If Silent Night ultimately aces its peculiar tone, it struggles with having anything to say.

The film feels like a tribute, and an eventual goodbye — to two extraordinarily unique people, their unconventional home, and their truly remarkable way of life.

Even at its most absurd, the movie is chilled by an ominous and ever-present feeling that the world has become smaller than we ever thought possible, and that real nightmares are waiting for us on the other side of every window.

The whole movie is suspended in a pleasant and intimate space between order and chaos, love and abandonment, leaving the nest and building a new one. Every time Shithouse borrows from something else, it only seems to become more itself.

The film is smartly assembled, making the most of a limited indie budget and building a compelling world to boot.

As Burden, Garrett Hedlund astonishes in a nuanced portrait of a man resistant to change, until he finally comes to understand that hatred is literally killing him.

McCarthy’s film, based on Lisa Klein’s 2006 novel of the same name, takes its best ideas (and its best performers) and traps them in a cheap narrative that would will likely rank among the worst of many Shakespearean adaptations. It’s such a good idea on paper, rendered totally inert on the screen.

Much less consistently enjoyable than many Hong films twice its length, Grass compensates for its dramatic slackness and deviant sobriety by honing in on the ideas that its director’s work often skirts around.

What emerges is the definition of a mixed blessing: a film of (often literal) peaks and troughs, scattering occasional moments of grace.

The result is a film that lucidly traces the specter of fascism (never extinguished, always waiting to exhale), and how unreal it feels for it to cast its shadow across Europe once more. It’s also a film that feels stuck between stations, so doggedly theoretical that it borders on becoming glib.

Holiday is a fearless work, anchored by Sonne’s bold, subtle performance, which keeps her motivation unclear until a burst of developments at the startling conclusion.

Piercing too often gets lost in the fog of its deranged characters, but just as frequently transforms their lunacy into a heightened form of escapist entertainment. In a movie where everyone’s crazy, “Piercing” makes their malady infectious.

While some of Bispuri’s scripting can be a bit too pointed for a story that traffics in such elemental textures (a brief flashback scene is particularly ill-advised), the film renders each of Vittoria’s mothers with such riveting and unvarnished empathy that you hardly even notice how their daughter is growing up before your eyes, stronger than the both of them.

Like its star, Anna and the Apocalypse merrily charges through danger. It’s a genre mash-up populated with cliches...but McPhail finds small moments to make his characters unique.

While Mantzoukas and Revolori charm – consider them your new, unexpected go-to buddy comedy duo – The Long Dumb Road soon runs out of gas, chugging through a series of increasingly unbelievable contrivances.

Bodied is pure zany fun disguised as a pure provocation, and sometimes vice versa, mainly because any attempt to characterize its narrative as problematic proves its point.

Shirkers becomes a paean to the pivotal moment when the idealism of young adulthood faces a harsh reality check.

Dano crafts an unsparing portrait that’s harsh and humane in equal measure.

The result is sometimes overlong and wears out its welcome, but it clarifies Hosking’s distinctive tone — a playful and often charming blend of outré humor and genuine emotion that makes him one of the most distinctive new voices in current cinema.

Gyllenhaal has been too good too often to label any one of her performances as her best, but she’s certainly never been better than she is here.

The Happy Prince largely amounts to a bland rumination on Wilde’s lesser-known decline.

Crucially, these characters are so believable that every scene has an internal logic and justifies itself.

The movie not only illustrates the power of modern activism; in its final moments, it becomes such an act itself.

Colette is a costume drama for people who have yet to figure out that they love costume dramas. It’s fleet enough after that first act, and the squeezed plotting of its second half ensures the story never gets too long in the tooth.

As Levinson swings wildly for the fences, Assassination Nation yields a modicum of payoff.

No matter how iffy the story gets, or how clinical Eyre’s direction becomes, Thompson makes it absolutely heartrending to watch Fiona’s veneer crack one line at a time.

Repetition grinds Lizzie to a halt, and the film lacks anything resembling energy, cycling through the same beats until something happens only because it has to.

Rather than forge a believable relationship between Grace and Del that stokes our interest in the future, this uneasy two-hander strings us along by raising dull questions about the past.