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.

This rigorously well-made, grippy-as-a-live-squid, toska-steeped work is Zvyagintsev’s most openly critical commentary on the motherland’s current political, spiritual and moral malaise, a denunciation never said in so many words but expressed with intricate layers of irony.

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.

Gasoline Rainbow pays homage to all the road movies that ever were but is still its own quirky thing, uniquely of its time.

Director Lorenzo Vigas, who collaborated on the script with Paula Markovitch and Laura Santullo, adeptly manoeuvres things so that the film slides effortlessly from mystery to criminal story to quasi-Greek tragedy, changing registers with subtle alterations of tone. The landscape – vast, desiccated, menacing – is practically a character in its own right, full of inscrutable secrets like Hatzín’s own deadpan face.

A spare but stealthily powerful tale.

Wrenching to watch, but told with clarity and guts.

This small, delicate, late-blooming film is quite lovely, and a throwback to the 1990s/2000s craze for semi-improvised, rough and ready indie film-making.

An intensely compelling work.

On a beat-by-beat basis, writer-director Matt Palmer’s feature debut skates close to the edge of cliche – only to swerve suddenly in an interesting new direction almost every time.

Wickedly funny, fascinating and niftily made.

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

Although this family-friendly tale of feckless adventurers pursuing a prize is consistently funnier than "Arthur," in language, humor and attitude it's as endearingly British as Yorkshire pudding, soccer hooliganism and wonky teeth.

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.

Some viewers may feel a little uneasy watching her being almost "catfished" by the deception, even if it turns out to be a delightful surprise, and a real emotional money shot when it finally lands.

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.

There's no subtextual allusion really to contempo France or civil wars elsewhere in the world today, just the feeling that this is an interesting story in its own right, fascinating precisely because it's so at odds with modern sensibilities.

It’s not so much the running time of 156 minutes that will tire you out as the incredible sonic, visual and emotional overload generated by the work itself; perhaps this is ideally seen first in a cinema for maximum impact and then again in small, digestible chunks at home.

There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space for itself somewhere in the region of Eric Rohmer wistful romances, Richard Linklater ensemble stories, and Sixth Generation semi-underground Chinese filmmakers like Jia Zhangke.

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.

There’s nothing radical or groundbreaking about either that message or the film-making on show here, but Ricciardi and Janice’s honesty and indeed that of all those around him, prove to be very moving in the long run, underscoring that there’s as many ways to face death as there are to live life.

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.

What saves this from being just best-of list bait for upmarket film critics is the sincerity of the performances, especially from the core trio of Wu, Lee and Panna, each of whom projects a profound loneliness that’s never more apparent than when they’re in the middle of a crowded place. Which, this being Singapore, is just about everywhere.

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

Although Coup! has a small cast and unfolds mostly in a secluded mansion during the 1918 influenza pandemic, it packs a lot of flavor, suspense and droll comedy into its slim 97-minute running time, making it fun enough to deserve an exclamation point in its title.

Reprising the kind of musical performances, campus hijinks, stinging humor and sassy sisterhood put in place by its eminently likeable predecessor, Pitch Perfect 2 remixes the elements and comes up with something even slicker and sharper.

Harvest stands strong and tall, a work solid as an oak. Full of a sensual love of nature and a distinctive vibe, it’s tangy like a home-brewed ale.

The script crackles with such bleak little jokes like this, relieving the tension in a work that could otherwise prove overwhelmingly depressing and borderline melodramatic.

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.

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.

Prayer dwells with almost swooning rapture on the bodies of young men as they mete out brutal violence on one another, and features a cast composed mostly of unknowns, impressively coached in order to deliver arresting turns onscreen.

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.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore does offer an engaging, exuberant portrait of the relentlessly likeable Matlin.

Half the Picture is a vital, comprehensive documentary on a subject that's so fundamental to the industry it's about, you have to wonder why dozens of movies on this scale or bigger haven't already been made.

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.

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.

Perhaps the most remarkable moment comes at the end when the elderly Aurora reflects that she doesn’t want revenge, she just wants those connected to the genocide to be made accountable for it: “sat in the chair” of justice.

Intimate in every sense, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande represents an affirming, immensely likable British comedy-drama.

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.

While the cast’s dancing is very good, on the whole, the acting suggests less training. But that fits the semi-professional vibe even better, creating a work that feels light, quick and quite dirty in every sense.

