Oktay Ege Kozak

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a deliciously bizarre and refreshingly unique experience that not only manages to successfully meld two completely opposite tones—punk and whimsy—but to wrap them up into an exhilarating narrative that infuses a familiar sci-fi/comedy/romance structure with a host of surprises that even the most hardened genre scholar will appreciate.

With its giddy and hypnotic mix of oil painting backgrounds and digital animation in service of a wonderfully inventive story surrounded by kooky, immediately lovable characters, Tito and the Birds is also one of the most original animated works of the year.

Not only is Bobby Sands: 66 Days allows us to put together a great double feature with “Hunger,” it’s also an incredibly important and profoundly inspiring historical documentary that will become more and more relevant as we prepare to once again face the kinds of oppression that Sands fought against.

Floyd Norman: An Animated Life is as joyful as its subject, and is heartily recommended to every artist who might have lost their way and are looking for some inspiration.

The People vs Fritz Bauer successfully uses the moral importance of its themes and the strength of its performances in order to build a riveting procedural that efficiently covers for its lack of visual pizzazz.

An exceptionally well-executed and emotionally heart wrenching documentary.

The most tension-filled ransom exchange sequence ever filmed works perfectly as the midpoint break between the two halves, which eventually begin to converge as a potent study on the psychological effects of income inequality disguised as a straight genre piece.

Wacky, smart, engaging and exciting, Get Duked! represents the next step in the Wright/Cornish school of 21st Century British comedy.

The Kid Who Would Be Kid hits the family classic trifecta: Spectacular fun for kids and adults, full of important themes, and a rebellious attitude in regard to the wide range of things grownups are messing up.

It’s a shame that its studio didn’t more heavily market Captive State. Smart, layered, tense, well-executed sci-fi like this should be nurtured in movie theaters.

Abrahamson can transition seamlessly between static James Ivory-type long shots of the soothing English countryside, easing the audience into a sense of comfort that comes with the high-class beauty of the period drama, and uncomfortable close-ups of faces, weaning in and out of focus, daring us to confront the neuroses of the characters head on. Underneath the veneer of uber-polite socializing is a vast inner turmoil.

All This Panic doesn’t offer any revolutionary approaches to this type of intimate documentary, and the subject matter might be too broad for some, but it makes up for its lack of originality with heart and genuine emotion.

Harrowing, uncomfortable, and heartbreaking, Pervert Park is an important film with an urgent, compassionate message.

Fans of high octane, fast-paced martial arts action might be bored with the deliberately calculating style of The Final Master, but those who look for a more patient and meditative experience within the genre will get more than their money’s worth.

Art Bastard is a respectful and affectionate look into the life of a true outsider in the art world.

The powerful performances by the three leads really help create the brothers’ distinct vision.

By focusing entirely on Zappa’s outlook on his own work and the way it related to the outside world, Schütte manages to form a tight narrative around this fascinating man.

This isn’t merely “eating your cinematic vegetables,” as Kennebeck manages to present a well-paced and structured documentary that’s also culturally significant.

It’s hard enough to have a fully CG character as your co-star, and it’s even tougher when an actor is tasked with creating a deep emotional bond with something she can’t even see during production. Steinfeld is up to the challenge, making us believe in Bumblebee’s existence almost as much as the animators who worked on bringing him to life.

It’s an endlessly fun romp with spectacular widescreen black and white cinematography. The fact that it contains the greatest—and perhaps bloodiest—samurai duel in film history is certainly a big plus.

With its unflinching and painstaking execution of such grim subject matter, Foxtrot is certainly not an easy watch, but an ultimately rewarding one.

This is the most engaging and emotionally effective Moore doc since Bowling for Columbine.

Served Like a Girl manages to inform the audience about its important subject matter in an always engaging way while also telling an entertaining story with as many twists and turns as one might find in a fictionalized counterpart.

This being a Steven Spielberg joint, The Post can’t help but gradually bring heavy emotional tension to the film’s forefront, easing us moment by moment into a fairly manipulative yet exhilarating finale. None of that should come as a surprise: “Manipulative but exhilarating” might as well be the director’s calling card.

You might have heard about ISIS using spiffy, Hollywood-style propaganda videos to attract new recruits, but City of Ghosts breaks down how nefarious and well-organized this operation is, as the members of RBSS point out the ways in which ISIS took clear production lessons from Hollywood to make their videos as attractive to impressionable youth as possible.

It’s a pulse-pounding, tightly wound thriller that sticks its predictable but nevertheless effective ending in order to provide a satisfying genre retread.

The film thrives within a dream-logic vibe, especially in Olivares’ cinematography, with its heavy emphasis on symmetrical framing, stark contast and lush use of yellows and blues, evoking subliminal terror.

Over all, the profound performances, the even-lit digital cinematography that gives the film a docudrama feel, and Moussaoi’s impressive voice as a first-time feature helmer turns Until the Birds Return into an engaging work on the universality of human nature.