Grief is fertile territory for horror, but while the script picks at Baghead’s thematic underpinnings, Corredor skips all but the most essential exposition, staying focused on delivering what the audience wants.

What elevates The Sky Turns beyond a lovely little elegy and into the realm of greatness is Álvarez's refusal to shape the film as a tragedy.

Her (Binoche) award-winning performance is reason alone to dive into such intellectual gamesmanship. (She can suggest an entire emotional arc with one facial tic.)

The film’s relentless masculinity and shouty attitude is tempered by a disorientating, troubling sense of characters tragically adrift. Equally powerful as what we do see is what we don’t – jobs, families, kids, colleagues – as the entire film exists in a selfish interval from real, daily life.

It's the cattlemen vs homesteaders plot, present in all its particulars, but refracted through the star personae of Cooper and Brennan.

Though the women could be stronger and the accents occasionally jar, cooper’s study of moral corruption enthrals. The Johnny-ssance starts here!

A Most Violent Year, Chandor’s absorbing no-bull NYC drama, further clarifies what might be the most promising career in American movies: an urban-headed filmmaker attuned to economies of place and time, with an eye on the vacant throne of Sidney Lumet.

It’s brimming with fascinating insights into the skill, conviction and sheer slog that went into tackling several rogue states, climate change and the odd dead cockroach on the West Wing floor without losing optimism, sanity or custody of the kids.

A combination of brilliantly edited car chases and existential thriller which recalls the sombreness of Melville and the spareness of Leone in a context which is the 'classical' economy of directors like Hawks and Walsh.

For 91 minutes, the pleasure of the Guiteauxes’ company is ours. We are ultimately the richer for it.

Culkin, just as motor-mouthed and f-bombing as Succession’s Roman Roy, but here with an extra slug of despair, is the manic yin to Eisenberg’s neurotic but compassionate yang. It’s an inspired on-screen pairing that plays to both actor’s strengths and finds space for melancholy amid some deeply awkward laughs.

This is a brisk, well-oiled thriller with blistering performances and a crackling, memorable script.

Taken on its own fun-over-philosophy terms, this is an exercise in tone-shifting virtuosity.

From the sun’s surface to the deep earth, Hawaiian volcanoes to Detroit’s decay, Mettler explores the different ways that we experience and define time, using his own documentary as a mind-bending demonstration of its mutability.

Carné’s camera records rather than amplifies the emotions: you can’t help but wonder what magic a René Clair, a Max Ophüls or a Jean Renoir would have found in this material. Its clamorous closing shot – which suggests, but doesn’t show, tragedy – is one of the greatest in all cinema.

A fitting tribute to a life well lived in spite of the overwhelming odds stacked against her, it is surely a sign of a remarkable woman that we are left wanting more.

With so many firsts, a film might buckle under the avalanche of the accompanying expectations. Thankfully, Bros is so belly-achingly funny, sharply observant and wryly self-aware that it can more than withstand such a crushing weight.

‘The most dangerous thing about Pandora,’ someone muses sagely at one point, ‘is that you grow to love it too much.’ Jim Cameron disagrees. He can’t love this place enough – and it’s infectious. 

It’s refreshing to see a grown-up big-screen thriller this well crafted – and one that cares for its grounded characters and their predicaments. If it comes off the road once or twice, it’s still well worth the ride.

Cagney's energy and Wellman's gutsy direction carry the day, counteracting the moralistic sentimentality of the script and indelibly etching the star on the memory as a definitive gangster hero.

Although the film was completed too early to document Hanna’s return to music—her new band, the Julie Ruin, released an album in September and has been touring—it still offers a poignant, intimate portrait of a larger-than-life personality—one whose singular voice is still sorely needed in music, culture and, well, everywhere.

By the time you realize how stealthy the film's critique has been, you've already fallen right into its trap.

Athena’s dystopian view of our present day, showing a collapsing world with black-and-white mentalities, selfishly motivated, and with a desperate underclass left angry and adrift, feels like an urgent message. Anyone who loves their cinema to be spectacular, immersive and a rollercoaster ride will soak it up.

A cinematic Rorschach test, it’s more likely to reaffirm your views on the man than challenge them.

Every trick and technique here, from ingenious match cuts, to split screens and even comic-book cells, works to soup up the storytelling.

Olsson requires us to connect the dots to today's struggles (a missed opportunity), but his discoveries are more than sufficient.

Memoir of a Snail is not just a stop-motion animation that feels handmade from top to bottom. It tells a deeply human story about a hard-won route to happiness – with all the pain and missteps that go with it.

A Lynchian coda upends the entire film, raising several questions and resolving none. Fans of rigorous storytelling may find it to be one whimsical step too far, but others will marvel at this miraculous coup de théâtre. Jauja is a film to make you wonder.

It helps that Candyman is exquisitely shot. Right from the first frame, DaCosta is always doing something interesting with the camera. There is smart visual storytelling almost everywhere you look, from the clever use of mirrors, to edgy scene transitions, to set design that starts to mirror Candyman’s look in interesting ways. The jump scares are rare but hardly needed: all this contributes to a growing feeling of dread as the film speeds towards its bold conclusion.

A movie that gives Streep her most emotionally blocked character in years, without caricature.

Fassbender and his multifaceted allure helps counteract any thematic or conceptual shakiness, as was the case in McQueen's highly uneven debut, "Hunger." One thing's for sure: McQueen has found his De Niro, and he better keep him close.

Luna Carmoon’s debut feature about the daughter of a hoarder comes home bearing prizes, after premiering at the Venice Film Festival, announcing a young British talent capable of blending realism with surrealism to create a vivid personal language that defies simple interpretations.

Berger doesn’t make concessions for the easily teary: Robot Dreams is a film as much about separation as togetherness. But while the final reel is a low-key heartbreaker, the bubble never pops on the loveliness of what came before.

Though the characters are fictional, Polytechnique hews close to the facts regarding the 1989 incident, down to its misogynistic Marc Lépine avatar (Gaudette) separating "feminist" coeds in a classroom.

A thoroughly enjoyable affair, complete with some of his most memorable set pieces.

Tirola’s punchy timeline hits the breaks at the ’80s flameout, wobbling in its handling of self-destructive editor Doug Kenney. But until the defunct Lampoon starts magically reappearing in your mailbox, this excellently titled pic will do nicely.

Leigh does a stellar job of showing how these events seep into the unaware girl's everyday existence - almost all of the film's sequences are photographed in precisely composed, inherently surreal single shots.

Often very funny as well as gorgeous to look at in its ineffable blend of realism and rhapsody, it comes on a little like a free jazz improvisation on the vulnerability of the human heart to the ecstasies and disenchantments that attend it in permanent orbit.

Despite the unsubtlety of the movie’s stance, a dizzyingly complex portrait emerges: that of pissed-off museum neighbors, arrogant critics and even the NAACP’s dignified Julian Bond, articulating a racial component.

The film is anonymously directed, functionally paced and hysterical at times, though it seduces as a hot-blooded spectacle that stitches emotional detail onto the epic canvas of history.

Amirpour’s career to date offers a triptych of stories of women navigating men’s worlds, and needing all their nous and resources to survive in them – and this is her most straight-up enjoyable survivor tale yet. It’s a feminist parable that may not linger as long as in the mind as her more provocative debut, but it’s irresistible fun in the moment.

The subtle pleasure of watching Tyrel comes from raising an eyebrow at every inferred (implied?) slight.

The ensemble acting is excellent. Remember, kids, it all comes down to Self Respect.

Abbasi offered a brilliantly leftfield perspective on immigration and otherness with his 2018 debut Border, and his follow-up takes no prisoners in his critique of Iranian society’s built-in misogyny and fake piety.

Newcomer Fonte is terrific in the lead role, communicating Marcello’s meek protests with a twitchy physicality that grows slowly into a sketchy defiance.

[Villeneuve] has nailed it where, in different ways David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowksy and Ridley Scott all floundered. His Dune is sprawling, spectacular and politically resonant in its critique of colonialism and exploitation.

New Yorkers and those who've been following the neighborhood's plight know exactly how this ends; at the very least, Paravel and Sniadecki have preserved the memory of what was. Sometimes, that's the most you can do.

In favouring the dramatic over the didactic, Goldhaber arguably buries the themes of the source text a little too deeply, resulting in a film that isn’t quite the call to action it might have been. Still, its message resonates – and its bomb-setting scenes are as nail-biting as cinema’s best bomb disposals.

Far from a slick, record-label-sanctioned promotional film, blur: To the End is a fly-on-the-wall look at a band coming to terms with themselves and their shared history and destiny.

A cut above most nonfiction explorations of Katrina, thanks to the ever-empathetic Demme's talent for showcasing the uniquely human qualities of every person he films.

Because the movie’s on-the-fly style is as scruffy as its protagonists, it’s easy to underestimate the intelligence and artistry it takes to make something so silly.

Joyfully, it shows no interest in brooding and simply throws its all into being as absurdly fun as possible. It’s one of the most enjoyable movies of the year so far and easily the streamer’s best action film yet.

Miller unveils some marvellously original cinematic snaps (the lost city of the feral children; Master Blaster, the dwarf-powered giant; Thunderdome itself); and if the thrills and special effects lack a little of the punch of Mad Max 2, there's still enough imagination, wit and ingenuity to put recent Spielberg to shame.

A sweet, shambling, supremely enjoyable road movie about two compulsive gamblers of very different stripes.

The movie might very well have come off as a too-clinical experiment if it weren't for Leo, who maintains a rivetingly mysterious aura even as her character's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre.

There are no easy answers in this raw but deeply empathetic film.

Lanzmann’s feisty exchanges with Murmelstein, a brilliant talker, become an emotional symbol for the pursuit of slippery truth, while the filmmaker’s recently shot footage of Yom Kippur services show a way of life in robust continuation.

There’s nothing cloying or corny about the way Arnold depicts these beasts. What she gives us is a straightforward slice of a cow’s relentless life of muck, milk, breeding and feeding.

We’re here for the rigorously conceived, blessedly coherent action showdowns, the work of director Chad Stahelski.

Boasting excellent performances all round (with the writer-director once again demonstrating his expertise with children), Shoplifters is another charming, funny and very affecting example of Kore-eda’s special brand of tough-but-tender humanism.

It’s a simple, angry work, determined to get across its point with force and with few distractions.

Mikkelsen is endlessly compelling.

Never saccharine, My Dog Tulip does justice to the rare experience of heartfelt, mutual love in any form

Sometimes Guest’s films stray into snobbery against flyover country, but Mascots mostly avoids that. It hides its toxic warfare under a furry guise.

It's first and foremost a teenage coming-of-age tale​, 65 electric minutes​ ​packed with financial hardship, racial demonisation and reggae.

A delightfully quirky movie about a New York lawyer (Scott) who imagines he is Sherlock Holmes, adopting the deerstalking garb and savouring four-pipe problems.

Its story beats are so irresistible, the arc of its trio of big-haired disco titans so snappy, the music so contagious, that it soars like a Barry Gibb falsetto above the clichés.

If the documentary lacks anything, it's a firmer grasp of Springfield's own transformation, from "kind of a dick" (per ex–MTV jock Mark Goodman) during his heyday to a giving, appreciative showman. Call it humility, shaded with weird, two-way neediness. Jesse's girl may have dodged a bullet.

By the final act, Sister Midnight breaks free from the shackles of submissive feminine stereotypes and raucously leans into a woman behaving very, very badly.

Rice's style is pitched somewhere between Merchant Ivory and Wes Anderson, favoring shots of sad, pretty people looking bereft in elaborately elegant rooms. But it's Jones and Treadaway, both seething volcanoes trapped behind artfully pallid faces, who turn what could've been a candy-coated comedy of manners into a complex, melancholic farce.