Let’s just say that morally, The Killer is all over the place, which may alienate some viewers. Others may delight in both the protagonist and the film’s puckish, zero-fucks-given attitude, one that seems entirely, atheistically uninhibited by fear of a punitive deity or higher moral purpose.

If nothing else, Armadillo proves just how well "The Hurt Locker" captured the mixture of boredom, fear, brutality and locker-room machismo that makes up the day-to-day routine of a frontline soldier.

The film has its own specific vibe, thanks in part to the writer-directors’ unique, immersive sense of the milieu and the leads’ tender chemistry.

A friend who watched this with me said that it’s the kind of film she’d like to see again when she’s dying. That pretty much nails its meditative, melancholy tone and suits the kind of work Goldsworthy does, which is all about the ephemeral and the enduring; time and the tactile qualities of the instant.

Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners (Domakinstvo za pocetnici) is a fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family.

Thanks to the director’s magisterial knack with actors (especially non-professionals such as terrific adolescent discovery Nykiya Adams, who, as the protagonist, is in nearly every frame of the film), the result is quite entrancing.

Simply designed animation, modeled on the look of cool cartoons of the time such as Daria, adds an extra comic jauntiness. You could say, to use a popular slang term from the 90s, this puts the “mental” back in experimental, but in a good way.

A gloriously off-the-charts study in perversity.

The big treat is seeing Jett herself talk and watching her still-strong bond with producer and best friend Kenny Laguna: two leather-clad old mates, constantly bickering but inseparable.

It’s a proper animation buff’s piece of work, and admittedly a little slow to get its yarn ripping, but mesmerising and moving in the later stretches.

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.

I can think of few documentaries that are more honest, self-scrutinising and revelatory about ageing, familial love and its limits, and the whole tragicomic process of dying.

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

Packed with rambling digressions, sudden shifts of tone, and playful fake-outs as it shuttles between layers of “reality” and performance, but constructed with precision and assurance, it leaves you with both a sugar high and slight sense of nausea.

There’s nothing sentimental about this documentary, which looks at people with the clear, unflinching gaze of a portraitist.

Like the emotional equivalent of a massage with a sandpaper loofah, the film leaves you feeling raw and tender, thanks particularly to the knockout performances from the small cast, especially Collette.

For all its flaws it’s a rich, thought-provoking film which, while challenging, is not without humor and visual pleasures, particularly in the restrained but bang-on period production design.

Money can’t buy you good comic instincts, inventiveness or a sense of playful whimsy, but, fortunately, Taylor and his handful of collaborators have all that for free.

"Doomsday," horror-trained British helmer Neil Marshall flexes strong action muscles and carves copious flesh here, creating the sort of broadsword-based bedlam that will thrill fans of ancient martial movies.

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.

Like so many Bildungsroman, it’s a tapestry crammed with incidental details, just as busy as the fantastic vintage-style prints on the women’s dresses and the flammable upholstery in the interiors. But then Crialese, who’s always been good with performers, will serve up a moment of achingly sad stillness.

The end result is a nifty ethical puzzle about balancing the needs of individuals versus those of the community. Still, it’s best not to take the plot too seriously given the wild implausibilities that come into play in the third act.

Equity is a smart thriller set in the corporate world that disguises its modest budget with an intelligent script and good set of hooks.

This arresting work, starring Margaret Qualley, Julianne Nicholson and Melissa Leo as well as a celestial choir of up-and-coming young female actors, mesmerizes as it probes a uniquely female-dominated milieu where passions — both religious, sexual and a combination of the two — run hot under those starched, lily-white coifs and black habits.

Both actors contribute knife-sharp timing and the kind of intensity needed to make this essentially two-man setup work.

Chock full of delightful narrative surprises, imaginative genre tweaks, and warming performances from its two leads, this low-budget romcom-horror story is worth seeking out.

It’s a surprisingly meaty work that works on several levels at once.

As quiet and thoughtfully composed as a Dutch master's painting, Ordinary Love uses clean lines and well observed tiny details to build up a deeply moving, nuanced portrait of a marriage under strain after a cancer diagnosis.

Utterly bonkers but also sort of brilliant, Judy & Punch creates an origin story for the traditional British puppet show (usually known as Punch and Judy,) resulting in a tonally complex comedy-drama about spousal abuse, infant mortality and misogyny told with magic tricks, puppets and slapstick.

