Propulsive and tightly constructed ... Flecks of jet-black humor add a wicked sparkle to an essentially tragic narrative.

The film feels at times like Terrence Malick meets Hayao Miyazaki for tykes, combining playful subjectivity with surreal flights of fancy. But it also maintains a narrative throughline that’s simple enough for any kid to follow, showing how its titular heroine literally emerges from her bubble to discover the pleasures and dangers of real life.

Though the film’s two halves aren’t equally as strong, with the second half lacking some of the complexity and breathtaking sweep of part one, this is an impressive step up for Quillevere.

This is a sprawling yet intimate narrative, constructed almost entirely of in-between moments rather than the big turning points and tragedies.

This is an incredibly charismatic man with a finely honed sense of his public image, but Roher is also able to capture how prickly he is.

Composed of broad, colorful brushstrokes and minimalist figuration, this seldom-told story can be a bit slow on the plot side but makes up for it with exquisite artistry and a welcome sense of gloom.

Its bursts of lightning-fast swordplay interrupt long, still stretches of misty moonlit landscapes and follow a pure literary style more than current genre expectations.

By simply contrasting short sequences that each tell a small story, Wiseman constructs a much larger mosaic.

It provides both deep musical pleasures and a touching farewell to the former Beatle.

Although the pace is slow, "Twilight" is a moving account of a family in crisis and the love that provides a short window of happiness for the father.

Madeline’s Madeline is both heady and head-scratching. Anyone who has ever taken an acting class and witnessed the psychodramas brewed there will relate to this bubbling kettle of raw, unleashed emotions stirred up in shifting power grabs.

While "Exorcism" focused on a murder-trial battle between the priest and a prosecutor, Schmid's film beautifully details the behavior, events and socio-religious pressures that lead to the decision to perform such an extreme ritual.

The film rips right along and never relinquishes its grip.

The film — and in turn the director — demands a lot from viewers; even with ample warning and disclaimers, it won’t be for everyone. Those who can stomach it will be rewarded with a courageous work of art.

The script intelligently dishes out key information in each vignette, with the scenes separated by major narrative ellipses that force the viewer to work a little in order to figure things out.

The film’s simple, lower-class setting is met with equally direct camerawork, lighting and editing. This feels like the farthest Farhadi has come from his stage work and the sometimes unconvincing dramatic elements that occasionally creep into his films.

The Northman is certainly a lot of movie, and while its hysterical intensity at times veers into overwrought silliness, it’s both unstinting and exhilarating in its depiction of a culture ruled by the cycles of violence. The cohesion of Eggers’ vision commands admiration, as does the commitment of his collaborators, both in front of and behind the camera.

The subtleties and vagaries of human behavior sometimes get lost in the sheer mundanity of the action, although the film gradually builds toward a meaningful depiction of what charity actually means — and it’s far from what the volunteers set out to do in the first place.

The film at times is more playful than illuminating, but it's also a handsomely crafted and boldly idiosyncratic contemplation of a great artist for whom political compromise was anathema.

Although I think there are gaps that DiMarco and Guggenheim could have filled in, the documentary is elevated by its exceptional quartet of central heroes and by its effort to tailor the storytelling and aesthetic approach to the unique aspects of this movement.

For those willing to take the plunge, it is a deep and haunting work that lingers in the memory.

Spry and playful at times, pedantic and ponderously repetitive at others, the film is French down to its sweaty tennis socks and ultimately a touch too self-satisfied in its clever unconventionality.

Stranger by the Lake invites you into its alluring and peaceful world, only to gradually uncover the darkness beneath it.

In telling this ancient story with style and humor, de Heer and his Aboriginal collaborators promote cultural understanding and acceptance by stealth, if you will.

Camus’ formidable antihero may be lost to his own demons, as well as to the demons of colonialism, but Ozon boldly suggests that the memory of his Algerian victim may live on as a harbinger of what’s to come — that is, of a time when rebels like Meursault no longer exist, in a country finally free of them.

Sacks’ personal life was as startling as his professional achievements.

This is strikingly talented cinema from a notable international filmmaker.

The results are always visually arresting, while the narrative, even by Maddin standards, is completely out in the ozone.

Co-directors David Douglas and Drew Fellman achieve the ideal balance of tender storytelling delivered with a conservationist message. But it’s ultimately the visual experience offered that sets Pandas apart from the titles in the impressive wildlife series from Disneynature.

By the time the film ends and the fates of the various figures revealed, you’re struck not only by the compelling narrative but also by the complex humanity of everyone involved.

The violence of the inter-American drug trade has served as the backdrop for any number of films for more than three decades, but few have been as powerful and superbly made as Sicario.

Though handsome in style and admirable in ambition, this sprawling neo-Western never comes together as a satisfying whole.

My Octopus Teacher is not the first documentary to plunge us into the otherworldly flora and fauna of Earth's oceans . . . But it is the first to chronicle a single sea creature's story from such a personal, openhearted perspective, revealing not just emotional connections but animal behaviors previously unknown to scientists.

