Ida

Desire for Beauty (Gaudêncio, 2013) is a schizophrenic mess of a documentary that also happens to be about an important and deeply complicated topic. Following four Polish people as they pursue plastic-surgery solutions to their dilemmas of self-esteem, the subject matter should be more than enough to carry the length of the film, particularly as it’s supplemented with interviews by actress Agata Kulesza (from last year’s Academy Award-winning film Ida) and conversations with a variety of people ranging from therapists to philosophers to models, who all have differing but equally complex perspectives on what it means to be beautiful.

15. The Immigrant  – If one were to rank the films of 2014 based solely on innovation, The Immigrant would probably end up near the bottom. Writer-director James Gray’s languid melodrama tells the tumultuous story of a resilient Polish woman looking to find a slice of the American Dream, without much in the way of …

40. Night Moves Since 2006, Kelly Reichardt has found a way to reach inside of the hearts of her audiences, plucking out strings one by one with desolate re-imaginations of the American Pacific Northwest, seen through the eyes of people not so different than ourselves. With Meek’s Cutoff, she departed from her typical genre and moved …

After a summer season of blockbusters that gave the cinematic landscape of jewels and gems worthy of inspection a shake,  “awards season,” from which some worthy contenders showed themselves, came roaring. Likewise, a backlog of more movies in the thick of this holiday season growing, certain timely realities proved elusive, in terms of getting to …

The 2015 Film Independent Spirit Award nominations came out this morning and unsurprisingly there are a lot of names here that won’t be on an Oscar handicappers list. Birdman is arguably the biggest film on this list – and it leads the field with nominations for Best Feature, Best Director, Best Male, Best Supporting Male and …

    15. Stranger by the Lake Directed by Alain Guiraudie Written by Alain Guiraudie France Though Stranger by the Lake premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival (and appeared on Sound On Sight’s best of 2013 list), it finally reached North American audiences in January of this year. Alain Guiraudie’s stunning noir-tinged thriller is …

Picking the best movies that come out in any given year is no easy feat. For film fans, a quality feature can come out at any time, from any one, and discovering an enjoyable and well-crafted feature is truly a pleasure. As we reach the halfway point of the year, many excellent films have already …

UK-based filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski returns to the country of his birth with a film that explores the persistence of the war in 1960s Poland. Shot in Academy ratio and soft black and white, the cinematography by Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal is beautiful, capturing the stark landscapes and emotional weight of the historical period. The setting and subject matter seem to give Pawlikowski renewed impetus at an important stage in his career and the result is a measured, sombre film that succeeds in evoking the intricate world of its central figures.