The movie isn’t quite suitable for the extremely young, but its apocalyptic tint may be catnip for smart preteens. They’ll breathe in the chilly air of a mysterious forest--the way forests should be.

Mostly, you see a prolific artist going out playing—an unsentimental, salt-of-the-earth tribute that keeps the beat in a way that would make this extraordinary journeyman beam.

Leavened by an attractive soundtrack that includes the Carter Family’s well-placed “Single Girl, Married Girl” (and the Paul Simon song that gives the film its title), Obvious Child has a loud agenda that will be off-putting to some. Still, it’s a welcome counterpoint to the likes of "Knocked Up" and even "Juno," where the abortion route is an apparent no-go.

If there's a misstep here, it would be in the character of camp medic Maj. Clipton (James Donald). His overwrought dialogue---especially some Heston-like cries of "Madness!" during the finale---is too much of an on-the-nose contrast to the story's necessarily clinical existentialism. It slightly dilutes the film's piercing grandeur, but the nit is easily enough picked.

Ozu's first film in colour, and he uses it sparingly. Subdued dress sense and domestic interiors are set against splashes of significant red (look out for the kettle!), representing the amaryllis which blooms around the autumn equinox - the perfect image for a film about transition.

The dialogue and script are fatuously Americanised from Scott's original, but these chivalric Hollywood sagas still have a strange poetic quality about them, perhaps partly because of the way they unscrupulously and inaccurately ransacked literature and history for ideas and images.

Where he ends up going—a place of real anxiety and envy—speaks to the filmmaker’s nervy ambitions. If this is Baumbach’s commercial breakthrough, he will have made it several steps up that staircase with nothing lost.

Eva Green’s full range of skills have rarely been so thoroughly showcased.

Stark social drama meets boy’s own adventure in this strikingly photographed African-set, Oscar-nominated adventure.

It’s mostly Wayne all the way. He towers over everything in the film – actors, script [from Charles Portis’ novel], even the magnificent Colorado mountains. He rides tall in the saddle in this character role of ‘the fat old man.’

Bellocchio counters these flaws with an energetically combative aesthetic (he makes you feel like you’re riding out a sociopolitical tempest, careening between perspectives) and an overarching humanism that gives equal weight to the many feelings stirred up by this hot-button situation.

Santosh positions its protagonist as a fundamentally decent woman in an impossible situation, rather than a crusading cop on mission. If ‘Training Day with more grey areas’ sounds dull, it’s anything but.

While Meg Wolitzer’s source novel is written in Joan’s voice, The Wife resists narration and allows Joan to internalize her feelings, ranging from affection, concern and duty to bitterness and rage. It’s a smart move.

Imagine if Frederick Wiseman and David Lynch had a bastard child, and you'll get a sense of the movie's off-kilter aesthetic, a potent and pointed mix of firsthand observation and surreal flights of fancy.

The overall effect is one of wonderment, eccentricity and heartache that will connect deeply with anyone who recently spent an extended period stuck in close proximity with other human beings.

As this tight-knit clan frays in the face of this vilification, they listen to one another less and less. And in that sense, it’s very much a story for our times.

As presented here (cut down from a longer edit), the film might have benefitted from more technical context related to the plant’s failure — this is a cautionary tale worth heeding. But the voices are valuable enough.

Thoroughly enchanting comedy.

Arguably Sirk's bleakest film - perhaps because it was shot in greyish monochrome rather than luridly stylised colour - and one of his finest, this adaptation of Faulkner's Pylon reassembles the three principles from Written on the Wind for a probing but sympathetic study in failure and despair.

It’s a movie about coming to peace with solitude, leagues beyond most biopics.

Anyone who saw The Killer will have a fair idea what to expect, from the intense male bonding to the hyper-kinetic editing style. What's new here is a rich vein of anarchic humour (will they evacuate the maternity ward before the hospital blows up?) and a bluesy back-beat of philosophical musings on a cop's sad lot.

Like a kind of cinematic Lego set, Ben Hania takes the building blocks of filmmaking and constructs from them something cathartic, affecting and original.

Making excellent use of Nolte's controlled toughness and Short's hysterical freneticism, Weber plays the comic action hard and fast, grounding the humour in believable reality that has spiralled out of control.