Beyond the handful of obligatory escapades, gunfights and images of martyrdom, the film reveals itself as less a drama about extraordinary heroes than an illustration of life in a fallen city.

Its humane message is potent even though it comes in the offbeat package of this gleeful, violent but entirely successful dark comedy.

The film is an essential character-driven document of a moment in the history of a country facing some challenges that are disturbingly familiar and others, thank goodness, that Americans will find very foreign.

Since from her other features it is clear she's an uncompromising director, it should perhaps come as no surprise that this film is as unapologetically personal and self-absorbed as it is, making no attempt to draw in viewers perhaps unfamiliar with the filmmaker.

Acutely observed but gloomy and lacking narrative, it tells of 12 months in the life of a decent but dull suburban couple and their friends, most of whom you would go out of your way to avoid at a party.

Benefitting from an unassuming but dead-on performance by lead Molly Windsor, the picture may frustrate those expecting a true horror film, but earns Oakley a place alongside other young women (like Amy Seimetz and Sophia Takal) currently exploring the usefulness of genre conventions in feminist storytelling.

At times fascinating, at times not, its in-depth look at the administration, campus, students and faculty offers an insider's view into the way American academia functions.

As a contrast to Gosling's deliberately deadened, emotionally zoned-out turn, Ford almost single-handedly amps up a film otherwise intentionally drained of character vitality.

Emotionally involving material is the key element to a good human-interest documentary, and Lipitz, a Baltimore native with a background in Broadway producing, has tapped into a great story here of adversity, struggle and elevating achievement.

Technically puckish where appropriate but grounded by strong performances from Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder, the film is not awards bait but makes some Big Thinker biographies that are look staid.

Although Vallee's remarkably assured film, which clocks in at more than two hours, proves that it's possible to have too much of a good thing, Canada's official Oscar submission for best foreign-language feature still manages keep up the entertaining yet emotionally satisfying pace sufficiently to earn audience accolades.

This graceful, deeply affecting movie has a soulfulness and sweep that mark it as a step forward for Hansen-Løve.

Often gripping footage, and the finished product resembles a taut if at times confusing and inadvertently comic political thriller.

Director Tom Hooper ("John Adams") ably balances the games (surprisingly little football footage, actually), the personalities and the drama.

Hong, who handled screenplay as well as directorial, editing and scoring duties, is in fine form here.

It's a harrowing watch, but a cathartic one, with each of the four superb principal actors delivering scenes of wrenching release.

Western is a naturalistic, almost documentary-like feature that slowly builds.

To say 13th is stimulating and thought-provoking is the understatement of the year.

This is awareness-raising documentary cinema at its most urgent and necessary.

It’s a marvelously imaginative conceit that transforms what could have been yet another dryly informative documentary into the realm of art.

Perhaps more than anything, the doc celebrates the remarkable creative union between Cave and his chief collaborator and bandmate Warren Ellis.

I doubt any movie, especially any documentary, will make me laugh harder this year, and many of its emotional grace notes land fully. Even with my high expectations, The History of Concrete is a small triumph.

Anchored by an internalized performance from Amy Adams rich in emotional depth, this is a grownup sci-fi drama that sustains fear and tension while striking affecting chords on love and loss.

Cody's dialogue has a definite rhythm and Reitman directs his actors to deliver the words in the rapid-fire precision of a '30s screwball comedy. Indeed all scenes develop a rhythm and inner logic that bring the movie to often startling revelations and insights.

Elena is an elegiac cinematic essay that is both haunting and unforgettable.

In many ways, this is an expertly crafted chiller. . . A strong cast and an intriguing chapter structure also work in its favor. But ultimately, it’s not really about anything much.

Nothing if not true to its title, this frenetically plotted serve of stoner heaven is insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun. But at two hours-plus, it becomes unrelenting and wearisome.

Ultimately, the heavy-handed and annoyingly obvious aesthetic wears thin.

Dhont and his team know just how to turn up the emotional dials with stunning magic-hour lensing that gives golden-haired Dambrine a halo of backlit suffering as he stands in fields of nodding dahlias, that most gloriously domestic and benevolent flower.

This cannily edited selection of rare archive footage reveals the peak of the people’s mind-born terror, and it is the beginning of the end.

It’s Gay’s most emotionally direct work to date, thoroughly shedding the clever-cleverness of some of his earlier work, and also his most accessible — a clean-lined, sensitively-written and beautifully played two-hander that tackles complex issues in a refreshingly straightforward, downbeat way.

This is a documentary both tragic and poignant, not to mention maddening in that only a few underlings, and not the perpetrators, will pay for the crime committed in Istanbul. The evidence is all here for the world to see.

The epic adventure, set during the Napoleonic Wars, boasts at least two artists at the top of their respective games -- namely filmmaker Peter Weir and actor Russell Crowe.

Kells proves that in the increasingly high-tech world of feature animation, there still can be a place for old-time tradition.

It’s like watching a first-rate standup routine transformed into fiction, or in this case auto-fiction, as Rock has more on his mind than just making us laugh, offering up a witty celebrity satire that doubles as a love story set during one long and eventful New York City day.

