Peter Debruge

Catch the Fair One is activist filmmaking at its most compelling. Before you run away from the notion, consider this: It doesn’t feel like this tough, relentlessly dark thriller is trying to push some kind of political point, even if so many of its creative choices succeed in doing exactly that.

Farrell and Kidman are astonishingly gifted at playing the subtext of every scene.

Considering Haneke's confrontational past, this poignantly acted, uncommonly tender two-hander makes a doubly powerful statement about man's capacity for dignity and sensitivity when confronted with the inevitable cruelty of nature.

An immensely satisfying taste of antebellum empowerment packaged as spaghetti-Western homage... A bloody hilarious (and hilariously bloody) Christmas counter-programmer.

The film’s last act brings everything full circle in a way that should satisfy both horror and art-house audiences, but then the movie, like its protagonist, is never content to be just one thing.

Even as he beguiles us with mystery, Guadagnino recreates Elio’s life-changing summer with such intensity that we might as well be experiencing it first-hand. It’s a rare gift that earns him a place in the pantheon alongside such masters of sensuality as Pedro Amodóvar and François Ozon, while putting “Call Me by Your Name” on par with the best of their work.

A profoundly moving and superbly acted diamond in the rough, Steve is better than anything the streamer has pushed for best picture to date.

This game-changing instant classic will doubtless inspire imitators, onscreen and in backyards everywhere, en route to redefining what a new generation expects of its mice-will-play movies.

For all the films that have been made about love triangles, Song has fashioned hers in the form of a circle, defying so many of the clichés in her quietly devastating way.

A stunning debut that finds its dandelion-haired heroine fighting rising tides and fantastic creatures in a mythic battle against modernity.

This grounded, frequently brutal and nearly three-hour film noir registers among the best of the genre, even if — or more aptly, because — what makes the film so great is its willingness to dismantle and interrogate the very concept of superheroes.

Every so often, a movie blindsides you, leaving you feeling different, enlightened, possibly even improved. Me and You and Everyone We Know is such a movie.

Delivers a polished and well-researched look at America 's largest corporate bankruptcy with a laser-sharp focus on the personalities, practices, and fates of the top executives behind the Enron meltdown.

Thoroughbreds doesn’t look or sound anything like other teen-centric movies, but this is hardly a surface-only character study.

Many filmmakers mistakenly think that exploiting tragedy is the way to jerk tears from their audience, when in fact, gestures of spontaneous kindness shown by near-strangers can be most moving — something Lloyd understands, boosting the positive energy with anthems like “Chandelier” and “Bulletproof.”

Propelled by color, energy, electronic music and a quartet of career-making performances, here is that rare sort of cinematic achievement that innovates at every turn, while teaching audiences how to make intuitive sense of the way it pushes the medium.

This is the director’s most accessible and naturalistic film, using everyday characters to test how well modern-day Russia is maintaining the social contract with its citizens.

Malta and Laudenbach have crafted an entertaining, kid-friendly toon whose power lies less in its plot than the surprising insights into human behavior revealed along the way.

Never before has anyone made a documentary like The Act of Killing, and the filmmakers seem at a loss in terms of how to organize the many threads of what they capture...Still, essential and enraging, The Act of Killing is a film that begs to be seen, then never watched again.

Beautiful, yet flawed film.

Brothers takes a scenario as old as Genesis – two jealous siblings spar over the affections of the same woman – and renders it fresh and immediate, by virtue of the warm, almost maternal, generosity director Susanne Bier shows her characters.

With My Flesh and Blood, Karsh finds a worthy subject in the constant day-to-day challenges facing a truly extraordinary family.

Three Burials is beautiful, authentic and brutally observant of human nature. With real Tex-Mex backdrops instead of the usual Monument Valley vistas and characters too complex to withstand simple white-hat/black-hat reductionism, Three Burials is a visionary portrait of the New West. This is the terrain of Eastwood and Peckinpah, saddled with the concerns of 21st-century life.

McQuarrie clearly believes in creating coherent set pieces: His combat scenes are tense, muscular, and clean, shot and edited in such a way that the spatial geography makes sense. He places audiences just over Cruise’s shoulder, or staring into the actor’s face as he grimaces with exertion.

One of the year’s few masterpieces.

Michael Dudok de Wit’s hypnotizing, entirely dialogue-free The Red Turtle is a fable so simple, so pure, it feels as if it has existed for hundreds of years, like a brilliant shard of sea glass rendered smooth and elegant through generations of retelling.

There’s no denying that Hooper and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon have delivered a cinematic landmark, one whose classical style all but disguises how controversial its subject matter still remains.

This is one of those rare, reframe-the-conversation films, like “Paris Is Burning,” “12 O’Clock Boys” and “Rize,” that take a very specific subculture and turn it into something universal and uplifting — only this one isn’t a documentary, despite the many real-world details that bring director Ricky Staub’s exceptional father-son drama to life.