Ultimately, and perhaps most beautifully, the film makes a case, à la the musical “Rent,” about how, in the end, we must measure our life in love. On that score, Eli Timoner left the world a very wealthy man.

Classify Pietro Marcello’s sweet new film Scarlet at your own risk, because its pleasures are as diverse and unexpected as a stroll through uncharted lands: Mapping the terrain wouldn’t be half as enjoyable as letting the place host its own truths and enchantments.

An inspired antiwar epic that recently won the Goya Award (Spain’s equivalent to an Oscar) for animated film, Vazquez’s sophomore nightmarish fairy tale culminates with frighteningly revelatory imagery signaling the pattern of destruction that has characterized human history.

The last great action movie filmed in black and white. [04 Nov 1994, p.F17]

Porous enough in their philosophical intent though as not to impose a strict meaning, and yet sufficiently potent to make us reassess our priorities, the array of interpersonal conflicts floating in the idiosyncratic “Blind Willow” feel like elegantly animated lucid dreams full of poetic imagery: far from realistic but viscerally truthful.

A triumph of stylish, witty Grand Guignol, it allows Price to range richly between humor and pathos as a crazed Shakespearean actor. It's not too much to say that if horror pictures were taken seriously Price would have been a 1973 Oscar contender. [24 Mar 2005, p.E15]

The remarkable debut from writer-director Michelle Garza Cervera is as effectively blood-curdling as it is intellectually incisive.

On its exotic surface, Wildcat might hold all the trappings of a standard wildlife conservation documentary, but lurking beneath the lushly photographed camouflage is a tenderly moving, deeply empathetic human survival story that has as much to do with emotional trauma as it does with the physical.

A visually arresting, politically forceful melodrama from Pakistan.

One of Peter Bogdanovich's most assured and ingratiating pictures, an unabashed romantic comedy of grace and sophistication featuring one of the most thoroughly likable groups of people seen on the screen in the '80s. [15 Apr 1990, p.5]

Jeanne Dielman belongs to the rare class of films capable of transforming the world around you, though it requires the kind of patience and dedication that can be hard to come by at home. [23 Aug 2009, p.D10]

This moving, probing, beautifully written film doesn’t completely eschew nostalgia, but like Ernaux’s books, it treats the past as a prism, casting varying light depending on how, when and where it’s held.

Even if Chung does leave us wanting just a little bit more romance, he delivers a supremely entertaining summer blockbuster in Twisters, one with a thematic heft that makes it even better than expected, and better than the first.

The film is utterly absorbing, anchored by the unpredictable performance of Taylor, playing a hopelessly complicated, but deeply caring woman.

Acrid and harrowing, it’ll slap you awake.

Yes, You Hurt My Feelings explores the incident of its title and the risks and limits of total honesty in a relationship. But it’s also a funny and incisive look at middle-age malaise

This is at once the loftiest and the most grounded love story I’ve seen in some time, a movie that feels lingering and contemplative in the moment but is over as quickly (too quickly) as a drink with a long-absent friend.

It’s almost unbelievable that Carney pulls off films like this, which could easily tip over into maudlin. Instead, the winning Flora and Son is an utterly irresistible emotional ear-worm.

Le Guay effectively keeps the pressure on his characters and their loaded situation throughout, using ominous camera angles and anxious music cues to heighten the dread and uncertainty. He receives a fine assist from Renier and Cluzet, who commit to their divergent roles with unnerving intensity. It’s a terrific film.

A long-overdue creation corrective that gives an outwardly revolutionary cultural icon his trailblazing due at the same time it grapples with the conflicted soul that rarely knew a lasting inner peace.

Documentaries with life-or-death stakes, not to mention wider resonance in our increasingly unsettled geopolitical world, don’t get much more nerve-racking or heartbreaking than “Beyond Utopia.” At the same time, the film is inspiring about the lengths people will go to for a better life.

This is a rom-com with heart, wit and style. But it also shows a clear-eyed understanding that one dreamy day — no matter how epic — is really just a good start.

A constantly surprising, undeniably entertaining portrait that proves anything but monochromatic.

Most gratifying in Newnham’s investigation is how Hite reclaimed her own positive sense of self in exile through some key female friendships: a love goddess finding refuge with like-minded souls after a bruising battle with unenlightened, resentful mortals.

Gravel, in the heart-stopping vein of Belgium’s social-realism-minded Dardennes brothers, invests his protagonist’s one-challenge-at-a-time needs with the kind of visual intimacy and racing rhythm that makes us feel intensely close to Julie, from first sprint in her dehumanizing day to the exhaling bathtub soak she takes each night.

