Tirdad Derakhshani

A transcendent work from Ireland's Cartoon Saloon studio that's almost wasted on kids.

The photography is lush, the dialogue uproarious, and the crazy action sequences unforgettable.

Paterson is easily one of Jarmusch’s most accomplished films. He portrays the life of the mind and the workings of the creative soul as a kind of secret love affair, a deep, hidden well inside the most ordinary, mundane existence.

Gripping, hair-raising documentary.

A transcendent political poem as intellectually rigorous as it is beautiful.

It’s a true American masterpiece and one of the best films of the decade.

The Salt of the Earth, has the power to draw you into its world, transfix, and perhaps eventually transform you.

Its historical influence aside, Dragon Inn delivers pure cinematic pleasure. I'm not sure it can be overpraised.

A somber piece of film poetry about men so invested in a rigid notion of honor and revenge they become trapped in an endless loop of violence.

An immensely rich, deeply felt exploration of human relationships that draws you in and holds you fast for nearly three hours.

Lindholm's mastery of film form is matched by his willingness to engage with some of the most intractable moral quandaries that haunt contemporary life.

I’m Not Your Negro is an unforgettable work. Baldwin’s words – eloquently spoken by Samuel Jackson – will haunt you.

If you want to expose your children to a work of art with real soul, you could do a lot worse than Kubo and the Two Strings.

A delightful, sharp dramedy that skewers the topic from every angle imaginable.

Wiener-Dog has a satirical edge as sharp as any Solondz has fashioned, but it is also filled with disarming moments of absurdist humor.

At turns elegiac, absurdist, and gently satirical, Lonergan’s drama is a deeply affecting chamber piece that features an outstanding performance by Casey Affleck.

Strictly speaking, Elle is a comedy, a blacker-than-death social satire about bourgeois values, set in contemporary Paris. It’s viciously, demonically funny in parts.

Moana 's great heart and great humor actively subvert the violent, egocentric, macho mind-set that dominates so many popular stories. It can hardly be expected to change prevailing attitudes on its own. But it’s a start.

A superbly researched and edited documentary about the women's movement in the 1960s.

The animated French family film April and the Extraordinary World will have your imagination doing somersaults and cartwheels.

It can feel inchoate, dropping the viewer in the middle of events without much context, and it exacts an emotional toll. But its raw quality also makes it compelling viewing.

It's easy to mistake the simplicity of plot and theme here for simple-mindedness - this isn't Pynchon or Proust. Kung Fu Panda 3 has the economy of a Zen koan, not to mention its inner harmony and wisdom.

An immensely enjoyable, warmhearted, and gentle showbiz dramedy.

Very few of us would like to think about the physical and emotional toll that life in captivity takes on these magnificent creatures. Gabriela Cowperthwaite's powerful, heartbreaking, and beautifully crafted documentary, Blackfish, forces us to do just that.

Ai Weiwei comes off as a man on a singular mission: to record the life around him before it is erased or distorted by a repressive government terrified by the smallest sign of nonconformity. His primary weapons: video cameras and Twitter.

Far too good to be watched in one sitting.

Directed with tremendous style and vibrant, buoyant energy.

Garfield melts into his Doss character in a performance that seems impossibly still and tranquil. He’s mesmerizing. It’s almost impossible to imagine he ever played Spider-Man.

Adapted from the devilishly clever 1955 novel by master crime author Georges Simenon, The Blue Room is a dazzling deconstruction of the mystery genre that turns its conventions on their heads.

The filmmakers don't bother hammering home a backstory or explaining why David is crazy. They just throw us in the deep end and dazzle us with a series of violent encounters that ends with a deadly chase in a surreal fun house maze of mirrors.

A startling, powerful biopic.

In Order of Disappearance has an utterly unique feel, a certain Scandinavian crispness that's impossible to duplicate.

Set against the backdrop of Montana's stunning wilderness, Certain Women portrays women at work and women in desire with the quiet confidence, simplicity, and directness of a true artist.

While it hits some of the usual sci-fi tropes, Creative Control's center of gravity isn't tech itself, but the relationships of those who use it.

The Confirmation is a powerful directorial debut from 59-year-old writer Bob Nelson, who received an Oscar nomination for his first screenplay, Nebraska.

