It’s a film about pettiness couched in maturity, and a brilliantly merciless take on the comedy of manners.

It would be inaccurate to say The B-Side only scratches the surface of Dorfman, but this lovely portrait takes pains to adopt her mindset, finding the beauty that pervades an artist’s life. As a result, Morris is offering his own kind B-side—not better than the main work, but a delightful alternative take.

Urchin more than occasionally looks like and has the immediate feel of a Ken Loach film, with its long lens scenes of Dillane interacting in real locations with figures who, as in the best of Loach, could be either non-actors or performers convincingly masquerading as them.

It’s a fascinating spectacle in large part because Nolan isn’t especially Malickian at all (though at least that frame of reference might temporarily ease the overworked, underbaked Kubrick comparisons).

Though the film can at times feel long-winded—a common predicament when transitioning from shorts to features—it is a heady and hypnotic parable for the irreparable ecological harm humans have committed, while insisting that it’s not too late to connect and reconcile with the land that nurtures us.

Orion and the Dark is the most Kaufman-esque children’s movie you could possibly imagine, replete with oodles of existential anxiety, a metafiction narrative and a surprisingly emotional payoff.

Kirk’s film is a surprisingly lyrical and quite gritty, intimate thriller, one that makes the best of its unorthodox choice of performers to tell a story that is equal parts tender and savage.

With its unflinching and painstaking execution of such grim subject matter, Foxtrot is certainly not an easy watch, but an ultimately rewarding one.

Morgan’s feature debut is as stunning, diabolical and boundary-pushing an emergence as any filmmaker could hope to achieve.

Does it push the sponge forward? Probably not, and that’s ok. There’s something timeless about Bikini Bottom remaining as it is, with spin-offs and new series serving as the appropriate playgrounds for new outlets of storytelling. Sponge on the Run lovingly splits the difference, but doesn’t take anything away from what many know and love.

Rise of the Guardians is definitely fun, and definitely worthy of a holiday outing to the theater.

It’s a humble exploration of a fascinating and untapped community, reminiscent of great cinéma verité documentarians like Frederick Wiseman.

The small cast, capsule setting and slow-burning yet scintillating story are efficacious in their sparse simplicity, leaving ample room for carefully crafted ambiance and performances to arrest the viewer with mounting dread and anticipation.

A Cop Movie is artistic activism at its finest, carefully treading the line of fact and fiction in a manner that illuminates rather than obfuscates.

Rather than being concerned with historical authenticity (Sandy Powell’s costumes are gorgeously anachronistic), Lanthimos gestures towards an emotional reality that posits the lover and the loved as soldiers, capable of being a casualty in what each party believes is a greater cause. What a blazing and burning feat of melodrama.

What’s most compelling about Poser is the titular concept it seeks to unravel, one of deception and contrivance that epitomizes the ultimate sin in expressive art.

Telling the story of a sexy-but-dangerous lodger, whom our heroine suspects may be Jack the Ripper, Hitchcock builds upon clues and doubts, while making Ivor Novello’s character increasingly intriguing.

The Florida Project is spattered with profound sadness, with moments of externalized, violent frustration at presumed helplessness, at practically being born into all this. To what degree you believe Baker to be condescending or patronizing or exploitive is up to you, but the film’s bursts of light, its idea of what caregiving looks like when caregiving is a privilege, is handled with sensitivity.

Theatre of Blood is a classic revenge story in the Grand Guignol tradition, following a single mastermind as he hunts down and messily dispatches all who have wronged him in ironic fashion.

Newman has pretty serious filmmaking chops: She shoots action cleanly, coherently, with an eye for the poetry of a well-executed suplex and the brutality of a back alley brawl. Her strongest work, though, is seen in her characters and in her lead.

Ozon’s film grafts aesthetic pleasures with danger, and gets closer to the core of teenage romance as a payoff.

Sallitt’s work is a character portrait, or perhaps more aptly a portrait of a friendship, and while he focuses on Mara and Jo growing apart, its clean, cauterized treatment of the characters might isolate some viewers, since very little actually happens onscreen aside from talking.

It’s (relatively) small, sincere and funny, and has more than your usual MCU allotment of post-credit bombshells.

While 3 Faces explores the social position of women in Iran through oft-whimsical encounters as Panahi drives across northwestern Iran with actress Behnaz Jafari (also playing herself), No Bears feels much more darkly prophetic, seemingly aware of the filmmaker’s encroaching imprisonment.

Comprising hardcore and doom metal, à la Isis, Electric Wizard, and Doomriders, Bliss is more metal than most of the metal records released in the last five years. The substance beneath the slaughter is a happy bonus, and a reminder that even the ugliest horror movies can have more going on under the hood than one might think.

This is the most engaging and emotionally effective Moore doc since Bowling for Columbine.

Pleasant and contemplative, Close to Vermeer chronicles an exhibit of a master that both civilians and historians know startlingly little about, considering the profound impact he’s had on the craft of painting.

Digging into the art world’s juicy guts and suturing it up as a compelling, ambitious sci-fi noir, Crimes of the Future thrills, even if it leaves a few stray narrative implements sewn into its scarred cavities.