Cinema doesn’t suffer for shoutouts to the great Italian stylists of the grotesque and/or bleak, but we could also use more descendants of Risi’s sturdy faith in the alchemy of well-timed long shots, middle shots and close-ups in real-world settings to reveal simple, lasting, bittersweet truths about people.

The Killer is an opportunity for America’s most stylish director to reboot, to get back to basics, to come in under two hours.

When the movie goes in for an infrequent closeup — a shot of ultrasound gel being smeared on Lynn’s belly or of Lynn’s face as she puts on a surgical mask in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 outbreak — the intimacy is startling, and instructive.

The film’s refusal to tie up loose ends has already inspired comparisons to Bong Joon Ho’s “Memories of Murder” and David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” two of modern cinema’s great cold-case classics. Moll’s movie doesn’t leave behind the same deep, implacable chill of those earlier works, but its lingering rage and sorrow are no less easy to wave aside.

Orlando, My Political Biography is cheekily unclassifiable, which, considering its source and subject, isn’t surprising. But at its core, the film is sparklingly intelligent, Godard-puckish and moving, capable of deadpan wit and the most intimate swirl of ideas and emotions.

Long before David Lynch mined the seedy underbelly of small-town life for the film "Blue Velvet" and the TV series "Twin Peaks," Michael Ritchie directed Smile, one of the smartest, most-biting satires on the glossy veneer of middle-class America ever put on film. [18 Oct 1990, p.7]

Concise, yet affecting, Chile ‘76 assuredly occupies the post as one of the finest Latin American productions to open stateside this year.

As with all great moral dilemmas, Sorogoyen makes it impossible to entirely side with either party without considering that each of them has been victimized by larger social ills.

This anti-nuclear war, science-fiction parable is something of a minor legend, beloved by '50s buffs and cinephiles. Robert Wise directed what turned out to be one of his best-liked movies and a personal favorite of his. [04 Jun 1995, p.66]

Like the fiery folklore entity that lends it its name, Will-o’-the-Wisp burns bright with idiosyncratic ambition. Few cineastes out there are making deliciously defiant art like Rodrigues, and this entry in his catalog is a concentrated shot of his sardonic mastery.

Lanthimos may have cobbled together a rambunctious psychosexual odyssey from many Frankensteinian parts — a little “Alice in Wonderland,” a dash of “Metropolis,” a soupçon of Voltaire by way of the Marquis de Sade — but he and his skilled collaborators have marshaled them into a remarkably coherent and purposeful vision.

McQueen and Stigter haven’t just excavated some not-so-ancient history; they’ve also made a haunting, magisterial tribute to a city they clearly love.

Hong invites us to look beyond story parallels into something simultaneously deeper and more quotidian.

Less a movie about a scandal than a movie about a movie about a scandal, it seeks to interrogate and even subvert its own promise of ripped-from-the-tabloids titillation, even as it challenges the predilections of an audience that might seek out such a movie.

This is a heartbreaker about mothers and daughters, the cruelty of repression and the slippery but revealing nature of performance. And to the end, it remains steadfast in its conviction that a woman’s truth and her beauty are never at odds.

A taut and rigorous piece of storytelling in which seething tempers and unruly politics are forever on the verge of leaping out of the movie’s tightly framed, square-shaped images, the movie may concern itself with distant events, but its subjects — antisemitism, police corruption, political awakening — are very much of the present.

The extraordinarily perceptive How to Have Sex pulls off many feats of daring: Nicolas Canniccioni’s alcopop-hangover photography, James Jacobs’ chemical club-anthem score, Mia McKenna-Bruce’s star-making central turn. But the most impressive is first-time writer-director Molly Manning Walker getting us not just to forgive her central triad their brash and brainless bravado, but to grieve for it when it’s gone.

The result is also one of the year’s most memorable theatrical experiences, because it’s Wenders’ return to 3-D (after 2011’s “Pina”), proving again how versatile and intimate the format can be when skillfully applied outside the genre of blockbusters.

If the details of “Kidnapped” aren’t familiar, do yourself the favor of withholding an online search until the full thunder and rigor of Bellocchio’s dramatic instincts can work you over — equivalent to a lavish ’60s period costume drama burnished into an engine of galvanizing narrative intention.

Despite its generally frictionless flow from meal to meal, its showstopping delicacies and subtly comical asides, The Taste of Things is haunted, from the start, by an awareness of the passage of time.

If anything, Last Summer is more commercial-looking and less shocking than much of Breillat’s previous work, but her eye and her insights are sharp as ever.