Autobiographical but also singularly imaginative, this formally exuberant bildungsroman plays like a Gregg Araki film with a dash of Cronenbergian psychosomatic body-rebellion thrown in.

This is a highly original work that goes beyond its theological aspects to explore more universal questions of mankind and our evanescent place in the world.

The period sets, costumes and cinematography all superbly recreate the brutal era, grand illusions and everyday suffering of the Poles under both the Nazis and the Soviets.

The long, unbroken rhythm of Wang’s filmmaking somehow casts a spell, and he certainly has a good eye for characters. That’s a blessing considering how slow and considered the takes are here, watching with equally intense absorption whether the subjects are sleeping on a train or constructing seams or making food. But overall, the lack of differentiation can be wearisome.

Coming Home sinks into a conventional tragic romance rut that not even engaging performances by Gong and Chen can save.

At every imaginative juncture, the filmmakers (the screenplay is credited to Pixar veteran Molina and Matthew Aldrich) create a richly woven tapestry of comprehensively researched storytelling, fully dimensional characters, clever touches both tender and amusingly macabre, and vivid, beautifully textured visuals.

A feel-good Cold War melodrama, Bridge of Spies is an absorbing true-life espionage tale very smoothly handled by old pros who know what they're doing.

The fitful development of the script aside, the movie is dominated entirely by Freeman and Tandy, who manage to retain individual star-quality while acknowledging the other's presence.

Co-director Starzack was one of the guiding hands behind the series version of Shaun the Sheep, and that experience in the kind of brisk, skit-based comedy that makes the series so charming shows through here in stand-alone scenes.

The lustrous textures, boldly saturated colors and lush sounds of The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao serve to intensify the intimacy of Karim Ainouz's gorgeous melodrama about women whose independence of mind remains undiminished, even as their dreams are shattered by a stifling patriarchal society.

I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians is a mature, ambitious work from a spirited auteur who has mastered the cinematic rules well enough to break them with confidence.

Denis creates the threat of imminent danger through stillness and austerity rather than action. She's helped immeasurably by an astringent, fully committed performance from her leading lady, a gaunt, impossibly resolute Isabelle Huppert.

Much is left unsaid in the beautifully shot doc, which will leave inquisitive viewers wanting many more specifics on both the family front and the artistic one. But sacrificing such detail allows Boesten to develop a more intimate emotional portrait of Morton, a subject whose thoughtful self-invention is affecting practically from the first scene.

Wonderfully understated, Station Agent is a masterful film and a bracing movie experience. Its power is in large part because of the performers, most prominently Dinklage as the solitary dwarf.

Mesmerizing in its incremental layering of a bizarre, tragic and thoroughly warped character study, Foxcatcher sees director Bennett Miller well surpassing even the fine work he did in his previous two films, Capote and Moneyball.

All the movie's playfulness rubs off on the actors. Scenes crackle with life. The chemistry among all the actors is terrific.

An affecting emotional journey as well as a telling example of how the fortuitous intervention of social media continues to reshape lives in unexpected ways.

Bratt certainly illuminates the uncertainty of her quest: the early dawns of heading out to rally strangers and the turmoil of a life fighting against superior, institutional forces.

The doc's heart is with ordinary people who have no show-business ambitions.

Bright Star may not be a joy forever but it will do until the next joy comes along.

MLK/FBI indeed serves as a chilling reminder that white supremacy is not solely a partisan problem; it’s a cruelty baked into the fabric of our political system, poisoning it at every level.

Driven by nuanced, persuasive performances and shot with an urgent, jittery tension, White Lie is a compelling close-up character study of a recklessly needy anti-heroine caught in an impossible dilemma of her own making.

Extraordinary in its piercing intimacy and lacerating in its sorrow, Jackie is a remarkably raw portrait of an iconic American first lady, reeling in the wake of tragedy while at the same time summoning the defiant fortitude needed to make her husband's death meaningful, and to ensure her own survival as something more than a fashionably dressed footnote.

Certainly for most audiences the viewing experience will prove not only tedious but bewildering.

It’s rare to see such confidence in a first feature, yet Ducournau seems to know where she’s going at all times, keeping the narrative lean and mean while utilizing an array of stylistic techniques – slow-motion, sequence shots and tons of on-screen prosthetics – that never let up until the witty, and inevitably grisly, final scene.

Though it abounds in the kind of sardonic humor intrinsic to life’s absurdities, the film is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. In a nutshell, quiet desperation prevails.

The film is a staggeringly impressive debut, blending color, sound and story to create an intricate emotional tapestry.

This is masterly understated filmmaking marked by a few stand-out sequences, particularly a one-shot town hall meeting that lasts for an entire reel and throws all the issues on the table before erupting into chaos.

Only fitfully does the film manage the kind of lift-off as that achieved by Pynchon's often riotous 2009 novel and, most disappointingly, it offers only a pale and narrow physical recreation of such a vibrant place and time.

Both surreal and sinister, it feels like we are watching a real-life version of The Truman Show.