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.

Bugonia is a hilarious movie with no hope for the future of humanity. What optimism there is lies only in the title, an ancient Greek word for the science of transforming dead cows into hives, of turning death into life.

Human connections are gifts, imagination is powerful and empathy isn’t a trick. These are the things Look Into My Eyes patiently communicates to us from its watchful perch.

Though its protagonist is a 10-year-old girl, it is a crackling good tale with a sense of wonder and mystery strong enough to captivate any age group. [03 Feb 1995, p.F1]

Working from an excellent screenplay (by Chika-ura and Keita Kumano) that’s a finely tuned model of narrative empathy, and boasting an all-timer portrait of decline by the great Tatsuya Fuji (“In the Realm of the Senses”), it conveys both keen insight into a tough situation and, at the same time, intriguingly lets some workings of the heart and mind remain impenetrable.

Babygirl’s erotic scenes are hot. But really, Reijn is doing her damnedest to get a moral rise out of us. Romy and Samuel have safe words, yet our own national conversation about sexual ethics gets tongue-tied whenever it tries to define right and wrong. Instead, we have Reijn asking uncomfortable questions.

Like its black anti-hero, the mapantsula (Zulu for small-time crook ) of the title, the movie makers do their job with swiftness, guile and gall. It’s a moral drama in disguise.

Holy Cow achieves its own special texture and flavor the more its central character boils, curdles and cools.

Not quite a thriller and not quite a horror movie, April is all the more haunting for never pinning down the roots of Nina’s retreat from life while dedicating herself to improving the lives of others.

Sight gags baked into the production design (the books the Gromit reads or the signs that populate the sets) and gnome puns aplenty make for a ride in which every frame packs a dense layer of comedy, at times conspicuous, others not so much.

Rudd and Robinson’s scenes together are great.