Gutnik keeps the film’s narrative progression steady and unsettled, positioning his film as a ground-level dispatch from the conflict’s frontlines.

There is nothing ordinary about Tom and Joan, and their story shows us that there is nothing ordinary about love.

Those who don't know anything about the tale going in (a category that included me) might be gobsmacked by what happens. The order of events doesn't stick to any established commercial movie template. What happens feels as random yet eerily inevitable as life itself.

This story has been told several times before—and influenced other similar romances—but Cooper and Gaga find a way to make this feel fresh and new. It’s in their eyes.

Touching on issues of identity, integrity, and grief, “Swan Song” never feels formulaic due to the complex, committed performances of its stars and the thoughtful exploration of the issues it raises.

Whatever your movie plans, you miss Tracks at your aesthetic pleasure peril. It’s a truly outstanding cinema experience.

The result is the most fascinating documentary about a failed movie since 1965’s “The Epic That Never Was,” about the abortive Korda-produced, von Sternberg-directed, and Charles Laughton-starring film of Robert Graves’ great novel I, Claudius.

The entire thing has the tone of an elegy or memorial throughout, including the hero's voiceover, which has a resigned inevitability. It is also, to its credit, a movie that plays fair with the viewer, establishing very early that it's going to honor its subject matter by being complicated, because almost nobody's life can be interpreted just one way.

It creates a world with its own rules and tells a story in its own visual language. It seems it will come to a very obvious conclusion, but then it pivots and introduces elements that create a new frame for the movie. Fifteen minutes later, it does this again, and then again.

Eloquent and moving, The Deepest Breath shows what it's like "down there," why people risk their lives to free fall into the blackness where it is so quiet, and why they also risk their lives to bring divers in trouble back up to the noisy surface.

Cinematographer Drew Xanthopoulos gives the actors very little room to hide, often framing their faces in extreme close-up during bracing moments of emotional nakedness. There are echoes here of Cassavetes’ most agonizing stretches in “A Woman Under the Influence,” as casual pleasantries detonate into a fiery inferno of resentment.

Chasing Trane streamlines the story of the jazz saxophonist, but it does so in a way that doesn’t feel like cheating. Scheinfeld’s approach is to give the viewer the forest, point out a few trees and get out, confident that those trees will inspire the viewer to spend more time in the forest.

In filmmaker Yael Melamede’s biographical film about her mother, pioneering Israeli architect Ada Karmi-Melamede, the two ways of seeing the world and telling a story come together.

The feature filmmaking debut from writer/director/co-editor Lauren Hadaway is an intimate and powerful sensory experience all around, but it’s the sound editing—Hadaway’s first calling, having worked with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Zack Snyder, and Damien Chazelle—that grabs you off the top and envelops you throughout.

After the Storm is one of our best filmmaker’s best films.

Though its generic title may evoke memories of the archaic science videos you fell asleep to in grade school, Schwartzberg’s film quickly proves to be one of the year’s most mind-blowing, soul-cleansing and yes, immensely entertaining triumphs.

This is the most beautiful Batman movie you’ve ever seen—even if it’s not really a Batman movie at all.

While the film loses some of its mesmerizing potency in the climax and subsequent wrap-up, it's still a beautiful and acute rendering of what could be if some of the most implausible lies we tell ourselves were in fact true.

Mood is ephemeral, but it helps establish point of view and orients us in the dream-space of the film. With all of the things that Christmas, Again (written and directed by Charles Poekel in his feature debut) does well (and it does almost everything well), the most striking thing about it is its evocation of an extremely specific mood.

The movie is significant as a movie: it's intelligent, sensitive and expertly made. But it's also significant because of its ability to provoke introspection and arguments. In its deceptively modest way, it's as much a Rorschach test as "American Sniper." Everybody who sees it will draw a different picture of the elephant.

Rest assured, finding out whether an on-screen couple have what it takes has rarely felt this cutting, and, ultimately, this rewarding.

However suave the movie itself may be, it's another accomplished piece of work from a filmmaker who is now four for four, and continues to surprise with the range of his interests and output. And it’s a love letter to a cinematic legend, serving as a perfect final film for someone who long ago surpassed mere actor status to become an icon.

Queen of Earth is terrifying because it is so emotionally unmoored—Catherine is a character with little reason to care about anything or anyone, and Perry and Moss convey the danger of that brilliantly.

It’s just over 90 minutes long, but Streetwise still feels like an epic poem, shrunken down and sparingly polished for maximum effect.

As a screenwriter, Kerr has a deep understanding of her characters and the complex dynamics of the relationship between Ben and Beth.

Again and again, I marveled at the humanist depth of the world Haigh creates, one that can only be rendered by a truly great writer and director, working near the top of his game.

The rare film in this genre that serves as both entry point and continuation. For a change, you can walk in cold and you won't be too lost.

In his impressive debut feature, writer/director Jason Yu strikes a fine balance between character-driven and high-concept horror.