The Family Fang goes deep into dysfunction, but even more impressively, it smuggles in the daredevilish art theories of the late Chris Burden and his ilk.

As a piece of watch-through-your-fingers outdoors filmmaking, The Alpinist stands right up alongside the Oscar-winning Free Solo.

Lockout is the kind of manly nonsense no one wants to make anymore.

It’s obvious that Welcome to Me is about an unusual person, but Shira Piven’s dark comedy makes it perfectly clear that the “me” of the title is no mere eccentric. On the contrary, this tragicomic oddity is that rarest of birds: a genuinely funny movie about mental illness.

What makes the film is essentially the character of Coffy as played by Pam Grier with increasing alienation: a nurse out to get the men who are responsible for her little sister's addiction, she makes a conscious decision to manipulate the sexual situations which the men around her force her to engage in. It is a performance that defies and subverts the genre.

It’s a bleak, brooding tale, steeped in folk mythology and infused with so much atmosphere you may feel the fog closing in around you in the cinema.

A subtle, touching valedictory tribute to both Wayne and the Western in general.

Peter Parker’s second Spider-verse adventure suggests that the concept just works – brilliantly.

Brawl then becomes a nightmare in scenes of skull-splattering violence that are truly sickening (and wonderful). Don’t look for a deeper meaning. Just soak up the grindhouse.

Shirkers is at its most gripping when it doesn’t overestimate Cardona’s narrative worth—the multifaceted women at the documentary’s heart are far more appealing.

Emily Blunt is hypnotically charming in the year's sweetest surprise—a big-hearted contact high.

It might manifest as a straightforward historical documentary, but the fascinating, hypnotic Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat unfolds into something much deeper – and more sinister.

With its slow-burn pacing and horrifying reveals, Aftermath remains a deeply compelling puzzle.

A worthwhile portrait of a genius who made beautiful music, and a case study for how to tragically, epically self-destruct.

Moore makes it all play like the classic club remix it is.

Directed with real élan by Edward Berger – going two-for-two on literary adaptions after his take on All Quiet on the Western Front – Conclave is a film for the ’they don’t make ’em like they used to’ brigade.

Part musical, part political treatise, and with more than a wink to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Noé is at his most decadent and devilish.

The editing is sharp and director Jon M Chu, who captured Singapore as a celebratory melting pot in Crazy Rich Asians, repeats the trick for New York, packing a tonne of warmth and summery vibes into every shot.

Worthy is a marvel, transitioning from pasty wallflower to a glowering, unencumbered threat.

A first-rate piece of forensic filmmaking.

Explicitly quoting Chaplin-style routines, Lewis bends the sentimentality into shape to produce a witty and magical essay on comedy, illusionism and fear.

The tone this time out is primarily comic.

Charmingly, like a throwback to the pre-Twitter age, here's a horror film that's been made with no reasonable way to discuss it beforehand.

Two-and-a-half hours long, Pacifiction is a film of extremely long and naturalistic takes in which tiny details become hypnotic – whether it’s the refreshing drinks served at a meeting or the way a woman dances.

To make a Western now is in itself a subversive act. Improving, embellishing and reclaiming an old-fashioned oater from the vintage studio-cheese bin with such humor and vigor seems truly, truly ballsy.

Combining state-of-the-art stylishness with comedy and suspense, Wang turns an otherwise straightforward conspiracy thriller into a pacy, racy fable with distinctly oddball dimensions.

If the story construction is intricate, the tennis is ferocious.

The animation is beautifully old-fashioned.

It’s almost impossible to describe the narrative specifics of The Past without making the movie seem ridiculously hammy. Indeed, several twists involving Samir, a dry cleaner with plenty of his own troubles, tip a bit into hoary melodramatics.

Embracing every level of French society, from the aristocratic hosts to a poacher turned servant, the film presents a hilarious yet melancholic picture of a nation riven by petty class distinctions.

As eye-opening as it is disturbing, with little in the way of commentary, it’s a patchwork of raw, brutal images that weave a chilling narrative of youthful naivety and adventure being warped into death and destruction.

Allen's neurosis is not to everyone's taste, but this movie - based on his own stage play about a film critic with seduction problems who takes Bogart as a role model - shows him at his best, exploring the gap between movie escapism and reality.

It’s an unfailingly beautiful movie that finally stakes out a territory of its own, with quietly intense performances and a sure hand on the tiller (although the trio of bounty hunters who set out after Affleck feel like invaders from another movie, one more defined by genre than mood).

There’s a sense that all the thematic messiness is intentional, a way for Jia to diagnose the ills of a country whose economic and social fabric is wilting under the effects of rapid modernization.

In the film’s second half, the two characters have roughly swapped social positions — Mindy is about to get married — but their sexual attraction (never fully expressed) remains a palpable thing. Try this one.

Egilsdóttir centres it all wonderfully as the lugubrious Inga, bemused to find herself slowly transforming into a champion of the underdog.

Mike Eley’s gorgeously saturated cinematography helps elevate the boys’ struggle into the realm of the heroic, but it’s the two young stars — one a whirlwind and the other a quiet protector — who make this only-slightly tall tale into something towering.