It's Gruber's own remembrances (and a wealth of accompanying archival photos and film footage) that best mark her life as a case study in pioneering feminist courage, ambition and individualism.

The logic wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, but García Bogliano’s unnerving mood, complemented by grungy camerawork and a shroud of sonic chaos, provides an emotional strain that makes anything possible.

The Secret Agent is vicious and vivid in its sense of place and danger. But it also has a streak of weirdness and offers a very human take on the political-crime thriller genre.

If Fuqua and his screenwriters (including True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto) slightly botch the underlying theme of redemption—Ethan Hawke’s haunted ex-Confederate sharpshooter could have been more developed—it still makes good on its ideas of community pride.

Kubi is often wildly funny in Kitano’s straight-faced style, and it’s never less than a lot of fun. Fans of visceral, cynical action movies will lose their heads over it.

This surreal, sentimental journey does provide an excellent encapsulation of everything Ruiz did best: oddball takes on highbrow lit and lowbrow genre conventions, guided tours of characters’ mazelike memory banks, and a reveling in film culture that doubles as a cinephile’s wet dream.

Although the story isn’t autobiographical, there’s a tang of lived experience here – of very personal feelings and important questions being channelled through these characters – that keeps its sunlit landscapes and island interactions ground with relatability.

For devoted filmlovers, Nouvelle Vague is a must-see – a joyful homage to the art of cinema that’ll have you queuing at your local repertory cinema as soon as the credits roll.

Harmony is a finely tuned comedy, complete with precisely scripted jokes and comic set pieces that swerve toward the playfully perverse.

It may not be the sharpest satire, but Barlow and Senes have a heap of wicked fun wielding the blunt trauma as Sissy takes a wild stab at everything from influencer culture and wellness voodoo, to body image crises and backstabbing (literally) so-called friend circles.

The documentary is strongest during these conference-room brainstorms, similar to those of a political campaign. (It could have used more of Boies’s witness-demolishing courtroom eloquence.) The draw here is watching a careful process unfold, regardless of the outcome.

What makes this latest installment such a riot — apart from having more money than usual, thereby allowing the practical special effects to achieve a splattery early–Peter Jackson glee — is its original script by "Brawl in Cell Block 99’s" S. Craig Zahler.

Interviewing residents from across the spectrum, Neshoba reopens the debate: How was this allowed to happen? How do we move forward? Some questions, this compelling movie reminds us, still require answers.

Na keeps pulling the rug out from under us, and his brawny genre exercise doubles nicely as a scream of social anguish, since most of the twisted screwups occur at the hands of bumbling or corrupt cops.

A finely wrought image of terminal stasis, national, political (Charles Barr suggests the gang as the first post-war Labour government), and/or creative (the house as Ealing, Johnson as Balcon?). Whatever, Mackendrick immediately upped for America and the equally dark ironies of Sweet Smell of Success.

You can't believe what you're watching: Compliance, true to its title, digs into the rarely explored subject of psychological acquiescence (behavioral scientist Stanley Milgram should get a cowriting credit), with common-sense dignity being the first casualty.

The riskiness of [Jenkins'] set-up, one that blooms with complications and rawness, is a thing of adventurous beauty. Her film is a gift to those people who discretely flinch at every dinner party and kid-celebratory anecdote.

It’s nice to see this great filmmaker sculpting something that feels genuinely revelatory. That’s not to say that the 3-D Goodbye to Language is always an easy sit.

You feel for the potential Wesleyan parent who asks an administrator if his daughter is going to have to move home after graduating: His question is met with an uneasy pause. Crucial stuff.

Sing Sing’s most affecting quality is its commitment to reality over shock value. With Domingo masterfully anchoring the ensemble, it’s never bogged down by the specifics of the men’s crimes.

A gentle, loving, noble, angry and heartrending film.

With enjoyable characters and smart dialogue, French-Canadian director Monia Chokri makes her dilemma a very entertaining ride.

As always, Tarkovsky conjures images like you've never seen before; and as a journey to the heart of darkness, it's a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's.

Not every performance is assured – though Nina Ye is consistently impressive – and the script includes perhaps one twist too many. Yet Left-Handed Girl remains a sensitive and affecting drama that avoids sentiment in favour of more grounded emotional truths.

