearly vanished rural way of life remains compelling, and the melodrama engaging enough to suggest this might have been improved by being spread thinner as a TV series.

This documentary by Morgan Neville reveals that he really was just what he seemed to be at first innocent sight: a kind-hearted, square but saintly man who genuinely loved and understood children.

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

Sometimes God is just too on the nose when he makes his creations suffer; but at least Alberdi’s humane, profoundly empathic film-making offers some balm.

The dry, strictly observational shooting style means the doc stays in the moment and rarely ventures out of the room where the programme unfolds, adding immediacy.

Although the story unfolds at a steady pace over two hours, the filmmaking is sufficiently elegant and metronomically efficient as to make every minute gripping, especially after the tragic twist halfway through the story.

Along with the moral lesson, Nguyen remembers to give auds some pleasures, including the exquisitely chosen soundtrack of African folk and pop music, Nicolas Bolduc's cinematography and the very artful use of sound throughout.

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

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.

This intoxicatingly stylish work is all over the place, a hot mess at times so ravishing it sends shivers down to the toes. Unfortunately, it’s also at times just plain crass and silly.

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.

Kotevska depicts the growing bond between man and bird with warmth and humour, and while the musical score is a bit on the sappy side, there are enough drolly astringent touches to make this cockle-warming family viewing, if you have a family that likes stories of unhappy agrarian workers.

Not only is the story compelling, but thanks to how much the event captured the interest of the world’s media, there is a lot of archive footage to splice in among the generous wodges of talking-heads narration from the main participants.

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.

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.

At last, just what world cinema really needs right now: an exquisitely made film about street dogs in Istanbul, satiating that universal desire to see distant lands, coo over beautiful, noble animals, and satisfy the audience’s need to feel guilty about the misfortune of poorer, unluckier people.

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

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets blurs the boundary between documentary and feature filmmaking, making for a playful, compelling sui generis work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unsurprisingly, it all builds to a bleak conclusion, and the film as a whole is a powerful statement that lingers in the mind long after the final credits roll.

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.

The film is an empathy generator, an antidote to compassion fatigue.

Newton’s storytelling is skittish and a bit too on the nose at times, but his palpable generosity toward his cast is rewarded with committed, passionate turns from the ensemble. However, Nicholson, a performer all-too seldom given a chance to lead, is the big door prize here, offering an intricately layered performance that lifts the whole film up a notch.

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

The fight scenes are terrific, but the haphazard plotting, off-the-peg characterisations and drippy music elsewhere lack flavour.

[A] striking and auspicious feature debut ... Saint Maud seeds the clouds with an eclectic mix of influences, but it works, creating a film with its own strange weather.

This ingeniously executed study in cinematic minimalism has depth, beauty and poise.

The inevitable North American remake will no doubt pump more technology into its iteration, but a more efficient, streamlined approach toward pace and editing wouldn’t have hurt this original and striking work.

Wim Wenders’ latest documentary Anselm offers a mesmerizing, cinematic catalogue of German painter-sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s deeply tactile, maximalist oeuvre.

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.

Davies is in fine form here, with luminous performances, especially from Rachel Weisz, rounding out a classy package whose only major problem is it may be a bit too true to its period sensibility and legit origins.

The film gets across the weird weight of lockdown, a time of tension and anxiety but also an opportunity for creative growth none of us saw coming.

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

It all could be too much reality to handle if it weren’t for the fact that mercifully, the film ends on a hopeful note, with the most wicked characters punished for their sins and the good given a second chance. It’s undoubtedly something of a fairy-tale ending, but the kind we need these days.

It is 80 minutes of pure woodwork-musicianship-upcycling erotica for a very specialist but passionate market.

If you’re in the right headspace, the whole thing is quite entrancing. Still, it’s also an extremely rarefied sort of entertainment.

Graham uses darkness and a very sparse score/soundscape to create a truly disturbing work that relies not so much on gore as the uncanny in its most potent form: stillness, pools of darkness and just-visible figures.

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.

Mixing together some of helmer Aki Kaurismaki's favorite Gallic and Finnish thesps with a few newbies, Le Havre feels like a welcoming family reunion.

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.

This is a beautifully distilled and literally still work that lingers in the mind long after its conclusion.

While there’s no doubt this is the work of a filmmaker entirely in command of her craft, there’s something a trifle academic and dry about the whole exercise, and slightly lacking in narrative cohesion given the nature of its origins.

Propulsive and tightly constructed ... Flecks of jet-black humor add a wicked sparkle to an essentially tragic narrative.

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

The film engages with Cave and Warren Ellis’ creative bond, one that’s produced some sublime work but also self-indulgent noodling (of which there’s a little too much here). Indeed, some might wish the spotlight was on Ellis more, a fascinating character who may be the more musically gifted of the pair, but not as capable of holding the spotlight like Cave – who has his suits, rumbly baritone and carefully coiffed too-black hair.

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.

Camara and Darin contribute outstanding work here, a beautifully meshed pair of performances that reveals nearly everything you need to know about the characters and their inner lives through exchanged looks, shrugs and the odd arched eyebrow.

This is not a cuddly version of Godzilla. He is rageful and entirely incomprehensible, seemingly not even motivated by hunger, desire or revenge. Like a god, he just is, an entity that has become death, the destroyer of worlds, as ineluctable as history itself.

The long, unbroken rhythm of Wang’s filmmaking somehow casts a spell, and he certainly has a good eye for characters. That’s a blessing considering how slow and considered the takes are here, watching with equally intense absorption whether the subjects are sleeping on a train or constructing seams or making food. But overall, the lack of differentiation can be wearisome.

Co-director Starzack was one of the guiding hands behind the series version of Shaun the Sheep, and that experience in the kind of brisk, skit-based comedy that makes the series so charming shows through here in stand-alone scenes.

After "Tony Manero" and "Post Mortem," his devastating portraits of how the Pinochet regime psychologically brutalized the people of Chile from 1973-90, Chilean helmer Pablo Larrain satisfyingly completes the trilogy with an affirmative victory for democracy in No.

Pic is a little too pleased with its own evenhanded presentation of liberal moral conundrums, but there’s no gainsaying Ostlund’s remarkable achievement in coaxing entirely naturalistic perfs from his young core cast

Throughout, Costa’s voiceover adds shape but doesn’t intrude excessively and lets the powerful compilation of original and archive footage, material shot on the ground in the middle of riots and by drones soaring hundreds of feet above Brasilia, tell the story.

With its brainy scientist heroine, and surreal, super-kitsch imagery, above-average Japanese anime sci-fi pic Paprika has a better chance than most Nipponese toons of breaking out of the specialty ghetto by appealing to femme auds as well as the genre's core constituency of fanboys.