Serena Donadoni

In the actor’s final role, Landau’s expressive power plays out in the soft folds of his gaunt face. Weiner offers a comforting vision of unlikely friendship and the peace an important man can find by embracing his ordinariness.

While acknowledging some missteps (such as jumping into a strenuous project too soon after surgery), Saffire and Schlesinger exhibit Whelan’s grace in dance and in life.

No one does dissolute hubris with as much charm as Grant, and his ebullience is the perfect foil to the misanthropic McCarthy.

Everyone needs nourishment, and Itami found humor and poignancy in how it’s provided and received.

Valley of Saints is a marvel of neorealism, with nonprofessional actors facing the same hurdles as their characters and writer/director Syeed improvising in shifting circumstances.

Key to Giant‘s enduring appeal is the meshing of outsize stars with Ferber’s characters: Closeted sex symbol Hudson’s towering Bick fills the big boots of his ranching family while struggling with the demands of traditional masculine authority. The taboo-breaking Taylor is the seductive, whip-smart Leslie, an assured reformer who views the injustices visited upon the ranch’s Mexican workers with maternal concern...And then there’s Dean’s most mannered, complex performance: Jett is at once transparent and enigmatic, hardening with age while the other characters mature. The actor’s death — a year before release — adds a keen poignancy to the character’s lost potential.

In the nourishing documentary Soufra, Thomas Morgan shows the claustrophobic living conditions and dangerous infrastructure of the tightly packed concrete towers, and chronicles how Lebanese government bureaucracy maintains the camp’s invisible borders and keeps occupants in a permanent state of legal limbo.

The film is restrained and observational, its impact cumulative.

The intoxicating A River Below contains elements of immersive nature documentaries and shocking wildlife exposes (like Blackfish and The Cove), but director Mark Grieco’s profile of two driven conservationists tells a more slippery tale.

Adopting the philosophy of neorealism, Rauniyar reveals the overarching forces (religion, caste, patriarchy) that forge Nepali communities, but his characters are also profoundly shaped by individual decisions.

Extraordinary ordinariness is Two Step's saving grace.

Guzmán and Cárdenas present this tropical island as both Anne's romantic refuge and Noelí's exploitative landscape, a beautiful, enchanting — and realistic — Eden where snakes are merely snakes.

Qu unpacks much that matters in Angels Wear White, including the abuse of power and importance of status and wealth in Chinese society, but her most thoughtful, nuanced observations involve female sexuality.

When the violence comes, as it must, Sen stages his shoot-outs with the physical and emotional wallop of the best westerns, but he’s more interested in restoring the faith of law enforcement officers whose belief in justice has eroded.

The dancers in Alive and Kicking all share a rapturous expression, and Glatzer makes the case for this Depression-era diversion as a modern tonic for isolation.

Franco seems the ideal interpreter of The Adderall Diaries, but he's reduced the memoirist's tough introspection to misery porn.

His interviews are informative and captivating, but the film’s gut-punch immediacy comes from the astounding visuals caught by participants on digital cameras and cellphones, including shocking images of Assad’s torturers at work.

Josue tries to reclaim his narrative with this intimate, positive portrait, but while Shepard's brave and resourceful parents encourage her, they realized long ago that his death means he no longer belongs solely to them.

In Fiona Tan’s glorious ode to a Japanese volcano, Mount Fuji is both geological marvel and malleable symbol, its solidity and grandeur inspiring conquest and contemplation.

There’s nothing preachy about Jinn, even though Nijla Mu’min’s elegant debut feature is about a teenager coming to terms with her mother’s newly embraced religion.

Tully encapsulates the psychological process of maturity with pithy humor and vertiginous insight. Tully’s appearance may have seemed like a magical interlude, but she solidifies Marlo’s reality by exposing the path that led her there.

Funny and smart, full of biting humor and astute observations about identity and history, Cheryl Dunye's audacious, joyous debut feature captures the process of falling hopelessly in love with the movies.

The restrained performances of Dubreuil and Yaron (Fill the Void) gradually reveal the flaws and strengths of this fragile couple, while Twersky is quietly devastating as an abandoned husband who fully understands devotion and sacrifice.

As with many recent environmental documentaries, the filmmakers’ call to action is simple and upbeat: This isn’t so hard, people, we can do it if we try!

Pin Cushion has the visual cues of comedy, with its candy-colored kitsch and exaggerated signifiers of eccentricity and snobbery, but at heart, it’s a tragedy of naïveté.

Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel’s signature style blends screwball and romantic comedy with playful fantasy, but Lost in Paris lacks the magical elements of their previous features.

The structure of After Auschwitz may be simple (talking heads and archival footage), but the cumulative effect of six women revealing the physical, psychological, and emotional toll taken on Holocaust survivors is a powerful testament to individual humanity emerging from inhuman horrors.

Ozon sacrifices his sharp portrayal of grief and rebirth to clumsy convention.