An ingenious script, excellent special effects and photography, and superior acting (with the exception of Francis), make it an endearing winner.

Sensitive parents shouldn't fret; this is the kind of grim fairy tale, equal parts midnight-movie macabre and family-round-the-hearth compassionate, that scars in all the right ways.

Comfortably Linklater’s best movie since Boyhood, Hit Man stands alongside School of Rock for big laughs and good vibes – albeit with a darker streak that slowly kicks in.

The film has three amiable leads and doesn't overstay its welcome.

The strength of the film is its vision - cutting, compassionate and sometimes hilarious - of what it means to be Asian, and British, in Thatcher's Britain.

The movie does an uncommonly sensitive job probing the psychologies of blocked men, less so the urges of a widow who needs more than comforting words.

This is humanistic drama done right.

You still leave hoping he ultimately found peace and enlightenment, two things he graciously gave to those of us who hung on his every word.

Diehl and Pachner are both terrific, mastering Malick’s improvisational style and bringing earthy authenticity to its playful family moments.

Mothering Sunday isn’t exactly a cheery watch, but it’s an intelligent, affecting British drama with a splash of French sensuality.

Part drama-thriller, part OTT slasher, Pearl doesn’t particularly resolve its internal conflicts, but it does hold the attention.

There are also juicy supporting roles for Shirley Henderson and Midnight in Paris’s Nina Arianda as the comedians’ long-suffering wives, Lucille and Ida. The film may be called Stan & Ollie, but it’s never more alive than when the four of them are onscreen.

The dialogue-free story makes for an accessible blast, although it's tricky to gauge individual personalities.

Feeling anything in a DC Universe installment is, in itself, evidence of filmmaking that’s superheroic (that overall bluish-gray glumness is completely gone). So imagine the shock to also encounter a nuanced, funny script, a richly developed surrogate family, a visual appreciation of Philadelphia and its heroic Rocky iconography, and not one but two expert jokes involving a strip club.

The only time a subject directly addresses Takesue, it's with a doozy of a query: "Why are you taking my story to USA, New York?" The answer is as complex as the film itself, and as simple as deciding to not look away.

Summer Wars surprisingly celebrates togetherness and bravery as much as binary-mathematics expertise, all helped along by a kick-ass synthesis of traditional hand-drawn scenes and fluid, rainbow-explosive CG artistry.

When the plot stops cold for a beauty-pageant performance of exquisite purity, you’ll feel like you’re watching the most American film of the year.

Truthfully, watching septuagenarian whores spank mildly titillated johns and test-drive sex toys has never seemed so ho-hum - or so oddly familiar.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say Kold gives what may be the performance of the year - one that not only offsets the movie's momentary dips into self-conscious quirkiness but adds a genuine sweetness to the proceedings. Forget the muscles; he brings the heart and soul.

No side overwhelms the other in the back-and-forth; you feel more like a profoundly uncertain moment is being marked, with little concrete sense of the outcome beyond mankind's enduring hunger for moving pictures.

A cinephile's film, stuffed with influences and allusions which, together with the precocious brilliance of every single image, can become numbing at times rather than stunning; but the absolute assurance and ingenuity make this a debut as startling as Eraserhead and every bit as spectacular.

Eerie yet entertaining, it’s Jenkin’s most accessible film so far, while remaining anchored to his core Cornish principles.

It feels real, and honest, in a way that too few romantic films manage.

It’s a film that doubles and trebles in complexity as it dives inward to a place of strange intimacy, one that’s a lot like Spike Jonze’s "Her": manufactured, yes, but no less affecting for its desperation.

Didn't Soderbergh notice there was pathos enough in Matthew McConaughey's beefcake proprietor, an ab-slapping, spandexed Peter Pan? Between this role and his owlish DA in the subversively sly "Bernie," the actor has finally found a way to subvert his six-pack. He's the magic here.

It's a comedy about the unchecked id; indeed, there's sleepwalking in it. But will those grunting strolls happen through a second-story window or on the highway? You're left cringing, and that puts Birbiglia in excellent company, alone though he might be in bed.

Away has the mild rush of a coming-of-age dream, the sort that lodges in your memory as symbolic and significant as you pass from one stage of life to the next.