Artist-turned-filmmaker Richard Billingham soaks his terrific debut in bleak authenticity and some gorgeous cinematography.

Arguably the finest of Hitchcock's silent films, this tale of a fairground boxer (Brisson) whose wife takes a shine to the far more socially sophisticated new champion (Hunter), sees the young director completely confident in his control of the medium.

Part meticulous character study, part hyperrealist drama, Trapero’s film is as interested in documenting how such an institution functions on a day-to-day basis as he is in presenting the joys and pains of female cohabitation in such a confined space.

Finding reciprocity—in the eyes of the law, your partner, your colleagues—is the essence of this documentary, one that comes at a moment that desperately lacks it.

Cry foul, you documentary purists, but narration by Jena Malone and others pulls the gamble off. The film makes its point ingeniously.

Add to the list of actors who, beautifully and boldly, go it alone in their own survival movies the name Blake Lively. Do it without laughing, because she’s the shark here: Even though The Shallows, a tremendously entertaining bit of fluff, pits her against a computer-generated great white, the poor creature never stands a chance.

What makes Splitsville stand out? Simply put, it’s goddamn hilarious.

Mickey 17 may lack some of the political bite of his previous work – though there are Trumpian elements in Marshall – but it’s unquestionably tremendous fun: a big, strange spectacle that’s unlike most blockbuster cinema out there.

Maggie Gyllenhaal excels in a thorny indie about boundary-crossing obsession and thwarted ambition.

The movie's success lies in Huston's very sure manipulation of mood and tone, somehow connecting black comedy, tongue-in-cheek acting, heavy irony, and even high camp into a coherent story.

Make room for the modest but affecting pleasures of veteran actors tearing into the subject of golden-years resignation.

Though its title may promise a clinical procedural, Anatomy of a Murder cloaks itself in smartly tailored ambiguity and irresolution, and never altogether strips off.

The director illuminates how the town's racial and economic dynamics have changed, while simultaneously reflecting on the ethics of nonfiction filmmaking. It's a powerful testament to how far we both have and haven't come.

Like :Carnage,: it’s a bit of a minor lark until a deliciously grotesque finale pushes it into the realm of such kinkily profound Polanski films as: Cul-de-sac: (1966) and "The Tenant" (1976). By that point, you can’t help but submit to the perversity.

This is Sweeney’s film. Christy is a career-best turn, sure to draw favourable comparisons with Hilary Swank (who, funnily enough, gets a namecheck in one scene, as Million Dollar Baby was released during the movie’s timespan). She may not be a problematic dude, but she’s certainly Michôd’s most impressive lead performer yet.

It’s a human-size tragedy, one that shows how deadening it can be to remain subject to those who give us life.

The movie's poetic-realist design meshes detailed, patient observation and delectable, poignant travelling shots; it grounds us in the quotidian duties of service and dissects contemporary Vietnamese social hierarchies, yet adds up to something much more subtle and enticing: a lyrical portrait of the human spirit in work and in love. Exquisitely controlled.

As you watch these actors, you appreciate the endeavor the climbers went through all the more — and as triumph turns to tragedy, you feel the grief winding its way through your shaken nervous systems.

Exciting and tautly directed – the lengthy robbery scenes are exemplary – it’s moody to the dying frame, emphasised by Harold Rosson’s lighting of trash-filled back-alleys and half-lit clip joints and Miklós Rozsa’s haunting theme music.

The main reason to commit to this movie’s tough story of orphan loneliness is the screenplay by Céline Sciamma, herself a major French talent devoted to tales of youthful resilience. (Her 2014 film "Girlhood" is breathtaking.)

Denis O’Hare delivers a heart-stopping performance as Hunter’s unlikely father figure, but this is Bennett’s show. She is luminous and her journey from beautiful, broken housewife to clear-headed woman, grabbing handfuls of soil from a parking lot to snack on later, is thrilling. It’s a role you can imagine a young Isabelle Huppert playing, and there’s no higher praise than that.

Another gem (given his consistency in style and subject, how could it not be? ); the atypically emphatic music alone disappoints. [06 Aug 2003, p.74]

The film lacks background and cultural context, a surprising choice considering the rich history of the art form. But the interviewees are so compelling that their stories stand on their own.

It's a strikingly controlled, confident, bitingly effective display, which leaves you wondering where this film has been all our lives.

The first half of Right Now, Wrong Then fits the usual mold, but the real joke begins when the movie abruptly starts over and our hero — seemingly aware of his Groundhog Day do-over — makes subtly different (and smarter) choices the second time around in a rich and playful revision.

Inception, though, is no "Avatar"--instead, it’s the movie that many wanted "Avatar" to be. In a roaringly fast first hour, we’re introduced to a new technology that allows for the bodily invasion of another person’s dreamworld.

The Marx Brothers' second film and one of their best, satirising the rich at play as they infiltrate a society party and beome involved with a stolen painting.

The new drama, best viewed as a church movie, is a return to the kind of corner-chat indie cinema Lee revolutionized, with an emphasis on a towering performance by The Wire's Clarke Peters as a local bishop inflamed with the Word.

