Scott Tobias

The second half of The Kid With A Bike diverges so much from the first that they seem like two different movies - the first a drama about an orphan's search for home, the second a moral thriller about the terrible things all people, no matter their social station, are willing to do in the interest of self-preservation. Both sections are riveting in their own way, and punctuated by startling shocks and bursts of emotion.

As much as any documentary since Errol Morris’ A Brief History Of Time, Particle Fever excels at expressing advanced scientific theory through graphics that are simple, attractive, and utterly approachable.

Caouette's shattering Tarnation represents a landmark in personal filmmaking: It finally realizes the digital dream of a raw, unsanctioned glimpse into the soul.

On a deeper level, Haneke tries to reach for political allegory on the French-Algerian War, but the film functions best as a perfectly calibrated thriller, perhaps his most accessible to date.

Miller directs with intelligence, though not flair, but the script makes up for any flagging energy with crackling Sorkin dialogue and performances that sing with revolutionary fervor.

Fast, exhilarating new comedy.

What makes The Duke Of Burgundy so affecting is how deftly Strickland and his remarkable actresses bring something as exotic as lesbian S&M into the realm of the ordinary and relatable. Viewers can see themselves in Cynthia and Evelyn, whether they’re hand-washing each other’s undergarments or not.

Östland writes the conflict between husband and wife beautifully, like a scab that gets picked at until it bleeds, and he does things cinematically, too, to suggest the growing distance between them—an already-cool visual palette broadens like a yawning chasm.

Everyone’s there to get the job done, Dolph Lundgren style, meaning Skin Trade is a throwback to the one-man-army actioners of the ’80s, sprinkled with updated stats on human trafficking. If the film happens to raise awareness, then that’s more bonus than objective.

It’s haunting and beautiful at times, surprisingly playful at others, and like all great movies about magic, it has more than a few tricks up its sleeve.

Nebraska is one of Payne’s best films, a near-perfect amalgam of the acrid humor, great local color, and stirring resonances that run through his work.

Though it has the dramatic apparatus of fiction, the film unfolds with a documentary-like openness to the world around it.

Though conventional in many respects, it feels like no other boxing film ever made, due largely to Eastwood's unmistakable presence on both sides of the camera.

Plenty of entertaining action movies have been made since John Woo's 1992 Hard Boiled, but really, what's the point?

It would be enough for The Babadook to get by on scares alone—the eponymous spook is eminiently franchise-able—but Kent doesn’t give the audience that kind of distance. Her agenda is more personal.

McQueen speeding across the German countryside and leaping over the first of two barbed-wire fences leading into Switzerland may be the film's most iconic and enduring image. Dubious or not, it's a triumph of sorts that a tale that ends in war crimes could have such a rousing conclusion.

In spite of some thoughtful-and occasionally just bizarre-rumination on what the marvels of Chaumet really signify, Cave Of Forgotten Dreams often feels as stifling as the place it explores, rather than the sensual odyssey its evocative title suggests.

Drawing on a wealth of footage from inside ACT UP meetings and protests, David France's powerful documentary How To Survive A Plague pays tribute to their courage and relentlessness, but it's even better as a record of the tactics of effective activism.

When victims and their families talk about having their lives wrecked by a sexually abusive priest in the forceful documentary Deliver Us From Evil, that destruction is as much spiritual as psychological.

Little beyond Servillo’s presence gives the film any ballast, which is both asset and liability, freeing Sorrentino to pepper the screen with wild setpieces and fits of inspiration while encouraging a certain shapelessness.

Arriving in the middle of the Reagan 1980s, Repo Man remains one of the few examples of revolt within the system, and it’s no surprise to learn that Cox is fond of John Carpenter’s 1988 cult classic They Live, which also weds genre mayhem to cutting political satire.

It's a feisty, contentious, deliberately misshapen film, designed to challenge and frustrate audiences looking for a clean resolution. Just because it's over doesn't mean it's settled.

Story has made a potent political film without having to spray viewers with a fusillade of alarming numbers to back it up. She trusts viewers to intuit their way through fascinating anecdotes and detours that gain a cumulative power, one that data alone cannot possibly express.

Dazzling cinema-essay.

Has the suffocating intensity of great chamber drama.

The Dardennes sustain that tension through a masterful closing drive that resembles the final third of "In The Bedroom," only without the same dreadful inevitability.

With startling clarity and dreadful logic, Loach and Laverty make sense of every bad choice Compston makes until he runs out of options, locked into a destiny that he can't escape, mainly because his good intentions are clouded by tragic naivete.

Witnessing outreach workers intervening in these situations is inspiring enough, but their subtlety and nuance in neutralizing people of different backgrounds and temperaments is especially impressive.