A film like Sing Sing is a rare, precious achievement — a cinematic work of unique empathy and hand-turned humanity, hewed from the heart, with rigorous attention paid to the creative process.

Minute by minute, it’s a roving, inquisitive, elegantly expansive portrait of an establishment whose many constituent and tangential elements — farms and markets, kitchens and dining rooms, chefs and sous-chefs, servers and customers — function together in a kind of whirring, bustling day-to-day harmony.

Within "Housekeeping’s” restless, naturalistic aesthetic, Stolevski crafts complex and poignant images, contrasting the playacting the couple is forced to do with their searing gazes.

The term classic gets tossed around a lot, but few films ever actually fall within its definition. John Huston's 1956 production of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, coolly received by critics when it first came out, now falls within the parameters -- a model of its kind. [03 Sep 1993, p.F23]

Baker wrote the part for her, and Madison returned the favor with a star-making performance, leaning into Ani’s audacity while revealing the fragile façade, the vulnerabilities and self-deception lurking underneath.

This tale of parents and poultry more than earns the exclamation point in its title. It sweeps you into a whirlwind of ingenuity, bite after animated bite.

Crafted with care and a distinct point of view, Between the Temples is the kind of film that bears rewatching just because you want to spend more time with its idiosyncratic rhythm and energy. Singing in its own key, there might not be a more authentic and purely entertaining film this year.

In its lived-in quality and gathering churn, Good One is a dream of an indie, from the craft in every frame to the humor, epiphanies and mysteries that gird its portraiture.

It’s a dazzling, tune-filled collage of images, words and sounds, recounting the moment during the Cold War when Congolese independence, hot jazz and geopolitical tensions made a sound heard around the world. But also, how that music was muffled by lethal instruments of capitalism and control, still a factor on the global stage.

It is a testament to this deeply moving film that Lacorazza has laid bare her own complicated feelings about her father while acknowledging that, as shown in a silently shattering final scene, sometimes words fail.

The tension never lets up throughout Longlegs, though it is peppered with a dry, black humor that somehow just makes everything more disturbing.

Dahomey is at its most blazingly confrontational when Diop includes footage of a panel session in which students discuss the issues at hand.

No Other Land’s sense of grim futility is very much the point — it’s what the strong count on in order to suppress those who oppose them. Anyone who sees this devastating film may share in that sense of hopelessness. But we can no longer say we had no idea what was going on.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s fun and fizzy adaptation views its Molotov cocktail as half-full. Yes, it says, the struggle for liberation continues: ideologues versus toadies, radicals versus conservatives, loyalists versus rats. But isn’t it inspiring that there are still people willing to fight?

A miraculously subtle piece of work.

The characters’ dilemma may, ultimately, be meaningless set against the ebbs and flows of history, but Gomes, who won the directing prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, invests it with such elegance that it becomes nearly mythic: a touching fable of cowardice and devotion with tragic undertones. The scenes may be dreamlike, but they’re our shared dream of being swept away by the movies.

Despite its intimate focus, Memoir of a Snail is a towering achievement. This touching animated film serves as a reminder that Elliot is a humanist who clearly sculpts his “clayographies” (as he dubs his films) from the very essence of life itself.

I’m Still Here brilliantly distills an agonizing chapter of a nation’s recent past into a sophisticated portrait of communal endurance.

Friedland’s acute debut feature, drawn from her experience in the memory-care field, is a small miracle of realigned empathy, turning away from the condescension and easy sentiment of so many narratives about late-in-life adaptation.

Sinners works more like a pop song than a grand statement, the kind of deceptively simple high-level craft that few people can pull off.

“My Undesirable Friends” captures dark times with some of the funniest people you’d ever hope to have as sisters-in-arms. Defiant, emotional and life-affirming, the film presents us with endearing patriots who love their country but hate its leaders, sucking us into a riveting tale with a powerful undertow.

This poetic gem is a journey from the weight of absence to the serenity of presence, thanks in no small part to the inquisitive, gifted woman pulled from obscurity: Sheila Turner-Seed, whose life was short but full and worth revitalizing.

I’d call “Wallis Island” a contender for the most quotable film of the year but there are so many good lines stacked on top of each other, and so much giggling on top of that, it’s impossible to keep up with Key’s wordplay.

Peter Hujar’s Day captures something beautifully distilled about human experience and the comfort of others.

Every scene has a delight.

2000 Meters to Andriivka is a war chronicle like no other.

Dead Lover, in all its stinky, sexy, queer and grotesque glory, is one of the grossest and loveliest films about love I’ve ever seen. This one’s for the horny, hopeless goth inside all of us.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats.