The excitement in The Soft Skin, however, gives way to an intense tragedy that's INFORMED by the thrills.

Reichardt crafts a highly textured narrative that both invokes the mythology of the American frontier and cleverly transcends it.

The cumulative impact of The Arbor is one of claustrophobia; at times, the endlessly downbeat adventures of Dunbar and her offspring grow almost unbearably morose.

The Troll Hunter offers high-caliber entertainment despite a low-budget production.

As with "Shotgun Stories," Nichols assembles a tense portrait of blue-collar life, while deepening his thematic interests and working on a bigger scale. Burrowing into the subconscious of a damaged man, he delivers a modern American epic with extraordinary restraint.

Melancholia hovers in ambiguity with riveting aesthetic prowess.

It's a frantic microcosm of life itself.

Despite the ongoing momentum, Sleepless Night never loses touch with its story.

Suleiman's most poignant moments are largely wordless. Nothing feels more affecting than Suleiman's ubiquitous frozen stare. Although he never utters a sound, his silence speaks volumes about the inability to resolve the social ramifications of Middle Eastern strife.

Although Madsen's survey of warning strategies has an aimless structure prone to repetition, he creates an effective mood that transcends his time-travel gimmick and eventually becomes topical.

It may go without saying that Poetry adopts a lyrical tone, but this forms the crux of its appeal. In this case, the title says it all.

Never indulging in outright scare tactics or loose improvisation, the movie primarily works like an awkward narrative that plays with perspective.

Unable to express the sorrow of Cory's passing or the larger sense of detachment from the world it represents, most of the people in Putty Hill try to remain disaffected. By pestering them with questions, Porterfield gets under their skin - and, in the process, ours as well.

Representing lower-class violence taken to an extreme, the cannibalism cannot be contained by police work. The movie's gradual build to a thrilling, appropriately bloody climax intensifies this disconnect.

Ignore the precise religious context and it stands perfectly well as a restrained look at personal convictions in the face of certain death.

A comedy of remarriage buried in intellectual abstraction and cinephilic obsessions, Certified Copy wanders a bit but never loses focus, with the only certainty being that its gimmick is genuine.

Showcases Jones' ability to provide ample entertainment value with sharply drawn characters in a minimalist setting.

Frammartino keeps the material engaging simply by aiming the camera at his subjects and letting the material organically emerge-rather than enforcing the supernatural element with overstatement.

The visual collage retains a consistent melancholy, resulting in an experience that's both deeply affecting and-since José never actually appears on-camera-utterly detached.

Potiche successfully satirizes the gender politics at its core. At the same time, it knowingly mocks the obsession over debates about the suppression of women that pervaded the culture during the movie's setting.

Greene's patient, understated portrait renders a universal rite of passage in strangely alluring, poetic terms.

To Die Like a Man deserves your attention for showcasing a filmmaker with the capacity for bold narrative trickery that doesn't come at the expense of emotional investment.

The first-time director's refreshingly credible portrait of a boho character with Middle Eastern origins rectifies the aforementioned canonical gap in a witty, naturalistic generational snapshot.

Herzog naturally plays up the enigma at hand with epic grandeur, occasionally overdoing it but usually hitting the mark.

More meditation than movie, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is bound to mystify, awe and exasperate in equal measures.

Film Socialism is a weighty, intentionally cryptic product that's easy on the eyes and heavy on the mind.

Mills fashions the set-up for an overwrought, thoroughly depressing character study into an oddly charming comedy. It's a midlife crisis gently portrayed with sympathy rather than grief.