The Holdovers is a warm blanket on a sad day – an unconventional Christmas movie that finds reasons to move forward even in the hardest of times. And while students of the dramedy may anticipate its every narrative turn, there’s something magical about a film that encourages empathy, especially when it asks much of us.

It's not simply about watching the destruction of lives and buildings, but of dreams and aspirations, and From Ground Zero quietly demands your empathy.

Most importantly, Marder gives the audience one of the most illuminating glimpses into deaf culture to date. Working with actors who are deaf is only part of it: The rest is in details and understanding.

The film is also comic, mysterious, and structurally ambitious, while offering numerous points of entry and perspective.

One of the most original movies of the year.

When compared with most of what passes for honest teen drama these days, My Summer of Love is a real reprieve.

It is beautiful, lyrical, tragic, redemptive, and focused down to the last tick on a dog’s nose. His animated characters have all the grace, quirk, and charm of any live-action performance.

It's the truth, unshackled and captured against all odds, and it's one of the most powerful documentary films I have ever seen, period.

Exciting to watch: The audio disruptions of Carla putting in or taking out her hearing aids and the inventiveness of the way the heist plot is revealed are just a couple of the film's treats.

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 subtlety and restraint in the way Reichardt links the vignettes is also commendable. It’s as if she’s reminding us that we’re all part of the grander scheme of things but at the same time disconnected from one another.

There's no attempt to anthropomorphize the rock and and glaciers, but they have never seemed more terrifying and alluring.

Yet a nigh-miraculous blend of high spirits, poignancy, gentle satire, and unpretentious insight into the nature of human aspiration make this one of the most impressive films you're likely to see this year.

Frozen River skates matter-of-factly on thin ice.

Boasts a smart screenplay by Robert Benton and David and Leslie Newman, striking cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth (especially in the Smallville sequence), bright comic turns by Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman, and of course, that winning performance by Christopher Reeve in the title role. Believe a man can fly? You bet!

Certainly one of the best drug movies ever made.... Great performances make this dispassionate study a memorable experience.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché is the daughter cinematically coming to terms with their complicated relationship and with a figure who changed our culture.

There are many questions raised and answered in this film, but one that isn’t is why on Earth it’s garnered an R rating. Love Is Strange is anything but. It’s a seriocomic romance of the most genteel sort, full of heartfelt “I love yous,” brief (and definitely unerotic) snuggling, and a wealth of tremendously fine acting from all involved.

As the focus of the film, Navalny himself is a fascinating and complex figure, but Roher makes him explicable by focusing on his family, his recovery, his motivations and his growing realization that to change Russia for the better he has to risk his life.

The overall execution add up to a film of beautiful, ultimately heartbreaking honesty.

Scores its ultimate coup de grace though its interviews. Macdonald has lined up an amazing collection of interviewees.

One of the most exciting movies of this, or any other, year. It's smart, funny, and wonderfully crafted and performed.

This is a determined, resolutely paced, and atypical samurai movie, more an epic of the heart than of the battlefield, and all the more powerful for it.

Unfortunately, what should have naturalistic depth seems oddly superficial, and an attempt to dispose of traditional structure becomes episodic. As with many failed experiments, there are still, at least, some interesting takeaways.

Secret Mall Apartment – a seriously fun film – commits in kind.

With Captain Phillips we get a viable thriller whose conclusion is already known, and a character who reacts to circumstances rather than a personal, heroic code. And now, it’s a story preserved in brine.

This is powerful filmmaking that goes beyond just vilifying racist scum, and asks hard questions about what hate hath wrought.

Farhadi takes a seemingly simple idea and threads holes and complications into it, creating a pressure cooker of intensity based on a handful of white lies and distrust. It’s a tragedy of simple misunderstandings, and misgivings.

A war movie with a conscience, an action movie with a funny bone, a caper movie with a shifting agenda.

The Northman lives and breathes like the old epics; not Old Hollywood's cartoonish depictions of warriors with horned helmets, but the ancient tales to which he pays deep respect.

This is tragedy at its most hilarious and comedy to break your heart; sweet violence in a hellish fairy tale.

This is a strange and beguiling film to the end.

Blancanieves never lags, per se, it’s just awfully in love with itself: with its gorgeous black and white chiaroscuros and whirling-dervish first-person camera perspectives, the Spanish-guitar-scored dance sequences (that include the undeniable dance of the matador in action), and battering winds of emotional extremes. By the end of this sumptuous and sincerely felt melodrama, I was rather in love with it, too.

It perfectly catches that childish point just before adolescence, where young boys are starting to notice girls but still want to find frogs in pools.

It is at times a beguiling and compelling piece of cinema, but it’s not without its frustrations.