In a way the film’s best bits are the quiet scenes where the audience is primed to expect something awful is about to happen, only to find the point is not a jump scare but a harrowing emotional insight.

It’s commonly thought that artists seldom make stories about happy, stable marriages because where’s the drama in that? Ethel & Ernest, a deeply affecting feature-length animated film, disproves that assumption by unfurling an emotionally rich story about the lifelong marital love affair between two kindly, modest people living in an inconspicuous corner of suburban England.

The cast has chemistry in all directions, between the romantic matchups but just as much among the menfolk as they bicker, bond and berate one another.

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.

What's ultimately very endearing about Swift is her intelligence and self-awareness, qualities that also make her music compelling, sophisticated and capable of appealing both to adolescent kids and hipster musicologists.

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

This neatly written Heathers-meets-Groundhog Day high-concept package delivers both technical polish and a toothsome yet likeable cast.

This debut feature from writer-director Brian Duffield (best known for his screenplays for Underwater, The Babysitter and Jane Got a Gun) has plenty of gallows humour to leaven the gore and tragedy, and plenty of subtexts swimming under the surface like glittering, metaphorical koi.

With Aniara, the Swedish writing-directing team Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja deliver a cold, cruel, piercingly humane sci-fi parable that’s both bang on the zeitgeist and yet also unnervingly original.

The whole thing might have been improved by slightly nippier pacing, but the slow-burn action pays off with a spectacular climactic gun-fight, where the distances are so vast it takes half a second for bullets to find their marks.

The film is to its credit much more interested in psychology rather than tech, and the fine lines between avarice, rage and impotence that make the capitalist world go round.

It has its own peculiar spirit and casts a very witchy spell, thanks particularly to Gregg's adept handling of both experienced and young, less proven performers.

It should be noted that sometimes this feels like just weirdness for weirdness’ sake. Nevertheless, Strickland builds his own worlds with such a distinctive style — down to the fonts, the bilious shades of green and the textures of the silks — that the viewer can’t help feeling pulled into his crazy maelstrom of quirk.

Luxuriating in a wealth of archival material that encompasses radio and TV interviews, privately recorded conversations from reel-to-reel tapes (Armstrong could swear like a sailor), and good old-fashioned newspaper clippings (remember them?), this documentary about the great Louis Armstrong is a real keeper.

While the landscapes, especially in the parched Sahara section of the story, are dazzling, Carnera’s camera always keeps the focus on the humans, sometimes specks seen from great distances moving through the sand and sometimes studied in close-ups that fill the widescreen canvas.

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

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.

Often moving but also disquieting and even intermittently funny, this drama unfurls a spiritual parable that is uniquely Polish but accessible to all.

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

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.

The constant juxtaposition of scenes showing the dark and light aspects of the characters endows the pic with a juicy moral complexity that will stimulate post-screening debates.

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.

All in all, this is a powerful example of a bricolage-like editing technique that relies heavily on exploiting the copyright laws around fair use to create a prismatic, provocative style of cinema that’s very 21st century.

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.

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

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

Similarly to his writings, Franz the film is interested in a distilled, abstracted meditation on power, the law, control and desire that transcends the banal borders of realism.

The result is a finely observed study of modern manners and mores on a micro-budget that’s nevertheless rich in feeling, especially the cringeiness one might experience from watching other people bicker or hearing people have sex through thin walls.

No one is a bad guy here, while all of them are also flawed, and the movie keeps the viewer wondering right up to the end what Jess will finally decide.

The whole thing is a bit bonkers but very beautiful too.

A judicious mix of new-minted interviews, home video footage and charming animation by Shanahan makes for a delightful, well-tempered package.

One senses that Billingham is not always at ease with the narrative demands of filmmaking. But his startling eye for the common made strange is very visible here, and hard not to hope that he’ll make further forays into filmmaking after this very auspicious debut with a work that feels so close and true to his earlier material.

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.

Thai writer-director Lee Thongkham’s horror feature is a giddy, gory little treat

Thanks to inventive camerawork, mesmeric performances and incisive yet elliptical editing and storytelling, the claustrophobia becomes a feature instead of a liability.

Like a photograph developing in a bath of chemicals, Kreutzer’s strategies and themes slowly become clearer, and the scene isn’t pretty.