Fireworks is bracing and original, an indefinable film made from familiar elements. "Hana-Bi," its title in Japanese, is a combination of the words for "flower" and "fire," and filmmaker Takeshi Kitano has, in the same way, adroitly fused genres, creating a film in which almost every moment pops out in unexpected ways. [20 Mar 1998, p.F4]

The Scent of Green Papaya, a film as delicate and evocative as its name, recognizes that out of illusion can come reality.

With its finely shaded portrayals, Cyclo, which took the Golden Lion at Venice last year, is another superb picture from Hung, a world-class filmmaker if ever there was one. [01 Aug 1996, p.F2]

Klondike is certainly not an easy watch, but it is a profound one — a film that feels both prescient and retrospective about Ukraine, locked in what seems a never-ending existential conflict with its neighbor.

With piercing matter-of-factness, Coppola ends this movie, her strongest in more than a decade, at just the right moment.

Ultimately, Pollard’s film is equal parts tribute and lament, as complicated as this country.

Amid the roaring motors and screeching tires of “Ferrari,” Michael Mann’s operatic saga of fast cars, furious women and the powerful human citadel who toyed with them all, a moment occasionally rises from the smoke with the grace and clarity of an aria.

A lyrical, edifying and blistering plea for Indigenous justice.

What makes the famous 1949 Raoul Walsh gangster film White Heat a classic is its crackling tension that derives from Walsh's breakneck pace and the developing psychological complexity of James Cagney's Cody Jarrett. [21 Oct 1990, p.6]

After so fruitful a collaboration on “Drive My Car,” Hamaguchi and Ishibashi may have topped themselves with something even more compelling.

Maestro holds its contradictions in balance; it sees the complexity and the tragedy of Lenny and Felicia’s romance, and also its undeniable tenderness and passion.

This is the finest work of Arcel’s collaboration with longtime cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk. They craft this Nordic western epic with an eerie beauty and an eye toward the kind of startling violence that can erupt unexpectedly in lawless frontiers.

It’s easy to be reminded of silent film’s who-needs-words heyday while watching Mami Wata, even when the foreboding sound design is doing its part and the actors are delivering their sparely written lines as if their characters’ lives depended on it.

In its voices tinged with sorrow and re-examined history, this expertly tuned film is simply pro-introspection: a heavy-hearted look at an unnecessary death and a cultural superiority long deserving of scrutiny.

It’s all so horribly familiar — even for those who have never traveled, never tended bar, and never found themselves the only female in a roomful of drunken, lonely men. The central terror of Green’s ferociously tense, intelligent movie is the terror of recognition.

What lingers is a collective misery and the invisibly masterful choreography of chaos, rage and death.

This wild, vicarious ride through youthful adventure is absolutely worth taking, for your own nostalgia and for the reminder that the kids are indeed alright.

It’s a celebration of talent, yes, but also of the commitment, the sacrifice, the sheer tenacity required to pull off the illusion of effortlessness.

About 30 years ahead of its time, Blast of Silence follows a hit man (Baron) who heads to New York over the holidays and finds the Christmas spirit interfering with his killer instincts. [13 Apr 2008, p.E10]

The takeaway isn’t exhilaration; the unease is what makes Garland’s film valuable. You watch it with your jaw hanging open.

In this film, Shaw come alive for you in ways that go beyond his physical presence (still handsome, a balding, bearded 74), or the sound of his clarinet (its impeccable sheen and limpid line).

Though the pair whisper the word “love” in bed and even seem to think they mean it, this is not a movie about two people healing each other. It’s about two broken souls mashing their jagged edges together, hurting each other and those around them. And it’s fun to watch the blood splatter.

If this ends up being Cronenberg’s last, he’ll have gone out with a worldly, weighty epitaph.

The Brutalist argues, and proves by its very existence, that the maddening thing about major works of art is that they demand invention and resources and cooperation.

The Kafkaesque reversal-of-fortune humor that follows — centered on how outgoing, beloved Oswald’s mere presence pours salt on Guy/Edward’s identity crisis — is as shrewdly conceived a comic bad dream as we’ve gotten since the heyday of “Zelig”-era Woody Allen or Charlie Kaufman (whose film “Synecdoche, New York” this feels like a cousin to).

While the boxing is kinetically directed, Morrison grasps that the movie’s fiercest stands are taken outside the ring, when Claressa — faced with tough choices about her future — asserts herself to the people who need to hear it.

Hanging over the narrative is a sense of futility, that this can and will happen again and again. Another lawsuit, another life lost, another workaround. But for a moment, one man on a bike with a few expertly wielded weapons can wreak holy havoc on corrupt cops, and damn does it feel good to watch.

