The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal.

It is more sad-funny than funny-funny, but Jenkins has enough empathy and wit to realize that even the sad parts are, somehow, funny.

The drama feels a bit leisurely and distant at times, and the film runs a little long, yet it intelligently and assuredly explores how longstanding traditions can be gradually upended by drugs, money and outside influences.

Finely acted and minutely observed, Ilo Ilo certainly has the texture of real life. The performances feel authentic, the emotional shadings agreeably nuanced.

Topped by a fine cast, a first-rate script by Nick Hornby and tight direction by Lone Scherfig, the film is a smart, moving but not inaccessible entry in the coming-of-age canon.

The emotional traumas of young Israeli soldiers drafted into the war with Lebanon in the 1980s are recounted through the eyes of a tank crew in this wrenching concentration of raw emotion directed by Samuel Maoz.

A shaggy-seeming but carefully modulated affair, To the Ends of the Earth gradually emerges as an offbeat but persuasive investigation of culture-clashes and the potential for trans-global bridge-building.

The performances of the two leads are riveting.

In Porumboiu’s movies, what you see is never what you get, and there are riches to be had if you just keep looking.

Gorgeously photographed by co-director Burke in the beautiful environs of East Sussex, England, this modest but subtly powerful piece of minimalist cinema exerts a haunting spell.

Inevitably harrowing and sickening in places, but with tender and uplifting moments, Night Will Fall is a somber treatment of a serious topic which earns its place in the broad pantheon of Holocaust-themed cinema. It is just a shame that Singer's worthy memorial feels a little too small for its world-shaking theme and world-famous cast list.

The film’s bucolic mood is constantly threatened by the prevailing reality of violence and injustice in the region, a creeping tension that Syeed carefully calibrates to emphasize the tenuousness of his characters’ relationships.

I Am Another You offers further evidence of this young director’s investigative energy and eye for cinematic poetry without the slightest preciousness.

The Rider is a rare gem, a small, acutely observed portrait of a few lives on what used to be the frontier but is now a desolate backwater, the windswept badlands around Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Despite its dreary outlook, the film does offer a semblance of hope in the generosity, good humor and tenacious sangfroid of the people it portrays.

The director is such an engaging presence onscreen — wry and humane, balancing sly social commentary with a playfully child-like attitude — that even a minor autumnal work like this is still a heart-warming mood-lifter.

Three hours long and divided into two parts, it starts off as a leisurely, shaggy dog crime story, with what’s probably one of the most laid-back bank robberies in film history. But then it digresses, deepens and complexifies, creating new mysteries out of old ones, and love affairs out of the thin air.

Slowly but deliberately paced, the movie builds to a crescendo in a closing act where a movie itself — a real movie shot and projected on celluloid — plays a pivotal role, resuscitating forgotten lives and memories as only the cinema can do.

Lakota Nation vs. United States is a visually dynamic documentary, and it’s also one that delves into the power of language and how we use it.

In less assured hands, Cactus Pears might have edged into trite territory, yielding to the familiar beats of trauma-laden queer love stories, but Kanawade’s considered direction and spare storytelling keep the narrative refreshing.

Newcomer Elsie Fisher offers a breakout performance.

Hugely entertaining documentary challenges conventional concepts of legitimate art and the creative process.

Dark, unnerving and thrilling, The Novice is poised to become a genre-breaking success. A film this raw made with such a steady, assured hand only comes along once in a while. We should take notice.

Where many filmmakers would have underlined the bleaker, harsher aspects, Girlhood presents the characters' grim reality without surrendering its lightness of touch, its compassion or its hope.

Women's roles and the eternal fight to expand their rights in Iranian society get a light, hugely entertaining treatment in Jafar Panahi's Offsides.

Though clearly not a proposition for either devout Christians or audiences for whom the multiplex is a temple, this is the kind of take-no-prisoners art house fare that advances and deepens the understanding of a singular director’s oeuvre as a whole.

Tales of the Grim Sleeper is unusually somber and conventional by Broomfield's standards, relying more on slow accumulation of detail than caustic commentary or ambush interviews. But it has a quiet emotional force which pays off during the powerful final sequence.

Easy Rider is very likely the clearest and most disturbing presentation of the angry estrangement of American youth to be brought to the screen.

Unfortunately, the narrative endgame is a mess, and should have been rethought in development, but there’s no denying Ezer has made a bold, audacious debut.

Apatow's gleefully raunchy movies are, in an odd and charming way, extremely family-friendly.

Heart-wrenching as well as spirit-raising.

A ferociously entertaining film.

Yes may be purposely over-the-top and unsettling to watch — at two and a half hours, it won’t win over audiences looking for light arthouse fare — but Lapid is trying to show us that it’s hardly an exaggeration of the truth, or at least his own truth about his homeland.

Festival Express should rightfully take its place in rock history as one of the great performance films of all time.

Kim Ki-duk keeps dialogue to a minimum and actions simple in what is virtually a two-character piece. Humor arrives organically, often resulting in hearty laughs.

It’s only when the story heads to pure sci-fi territory later on that April stretches itself a bit thin, though a smart epilogue manages to put things in perspective for both the characters and viewer.

