It's rare for a movie to be at once so biting and so moving. If Ryan's future seems bleak, there's something exhilarating about a movie made with such clear-eyed intelligence.

The film is superbly crafted, covering huge amounts of time, people and the zeitgeist without a moment of lapsed energy or inattention to detail.

It provides a powerful depiction of the blame-the-victim culture that has so long dominated the national discussion about rape and which only now thankfully seems to be receding. Although there's clearly a long, long way to go.

The edges are perhaps rougher and the narrative more structured, but the film carries echoes of the work of Asian contemplative cinema maestros Tsai Ming-liang and Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, both of whom Yogi cites as influences.

A deluxe multi-character drama that blends real history with semi-fictionalized spy thriller and soap opera elements, Burning Bush feels in places like an extended Czech remake of the Cold War-themed German Oscar-winner The Lives of Others.

Newton’s storytelling is skittish and a bit too on the nose at times, but his palpable generosity toward his cast is rewarded with committed, passionate turns from the ensemble. However, Nicholson, a performer all-too seldom given a chance to lead, is the big door prize here, offering an intricately layered performance that lifts the whole film up a notch.

Bruce Lee's last movie is the only one that gives him the star treatment he deserved. His charismatic presence is remarkable in Enter the Dragon, and it's a shame he didn't have the chance to become the great, unique star he seemed destined to be.

Because Cutie and Boxer resists easy sentimentality, its view of life and love is all the more powerful.

U2 3D takes the well-traveled concert film to exhilarating new heights.

To some extent, One Night in Miami remains high-quality filmed theater. But the conviction and stirring feeling brought to it elevate the material, making this an auspicious feature debut. Here's hoping that King, one of our most consistently excellent screen actors, continues to spread her wings in this direction.

It uses historical artifacts to excellent, devastating effect.

Aptly enough, it's a work that enlightens and informs but that is also ravishing to behold.

Perhaps the most ambitious film to date by Japanese animator Mamoru Hosoda.

Kill Bill-Vol. 2 puts to shame doubts entertained about aesthetic strategies or structural imbalance provoked by "Kill Bill-Vol. 1." Now that the entirety of Quentin Tarantino's epic revenge melodrama is on view, "Kill Bill" emerges as a brilliant, invigorating work, one to muse over for years to come.

It's difficult to think of another recent film so seamlessly rendered or that envelops an audience so completely in its period authenticity.

Looked at independently, so many scenes contain something raw or truthful that one understands Jenkins' reluctance to trim.

Moonage Daydream is short on insight, and ends up feeling more enervating than enlightening.

Lee and his writers have thrown as many logs on the fire as they’ve been able to find to signal the persistence of racial injustice; they have also endeavored, and mostly succeeded, to entertain.

Vengeance Most Fowl is a brisk and well-paced escapade, in which Gromit proves himself to still be one of our best screen actors and Wallace’s absentminded behavior still endears.

The movie contains no non-diegetic music and even limits major camera movement to a relatively small handful of scenes. Nothing distracts from the tender wisdom of its unimpeachably unsentimental gaze and the vividness of its very specific New England milieu.

This is an exciting new direction for Runarsson, who proves that making a film about Iceland today doesn’t necessarily require a three-act narrative structure and characters with carefully calibrated needs and desires and neatly constructed backstories.

The deadpan edge of much of the film’s 90 minutes of prattle conceals thoughts on the insularity of creative communities, the ticking clock of an artist’s life and the importance of remaining open to finding truth even in what appear to be random connections.

Smart, visually appealing, and consistently engaging.

More pictorially arresting than intellectually coherent.

Red Army is a slick, witty, fast-moving blend of sports story and history lesson.

A moving and complex homage to Barrett, Bogawa’s film also turned out to be his “goodbye to Storm,” who was ill with cancer during its making.

It's a dramatic tale loaded with all manner of dynamics, political and personal, and Spielberg charges out of the gate at a brisk clip, extends his hand and all but enjoins the viewer to grab hold and be swept along for the ride.

What Kovgan's utterly transporting film does, through a thoughtful and dynamic combination of curated material and new performances, is radiate the rapturous power of dance.

Ingrid’s complex and flawed psyche finally does come into view in the home stretch but it feels like Vogt’s kept his narrative cards too close to his chest for too long. It’s a shame, especially because Petersen (Troubled Water) is terrific in a very tricky role.

It's a sympathetic portrait of a complex man driven by an anger that still bubbles beneath the surface.

Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian mafia in London.

Jewish and academically inclined audiences worldwide will respond to numerous aspects of this unusual drama, although it is paradoxically both too broad and too esoteric for the general art house public.

An ultra-naturalistic slice of rocky adolescent life that combines violence and sensuality, wrenching loss and tender discovery.

Dawn Porter crafts a striking profile of a singular musician.

This is in many ways a white-knuckle brand extension for Honnold above all else. Still, the film frequently treads into knotty territory.

