By this point, it’s become quite clear that director Denis Villeneuve is a man who enjoys challenging his audience. With the constantly twisting plot lines of Prisoners to the subconscious probing head trip that is Enemy, he makes a concerted effort to keep viewers engaged on an intellectual level and more importantly, he isn’t afraid to make bold narrative choices that run the risk of potentially alienating and dividing viewers. He’s done it again with Sicario, a film that can be easily summarized as a day in the life of new DEA agent in cartel-controlled Mexico but slowly reveals itself to be a thoughtful meditation on moral compromise and human frailty.

After raiding an Arizona drug home filled with dozens of corpses linked to cartel violence, FBI agent Kate Macer (a superb Emily Blunt) rises quickly through the ranks and catches the attention of cocky DOD advisor Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). He recruits her to find the men responsible for the killings, which leads them to the threatening streets of Juarez, Mexico. With the help of Graver’s partner Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro), they must navigate the dangers of an area torn apart by drug trafficking and rampant violence.

And while there are bursts of graphic violence, most notably in a terrifically tense border crossing scene, this film is much more interested in the suggestion of violence rather than displaying the grisly details on screen. During an interrogation scene, the camera lingers on a lone floor drain while faint sounds of anguish can be heard. We can surmise that a man is being tortured but his pain isn’t made visually explicit. An even more prevalent example throughout the film is the gunshots humming in the distance, which serve as an uneasy soundtrack to the hellish cityscape.

We’re informed in the opening frame that “sicario” is Spanish for hitman, which doesn’t seem to be a fitting descriptor for the first half of this film as we follow Macer’s point of view but during a pivotal scene at her apartment, the entire focus of the film seems to shift to Gillick’s perspective. His personal mission and vendetta then start to kick in and seem to supplant the tumultuous moral dilemmas that plague Macer through most of the story. We’re trained, in a way, to root for her to triumph over the moral deficiency of her male superiors but Villeneuve doesn’t give us the satisfaction of an easy conclusion here.

First-time screenwriter Taylor Sheridan deserves ample credit as well, forgoing “message movie” cliches about the war on drugs to write a script that does justice to its characters and the world that they inhabit. Cinematopher Roger Deakins, a true master still waiting patiently for his first Oscar (he’s been nominated 12 times previously), continues his great run of work here with bold choices of camera placement and movement that make even routine scenes exhilarating. Everyone is firing creatively on all cylinders to create this subversive and enduring work.

Do stories of survival, bleak as their subject material may be, always have to be so serious? Over the years, we’ve seen countless iterations of characters stranded or deserted in various circumstances (Gravity and All Is Lost being recent examples), struggling mightily against the formidable forces of nature. As a storyteller, it’s important to convey the sense of desperation felt by the protagonist but does the perspective need to be drab and dour in every case? Ridley Scott’s The Martian has answered that question with a resounding “no” and in doing so, it has single-handedly reinvigorated the survival film genre and also given the science fiction genre a welcome addition of sly humor as well.

We open with astronaut and botonist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) and his crew, led by Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain), as their mission on Mars is put into jeopardy by an intense storm that crops up unexpectedly. During an evacuation attempt, Watney is struck by a satellite antenna and presumed dead as the rest of the team reluctantly flees the planet. He wakes to find that he has been stranded with limited resources left to his disposal and with no way of communicating with NASA, he must wring every bit of scientific knowledge from his mind to endure the hostile living conditions of a foreign planet.

What’s so unique and captivating about this movie is the level of pragmatic optimism and self-aware humor that Watney is able to cull from his dire situation. Since the majority of his dialogue is presented via video journal, we not only have the practical benefits of hearing his scientific process firsthand but there also exists a kind of conversational aspect with the audience that allows for plenty of down-to-earth moments of levity that don’t feel contrived. It’s also effective in making him relatable as well; we’re not just rooting for him because he’s an anonymous man under terrible circumstances but because these things are happening to someone that we’ve grown to care about as a human being.

While there is a playfulness and wit to Watney’s narration of the proceedings, there is also a copious amount of good old-fashioned applied science that he details throughout the film. Challenges and obstacles pop up with increasing frequency during his time on the red planet but each one is met individually with a calculated and well-reasoned response. In some ways, this is the most pure form of problem solving that can be exhibited in a feature film but the tricky part is finding a way to present it in a consistently entertaining fashion while still showing respect for the scientific process.

This is where screenwriter Drew Goddard deserves so much credit in his adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel. The writing is not only superbly clever but also thoroughly engaging in following the ingenuity of its main character and the support system around him. Scott also deserves ample praise for balancing the brainy dialogue with a few well-crafted action sequences and also some moments of well-earned suspense. There’s something liberating about how purely The Martian strives for intelligent entertainment and I hope it serves as a model for more science-based movies to come.