The Good Lie is a touching, generous-hearted movie, sensitively directed by Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) working with a smart, sly, long-gestated script by Margaret Nagle (Boardwalk Empire).

Spirited, highly amusing and endearingly shambolic.

Creature is exceptional in its depiction of the Byzantine bureaucracy that encases gulags, and how the towns adjacent to Russian prisons tend to be seedy snake pits of crime and venality.

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.

A compelling gateway documentary that should absorb both fans and novices alike.

Told with clarity, respect and empathy, and not just for the women on whom Weinstein preyed, Macfarlane's film offers a timely and fascinating overview of his story, one that's almost emblematic of the pathology of serial sexual abusers.

Essential viewing for anyone interested in what freedom of information means in the digital age, this passionate, fascinating, unapologetically partial but fair documentary celebrates Aaron Swartz.

British thriller Beast takes a fistful of tired old tropes — like a hunt for a serial killer, and the ‘ol Joe Eszterhas-style is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-baddie tease — and manages to fashion something fresh, fierce and quite striking from them.

A nuanced, emotionally temperate study of a precocious youth.

An overview of African-American gospel sounds whose dazzling talent-display should exhilarate viewers regardless of religious leanings.

All In offers compelling visual history and civics lessons that will still serve an educational purpose long after the next presidential inauguration.

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.

A documentary that, like its subject, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is eminently sober, well-mannered, highly intelligent, scrupulous and just a teeny-weeny bit reassuringly dull.

The last half hour, so finely underplayed, is quietly devastating.

[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.

As a film this is anything but banal, and operates as a potent reminder of the randomness, and casual cruelty of modern terrorism, the way it leeches out the humanity of victims and perpetrators on both sides.

Berg’s account of the child abuse cases that led to the imprisonment of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), doesn’t reveal much that hasn’t already been in the news or written up in books, but it does provide a comprehensive, disturbing and utterly fascinating historical overview.

The endgame is disappointingly predictable, but writer-director-cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier has a lovely touch with faces, light and telling details.

Director Jill Soloway's comedy-drama isn't perfect – the leitmotif about open eyes feels over-workshopped, and the ending's a bit pat – but it nails with self-lacerating precision the manners and mores of a certain type of hipster parent, the bourgeoisie's muddled attitudes towards sex workers, and the precarious foundations of friendship.

Like a lot of topline Korean films, this prestige action thriller is a little too long at 137 minutes, but it’s consistently entertaining throughout, and quite well-suited given the length to being viewed on a streaming platform.

Writer-director Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s script leans perhaps a little too hard on the show-don’t-tell theory of construction, but she and her team make evocative use of simple but effective flourishes.

Hardcore Ozon fans will have fun arguing about where exactly this falls in the ranking of his substantial body of work, but it’s surely somewhere in the top 10 or even the top five, a rock-solid demonstration of his control over storytelling, technique and ability to get the best from actors.

It does serve as a handy summary for those who want a cinematic introduction to Bell’s sprawling, singular story.

The most affecting moments in the film are in more intimate settings.

Although not as strikingly original as Bujalski’s earlier work, there’s something endearing about the characters, the film’s laconic, stoner rhythms and quirky plotting. In the end, it has something wise and kind to say about loneliness and the cult of personal improvement.

The cast commit enthusiastically to the material, walking that fine line between comic exaggeration and an almost earnest dramatic sincerity.

Not a word is spoken throughout, which harkens back to an older era of cinematic storytelling. At the same time, the extreme frame-to-frame fluidity of the computer-assisted animation style, composed entirely of fields of subtly modulated colour, no outlines and minimal modelling, looks completely 21st century.

It’s all a lot, as they say, but those with a taste for maximalism will swoon over the goods on offer here.

Youth (the parenthetical subtitle Spring heralds a projected series of films) is consistently engaging, even if it’s not always easy to see what the whole package is trying to say that couldn’t be said with more brevity.

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.

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

By the end it’s nearly impossible not to shed a tear after the touching finesse and shape of this story.

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.

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).

There is a fair number of gags and wisecracks that will go over the head of many viewers not steeped in the local lore, argot and history. But the film’s infectious energy, use of in-camera effects, animation and all manner of jiggery pokery is as mesmerizing and giddy as it was when Danny Boyle used many of the same tricks for Trainspotting.