Ten Canoes is as much a work of anthropology as it is a narrative, and its true strength lies in its exploration of ancient aboriginal hunting practices, death rituals, and legal traditions.

It may well be that Ozon has made the best possible conventional adaptation of the book. Yet maybe it requires a more unconventional touch to truly translate Camus’ point.

An intriguing psychological study that, more or less, leaves out the psychology and presents us with surface behavior.

Anyone who can watch this film and deny that the Sex Pistols were one of the four or five most exciting and indelibly brilliant rock groups ever is pumping formaldehyde, not blood, through his veins.

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

Sicario is at its best when its borderlines are fluid and indistinct.

In its bloody denouement, Bacurau feels like a Spaghetti Western, playing with post-"Seven Samurai" idea of peasants learning to be soldiers at the hands of warriors. But it's also a subversion of that idea, and brings in elements of the old horror conventions about bloodthirsty killers in remote places.

Director David Gordon Green has made a work of uncommon beauty and intelligence, one that is smart enough to trust its characters and the technical contributions of its crew.

Diaz stays out of the way of her own lens, instead giving a portrait in context of Ressa's valiant struggle for truth, and her determination to simply do the job even as she becomes part of the story.

Is it a perfect movie? Not quite. The middle section drags a bit through no fault of the excellent performances, but ultimately it’s all of a piece, and the mid-mark pacing turns out to be a relatively minor quibble.

The music by Raphael Saadiq also belongs in the film’s plus column, helping to make Step one of the feel-good documentaries of the year.

As riveting as a documentary can possibly be, this slim (74-minute) film is also one of the most politically aware films of the year.

Carver's stories are obviously inspiring for Altman, and that's the point, this movie is bursting at the seams with ideas and energy.

There’s much to enjoy, even if the funny bits don’t add up to Spinal Tap greatness. And the titular anthem, performed in a star-studded closing jamboree, has a wickedly funny payoff.

The Damned United is Shakespearean in its tragedy.

Mass takes the high school shooting drama out of the exploitation rut into which it has fallen, and instead turned it back into a story of people. It's a simple achievement to name, but an extraordinary one in its impact.

If Wadjda, this Muslim girl, calls up film memories of adolescent Marjane Satrapi in "Persepolis", whose Western-loving lifestyle is uprooted by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, or the young women in Jafar Panahi’s "Offside," who countermand the rules that forbid them from entering stadiums to watch men’s soccer matches, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

It takes a bit to get going, but once it does, Fresh never lets up.

A deeply soulful film, shot through with loss, regret, and hope. Like almost all great sci-fi films it’s less about the alien unknown than it is about the human condition.

As with "Sunshine," I'd call Juno a family film if only it didn't make teen pregnancy look so sporting. Instead, we'll settle for that rare bird, an indie comedy that uplifts – funny and smart, totally trying to be cool and succeeding, and heartfelt to boot.

The film is wickedly hilarious but more in a droll and knowing kind of sense than a har-de-har-har manner.

Weapons is such a deliriously twisted blast that, as soon as it’s complete, you’ll want to shake up the box and do it all again.

Truly, Everything Everywhere All at Once does one thing: exactly what the title promises.

Those moments, as affecting as they are, can't surmount the overworkshopped feel of the whole film.

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s latest film Close is a devastatingly heavy watch, a delicately filmed tragedy that takes hold of your emotions and never lets go for the duration of its run time.

There isn’t one false move in Tomàs Aragay and Cesc Gay’s beautifully modulated screenplay. Es perfecto.

Thorough and competent, The Dissident works as an essential political documentary. It covers Khashoggi’s assassination in detail, and very clearly makes it known that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the one behind it. However, it’s certainly a step down for Fogel, and while its production is glossy and polished, the lack of inertia keeps The Dissident from reaching its full potential.

A humanistic adventure film that's both rich with characterization and concussive cannon bursts, Master and Commander is, surprisingly, some of the best work either Crowe or Weir have ever done.

There's as much of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru here as there is the rubber-suit genius of Godzilla creator Ishirō Honda (himself never shy of political subtext), and that's a pairing as powerful as any monster mash-up.

Everywhere in America these days, people pay lip service to the idea of conducting open and honest conversations about race. Due to a fluke of timing and its entertaining quality, Top Five should help get the ball rolling.

More than an appreciation, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is an inspiration.

It's not perfect -- Thornton's slack-jawed yokel Jacob is played a bit wide of the mark and Fonda continues to irk in some indefinable way -- but it's a revelation for longtime Raimi fans. And it's a hell of a ride too, for both Raimi fans and newcomers alike.

The film itself is fictional, filmed in a 1.33:1 ratio to mimic the framing of the inspirational photographs. It’s absolutely breathtaking work – the camera helmed by Maria von Hausswolff captures the unassuming beauty of Iceland, but also does not hide its frigid nature, both terrifying and beautiful.

