Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quotidian foibles, in a film that explores our mysterious relationship with both the green world and one another.

The Currents never comes off as derivative. The elegance and, especially, empathy with which Mumenthaler captures the gaping chasm between how we present and who we are give the film a voluptuous pull all its own.

What makes Obsession so fun, and so disturbing, is how it takes typical aspects of dysfunctional romantic relationships to initially comic and then horrific extremes.

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.

Sam Raimi’s darkly comic horror-thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien boasts an audacious concept that is superbly realized by Raimi’s filmmaking, which milks every bizarre situation for all it’s worth.

What’s quite novel about this work, as opposed to any number of well-made docs about (mostly male) war photographers, is that it directly addresses how Addario’s job impacts her as a mother.

There’s a lyrics-and-melody power to the interplay of sharp observations and visuals that dive deep into archival material — a fitting dynamic for a film about someone with a preternatural gift for infectious tunes. And there’s a playful, irreverent bounce to the film that’s in sync with the Liverpudlian music hall tradition that McCartney, more than any of the Beatles, has held close.

Blue Film provokes and captivates in equal measure, with the naked honesty of a black box off-off-Broadway play. It’s a two-hander chamber piece that doesn’t pull any punches in its dialogue or presentation.

Director Sang-il Lee’s feature is propelled by operatic intensity and visual poetry. It unfolds over three mostly riveting hours, with only occasional jagged lapses in narrative momentum.

An absolute charmer, The Tale of Silyan is an affecting look at the human-avian bond, with all its mysteries, warmth and ungainly practicalities.

With superb performances across the board, particularly from her two young leads, and an adventurous use of visual and aural elements, Djukić has conjured an alluring fusion of spiritual awakening and adolescent confusion.

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.

What makes Segan’s movie so intoxicating, however, is not just the depth of its inside-and-out central character study but the granular textures of the world Harry inhabits and the incisively drawn secondary characters played by a deep bench of very fine and impeccably cast actors.

The title role in the austerely beautiful character study Rose is such a thrilling fit for Sandra Hüller — her flinty manner, her fierce conviction, her steely charisma and her incredible economy of means — that it becomes impossible to imagine any other actor nailing the part.

Decidedly dark, though not necessarily bleak, Bertelli’s hybrid docu-fiction is an unflinching look at the trials and travails of contemporary sports. It’s also a visually seductive meditation on the many ways in which science — whether biological or technological — now plays a pivotal role in any serious athletic endeavor.

It’s a great feeling to know from a movie’s first frames that you’re in the hands of an assured genre auteur. The rare action thriller that takes place almost entirely in broad daylight, Hope pulls you in immediately with its virtuoso camerwork, pulse-pounding score, adrenalized pacing and sharply drawn characters.

The director declines to get too specific about his allegorical intent, which could be sexual trauma or gender identity or just a mysterious body-snatcher nightmare. Either way, this is a spellbinding psychological puzzler led by a typically fearless performance from Léa Seydoux.

This rigorously well-made, grippy-as-a-live-squid, toska-steeped work is Zvyagintsev’s most openly critical commentary on the motherland’s current political, spiritual and moral malaise, a denunciation never said in so many words but expressed with intricate layers of irony.

The film feels fresh and off-the-cuff, as if someone traveled back to 1940 with an iPhone and hit record, chronicling the dark years of far-right obedience and moral decadence.

All of a Sudden is an odd but audacious film in the way it favors the thematic over the dramatic. Those not attuned to Hamaguchi’s wavelength may find it overstretched and desiccated. But if you can get on board with its leisurely pace, there’s transcendant beauty in its view that all lives are of value, no matter how diminished.

There’s a radical bent to the Esiris’ interpretations of and deviations from Mrs. Dalloway.

An intense Mel Gibson performance anchors this brutally effective crime thriller.

Pitched cannily at World Beat fans as well as martial-arts zealots, this Luc Besson production aims to please and nails its targets with more speed and style than most of its higher-priced competition.

Sensitive and stylish.

The film belongs to Jarvis, however, and she makes the most of it with expressive features that convey Mia's mixed-up emotions from raging temper to sweet vulnerability. She will go far.

As Precious, Sidibe is superb, allowing us to see the inner warmth and beauty of a young woman who, to her world's cruel eyes, might seem monstrous.

The always surprising Coen brothers have finally made a very serious movie with A Serious Man. It's about God, man's place in the world and the meaning of life, so naturally it's one of their funnier movies.

Arriving amidst a tidal wave of overblown and frequently charmless big studio efforts, Sita Sings the Blues is a welcome reminder that when it comes to animation bigger isn't necessarily better.