To quote one of the nameless board members: “Libraries are the pillar of our democracy.” That couldn’t be more evident with Wiseman’s effective and engrossing film. When was the last time you renewed your library card?

The spasmodic violence creates a stomach-churning counterbalance to the quiet palace intrigues, especially through the surgically placed classical Chinese score by Loudboy – much of it carried through duets by the commander and his wife on the guqin and guzheng (paired Chinese zithers), which becomes a subtle subplot in its own right.

The driving forces behind Dick's courageous, defiantly candid film are curiosity about all things human and a desire to explain the seemingly inexplicable.

Barbie, the toy, see-saws in the culture between extremes: Is she an aspirational figure, or the fastest way to f*ck up a kid’s relationship to her body? A gateway to the imagination, or a slammed door? Barbie, the movie – an exhilarating, generous, deeply handmade comedy about a mass-market product – revels in these extremes.

If Victorian Manchester had been remotely like this, H.G. Wells never would have bothered to pen "The Time Machine" – he'd have just stepped outside and into the fray.

This oil-family story is way, way east of Eden. Were I asked to choose, Written on the Wind would blow in as my favorite Sirk film.

For those willing to submit to its terrible charms, it may be the single most important debut to come out of the Americas in years.

Ultimately, Once transcends even its own ambitions, becoming a complex meditation on relationships, Irish culture, and music.

Releasing Nightcrawler on Halloween may seem counterintuitive, but then again, when better to release a thoroughly gripping portrait of an utterly modern sociopath?

Honestly, it's refreshing to have a movie built around dance and dancers that emphasizes both art and character, especially after the tedious schlock of Gaspar Noé's severely anticlimactic "Climax."

Reminiscent of Jim Sheridan’s masterly "In America," The Namesake delivers such a tactile presence that it's difficult not to leave feeling as if you've just struggled through a New York winter, attended an Indian wedding, and returned from a Calcutta holiday.

As sequels go, Paddington 2 is up to the challenge. It’s neck and neck, or paw and claw as to which is the better, so why not just watch both back to back?

Restrepo is an example of photojournalism at its finest.

There are some frustrating gaps, but only because Wolf has so much to cram in. The second round of biospherians are completely erased, while the sudden appearance of Steve Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon) poses more questions than it answers. Yet even those dead-ends cannot overcome the fascinating story of compromised idealism and hardheaded optimism that underlies it all.

Titane is a dance. Julia Ducournau’s follow-up to her engrossing debut Raw is a flashy, traumatic body horror explosion that is just as gnarly as her first film.

There’s a sharpness to Poitras’ filmmaking that’s remarkably powerful, a film that’s sure to leave one breathless as the credits roll, an utterly effective snapshot of a woman who has dedicated her life to those who deserve a louder voice. It’s a film that’s simply stunning.

The crisp imagery (by Radek Ładczuk) creates a true sense of menace amid the household banality. Tales about mothers who fear their offspring also strike at a very primal level of mythic storytelling. Vigilance is the only means of protection against creatures from the id.

Don’t leave until the final credits finish rolling or you’ll miss what many are considering Kill Bill: Vol. 1’s best bit. Trust us on this one.

It is, in fact, an instant classic, the sort of film that will make you check under your bed at night and then amplify into terror the midnight creaks and 3am breezes that unsettle every house at times, most especially yours. Highly recommended.

Wildly entertaining, "Shakespeare in Love" minus the Bard and the babe, but with substantive style to burn.

Fall into the rhythm of Rohmer’s beats, and you will hear the sound of humanity wrestling with everything that matters.

Though we will differ on the methods of improving the American health care system, Sicko's enduring contribution is the undeniable evidence that the system is broken. If the film brings the debate out into the open of our movie lobbies and living rooms, it can’t be long before the conversation trickles into the corridors of Congress.

An altogether more viscerally engaging film, from its relentless pacing and slam-bang effects work to the fine, appropriately heroic score by John Ottman. That the movie has an obvious gay subtext neither adds nor detracts from the film’s smashing popcorn appeal.

The Life of Chuck is not so much about raging at the dying of the light but about how we embrace the inevitability of death and the wonder of what comes before. It’s blockbuster metaphysics, a twinkle in the eye of the infinite.

The problem between Anika and Martin is the problem they had from the beginning: He is a shell of who he once was, lost in his own middle-aged melancholy. The problem is not the substance, it’s the person, and with Another Round, Vinterberg has crafted a beautiful dissection of that conundrum.

After Yang will resonate with anyone who has absorbed such emptiness into themselves, and found some comfort there.

The whole film is a delicious excuse to gawk – at the magnificent costumes, at the diplomatic dance of museum personnel and party planners, and at the sumptuous squish of so many egos sharing space.

Nobody Knows is the rare film that successfully tells its tale of childhood from the children’s point of view.