Fonda (who received an Oscar) and Sutherland are at the top of their game in this mystery/thriller that also provides a fascinating look into the mind and soul of a top NYC call girl.

Set against the gray backdrop of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, this is old-school melodrama writ big from a director who’s probably better known to mainstream American audiences as the man behind the spectacular Wushu action epics Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower.

It's a hilarious, scathing look at one man's attempt to get a film made, whatever it takes, and it may be the most realistic depiction of that struggle so far.

Coco is animatedly empowering entertainment for anyone who’s ever had to go against the wishes of their family to achieve their most heartfelt dreams.

I Am Everything is most fascinating when it goes deep into his formative years and the influences of truly obscure figures like Esquerita and Billy Wright (both Black queer musicians). Yet the further into his life the documentary goes, the less insightful it becomes.

For the most part, Spielberg appears content to allow the story (admittedly, a tad bit long) to do the talking, though he goes badly off-track in the sappy ending reminiscent of a Fifties sitcom’s notions of hierarchy within the American family. Given the Spielberg film canon, it was inevitable. The guy just can’t help himself.

There’s something refreshing about the old-fashioned way in which it entertains, a mix of silly slapstick and sight gags combined with a gentle heart.

The film is so alive, so joyous and raucous at times, that the empathy you feel for these characters is all the more poignant and the catharsis is well earned. This is a film you fall into, like an embrace you wish two sisters would hold, but one that the world denies them.

McCarthy’s film is rich in tone and subtlety, but has precious little dialogue. It feels less like a modern motion picture than some odd poem long lost and then discovered in another age, a timeless, ageless gem of hard-resined emotions melting into real life.

Whatever the case, Foxcatcher provides little insight. Art can shape the truth in ways that resonate beyond the obvious. Regrettably, the truth-shaping here grapples for significance, without any apparent aim. Catch as catch can.

Bamako, with Sissako's poetic blend of the humdrum and the theoretical, is altogether fascinating. Dramatic features born and bred on the African continent are rare commodities on these shores, and the opportunities they offer can stretch far beyond film appreciation and into the realm of world understanding.

A quietly interesting but unusually perceptive story about love and relationships.

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.

Even more extraordinary than the concept or its conceptualization is how intensely moving an experience it all amounts to.

What’s clear is that after watching Dolores, this woman becomes an unforgettable figure in the annals of Mexican-American history, the workers’ rights struggles, and feminist legacies.

Campion’s story of a tubercular poet and his lady love recasts the hackneyed old stanza in refreshing new verse.

Through talking heads over archive materials, Pollard deftly explains why the tapes exist and how the inflated claims about national security were no excuse for them being recorded.

Jackie has a nightmare vibe to it that’s palpable and unsettling, and Portman’s performance as the widowed first lady is a tour de force of conflicting emotions brought on by the impossibly ghastly reality bookending that sunny day in Dallas.

Like the analogous "Before Sunrise," Weekend manages to ride the line between character study, comedy, drama, and a host of other genres without feeling cramped.

Corrosively funny yet emotionally devastating.

This material is so rich probably any halfway decent filmmaker could assemble a competent doc tallying the two men’s extraordinary accomplishments. But only Lizzie Gottlieb could make a film where she does that plus needles her pop about wearing sweatpants for his sit-down interview.

Even though there’s a great deal to admire in Ducournau’s debut outing, Raw will mostly appeal to the taste buds of horror connoisseurs. Skittish consumers should consider other dining options.

Ford’s commitment to implying trauma instead of visualizing it is more than just an impressive formal constraint. Test Pattern proves the fault of more uncreative depictions of racial and gendered violence that exploit bare bodies and blood for shock value rather than depth and specificity.

My advice? Relinquish yourself to this hazy tapestry, and let the film take over. Squares need not apply.

Three Identical Strangers may not achieve the kind of redemptive catharsis we wish for here, but it achieves something almost as miraculous, making an otherwise unbelievable story seem believably real.

Ferociously subversive and trippily beautiful debut feature from director and screenwriter Coralie Fargeat.

By telling a Mexican story, Lorentzen arguably speaks more directly to an American audience.

Family dynamics are just one tentpole in Jefferson's construction of a movie that deals with authenticity in direct opposition to the easy and frivolous.

Fish Tank isn't an easy watch – it's like two hours of ache – but there are rich rewards to be had in the many ways Arnold and her terrific team rend us to and fro.

It all looks crummy, to say the least, but this is clearly the director’s intent. I’m not fully convinced that the technique delivers the kind of veracity the filmmakers were trying to achieve, although it is a creative solution to an intractable visual problem.