It is one of the few films so visually absorbing, felicitous shot after shot, that its emotional coldness is noticed only at the end, when all the plot twists are unraveled in a solid piece of thinking-man's entertainment for upmarket thriller audiences.

Part of this tender animation’s appeal comes from its committed and absorbing voice performances.

An easygoing hangout film that will ring true for anyone who has worked in the service industry, it continues the filmmaker's streak of making movies that have few obvious common denominators besides empathy for types of characters who rarely get it.

If there was ever any doubt, with Half Nelson, Ryan Gosling establishes himself as a major talent and one of the finest young actors around.

The director also pulls career-high performances from Mezzogiorno and Timi that are, respectively, tragic and mesmerizing.

This precision-controlled film once again highlights Alexander Sokurov's mastery of the medium. The third entry in his Men in Power series employs refined performances, a controlled script, excellent sound and fluid camerawork.

Derki and his experienced editor Anne Fabini have crafted a sober, sobering bulletin of unambiguous intention and undeniable power.

Despite the obvious sadness at its heart, the doc benefits from an unforced optimism.

Lovely, unforced Chekhovian notes grace the gently observed snapshot of a summer of unstoppable change and momentous upheaval. Even if there are moments of frustration in which Simón and co-writer Arnau Vilaró pull away just as conflicts are heating up, the film’s immersive, lived-in nature has a transfixing grip.

The precision, beauty and emotion in the film is built on strong writing (the screenplay is by Ghaywan and the story is by Peer, Ghaywan and Sumit Roy) and superb performances.

At its strongest, the film feels like kin to Kirsten Johnson’s great Cameraperson (2016), a free-associative nonfiction memoir comprised mostly of B-roll and personal footage. Though the subject here isn’t Ross himself (despite a few offscreen aural appearances) but an entire community that, in both micro- and macrocosmic senses, has remained historically unacknowledged and unseen.

Tràn Anh Hùng’s The Pot-au-Feu (La Passion du Dodin-Bouffant) is a movie that captures its mouthwatering dishes like edible tableaux, combining culinary marvels with a moving tale of middle-age love.

Don’t sell Songs of Earth short, mind you, as an exclusively visual experience. Its sound design and score are every bit as immersive, and that may hold the actual key to best experiencing Olin’s film.

This smart, aesthetically understated concert film from Jonathan Demme will transport Young's legions of baby boomer fans back to the future, as 1969 re-invents itself in 2005 for Young.

Typical of Hong’s work, the laid-back anti-storytelling lets daily life flow slowly by without incident, until a revelatory twist in the last act gives the film its meaning. It will certainly appeal to his festival fan base but neophytes beware: It takes patience to get to hidden truths, and even so they are about as clear as a Zen koan.

Mudbound requires a taste for leisurely storytelling generally more focused on building careful nuances and layered characters than on big dramatic cymbal clashes. But patient investment pays off in an epic that creeps up on you, its stealth approach laced with intelligence, elegance and an affecting balance of humanity and moral indignation.

Whether this is a one-time passion project or the beginnings of an ongoing move from acting into directing in her career focus, Hall has crafted a work that's thoughtful, provocative and emotionally resonant.

What sets Courgette apart is the constant attention to how each incident and experience influences and builds character, which is how these children can slowly ease themselves into their future grown-up selves.

Even when accessing the situation remotely via camera operators and citizen journalists on the ground, Wang deftly balances factoids with first-hand experiences to show the emotional cost, both for people unable to say goodbye to their loved ones and front-line health care workers and funeral home staff, absorbing the trauma of unrelenting losses.

[A] dark yet humanly luminous story.

As with any vérité portrait, there are many things that go unexplained. But the images tell us what we need to know: The unforced choreography between Hatidze and the bees.

From its very first minute, this searing drama of rural strife, xenophobia and cultural hostility is filled with almost unbearable tension.

Exhilarating, opaque, heartbreaking and completely bonkers – French auteur Leos Carax's so-called comeback film, Holy Motors, is a deliciously preposterous piece of filmmaking that appraises life and death and everything in between, reflected in a funhouse mirror.

Graced by its refreshingly frank treatment of gay sexuality, its casually expressive use of nudity, and its eloquent depiction of animal husbandry as a contrasting metaphor for the absence of human tenderness, this is a rigorously naturalistic drama that yields stirring performances from the collision between taciturn demeanors and roiling emotional undercurrents.

Dreamy, poetry-filled and prone to veering off on tangents, the picture teases viewers with such self-assurance it's difficult to believe the twentysomething director is a first-timer.

Like a shooter whose skill allows him to take careful aim with a rifle rather than going for the easy splatter of a buckshot, director Eastwood's big picture is suredly calibrated: He points your eye to the tiniest specs, the most telling and powerful parts of this moral panorama.

Surrealism is one thing, but The Intruder appears so ill defined and random that it ends up looking simply inept.

Riveting, near flawless documentary.

Bale again brilliantly personifies all the deep traumas and misgivings of Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne. A bit of Hamlet is in this Batman.