This analogue noir set in central China evokes satisfying memories of Bong Joon-ho’s great Korean crime thriller Memories of Murder.

Thanks to some judicious plot tweaks and a full-bodied commitment to action, director Martin Bourboulon (Eiffel) has succeeded in making the best Alexandre Dumas adaptation in decades.

Bad Milo! is sick—but it’s the right kind of sick.

It could have a lot of sentimental mush, but with Jackson and Caine on this form, it’s a total heartbreaker.

M3GAN 2.0 continues to offer up a goofy brand of cautionary tale, too: against AI, tech dependence, and Silicon Valley types who want to stick a chip in their brains. You can take that seriously as you want to, just don’t be surprised to find yourself watching it again on your cellphone one day.

Borden charts the explosive coming together of the women as they forge their own liberation, handling her story with audacity and making even the driest argument crackle with humour, while the more poignant moments burn with a fierce white heat.

Far more than a sterile exercise in suspense: Communion constantly keeps the audience on its toes with a wealth of incidental detail, excellent set pieces and technical versatility.

Not a comfortable film, but humane and savagely beautiful.

The jokes and details are delightful, yet there's real anger behind them, and it bursts spectacularly into view in the concluding frames.

Never patronising his characters, Ang Lee combines comedy, both subtle and raucous, with acute social asides.

Every so often, you get the gift of watching an under-the-radar actor bloom into a critical-mass phenomenon before your bloodshot eyes: Franka Potente in "Run Lola Run," or Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds." Add Noomi Rapace to the list; what she does with the title character of this Swedish thriller-cum-pop-lit-adaptation will spawn cults of swooning Rapacephiles stat.

The various strands of plot are interwoven with phenomenal mastery, and Yang's images are as effortlessly precise as ever. It's his sharpest funny/sad vision of city life yet.

Though not as sharp or as unusual as Ritchie's earlier Smile, this is still a delightful, gentle satire on the American ideal of winning, which also takes broad but often hilarious swipes at fashionable health fads.

William Hechter and Peter Miller’s documentary explores an artistic life well lived, combining interviews (Leiber & Stoller, Jimmy Scott, Ben E. King) and footage of the man at work beside kindred spirits like Dr. John, to construct a moving, un-mawkish portrait of a songwriting icon.

Diwan was BAFTA nominated for the film, and it was richly deserved, while Vartolomei makes a luminous heroine full of gritty determination. Their collaboration makes for an atmospheric, gripping drama with a poignant contemporary relevance.

Pattinson is great in what is surely his best post-Twilight performance to date.

It’s a portrait that’s equal parts shtick and soul — in other words, exactly what "The Love Guru" should have been.

It is wittier, warmer and more unpredictable than it has any right to be.

A mostly CG-free, witty, grown-up drama that revels in strong, propulsive storytelling? Sometimes they do make ’em like they used to.

It's cheerfully nonsensical, of course, shot in a sun-drenched luxury compound straight from the big book of action movie clichés, yet lacking the flourishes of a John Woo or a Michael Bay.

Visually ripe and located just around the corner from melodrama, A Cure for Wellness is a cousin to Guillermo del Toro’s recent "Crimson Peak," another thriller nostalgic for the deep-pocketed lushness of ’30s-era horror-branded studios like Universal, the makers of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein."

If there’s one thing Rocketman does have in common with Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s a commanding central performance.

This level of mastery is timeless, and although the movie is overly deliberate at times, when it takes off, it really flies.

Combining footage of embattled town meetings and raucous boardwalk scenes with evenhanded interviews and visualized statistics, Zipper is a compelling argument for a populist Coney Island whose days are, alas, numbered.

If, like Alan Partridge, you believe that Wings were ‘the band The Beatles could have been’, Morgan Neville’s propulsively upbeat music doc is a total treat.

A rare delight that’s laced with melancholy and a suffocating sense of menace from its first scene straight through its shocking finale, Man From Reno is made special by the collisions between its characters.

Very probably the most clear-sighted movie ever made about the ways that shopfloor workers get f.cked over by the system.

The quintessential New York movie – with exquisite design by Alexandre Trauner and shimmering black-and-white photography – it presented something of a breakthrough in its portrayal of the war of the sexes, with a sour and cynical view of the self-deception, loneliness and cruelty involved in ‘romantic’ liaisons.

The man himself has rarely been profiled without noticeable reluctance, though documentarians Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein delve fairly deep by allowing their subject to guide them where he may.

Skilfully blending fairy-tale clarity with the skewed logic of nightmares, Craven also blurs the boundary between reality and fiction. There is creepy subversive stuff going on here, not to mention sly sideswipes at the censors.

After Carpenter and De Palma, it may seem a little dated; yet Edwards' classical feel for pure cinema remains unalloyed.

It’s a tale of lonely souls and literalized online dating, and you assume filmmaker Spike Jonze will characteristically mix high-concept absurdism with heartfelt notions. Unexpectedly, the latter dominates, thanks in no small part to Phoenix’s nuanced, open-book performance.

The tone couldn't be further from the self-congratulation of an exercise like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.