Sober and heartfelt, Union lets us see what Amazon and the world would soon discover about the power workers have when they invest in their dignity first.

If the genre trappings seem familiar, it’s the prowling, ghostlike vantage of the camera that makes all the difference: Soderbergh has elected to tell this haunted-house story entirely from the perspective of the haunter. Shooting in wide-angled long takes that range in tenor from voyeuristic languor to nerve-shredding anxiety, he transforms a domestic horror exercise into another Soderberghian tour de force.

A comedy about learning to live with grief, Between the Temples has a lot going on in its head and heart.

While the dance is clearly intended to be positive and inspiring (we’re told 95% of the fathers who participate never go back to jail), the movie isn’t afraid to show just how much fragility and uncertainty goes into the buildup and its aftermath.

In artist Titus Kaphar’s emotionally knotty, semi-autobiographical directorial debut about hurt and resilience — and, of course, making art — we get a refreshingly bone-deep view of how someone can be saved by the act of creation, yet flummoxed by its therapeutic limitations.

Eisenberg furthers himself here as a distinctive voice, one with a keen visual sense, a masterful ability to juggle tones and an innate feel for timing and pacing.

A sublime and stirring documentary.

There are some cringeworthy moments watching the pair win at detective work while losing as vulnerable fangirls. But like any soulful quest worth its salt, Seeking Mavis Beacon makes the lows as meaningful as the highs, endorsing a wild web world in which mystery and exposure can peacefully coexist.

Izaac Wang’s performance of this tortured teenage soul — so young, still in braces — is a sensitive expression of the insecurity Chris feels around others and anxiety about how he will be perceived. Wang’s performance is mirrored by Chen as his mother, a housewife with an artist’s heart. She delicately balances steeliness and vulnerability to deliver a heartrending performance.

The result is a tough, harrowing work of self-portraiture in which it’s Ito’s own journalistic tenacity, as much as her personal determination and outrage, that leads her to go public with her story, despite enormous pressure to do the opposite.

This is a beautifully life-affirming fable about the power of art to heal, but really, it’s the people making the art that do the work. Ghostlight is a stunning and incredibly moving tribute to that process.

[A] tender, harrowing and beautifully modulated coming-of-age drama.

Even the landscape speaks to an emotional duality. It captivates with its natural beauty and sweep at the same time it tragically underscores the remoteness of places like St. Joseph’s, where evil could keep secret.

Coming-of-age dramas may be a dime a dozen at Sundance, but one this tender and truthful can make an entire subgenre feel shimmeringly new.

The Wild Robot has a lot to say and its own way of saying it. It’s a big-studio animated feature that has its own look, feel and identity, wrapped around an unusual story with ample humor and plenty of emotion — all of it earned. The movie’s vocal performances, especially from leads Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal, are excellent. It’s lovely on the outside and on the inside.

Le Samourai is a film of few words but many vivid images and, above all, impeccable style. [09 Jul 1998, p.F18]

A great poetic epic that blends the stirring visual daring of Russia's cinema of revolution with an intoxicating Latin sensuality. [21 Jul 1995, p.F8]

[Anderson's] managed to build yet another dazzler, a shrine to his own ambition and craft. And while it sometimes feels a bit drafty in the corners, the accomplishment itself is plenty.

As good as the movie is with its visuals, it’s just as skillful with sound.

Schamus’ sensitive and funny debut brings its anxieties and pleasures to full bloom so they can be properly considered and found suitably fleeting.

Clearly there’s no better narrator than an obsessive like Scorsese for an archival dive into the duo’s unusual and extraordinary oeuvre. It’s his heartfelt analysis as host of filmmaker David Hinton’s documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger that puts this rewarding, personalized master class above most movies about movies.

The film is a harrowing and eerie horror fairy tale from another time, even as it feels startlingly fresh and always unpredictable.

In its atmosphere of gnawing discomfort with imposed secrecy about bad men, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is a uniquely dimensional work of character and temporality. Nyoni’s brilliance is in portraying the gap between public and private, past and present, as spaces where submerged feelings awkwardly co-exist, leaving nobody able to feel truly whole.

Caught by the Tides serves as a handy primer on Jia’s fascination with China’s political, cultural and economic evolution, amplifying those dependable themes with the benefit of working across a larger canvas of a quarter-century.

Maybe the most rewarding quality Eephus displays as a first-ballot hall of fame sports movie is the dedication of Lund and company to just being what they are: no-nonsense celebrants of something ephemeral yet enduring.