Tim Grierson

All Of A Sudden never stoops to treacly melodrama, instead preferring a restrained approach that allows the film’s most emotional scenes to hit with full force.

Thanks to a sterling lead performance from Oscar Isaac, the Coen brothers have once again delivered an impressively nuanced character study — one that has much to say about art, compromise and all the aspiring hopefuls who never got their moment in the sun.

It is a testament to this deeply moving film that Lacorazza has laid bare her own complicated feelings about her father while acknowledging that, as shown in a silently shattering final scene, sometimes words fail.

A sympathetic but clear-eyed character study transforms into something more insidious, sobering and infuriating in (T)error, a superb documentary that personalises the US War on Terror in ways that make the human toll intimate and unmistakable.

Writer-director Jim Jarmusch often explores existential themes, but they’ve perhaps never been so beautifully unadorned as they are in Paterson, a deceptively modest character piece that’s profound and moving while remaining grounded in the everyday.

The sixth film in the series is among the most outstanding, delivering a near-exhausting amount of stupendous action sequences paired with deft character drama and the requisite life-or-death stakes. Fallout is a testament to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who gives the proceedings a witty, sophisticated grandeur, and yet the film belongs to Cruise and his seemingly limitless passion for putting himself and his audience through the wringer.

Some may be frustrated that Kaufman leaves viewers to figure out his ultimately puzzling narrative, but this film’s entrancing strangeness begins to assert a hallucinogenic hold. Even if the roads are sometimes treacherous, they’re well worth exploring.

Semi-autobiographical and dedicated to his late mom and dad, the film is a potent memory piece guided by remarkable performances from Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, who are asked to walk a delicate tonal tightrope, delivering a portrait of an imperfect marriage that’s heartbreaking in its tenderness.

A mixture of domestic drama, apocalyptic fable and old-fashioned (and unironic) Hollywood musical, The End is an audacious and frequently enrapturing experience, with superb performances at its emotional heart.

The mirror it holds up to its subjects — and perhaps the audience — is incredibly, sometimes painfully illuminating.

Such questions are central to this elusive marvel, which invites the viewer to complete the drawing that Schilinski evocatively sketches.

Janet Planet is alive with possibility, not just for the youngster but also for the remarkable writer-director who announces her big-screen ambitions with stunning force.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the movie works better as a free-floating societal critique — of materialism, of so-called domestic tranquillity — than as an incisive commentary on any of the topics it brushes up against. But The Nest’s atmosphere of animosity is palpable enough that it’s wicked fun simply watching the O’Haras become unglued.

Many small things happen in Killer of Sheep, nothing of much consequence. But the enlargement of life itself is profound.

A corrosive rage courses through this 163-minute odyssey that’s matched by a leavening absurdism, Jude aghast at the comical stupidity of our inauthentic, greed-driven world.

A coming-of-age tale rendered with humour, sensitivity and intelligence, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a marvellous look at adolescence which is frank but also affectionately attuned to the excitement and confusion of being young.

Sure, Widows is a dynamite entertainment, but it’s also more mournful, thought-provoking and intelligent than that.

This ripping action-adventure features stellar effects and a superb lead performance from Owen Teague as a timid simian who must rescue his clan from the clutches of a warlike tribe.

A beautiful, wise, erotic, devastating love story, this tale of a young lesbian couple’s beginning, middle and possible end utilizes its running time to give us a full sense of two individuals growing together and apart over the course of years. It hurts like real life, yet leaves you enraptured by its power.

A shattering portrait of a luckless woman unable to pull out of the tailspin that is her life, Where Is Kyra? is a powerfully moody character study anchored by a remarkable performance from Michelle Pfeiffer.

Ballad doesn’t reinvent the Coens’ sardonic, measured aesthetic, but the anthology’s looser structure allows them a friskiness that is welcome from such masterful veterans.

The result is that rare documentary that works equally effectively on the head and the heart, only making Murad’s heroism more remarkable in the process.

Delicately segueing from deadpan humour to delicate poignancy, Sorry, Baby is guided by the filmmaker’s graceful lead performance, which captures the guilt, anger and sadness of a woman who once seemingly had a bright future — until, suddenly, everything changed.

A scintillating romantic triangle paired with a gripping sports drama, Challengers finds Luca Guadagnino in crowd-pleasing mode, delivering his most purely entertaining film.

Writer-director Mike White has crafted a painfully funny and surprisingly moving character piece, but what’s most remarkable is how he and his star empathize with Brad’s feelings of inferiority while, at the same time, pinpointing the arrogance, privilege and callousness that often factor into such soul-searching.

The picture deftly blends genres to create an arresting snapshot of the ricocheting carnage of sexual violence.

Each of the three leads in Blue Sun Palace dreams of a transcendence that may never come — Tsang’s superb debut puts viewers on their side, even though we see how long the odds are against them.

This is a moody comedy about unconscious marital discord, but it’s also about that ineffable discontent that envelops most of us. Digging For Fire is funny because it rings true — and because it stings a little.