In an early scene in the well-crafted music documentary Amy, we see home video footage of its subject Amy Winehouse singing “Happy Birthday” as a teenager among friends and family. Her raw talent is undeniable but more revealing than her sultry voice is the charm and vibrancy that she exudes during her singing. It serves as a stark contrast to the Amy Winehouse that we all saw when the cameras of the world were rolling, whose public persona would come to be one synonymous with drug addiction and alcoholism. Her early death at the young age of 27 was not wholly unexpected but it doesn’t make her tragic story any less worthy of thoughtful examination.

Director Asif Kapadia has crafted a fitting eulogy that neither absolves Amy of her personal vices nor points obvious fingers as to who is to blame for her untimely demise. There were a litany of bad influences, some larger than others, that could have contributed to her death but the film doesn’t take sides in trying to single one aspect out as the main cause. She’s portrayed not as a saint or a sinner but rather as a human being, a young vulnerable girl who was fully unequipped to deal with the rising demands associated with pop stardom.

Though she was most notable for her stylized jazz vocals, this movie does a fantastic job at highlighting other sides of her artistic and musical talents as well. Her handwritten lyrics, offered up as subtitles during scenes in which she’s performing, are given new layers of poignancy when accompanied with corresponding accounts from her personal life. She is also shown to be a very competent guitarist too, performing some of her earlier songs on either acoustic or electric guitar while also singing in her trademark tone.

Perhaps most saddening, we also get visceral glimpses as to what could have been had she continued to live on and keep making music. Accounts from rapper Mos Def and Roots drummer ?uestlove detail the artistic thrust and ambition that Amy had, as evidenced by proposed projects and unfinished song ideas that could have launched the singer into newfound artistic territory. We will never know what else Amy had in store but the fact that her spirit is still well represented in today’s pop music (Adele and Lady Gaga, among others, cite her as a major influence) is a reminder that some talents are truly timeless.

As a film genre, the world of music biopics can be one of the trickiest terrains to traverse. The potential for cliché and over-sentimentality feels more heightened, which is probably due to the myriad movies that have gotten it so wrong in the past. Fortunately, the new Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy is one of the good ones, a film that truly seems to capture the soul and spirit of its subject. There’s an undeniable magic in the music of the Beach Boys and director Bill Pohlad is able to reveal it with both commendable historical accuracy and artistic expressivity.

The film takes place during two crucial chapters in Brian Wilson’s life, the first taking place during the mid-1960s at the height of the Beach Boys’ success and the second taking place during the mid-1980s at a low point of his personal and professional life. Paul Dano plays a young Wilson, who hit a creative apex that resulted in the recording of the album Pet Sounds while the rest of the Boys were touring in Japan. John Cusack plays Wilson as an older man, whose life is spontaneously altered forever when he meets his future wife Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks) in a Cadillac dealership.

All three of these central performances are career-bests for the respective actors. Dano has been known to play creepy or generally off-putting types in the past but his ebullient turn here as a young man reaching unparalleled creative heights is a true joy to watch. Likewise, Cusack digs deeper into his “sad sack” persona and in turn, culls a gentle grace from an older and wiser Wilson. But it may be Banks, known mainly for her comedic roles, who delivers the strongest performance as a woman who has many opportunities to leave Wilson amid his dilemmas but chooses to fight from pure devotion on his behalf.

As the two timelines are interwoven throughout the narrative, the tone also alternates congruently with the emotions of the characters in each time period. To accentuate this, there are also impressionistic scenes that detail the kind of sonic hallucinations that Wilson encountered while struggling with mental health issues (in fact, the film opens on a black screen while one of these sound collages plays underneath). Editor Dino Jonsäter does a superb job of tying these story elements together to make a cohesive and consistent narrative that is easy to follow throughout.

The film does occasionally slide into convention, mainly during times where it feels like characters are reading excerpts from Brian Wilson’s Wikipedia page. Another issue is the early lip syncing, which is generally unconvincing and did take me out of the experience for brief moments. I much preferred the portions that Dano performed himself, as he replicates Wilson’s unique timbre beautifully. Genuine touches like that make Love & Mercy an inspiring and heartfelt tribute to one of pop music’s greatest legacies.

It Follows is a refreshing and engrossing new entry into the modern horror genre, centering around scenes that patiently built up dread as opposed to going for easy, knee-jerk scares. It has an intentional and almost disorienting throwback sensibility to it, recalling the chills of genre classics like Jaws and Halloween while still blazing a unique stylistic path of its own. Frankly, I wouldn’t classify it as an especially “scary” movie in the traditional sense, but rather a supremely creepy film that takes a relatively simple conceit and wrings it dry for maximum suspense.