The Nest lingers long after the final credits. It may not have the same surprising newness that juiced the debut of Martha Marcy, but it casts an ineffable spell nevertheless.

It brings into focus not just the painful losses of loved ones and homes, but the sheer daunting scale of logistical planning, fundraising and negotiation with bureaucracies needed to rebuild the community.

This tense dystopian horror-thriller feels geographically non-specific, almost as if it were taking place in some kind of dream world. That touch of hazy vagueness is just right for SA director and co-writer Kelsey Egan’s cracking feature debut (co-written with Emma Lungiswa De Wet).

Even for those who know about the Auschwitz Protocols – a report to which the pair contributed that has a weighty legacy in Holocaust history – the film is still intensely impactful. Inevitably, it is profoundly upsetting and disturbing.

With its really smart deep dives into cultural criticism, this is a seasonal stocking overflowing with spooky fun.

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.

Offers both a universally relevant examination of religious zealotry and, at the same time, a damning, satirical look at modern Russia, a country whose major institutions have become increasingly dominated and cowed by medieval-minded reactionaries and bigots.

It feels confident, inventive and as grippy as duct tape throughout.

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.

A pleasing walk in the park for all involved, not exactly profound, but appealing to both long term fans of the franchise and accessible to newcomers.

The result is an expressive and moving portrait of a tempestuous marriage, one told with elan that feels rich in feeling even if its entire budget probably wouldn’t have covered the cost of croissants on an average film shoot in France.

As a meditation on bereavement, parenting and the burden and blessing of inheritances, Love & Stuff is about as universally accessible as it gets.

It seems almost frivolous to note this, but the hyper high-definition cinematography is both beautiful in a savage way and adds immediacy to the viewing experience.

The final reel packs a genuine emotional wallop, even as it makes auds laugh with the vicious precision of its dramatic irony.

This goofy horror comedy, based on an online game of the same name, just goes to prove that if you have a great cast, smart direction and witty script you can just about get away with murder.

This extraordinary documentary by director Sebastien Lifshitz, who has made many films about the LGBTQ+ experience (Wild Side, Bambi, Open Bodies), achieves a remarkable degree of intimacy with its young subject and her family.

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

Despite being entombed in all that prop flesh and wrinkles, Mirren manages to emote very effectively with her voice, mimicking Meir’s midwestern twang, gait and posture.

Like horse racing, filmmaking is a high-risk gamblers' game, but the team behind Dream Horse, the resulting dramatization of the Vokes' story, have surely bred a winner with this endearing, determinedly crowd-pleasing adaptation.

Not everything is spelled out too literally, and both the screenplay and Macneill's sensitive direction leave it to the lead actors to fill in the foreground colors.

It’s hard to dislike this pleasant, earnest work.

This directing debut for experienced producer Marc Turtletaub (Little Miss Sunshine, Loving) ticks along pleasantly, driven by an efficient if slightly bland script by Oren Moverman and Polly Mann.

Tenet makes you feel floaty, mesmerized and, to an extent, soothed by its spectacle — but also so cloudy in the head that the only option is to relax and let it blow your mind around like a balloon, buffeted by seaside breezes and hot air.

Facing the physical challenges of depicting Hawking’s disability, Redmayne pulls it off with enormous grace and endurance.

So much better than one would expect for a fifth installment in a franchise, this tribute to female friendship and girl power is a kick.

The worst that could be said of helmer David Gelb's feature debut is that it's perhaps a little over-garnished with backstory about Ono's relationship with his two sons, and is slightly repetitive. That said, this intrinsically compelling hymn to craftsmanship and taste in every sense should cleanse palates.

Although the focus is on one particular nightclub and its owner, the film acts as an accessible slice of jazz history that might usefully entice viewers to learn more.

As action, it's niftily executed, the suspense neatly built, and the shocks expectedly surprising.

The Nowhere Inn is simultaneously satire and fan service, frothy fun and pretentious nonsense, depending on what the viewer wants it to be.

This hallucinatory, deeply confusing but skillfully executed and mesmeric work flows back and forth across time periods, parts of the city of Yekaterinburg and its characters’ memories, often literally within the space of a single shot.

Director Bose handles the material with a light, elegant touch. It helps that the cast, especially the remarkable Koechlin who gives a bravura performance in both physical and emotional terms, can carry it all off.