Hong, who makes his feature debut here, has a masterful command of rhythm, beautifully weaving each strand of the narrative around that momentous opening scene.

Exceptionally graceful and accomplished, Ozon's film challenges our received notions of normalcy, intimacy, and love.

Giannoli's riotously funny and heartbreaking film follows Marguerite's attempt to stage a solo recital in a grand theater in Paris.

Swinton is delightful in a twisted turn as Wilford's enforcer, a Margaret Thatcherian dragon lady who adores watching her men torture miscreants who have defied the train's No. 1 rule: Know your place.

A richly observed coming-of-age drama about two teenage boys who are drawn to each other with a complicated mix of attraction, repulsion, tenderness, and aggression.

Their film would be even more compelling if it followed up with further reports, perhaps a few years apart, charting the three boys' fates.

Always, murmuring just beneath the surface, there's a political undercurrent to Farhadi's films, a gentle whisper of a critique aimed at the weight of Iran's combined cultural and political intransigence.

Wetlands is one of the most daring, visually arresting, innovative, and imaginative examples of filmmaking to come out of Europe in recent memory.

A breathtaking, disturbing look at urban angst and the emptiness of youth culture.

A dazzling documentary.

Drug War is a deeply intelligent, exhilarating and eminently satisfying adult crime story, one of the best thrillers you're likely to see this year.

"You have to be like a poet," Jodorowsky says at one point. "Your movie must be just as you think of it. . . . The movie has to be just like I dream it." What an extraordinary dream it could have been.

At its satirical best, Things to Come takes aim at some of the sacred cows of French academia, showing how the posturing of today’s radical kids seems to repeat the attitudes their parents had in the '60s.

Rebecca Hall is wondrous as Christine, delivering a sly performance that brings out her character's extraordinary intelligence. Her Christine has a peculiar brand of dry, subversive humor that takes aim at various absurdities of modern life and mass media.

One of this year's true surprises, the superior animated sequel not only is infused with the same independent spirit and off-kilter aesthetic that enriched the original, it also deepens the first film's major themes.

You'll need a strong stomach for some of the scenes in A Girl Like Her, one of the most moving and intelligent of the recent glut of films and TV specials about teenage bullying.

A remarkable, thoroughly disturbing creepshow that burrows deep under your skin and refuses to let go.

Funny, wry, tragic, and deeply moving.

Paddington is perfect for today's audiences, so long overfed on comic-book fodder. The bear's impeccable manners, perfect diction, and earnestness make him the ultimate anti-Bart Simpson.

We can't but enjoy the movie and its oddball characters - which makes us somehow complicit in their crimes.

Wake in Fright is essential viewing for anyone interested in the roots of male violence.

Fences is also very much an actors' movie, with breathtaking performances from Washington and his costars, including Davis, Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby, and Mykelti Williamson.

Dense, richly textured, and emotionally fraught - uplifting and devastating in equal parts - Shane Carruth's masterful sophomore effort is an abstract, elusive, but emotionally engaging love story that's more tone poem than drama.

A fascinating, suspenseful story about obsessive love, money, the Mafia, and murder.

It's not a critique but a rather graceful, witty, and stylish film that offers possible solutions to the problems Moore believes plague the United States.

Rosamund Pike is adorable, if a little too ethereal and flighty.

A truly refreshing break from the Hollywood humdrum, the film is a perfect vehicle for Rock's range of talents, giving him plenty of breathing space to launch into his trademark stand-up riffs while grounding him in a story as moving as it is funny.

We know how the story ends: Nordling persuades Choltitz to back down. Yet, the film somehow maintains a razor-sharp sense of suspense throughout. And it ends with a delicious plot twist that makes one rethink Nordling's moral superiority.

Emotionally engaging and unhampered by dialogue, Boy & the World will appeal to children with its deceptively simple story and its visual splendor.

An elegant survey of the origins of the information revolution and a shrewd analysis of how the internet has reshaped the world. It's one of the director's best docs.

The Green Prince is an extraordinary achievement. It has all the suspense of a great espionage yarn, but it's also a powerful moral document that calls into question the tactics of terrorism.

A taut, understated minimalist masterwork.

It's the stuff of nightmares.

It's fun, exciting, freakish filmmaking.

