Ari Aster’s Eddington is such a superb social satire about contemporary America that I want to bury it in the desert for 20 years. More distance will make it easier to laugh.

One can even detect, in this brilliant, captivating Reichardt gem about fortune and fate, a what-if attached to her disaffected male protagonist: Would today’s version of James, just as adrift and arrogant, steal art to assuage his emptiness? Or, thanks to the internet, succeed at something much worse? “The Mastermind” may be an ironic title as heists go. But it also hints at the male-pattern badness still to come.

With Resurrection, Bi delivers something uncommonly rich, boldly conceiving his latest as a salute to the history of film. Still, his focus remains on people — whether they be in his stories or watching in the theater.

Such questions are central to this elusive marvel, which invites the viewer to complete the drawing that Schilinski evocatively sketches.

This deservedly anticipated Frankenstein transforms that loneliness into stunning tableaux of Victor and his immortal Creature tethered together by their mutual self-loathing. One man’s heart never turned on. One can’t get his heart to turn off. Ours breaks.

A most unusual musical and a genuinely remarkable movie.

With a breathtaking eye for one-shot scenes and unwavering confidence in the demands he makes on our monkey-brained attention spans, Diaz has crafted a stunning piece of time travel, its languidness and exquisitely hued imagery working in perfect sync.

Sophy Romvari’s luminous debut feature “Blue Heron” is a loving and studious act of remembrance.

A Poet rides its wave of misfit compassion so beautifully because its contradictions live inside Rios’s howling, pitiable shambles of a character, who at times looks like someone sketched by a cynical animator but finished by a sympathetic colorist.

Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game.

On a par with Bridges' acting, and a sine qua non for Crazy Heart's success, is the excellent music he sings.

A pleasantly cerebral experience, exhilarating and fizzy, that goes to your head like too much Champagne.

As unusual and idiosyncratic as its one-of-a-kind title. You'd expect no less from Terry Gilliam, and admirers of this singular filmmaker will be pleased to know that "Imaginarium" is one of his most original and accessible works.

For the most part, Ford has done good by the film, infusing a sad story with warmth and humor to spare. While loss is what makes George's experience universal, heart is what gives him such life.

The 17-year-old so completely captures the innocence, cynicism and rage of a child of poverty and divorce on the edge of adulthood that it feels as if you are spying on Mia, so achingly real, so tangible does her world seem here.

Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is Precious. A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story.

It's tempting to forget that Cage is not Terence. That would be unfair though, and diminish the sheer ferocity of his performance.

For those who enjoy actors who can play it up without ever overplaying their hands, The Last Station is the destination of choice.

With Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro has made his most accomplished film to date, a dark and disturbing fairy tale for adults that's been thought out to the nth degree and resonates with the irresistible inevitability of a timeless myth.

Something seldom seen: an original romantic comedy.

First-time feature director Ruben Fleischer brings impeccable timing and bloodthirsty wit to the proceedings. Cinematographer Michael Bonvillain captures some interesting images amid the post-apocalyptic carnival of carnage, as when he transforms the destruction of a souvenir shop into a rough ballet.

It's important to remember that Sinclair was as much a committed socialist as a novelist, someone who probably wrote for political purpose more than for dramatic effect. So while Day-Lewis' gorgeous acting largely disguises it, the people in "Blood" tend to be schematic and the film as a whole has a weakness for the didactic.

The reality of François' classroom is so intense that it holds our interest even while the film's dramatic focus is building so quietly under the surface that we don't notice it at first.

French films traditionally take France and its eternal appeal for granted. Summer Hours is the rare film that worries about that, worries about the future, and that proves to be invaluable.

Simultaneously an art film and a crime film, Mann's latest work may not give you a ton to hang on to emotionally, but the beauty and skill of the filmmaking keep you tightly in its grasp.

The result, narrated in a grave monotone by Campbell Scott, is a catalog of horrors so absurd and relentless it verges on farce, or Greek tragedy.

Boyle has been nothing if not bold with this film. He's dared to use so many venerable movie elements it's dizzying, dared us to say we won't be moved or involved, dared us to say we're too hip to fall for tricks that are older than we are.

Simultaneously uplifting and melancholy, suffused with an unexpected sense of possibility as much as the inevitable sense of loss.