It’s simultaneously tricky and profound—a documentary about something small that gradually grows to cover so much more.

For a movie that’s so photo-realistic in its backgrounds and detailed in its character design, Ghost In The Shell is just as effective when it goes minimal, suggesting presence through absence.

Do the undeniably Malick-derived qualities of The Better Angels work against it, or is the film all the more special for being, essentially, a bonus Malick picture? To be fair to Edwards, a lot about The Better Angels sets it apart from Malick.

Despite some mawkish moments, this portrait of where espionage and domesticity collide is a unique take on typical John le Carré turf.

Maddin mixes personal reminiscences with elaborate fantasies of Masonic rituals and collectivist brothels, to construct a vision of Winnipeg as a city of sleepwalkers, roaming through mazes of snowbanks. In the end, it’s the “my” that matters more than the “Winnipeg.”

Going strictly by plot description, Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox sounds a little like an Indian knock-off of a Nicholas Sparks movie, but it plays out more like Brief Encounter.

Here’s a seemingly twee movie that ultimately, surprisingly argues that some music isn’t for everybody, some people are too broken to fix, and some would-be artists are better off in the audience.

Darkman is funny, but it’s no joke; it’s the work of a man who underlines the conventions of adventure stories and horror because he enjoys them, and knows that even when rendered tongue-in-cheek, they’re timeless.

So far, Nymphomaniac looks like a major work from a major director: a compendium of all von Trier’s career-long preoccupations with gender roles, authoritarianism, religion, obsessive behavior, and lust.

With his thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, disquietingly symmetrical face, Mikkelsen is nearly as good a prop as he is an actor. That impassive but selectively expressive mug is what makes Age Of Uprising’s climax shocking and memorable, but not at all in the way viewers will be conditioned to expect.

What makes Informant so effective is that while its focus is on Darby, the story has a larger scope.

What ultimately makes Tootsie linger past the giggles is its immense affection toward everyone on the screen.

No stranger to sneaking left-wing politics into his genre films, Corman emphasizes the struggle between the callous haves and the suffering have-nots, while Price’s performance teases out the story’s seediest elements.

As much as any documentary since Errol Morris’ A Brief History Of Time, Particle Fever excels at expressing advanced scientific theory through graphics that are simple, attractive, and utterly approachable.

Though it’s a good movie in and of itself, The Little Mermaid is even more fascinating as a Rosetta Stone of Disney history, representing the classic animation techniques that the studio revived for this film, the cheap shortcuts that had prevailed for much of the previous two decades, and the sophisticated modern storytelling that soon became the standard.

A warm and enjoyable small-scale film.

Swanberg isn’t doing anything new with Happy Christmas, but sticking to the same non-formula formula this time around yields unprecedentedly inspired results.

Vessel is much more than a documentary about abortion rights; it’s about the conviction, creativity, and sacrifice that goes into creating a movement.

Eastwood didn’t overreach with Play Misty For Me. It’s a tense thriller that’s inside his comfort zone in more ways than one. But he does overdeliver in the best way. Co-star Jessica Walter plays an obsessed fan, and Eastwood wrings every ounce of tension from a scenario in which a casual affair turns into a life-threatening mistake, and the film executes a potentially trashy scenario with respect for its audience.

It’s hard to build a story entirely on grace notes, but Lafleur comes close.

A master class in structure, a meticulously constructed period piece, a powerful anti-war film, and rarest of all, a thriller whose tension and suspense feel genuinely earned.

Despite its attention-grabbing logline and gleeful embrace of raunchy, frequently scatological humor, Obvious Child is at heart a well-realized, straight-ahead rom-com, one with the potential to reinvigorate a genre that’s been flagging for decades.

The film plays like a companion piece to Usher, but one eager to push beyond its limits, particularly in its tinted flashback sequences. It also lets Price begin the film as a delicate gentleman and end it as a madman.

As Marty continues to run scams, the laughs continue unabated, but the dread only deepens, because we realize he’s a creature of need, capable of anything but empathy. And he’s been pushed to the precipice.

Morgen isn’t interested in rehashing the facts and highlights of Cobain’s life and career, or in providing chin-scratching insights via music scholars and other talking heads. He’s made an impression of Cobain, which is a much more intuitive and vital enterprise.

Lane approaches New York’s unbalanced, inhumane economy the same way he approaches filmmaking: by putting a new frame around familiar sights, and forcing the audience to reconsider them.

Code Black doesn’t suggest ways to improve health care in America, but it at least documents one of the most noble and necessary professions with insight and humility.

The thrill of The Overnighters is in witnessing a heartrending payoff that could not be anticipated nor written—and, miraculously, closes the movie on a perfect irony.