The White Ribbon comes dangerously--wonderfully?--close to playing like an evil-kid flick.

It charts an unexpected success story that leaves you hopeful others will embrace its lessons.

The movie has the proportion of a fable but the scope of a mythical lifetime.

It's here, in a keenly captured Forest Hills, Queens, land of low-lit bars and manicured lawns, that Roadie soars as a gently comic drama about living the dream - or trying to.

Given Robert Rossen's strikingly literate script, Sol Polito's wonderfully eerie camerawork, and Robinson's terrific performance - all pulling together to elaborate the Luciferian motto borrowed from Milton by which the captain lives, 'Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven' - this is one of Curtiz's best movies.

It’s horror hokum told with unswerving commitment.

This intelligent, honest documentary explores his complex personality without getting tacky or tabloidy, or ignoring McQueen’s dark side.

A film made with cold courage by the victim of a sexual assault, this gripping Japanese documentary plays like a ’70s conspiracy thriller.

The future of the murder-mystery looks bright with movies as bold and boundary-breaking as this.

Those first 40-odd minutes are unbearably tense. Ferguson is a standout in a strong ensemble cast

The characters of 20th Century Women, more interconnected than most, generate a group narrative that’s just substantial enough to keep you in thrall by how uninhibited a movie can be.

A thriller of real psychological and emotional depth, Triet’s film is a treat. Watch it with a partner and argue about it afterwards.

Tarkovsky goes for the great white whale of politicised art a history of his country in this century seen in terms of the personal and succeeds. [18 Aug 2004, p.90]

Kirk & Co return to present-day San Francisco to save the whales in the most enjoyable film of the series so far, also returning to the simplistic morality-play format that gave the original TV series its strength.

The film builds to a shattering climax that works precisely because all involved fully embrace the melodrama. Be sure to bring Kleenex.

That’s a lot of years to wrangle into one biography – even before you take in the rags-to-riches, zero-to-hero-to-popular-villain arc of his life – but this snappy and searching doc makes a very solid fist of it.

Ajami is Israel’s submission to the Oscars, and like the gritty "City of God" before it, it takes harrowing, tricky circumstances and illuminates them with Scorsesian snap.

Writer-director Freida Lee Mock’s concise and potent chronicle uses a wealth of archival video and numerous new interviews with its subject to properly contextualize Hill’s testimony as a landmark moment in the fight for gender equality.

Sol Tryon’s dark, irrepressibly hilarious fable offers highbrow absurdism and low-budget filmmaking at their most clever and outlandish.

It's all very humorous and engaging, if only for proving that American whodunits don't have to have car chases and brutality; and it has a wicked eye for the vacuity of middle-class good life and what it may conceal. Lots of feelthy girl talk, too.

It’s full of symmetrical Anderson-like compositions, memorable characters and offbeat laughs. And stitched in are some smart, fly-on-the-wall observations about the often-abrasive relationship between capitalism and tradition too.

Clearly, Pixar’s genius for adventurous storytelling continues unabated.

The situation in Myanmar remains tense and ethnic cleansing continues, yet Snow Hnin finds grace notes of optimism to offset the bitterness of the film’s backdrop. It makes Midwives a thoughtful, empathetic and powerful insight into the region – and its women.

Pretty irresistible, nevertheless, with Rogers doing a beautiful job of dovetailing sexual provocation and demure innocence.

The message is that there is no message; if this isn't action cinema in its purest form, then it's pretty close.

For once, a genuinely psychological thriller.

This colorful, cranium-bursting film isn’t about one specific tale so much as the endless ways you can present narratives; it’s nothing less than a kitchen-sink deconstruction on the art of storytelling.

Sweet and fiercely humane, Song’s layered family portrait is decidedly Buddhist: silent when it needs to be and steadfast about approaching inevitable tragedy with care and patience.