After all, Street Gang absorbs what was truly important about the show: that not every lesson is going to be fun, but that doesn't mean everything is terrible. Most importantly, it taught small kids their ABCs and 123s, while showing them that a beat-up, diverse neighborhood just like theirs could be the best place on Earth.

There are so many terrific things going on in the film – rapid-fire wordplay, split-second visual gags, and some veddy, veddy British punning – that, frankly, Paddington deserves more than one viewing. Huzzah Paddington, and marmalade forever!

Crowley doesn’t blink at the cradle-to-grave graphic intimacy of Payne’s script, and in Garfield and Pugh he finds a duo who understand the deceptions and devotions of a beautifully flawed relationship. Watch ’em and weep, kids.

This folk tale about a magical child has even been cited by some scholars as an early and elegant work of science fiction. However, it’s also possible to bypass all this baggage and just approach The Tale of Princess Kaguya as the gorgeous and expressive film that it is.

That Swinton Byrne's performance is so open, so immediate, so caught up in emotional truths rather than performative beats, makes this one of the year's most unique and memorable roles.

With 8 1/2, Fellini cast aside all vestiges of the naturalism that informed his early work. From here, he stepped off into the dazzling fantasyland of Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, and Roma, but for many, this remains the quintessential Federico.

Spielberg suppresses his worst tendencies in the uncharted territory of his first movie musical. His solid direction respectfully doesn’t oversentimentalize the material.

Only a quite over-the-top character played by Raquel Welch strikes any false note. Otherwise, Tortilla Soup is a real chef's special.

One of the most immersive and intimate documentaries on Goodall, Jane is a triumph of filmmaking, and essential viewing for humans.

Like a car crash in slo-mo, it's a riveting, beautiful mess.

With Burning Lee has molded a psychological masterpiece that will leave you full of doubt, dread, and searing questions about morality.

Filled with brilliant, stand-out performances.

Smart and self-deprecating story about love and mortality: It’s merely a winter's tale told with a summer's palette.

Moon doesn't belabor anything, really, so confidently measured and philosophically nuanced it all plays out (aided by a striking, under-the-skin original score by Clint Mansell).

It's a magnificent film – thoughtful but not distant, aesthetically and technically sophisticated but staged with restraint and delicacy.

There are plenty of great things to say about director Janice Engel’s portrait of the late, legendary Ivins, but maybe the best is that after watching Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, you'll immediately want to go back and re-read all her books.

One of the most extraordinary debuts of the year.

Art historian Thomas Negovan has excavated countless hours of rushes and raw footage from the archives to assemble a new film, hewing as close as possible to Vidal’s original story. In doing so, the debauchery, majesty, and brutality are finally revealed in all their unhinged glory.

Bielenia's damp-eyed performance is the broken heart of this restrained and low-key narrative.

This is nobody's idea of a happy family story, but it is a pristinely chilling depiction of familial meltdown in a post-Stalinist, Twilight Zone anti-place, the dark heart of heartlessness and mysterious parenting techniques.

The air of fear that still pervades every frame of It Was Just an Accident is undeniable and institutionalized, to the point that cops take cash or cards for bakhshish, the customary bribes required just to live in public.

Deep in the Heart is a reminder to everyone, whether they're raising cattle, walking through a state park, or just turning on a tap, that their actions have consequences for the state's beautiful biodiversity. It's an extraordinary document of the Lone Star State’s wildlife, and a remarkable call to action.

It proves that value of the journalist as record keeper of horrors.

It’s a personal, aching, and romantic film that’s swimming in the complicated trials of youth.

I suspect where the plot goes will be polarizing; I’m not sure they landed the plane was my first thought when the credits rolled. But days later, Between the Temples has stuck with me. On the zoom out, I think it’s simply marvelous.

Mostly it's just terribly funny and sad and beautifully acted and terrifically feel-good for being, you know, a cancer comedy.

Director Pollack and scriptwriter John Milius transform Vardis Fisher's novel Mountain Man into a gritty, cinematic tall tale that resonates across geography, time, and the loneliest regions of the solitary heart.

Though you might have a hard time discussing some of the film’s verbal descriptions of torture with young ones, Persepolis will prove a worthwhile movie for thoughtful teens.

Limbo may be a smiling teardown of any society that actively facilitates the deportation of its most vulnerable inhabitants, but there’s a wildness in the film’s eyes – a darkness Sharrock only feels comfortable approaching through artifice and sentimentality – that betrays the political message underneath.

A lovely, quietly thrilling thing.

It may be a film that rubs some the wrong way – those who hate Villains will hate it with a fervent passion, I fear – but for everyone else, this is quite the lovely little oddball.

Amreeka is anything but a depressing digression on American wartime paranoia.

Hustle is a great modern love story disguised as a neo-noir police procedural.

This is a film that alternatively shows humanity in all its ugly glory as well is its quiet moments of beauty.

What struck me more was the film’s interpretation of Bailey’s coming of age not as something to be mourned or that comes on too soon. Instead, it’s an activation.