They've given their star one rotten peach of a role, and Depardieu makes the most of it. Because of him, such surreal Gallic scuzziness has rarely seemed so sweetly tender.

This is some flu: it plunges us into a deeply strange and unsettling version of reality. It’s undeniably confusing, but it leaves you with a powerful, if imprecise, feeling of a society that’s sick from something far worse than a passing virus.

While it lacks the emotional intensity of the duo’s Oscar-nominated The Square—a rousing 2013 look at Egypt’s Arab Spring—The Great Hack still feels of a piece, inviting viewers to contemplate the power and irreversibility of their online footprint.

Even as it drifts into narrative indiscipline, you appreciate the movie’s attempt to make sense of a troubled, beclowned present.

It’s a lot of passion and restless, sometimes misdirected energy to channel through this film, but Miranda marshalls it effectively, communicating Larson’s talent and drive without obscuring the fact that he could, sometimes, be a bit wearisome about it.

It could all come across as terribly zany, or sentimental. But Baker’s writing and direction has a near-hallucinatory sparseness to it.

Full of well-integrated symbols (islands, hawks, a whirlpool) and lyrically shot in monochrome by Erwin Hillier, it's all quite beautiful, combining romance, comedy, suspense and a sense of the supernatural to winning effect.

The rush of A-listers combined with apocalyptic dread creates its own kind of dizzy pleasure: Who's going down next on this Poseidon Adventure?

The issues are so profound, in fact, with such implications for the human existence, a single film could hardly scratch the surface. Yet Eternal You is a very good way to start digging.

In narrative terms, it's mostly an excuse to work in a trio of crooks whose banter may be even better than that of our hero; Mark Strong's disgusted rant about paying off policemen and Liam Cunningham – led musings on Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" are enough to justify the entire movie on their own.

McElwee's quietly reassuring voice dominates the film, but that doesn't mean he can't craft a magnificently eloquent image when he wants to, as in the moment when he frames Adrian, seated in a coffee shop, inside his own reflection in the shop's front window.

The film builds riotously via a series of verbal takedowns as male authority goes limp in the wake of a regrettable impulse. This is slender material to build a whole film around, but Östlund turns it into something deep, for viewers with patience.

Alfred Hitchcock’s interrogator, the rising French director and critic François Truffaut, brought a fan’s passion and a colleague’s precision to his questions. The result remains a how-to guide for Vertigo, Psycho and a future wave of nail-biters inspired by their observations.

A lost-artist comedy in the vein of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, but more deeply, a referendum on the dead-end choices Rock himself might be feeling.

In style, the film’s ambition sometimes oversteps its ability, but it’s a rare London gangster film that has something to say about the city and says it with wit and little resort to bloodletting

An American remake is already being prepped. We suggest Hollywood simply cries uncle now and calls it a day.

Sirk turns all this into an extraordinary film about vision: sight, destiny, blindness (literal and figurative), colour and light; the convoluted, rather absurd actions (a magnificent repression?) tellingly counterpointed by the clean compositions and the straight lines and space of modern architecture.

Made with all the awareness of hindsight, Shampoo offers a sharp sexual satire and a mature statement on both America and Hollywood in 1968.

Excellent writing by Katy Brand leaves plenty of room for both light-hearted humour and deeply personal moments, with Thompson bringing her A-game and newcomer McCormack matching her. They’re a captivating, unlikely duo.

Frozen has tunes and darkness. But most satisfying is a formula-defying finale that subverts fairytale status quo.

While this sounds like it could be a lurid, teen-boy-fever-dream mess, Gunn gels it together with a wicked sense of humour and an evident affection for his characters who, though not so endearing as his Guardians of the Galaxy, are a hoot to hang around with.

By paring down to the bare processes of the pair's work, The Observers creates a haunting sense of people engaged in an otherworldly duty-huddled over incomprehensible charts and dials, they seem like they're busy maintaining the clockwork mechanism of the world itself.

If director Antoine Fuqua thoroughly flubbed his remake of The Equalizer, he properly sticks the landing here. Seizing you from the outset, The Guilty refuses to let go until you’re gasping for breath.

Welles' third film, often described as his worst, but still a hugely enjoyable thriller.