It's as honest and clear-eyed about the past as its predecessor, another in a filmography of unpredictable gems. It may be most like Dazed in that the public could take a while to appreciate it for what it is.

Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge.

Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi pursues his exploration of guilt, choice and responsibility in a superbly written, directed and acted drama that commands attention every step of the way.

Pillion is less about the shock factor of some very graphic gay kink than the nuances of love, desire and mutual needs within a sub/dom relationship.

It’s witty, stylishly crafted and boasts a stellar ensemble, led by especially toothsome work from Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. It keeps you glued, even if the movie ultimately feels evanescent, a slick diversion you forget soon after the end credits have rolled.

Densely informative yet always grounded in deep personal investment and clear-eyed compassion, this is a powerful indictment of a traumatic social experiment, made all the more startling by the success of the propaganda machine in making people continue to believe it was necessary.

The film's stylistic approach places an unmistakable and compelling veil of empathy around Magdalena, Miguel and the migrant workers just trying to survive amid violence, economic desperation and political strife.

Not intended by any stretch as a proper biography, the film is also not one of Herzog's more mainstream efforts. But admirers of either artist will find it very worthwhile, as will viewers who need the occasional reminder that the world still contains wild places to explore.

If Asteroid City was a too-rich 20-course tasting menu, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a deliciously calibrated amuse-bouche.

With compelling and charismatic performances by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the lovers, and a stunning contribution from Romola Garai as their remorseful nemesis, the film goes directly to "The English Patient" territory and might also expect rapturous audiences and major awards.

Brandishing an ambition it's likely no film, including this one, could entirely fulfill, The Tree of Life is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind's place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amid its narrative imprecisions.

Crafted with unforced humor, ravishing visuals and commanding maturity, Decision to Leave intoxicates with its potent brew of love, emotional manipulation — or is it? —and obsession.

Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s Daughters targets viewers squarely and simultaneously in the head and the heart, succeeding much more effectively at the latter, presumably with the hope that the former will follow.

Immediately joining the first ranks of artists’ memoirs, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is both a vivid capturing of the auteur’s earliest flashes of filmmaking insight and a portrait, full of love yet unclouded by nostalgia, of the family that made him.

Featuring past and recent interviews with many of the key figures and generous doses of archival photographs and vintage performance footage, Fire Music should be on any serious music lover’s must-see list.

One in a Million feels both ultra-specific and universal.

Bong has pulled together a multilayered horror-drama that works more often than not. The film gets back on track after a clumsy middle section that's too long and finishes strong, and Bong fans, horror fans and Asiaphiles are likely to be thoroughly satisfied.

Writer/director Mia Hansen-Love’s first feature, All is Forgiven, a keenly observed study in intimacy that has the rhythm and feel of real life, announces the arrival of an intriguing sensibility. Technically accomplished and finely acted without artifice by a talented ensemble cast, it’s an astutely written, mature work in its content, understated, naturalistic style and sensitive rendering of complex emotion.

In-depth account of Army deployment in an Afghanistan hotspot shows soldiering at its most rugged.

Starless Dreams (Royahaye Dame Sobh), shot in a juvenile correctional facility for girls under the age of 18, is the perfect example of how powerful simplicity can be, when it’s underpinned by compassion for its subject.

In its poetic portrait of a man whose quest to help others has cost him dearly both emotionally and physically, The Departure proves quietly profound.

An astonishing real-life geopolitical thriller with a very run-of-the-mill historical explainer grafted to it like a remora, Madeleine Gavin’s documentary Beyond Utopia is so packed with high-stakes tension and nail-biting set-pieces that it’s fairly easy, and probably even ideal, to ignore its clunky structuring and expositional choices.

The portrait of a nearly vanished rural way of life remains compelling, and the melodrama engaging enough to suggest this might have been improved by being spread thinner as a TV series.

Director Brad Bird (TV's King of the Hill, The Simpsons), adapting the original children's book by the late British poet laureate Ted Hughes, has created a wonderful character in the huge childlike visitor from space.

It’s a demanding sit, a film both rigorous and indulgent, rewarding and aggravating.

There's more to Fred Rogers than any 93-minute documentary can contain, and it was easy for me not to lament what Neville wasn't doing and just to embrace what Rogers was.

In directing the film, Lee allows the show's inherent vitality to carry the doc, relying on Stew's charismatic stage presence, the cast's absorbing performances and the production's effective combination of minimal staging and impressive lighting design to convey the musical's energetic celebration of artistic discovery.

A realistic slice of pioneer life that offers a disquieting alternative vision of America's most mythic location.

The Long Day Closes is impressive in many ways. It may be a strange filmgoing experience, but its haunting imagery and sounds make it powerfully memorable. [24 May 1993]

As Oscar, Jordan at moments gives off vibes of a very young Denzel Washington in the way he combines gentleness and toughness; he effortlessly draws the viewer in toward him.

I’m Still Here is a gripping, profoundly touching film with a deep well of pathos. It’s one of Salles’ best.

For all its playfulness, there’s an intellectual heft to A Useful Ghost that exerts its own gravity.

A film whose lightness of touch rides a wave of family conflict to perfectly balance smiles and tears.