For the iconoclastic film director Ken Loach and his longtime screenwriting collaborator Paul Laverty, I, Daniel Blake represents their most accessible film ever.

As a narrative work, it undeniably drags: but then, that's not really its intent. This is a spectacle to be absorbed and analyzed.

One of the most brutally innovative horrors of the last few years, and all done through windows on a computer screen.

The story is simple and true-to-life, and the technique is naturalistic, using nonprofessional actors, photography that emphasizes the characters' environment, and deliberate narrative pacing that mimics real-time events.

From its brilliant and sublime opening sequence to its self-reflexive ending, The Player distills everything that's wrong with the American film industry with the precision of someone who's been there.

Visually inventive cartoon is complemented by clever, whimsical narration and 11 songs from the Beatles.

Neville’s film isn’t making a case for canonization. But it is a call to action.

At heart, The Souvenir Part II is a film about filmmaking as art, industry, and identity.

Director Alan Parker milks naturalistic performances out of his small cast and creates a brutal intensity rarely matched in cinema today. Michael Serensin's cinematography is oddly sedating yet intense, giving the prison and the whole country of Turkey a frightful, alien sort of feel.

Onscreen, Lighton explores the imbalance between the two and gently leads the audience with sympathy and empathy to a perfect resolution that asks both to face their own dysfunction.

Music has rarely appeared more essential to the human drama.

I could say Bottoms shines because it nods to nostalgia but feels totally of our time, or expertly inhabits the buddy comedy genre formula while providing its own absurdist twist – but most importantly, it is simply, joyfully, ridonkulous.

Funny, tragic, moving scenes unfold in Andersson’s meticulously crafted frames. In cafes, bedrooms, offices, street corners suffused in muted off-whites and grays, with characters (mostly nonprofessionals) participating in a sublime ballet of choreographed insecurity, doubt, and frustration, but also of tender and fragile grace.

The film sucks you in with its exquisite cinematography (shot in lush black-and-white, with a handful of carefully curated moments in color), and a heavy influence of Thirties and Forties Classic Hollywood filming techniques.

The characters’ painful inability to connect only endears them to us, and somehow the film seems, like any human object of our affection might, more vivid and more knowable in its absence.

So many strands, and when the full tapestry is unfurled, its captivating, beautiful, thrilling, and entrancing patterns are revealed. Wolfwalkers stands proud as a new classic.

There's so much information and so many finely honed arguments in this ultimately joyous film that it's liable to send audiences scurrying home to their computers to download the bands they've just heard.

Grant punctuates almost every piece of Hock’s dialogue with an absurd gesture or facial expression – the theatricality of his portrayal of this not-so-street-smart bullshit artist is fascinating.

Even if Birds of Prey doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it sure as hells gets it spinning. Those who wish their superhero movies had a little bit more Lisa Frank and a whole bunch more female gaze may find themselves falling in love with Harley Quinn all over again.

Part "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," part "American Graffiti," and wholly its own stunning self, The Vast of Night is a debut of captivating weight and ingenuity.

Grief doesn't exactly sound like a promising starting point for a love story, but, really, what a bounty Mills presents to us of beauty and buoyancy and possibility.

In her first solo writing and directing effort, the hard-working indie film actress Greta Gerwig proves that she is her own muse. She takes the well-worn coming-of-age-dramedy format and fashions something fresh, funny, and artful from its familiar tropes. Also delivering the goods is a knockout cast of accomplished veterans and relative newcomers.

Anchored at the center is such a warm, tenderhearted personality and worldview that sends you out of the other side with a rejuvenated and healed spirit.

Following James, I couldn’t help but think that Mackenzie and Collier had found a real-life David Brent (I know, they’re probably everywhere). The sheer force of his belief in his own skills (clothes designing, particularly) and the unflappability he exhibits is constantly stupefying.

At its core, this movie is a piece of unflinching activism that forces you to look at something uncomfortable, something those of us in the cocoon would probably rather not see. But see it, you should. See it, you must.

Seems more like a subtle, elegiac tone poem than an indictment of human banality and the evil that men do.

In a year when the coy social mores of upstairs and downstairs have been filtered once again through the aristocratic monocle of "Downton Abbey," it's a relief that there's a film this year that tackles the servant/master relationship with the straight-for-the-jugular malice of Parasite.

Secretary is a testament to the importance of tonality in telling a story.

Not enough can be said about Willem Dafoe’s amazing performance as van Gogh. It is some of the best work of his career.

An antidote to holiday cheer like no other, this French tale of psychological horror is as harsh as they come -– it’s like finding a severed finger in your stocking and then finding it’s even better with hollandaise.

Owen’s story is unique, and deserving of singling out.

So upbeat it might as well arrive on a sunbeam.

Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance is so incredible that witnessing it is reason enough to take a look at this movie.

There is a whole lot to be said for fun -- especially fun that can be shared by all -- and in this regard Spy Kids saves the day.

It takes love to bring all these elements together into harmony, and Nair makes it look easy even when it's most difficult for her characters.