A crafty, suspenseful, violent horror film that touches on the inner lives of sexual predators, the question of guilt and remorse in the human soul, and the practice of torture.

When it comes to sheer comic-book fun, few summer movies deliver a more consistent, satisfying, thoroughly enjoyable shot of cinematic jouissance than the delightfully adventurous actress Scarlett Johansson's latest bit of strange, Lucy.

A quiet, modest chamber piece more like "Moon" than "Star Wars."

While its rather formulaic second half relies on clichés about underdogs' triumphing against the odds, The Idol opens with a terrific look at Assaf's childhood that has the feel of "Stand By Me."

This terrific film and its inspirational message have been filtered through an individualistic, American point of view, suggesting that anyone can make a better life for themselves if they are willing to work. And that's not the case everywhere.

Deadpool is, on the whole, a big bowl of fun filled with great stunts, gory fight scenes, and sexy poses.

Americans seem uncommonly uncomfortable discussing our own class struggles. But, boy, do we love to watch the Brits do it. I think that's one reason the inspiring and joyful Dark Horse is such an appealing film.

A complicated, multi-segmented narrative that's much longer, more elaborate, more dramatic, and more packed with chilling moments and hair-raising visuals than one could anticipate, even from Wan.

The weight of the picture's moral and political message rests on Ice Cube's Calvin. A decent, honest man with a well-developed sense of responsibility and a passion for social justice, he's an iconic American type - the reluctant hero. He'd rather tend to his own garden, but when called to duty, he's all in.

Amid all the horror and the black ooze, there emerges a deeply touching story about the power of love.

Chilling - and very chatty. Snowden is a seriously talky film. Yet it never feels tedious, thanks to Stone's tremendous sense of story construction, the film's razor-sharp editing - and Gordon-Levitt's masterful performance.

At once a shocking, baroque freak-out and a finely tuned, brilliantly paced surrealist black comedy.

Wolf Totem has some of the most exciting, mind-blowing scenes of nature I've ever seen.

An intensely intelligent, well-written, and mature exploration of the unwritten rules women have to follow if they want to succeed in high finance.

A remarkably weird and wonderful exercise in psychological terror featuring a virtuoso performance by Scottish actor James McAvoy.

Michael Keaton has this incredible, I’m-at-the-edge-of-the-abyss look that should be taught as "the hangdog" in drama school.

Pulp fiction doesn't come much better than Cold in July, a gritty, grisly - and perversely giddy - crime yarn directed by Pottstown-born indie-film provocateur Jim Mickle.

With its clever structure and pacing, its range of emotional notes, and its remarkable use of magic realism, The 9th Life of Louis Drax makes for an absorbing and memorable mystery.

The film delivers what it promises - an education and a thrill.

The 85-year-old Chilean-born auteur returns this week with his latest directorial attempt, The Dance of Reality, an intensely personal, deeply felt, if at times solipsistic autobiographical work about his childhood in Tocopilla, a seaside town at the edge of the Chilean desert.

A charming, warm-hearted Swedish dramedy about the redemptive power of neighborly love.

Alvarez triumphs because he made one crucial decision: Avoid digital animation and use only practical in-camera special effects. He uses every trick from classic Hollywood and invents a few of his own.

It hobbles its otherwise fascinating premise by descending into hagiography. Webb's story is a tragedy, to be sure, but portraying him as a saint and martyr does little to advance the truth.

A cross between François Truffaut's sometimes-harrowing dramas about childhood and a Steven Spielberg fantasy, Gondry's film abounds with sentiment - without falling prey to sentimentality.

Child actor Pawar is extraordinary as Saroo during his terrifying odyssey, and Davis portrays the streets of Calcutta, teeming with homeless children and adults, as if they were one of the rings of hell from "Dante's Inferno."

An inspiring, educational, highly enjoyable documentary.

Lean, mean, and utterly compelling, Ma’s beautifully paced and remarkably understated 80-minute thriller Old Stone is a Kafkaesque satire about the soul-crushing effects of bureaucracy.

A thrilling, gorgeous actioner about a massive tsunami that wipes a tourist town off the map.

A small, intimate micro-budget effort, Altered Minds boasts terrific production values, pitch-perfect performances, and an eerie soundscape of found noises that evoke the feel of a surreal nightmare.