Kimberly's ground-zero home video of the storm is what really makes the film exceptional, although much of it is of such rough quality and execution that it struggles to hold up on the big screen.

[A] striking and auspicious feature debut ... Saint Maud seeds the clouds with an eclectic mix of influences, but it works, creating a film with its own strange weather.

The two movies don’t always crystallize into one, and if you’re looking for a credible crime thriller in which everyone behaves logically, Misericordia may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an exploration of repressed sexual desire and religious hypocrisy in backwoods France, Guiraudie’s strange and sober new film does the trick.

The documentary ignites a longing to see the movies, whether for the first time or the umpteenth.

The story's quiet power comes from its sensitive observation of the characters as normal, emancipated young modern women, with healthy desires and curiosities, whose supposed transgressions are imagined and then magnified in the judgmental minds of others.

The film devastatingly makes clear the extent of Russia's propaganda meddling, which has particular resonance in light of its recent attempts to also interfere with elections and public perceptions in America and Europe.

Pointlessness, isolation and the guarantee that no one will ever understand your plight may not sound like the makings of a laugh-filled heartwarmer, but in the hands of Barbakow and screenwriter Andy Siara, it is.

Directed with razor-sharp, naturalistic precision and set over one sweltering Corsican summer, amid stunning Mediterranean vistas that provide a backdrop to all the bloody vendettas, The Kingdom marks the arrival of a bold new talent who’s able to spin a gripping crime thriller while channeling real emotion on screen.

Mond's skill at working with actors is equal to his fully developed visual style and assured modulation of atmosphere and tone. This may be a small movie, but it's an impressively rigorous one without an ounce of flab.

Creepy, suspenseful and sustained, this skillfully made lo-fi horror movie plays knowingly with genre tropes and yet never winks at the audience, giving it a refreshing face-value earnestness that makes it all the more gripping.

Rare is the reflection on Black cinema that even tries to address all these critical points. Still, it makes digestion, especially on the first watch, overwhelming. Is That Black Enough for You?!? is layered and informative but, like a scholarly thesis, requires a bit of work to unpack. It’s a challenge worth accepting.

The filmmakers never underline the emotions they want to evoke, and yet by the end, audiences may be moved to tears by this tale of fractured lives that find just the right measure of repair.

In massage parlor reception areas and backrooms, working-class restaurants and karaoke bars, Tsang and her strong cast, with superb contributions from production designer Evaline Wu Huang, have captured something evanescent and life-giving, and grounded it in kitchen clatter and workplace chatter, the gritty day-to-day.

As much as Don't Think Twice focuses on professional envy, though, it remains a love letter to this weirdo art form called improv.

The movie is a small marvel of impeccable craftsmanship.

Teaming with Depp, his long-time alter ego, Burton makes Sweeney a smoldering dark pit of fury and hate that consumes itself. With his sturdy acting and surprisingly good voice, Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages.

While it feels a fraction overlong, Gibney’s film is a vibrant testament to the intellectual life of its subject.

Sweet Dreams delivers a rare uplifting story from a country that has seen more than its share of brutality and heartache.

A realistic and very humanistic look at one immigrant’s grueling daily life in Paris, where he struggles to make a living and obtain legal status.

The feature is a visual poem, an enveloping four-stanza ode to experiences shared by a man and his daughters.

While this near two-hour feature debut does betray occasional signs of inexperience, on the whole it's a work of striking confidence.

No less impressive than the narrative mastery here, however, is the technical execution of this bold minimalist experiment.

What makes 20,000 Days on Earth distinctive is that it provides an overview of the man and his art while creating the illusion that this has come together organically -- out of poetic ruminations, casual encounters, ghost-like visitations and good old Freudian psychoanalysis.

The Woman Who Left is an immensely immersive and engaging tale about a wronged individual's grueling struggle between reconciliation and revenge.

Neptune Frost is an intimidating film, both in scope and pure cinematic power.

At once a vivid portrait of a place and its people, an unsentimental ode to the art and craft of tequila-making, a damning depiction of the results of globalizing economic policies, and an exquisite character study, with Teresa Sánchez delivering a performance of potent restraint.

Sylvester Stallone doesn't get back in the ring in Creed, but he still comes away as a big winner in this far-fetched but likeable offshoot of the geriatric Rocky series.

Uses dark humor, incisive characterizations and social commentary to infuse its familiar detective tale with a distinctive flair.

Turns Jane Austen's nimble satire into a lumbering gothic romance.

A work of old-school humanism that hovers between pro-Revolutionary fervor and a more objective documentary stance, Cuba and the Cameraman is sustained by the strong bonds of trust which the gregarious Alpert has evidently been able to maintain with Cubans from various echelons of this theoretically classless society.

It’s not a love letter to a Michigan town, but it’s a love letter to overcoming adversity with the help of family, of business, of identity.

