Zachary Wigon

This portrait of an introverted soul brought out of her shell is not without its charms.

Full of long takes and matter-of-fact performances, melancholy low-contrast cinematography and desolate vistas suffused with acute loneliness, The Empty Hours captures the feeling of idling away the time, waiting for something to arrive.

Thoroughly transporting, the peacefulness and clarity of Cousin Jules can't help but reveal, by contrast, the restlessness and agitation too common to life today.

Weaving numerous influences into a rich emotional tapestry, Alain Guiraudie's The King of Escape skillfully absorbs and updates its assertive cinematic forebears.

With striking compositions and cuts that reveal a deep appreciation of cinema's possibilities, Valeria Golino's Honey could be about anything at all and still demand and hold your attention; that the narrative is as moving as the film is aesthetically precise is an added delight.

The film’s strength derives from how Wasikowska makes Davidson’s seemingly suicidal wanderlust relatable.

Breillat's impressive film is a study of bodies and how we carry them, and it explores the manner in which weakness seeks out strength on an almost primal level, bypassing the higher modes of human thought.

Refusing to take sides or vilify his characters, Adler finds the humanity in all parties.

Dead Man's Burden is a fine example of economical storytelling.

Miss Violence honors the thoroughly creepy work of Avranas's countrymen, but in his turn of the screw, Avranas marshals the abstract qualities of art cinema to comment upon concrete horror.

Ballet 422 is more visually sumptuous than most narratives you're likely to see this year, featuring careful compositions that make watching the film an aesthetic experience as much as an intellectual one.

A picture that balances heart and mind with nuance.

With such a compelling central figure it would be tough for the doc to not stimulate, but stimulation aside, its rather shapeless narrative can feel desultory.

This is a sure-handed, complex portrait of one woman's attempts to feel alive.

Herman's House coasts on the strength of its portrait of two systemic outsiders.

In the House is a mystery, but it investigates a far tougher riddle than what makes Claude tick—it's trying to figure out why, exactly, voyeurism and mystery delight us so. In the process, it delights us.

The emotional disconnect between a soldier's perception of reality and reality itself is the subject of this documentary, which finds drama in evenhanded storytelling that is the inverse of its characters' emotional shakiness.

Surprisingly -- and pleasantly -- restrained in its delivery, Abel Ferrara's Welcome to New York is the sort of picture that withholds judgment of its protagonist so that viewers have space to make their own.

In essence, the film is a lecture, but Zizek's associative thinking and understanding of the applicability of psychoanalysis makes it a lecture like no other.

With dexterity and care, Swanberg illuminates our muddled perceptions of our own relationships. He fixates on the minutiae of hanging out, the stuff of little loves and lies, the feints and thrusts we make in sorting matters of head and heart.

Trance packs many reveals, and the guessing game of who's who and what's what continues throughout. But with its terribly campy setup (hypnotherapy and gangsters? One's inner child and murderous showdowns?), Trance could have gotten some mileage out of comedy

Sightseers is a jet-black comedy that understands exactly how absurdist it is, and its murders are always played for laughs.

While you may be left craving more emotional fireworks than you get, Fillières's intelligent film is accomplished in its portrayal of a marriage in crisis, the union's last gasps rife with poignant exchanges.

Hartley's humor and intellectual musings are, as always, fully present, but by anchoring them to a genuinely compelling story of familial retribution, he's made his best film in years.

While certainly a formulaic genre film, it's nevertheless a formula executed with a great sensitivity to visual engagement.

Matthew Johnson's The Dirties explores high school violence from a refreshingly original angle.

While its ending descends into standard horror tropes that fail to completely satisfy its promise, the film nevertheless achieves emotional resonance due to how effectively it joins its source of horror with the stuff of everyday human anxieties.

The folks who made Wild Style probably didn’t realize it, but their fiction film was essentially a documentary of history in the early making.