Disarming, alarming, and more than a little impressive, Shults' movie was shot in his mother's Texas home, and the thing plays like a cross between Eugene O'Neill and a slasher pic. (It's cut like one; the soundtrack makes you feel jumpy like one.)

The Babadook, then, is a study in madness that lurks beneath the surface. But it is also very much (and amusingly) a look at the trials of parenting, especially single-parenting: those days when you just want to, well, get your child out of the picture somehow. Of course, you don't act on those impulses. That's what the movies are for.

You know how some kids just connect? Jake and Tony connect. And the adults in their lives, without really meaning to do so, make it difficult for that connection to hold. It is a measure of Sachs' talent and skills that such a seemingly small story can resonate in such big ways.

Here are five gifted actors at the top of their games as five characters in search of what makes a family.

A beautiful, appropriately loping little gem about growing older, daring to take risks and follow your heart. That probably sounds corny, and The Straight Story is.

And how can you not reflect about time, and change, and physical and spiritual being, when confronted with such a stunning visual record of human existence?

The story is simple, illogical, mysterious, strange, and, of course, very, very sparse.

It can feel inchoate, dropping the viewer in the middle of events without much context, and it exacts an emotional toll. But its raw quality also makes it compelling viewing.

When it comes to the realistic portrayal of the complex process of grief, most actresses are at a loss. Sissy Spacek is decidedly not most actresses.

It's an observation of crushing truth.

Nobody's Fool boasts the kind of low-key realism on which Newman made his reputation but that, in these days of high-decibel, high-concept fantasy, has become a lost art. [13 Jan 1995, p.3]

A wicked deconstruction of a dysfunctional clan: brothers at each other's throats; a father whose legacy is anger and betrayal; an unfaithful wife; a history of deceit. It's a horror show of hatred and festering psychic wounds.

A captivating cine-memoir, impressionistic and surrealistic, surveying Varda's formidable career as a still photographer, filmmaker, documentarian, and life force.

Courageous, shattering and exceptional documentary.

Drug War is a deeply intelligent, exhilarating and eminently satisfying adult crime story, one of the best thrillers you're likely to see this year.

Argo's white-knuckle nail-biter of a climax takes liberties with how events played out in real life. But while Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio have opted to go Hollywood, it's high-class Hollywood, not the low-rent and exploitative route that the make-believe movie at the heart of this tale would have taken.

A flat-out electrifying experience.

Almodóvar has made a powerfully moving film about men who think they want to lose themselves in their women, then are startled to realize that they're the ones who have been comatose.

Quietly and keenly observed, Summer Hours nods to Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" (a country estate, a family reunion, an impending sale). Assayas displays a lucid sense of how personal history and family identity are inextricably linked to a physical place - here, to a house that is still busy accumulating its memories.

Phoenix's performance is one of such wild, intense abandon that it is not to be believed, and this, in fact, was my problem as The Master sailed into its momentum-less second hour.

To say this bone-chilling, gut-turning feature is "The Crying Game"-meets-"In Cold Blood." But this is a film - writer/director Peirce's first - that matches those pictures in power, in surprise, and in unnerving drama.

It's a beautiful, grim tale.

You watch a Miyazaki film with the pie-eyed, gape-mouthed awe of a child being read the most fantastic story and suddenly transported to places previously beyond the limits of imagination. It's quite a trip.

Beasts of the Southern Wild transports us to places that are peculiar and dangerous and magical, and makes us feel weirdly at home.

Let the Fire Burn does not glorify MOVE. What it does do is force us to consider why and how this surreal event - a city bombing its own citizens, leaving innocent children dead - occurred. And ask, could something like it ever happen again?

Fan's fly-on-the-wall perspective enables the viewer to empathize with all the players in the family drama, unlikely to have a happy ending.

A meditation on art, life, loneliness and the links between friends and strangers, the movie has a grace and humor that's wonderfully inviting.

At once guileless and profound.