There is no denying that, initially, Transit’s story might feel excessively oblique. But as the film slowly puts its formalistic and thematic cards on the table, it becomes clear that its storytelling technique is really just a reflection of its core themes.

Although at first sight this dramatization of a 1962 strike at a factory in the U.S.S.R. may seem a long way from the interests of contemporary audiences, it is surprising how much resonance the film has with the political struggles of our own time.

A low-fi but beguiling mixture of intellectual discourse and emotional rollercoaster from Spanish maestro José Luis Guerin.

The documentary goes out of its way to consider the situation from all angles, and what might look from the outside like a simple story spills over with complicated emotions once it’s been cracked open.

The Love Witch is an expertly executed homage that works brilliantly on its own original terms.

What a concert it is — and what an experience it makes, even in the relatively modest confines of a movie theater.

Poetic in its simplicity yet crafted with as meticulous attention to detail as Hujar’s reflections on his day, this is a singular meditation on the life of an influential artist for whom major recognition came only after his death. It has the feel of a rare find plucked from a dusty archive.

The Killing of Two Lovers is a transfixing drama without a wasted word or a single inessential scene.

This captivating hybrid of a movie mixes fairy-tale and storytelling elements with a vividly drawn backdrop of heightened realism — no one would mistake this prison for a luxury resort — and relies on images and sounds as much as the human voice to tell its multiple stories.

Muylaert does a deft job here of plotting her story and setting up her characters and their predicaments in ways that immediately invite reflection.

The genial, relentlessly curious Sharif proves an excellent guide as the security situation spirals from instability into nightmare and the so-called Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh) advances inexorably advances towards Jalawla.

The documentary's talking heads include Rubin's aunt and cousin as well as artists, friends and critics — notably Amy Taubin, whose personal recollections are particularly incisive. Even with this mix of voices, Smith doesn't try to fill in the many gaps in Rubin's story but to honor them, along with her creative and spiritual impulses.

Shot in grainy 16mm to better capture the mood of the epoch, Broken Voices keeps its drama grounded in the social and cultural realities of its time. Provaznik coaxes strong performances from the young cast, whether in their chorus rehearsals or behind the scenes.

Three Times offers a careful examination of the changing ways people have reacted to each other during the past 100 years. As such, it's an interesting essay but certainly a minor work from a master.

Wim Wenders’ latest documentary Anselm offers a mesmerizing, cinematic catalogue of German painter-sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s deeply tactile, maximalist oeuvre.

Given the chemistry between the two leads that could restart a dormant nuclear power plant, viewers are likely to come away sated with pleasure after seeing this delightful work.

O’Sullivan and Thompson’s touch isn’t subtle, but it’s generous and, at times, gently inventive; they don’t sidestep clichés so much as configure and reconfigure them in satisfying, sometimes stirring fashion.

The modulation in the final stretch from extreme sorrow to regeneration and then a possibility of reconnection in the open ending is lovely.

The main drawback to this noble effort, just nominated for the foreign-language Oscar, is that the two-hour film is unrelievedly grim and tense.

The first feature-length doc by Suzannah Herbert, it is smartly focused, offering nothing to distract from the stories it is able to fit within its running time.

While the pleasures of the brief (65 minutes) Viola are modest, it displays an imagination and stylishness that marks the young filmmaker as someone to watch.

D’Ambrose’s drama is attuned to how much sensitive kids keep inside, watching and holding their breath while the adults convince themselves they’re not making a mess of things.

All of the key creative personnel contribute to the movie's nail-biting tension and unexpectedly moving finale. Jon Harris's editing is matchless, and Rahman's score effectively heightens the emotion. Ultimately, however, it is the talents of Boyle and Franco that sock this movie home.

Especially in light of a short parable Cam tells early on about work and retirement, it's pretty obvious that Abbie's voluntary imprisonment is meant to reflect an American underclass that can't imagine any kind of life beyond our late-capitalist constraints.

Twilight is a procedural with little procedure and, by design, no satisfying answers. The mood it builds is soul-shaking.

Spicing up the entire package is a screenplay by Canet and Philippe Lefebvre that bristles with wit and energy.

All elements of this arresting documentary work together to push an urgent thesis: What we are attuned to hearing, to seeing and to thinking about the U.S. and what the country can and cannot afford to do is by design. It’s better to realize that now before it’s too late.

Mars One revels in the lives of its characters, taking a leisurely and scenic route to understanding their dreams and realities.

As intensely personal and deeply felt as it is, however, Davies' attempt to breathe new life into Rattigan's 1952 play is a rather bloodless, suffocating thing, lent tragic passion more by its use of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto than by anything achieved by his star Rachel Weisz and her leading man.

Essentially, this is a film about existential emptiness, and yet it’s beautiful and alive, as filled with humor as it is with melancholy.

Not only a great cautionary tale, it's a civics lesson that should be seen by every concerned citizen.

More uneven but ultimately more effective than filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi’s previous anti-war film.