A nearly three-hour talkfest that plays out in something close to real time may sound daunting on paper, but if you can make it past the opening shot, you will find yourself gripped for the duration.

Ade has an unusual gift for planting more than one idea in each frame; I don’t think there’s a single one of the movie’s 162 minutes that can be reduced to a single emotional beat or narrative function. That hefty running time isn’t a sign of indulgence, but integrity.

The Red Turtle is a visually stunning poetic fable, but there’s more on its mind than simply beauty.

Arrival is really Adams' film, a showcase for her ability to quietly and effectively meld intelligence, empathy and reserve.

I have only kind words for The Kind Words, an emotionally rich, beautifully textured family dramedy that touches on a wealth of interpersonal issues with buoyancy, charm and grace. It’s one of the best films so far this year.

Sand Storm's great gift is that it is human, not didactic, showing not only how difficult this iron web of culture and tradition is to escape from but also how much it poisons the lives of the men who enforce it as much as the women who are victimized by it.

The aesthetic that Dominik has crafted is a pitch-perfect expression of Cave’s grappling with matters of time and space. It’s gorgeous and ghostly.

Moonlight is magic. So intimate you feel like you're trespassing on its characters souls, so transcendent it's made visual and emotional poetry out of intensely painful experience, it's a film that manages to be both achingly familiar and unlike anything we've seen before.

In ways both subtle and overt, the movie continually draws our attention to the human consciousness guiding every shot, the hand that is gently yet unmistakably manipulating the image.

These despairing, ambiguous pieces are always emotionally unsettling, and that is due in part to Kieslowski's complete assurance as a director. His spare, minimal visual preferences dominate each episode. The camera work is fluid and precise, and the films are so rich they seem to be feature-length though they're not.

Daring in its willingness to risk looking maudlin by dealing with extremes, Blue doesn't hesitate to explore spiritual and psychological states that are beyond many films.

Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time: The Imax Experience is a glorious cosmic reverie, a feast for the eyes and a balm for the soul in these angry, contentious times.

There’s a thrilling friction between the smoothly assembled pieces of Anthony’s narrative, and often sparks.

Artistic, obsessive and intoxicating, I Called Him Morgan is a documentary with a creative soul, and that makes all the difference.

Larraín told his producers he wouldn't do Jackie unless Natalie Portman agreed to take on the role, and her superb performance, utterly convincing without being anything like an impersonation, vindicates his determination.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is as fine a film as it is a brutally disturbing one.

It's an exquisite reminder of the wondrous things that can happen when a storyteller of boundless imagination avails himself of some rigorous discipline.

What makes I Am Not Your Negro a mesmerizing cinematic experience, smart, thoughtful and disturbing, goes well beyond words.

It has the irresistible freshness of a recipe that many have tried to copy and none have matched: a barbed, sprawling, scintillating vision of a society happily in thrall to its taste buds.

Wised-up as well as traditional, with a striking and detailed look and a strong storyline, it is sure to charm a wide audience both now and for a long time to come.

The Ornithologist” is both an opaque narrative and a deeply inviting one. Even as the film commences a series of radical formal and dramatic mutations, you are held rapt by the steadiness of the camera’s gaze and the sublime, sun-dappled beauty that it invariably discovers.

Its emotional reserves are deeper and more capacious, its sense of mystery more profound, than in just about any American movie of any scale I’ve seen in recent memory.

It’s a simple, wrenching story of love and loss that pries open a window onto eternity.

Guadagnino’s storytelling is overpoweringly intimate but never narcissistic. He directs our gaze both inward and outward, toward the treasures and mysteries buried within this Italian paradise, and also toward the unseen, unspoken forces that have threatened bonds like Elio and Oliver’s for millennia.

To a degree that is both formally impressive and politically astute, Rees and her co-writer, Virgil Williams, have largely retained the symphonic, almost Faulknerian structure of multiple narrators that governed Jordan’s story. The radicalism of Mudbound thus lies in its inherently democratic sensibility, its humble, unapologetic insistence on granting its black and white characters the same moral and dramatic weight.

In the push-pull between Secareanu’s resonant stillness and O’Connor’s barely sublimated intensity, you feel the struggle of two souls forging a path toward each other, gradually realizing that while life may be harsh and unforgiving, love doesn’t have to be.

What holds you throughout isn't just the picture's astounding craftsmanship but also its unsettling, exploratory vibe — the sense it conveys that you've seen something like it before, even as you assuredly haven't.

The movie is a savage attack on the egomania that enables a director to fancy himself a deity, as well as the rotten patriarchies that govern the worlds of art, industry and religion alike, with Lawrence embodying the wise but perpetually ignored voice of the divine feminine.