The story centers around a young girl named Jay (Maika Monroe, who also starred in last year’s The Guest) and a curse that she contracts after having sex with the mysterious new guy in town (Jake Weary). After their encounter, he explains that she will now be stalked on foot relentlessly by a shape-shifting entity that is only visible to her until she “passes it on” to her next sexual partner. With the help of her friends, including her long time childhood crush Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Jay must find a way to counter the unstoppable force as it pursues her at walking speed with a zombie-like level of persistence.

David Robert Mitchell, who previously wrote and directed the sweetly nostalgic Myth of the American Sleepover, recontextualizes his earlier film’s themes of sexual anxiety and adolescent metamorphosis within the framework of a chilling campfire tale. Once again, he proves that he has a knack for writing believable dialogue for teenagers and also displays an uncommon level of empathy for his characters, which is crucial for any horror movie to be a true success. These kids are thankfully much smarter than they’re typically allowed to be in movies like this, which allows us to root for them instead of shouting at them on the screen.

Mitchell, along with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, also inject It Follows with visual flare that is subtle but incredibly effective. The camerawork often mirrors the patient efforts of the film’s antagonist, using slow and measured movements to sneak up on characters or draw our attention to apparitions that may or may not be lurking in the distance. I was particularly fond of a scene where the gang goes to a high school and instead of the following them each step, the camera stops at a center point and slowly rotates fully around multiple times to give us brief glimpses of the entity (or is it?) in the background.

Another huge asset to the film’s success is the memorable score by Rich Vreeland, which nicely amplifies the tension with its jolting synthesizer stabs that favorably recall Bernard Herrmann’s work on Psycho. Somehow, this movie is even able to include passages from  T.S. Eliot and Dostoyevsky in a way that’s not nearly as pretentious as it could have been. Bold choices and details like these make It Follows one of the most richly inspired and downright fun horror movies that’s come out it quite a while.

Set in the brutal winter of 1981 in New York City, the terrific new film A Most Violent Year covers a troubled time in the city’s history which saw record numbers for murders and violent crimes citywide. Fittingly, it maintains a chillingly tense atmosphere where the threat of violence is always high and the sense of desperation and danger is overwhelming. In his third and best effort as a director, J.C. Chandor uses this setting to tell a gripping morality tale about hardships of honest ambition and the overwhelming temptation to give into corruption.

In yet another impressive leading role, Oscar Isaac plays Abel Morales, the struggling owner of a heating oil company on the verge of collapse due to his truck drivers routinely getting ambushed by an unknown band of assailants. In a last ditch effort to save the business, he attempts to secure a sought-after waterfront property through a 1.5 million dollar down payment but due to his company’s complicated legal history, he finds that there isn’t a bank in town who will loan the necessary funds. To add to Abel’s surmounting stress,  his wife Anna, played with ruthless vigor by Jessica Chastain, threatens to get her infamous mobster father involved with their affairs if Abel is unable to sort things out himself.

The chemistry between Isaac and Chastain is outstanding and gives the movie a tempestuous core on which the rest of the story hinges. Their power dynamic constants fluctuates but in small and subtle ways. Abel is an honorable businessman who knows how to fight fair but is woefully unprepared to retaliate against the criminals who threaten his well-being. Anna respects her husband but grows unwilling to tolerate his seeming lack of commitment to do all that is necessary to protect their way of life. Naturally, confrontations arise between the two and their struggle to simultaneously understand and push one another leads to dialogue that reveals depths of disparity between their characters.

Despite its title, A Most Violent Year is not an especially violent film but that aspect lends itself to part of its brilliance: it’s the constant, impending threat of violence around every corner that is much more captivating than endless shootouts or bloody showdowns. It doesn’t fetishize violence in the way that some action movies can but instead, it treats it as an inevitable force capable of reshaping the mindsets of even the most principled and respectable of men. Its corrupting presence looms over every frame and almost feels like a main character in the movie itself.

Cinematographer Bradford Young, who also shot the sublime Selma last year, contributes to this air of menace with wide shots of snowy landscapes that have characters frequently guarding themselves against the elements. The music by Alex Ebert also fills things out nicely as well, with ominous organ and synth tones that are reminiscent of Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-winning Interstellar score from last year. Everything comes together to make A Most Violent Year a most compelling tale of ambition and survival amongst the most strenuous of circumstances.

The new Swedish film Force Majeure is an unexpected powerhouse, deftly blending moments of engaging introspection with surprising bits of dark humor to create a thrillingly original tale of marriage and mistrust. The film’s devilishly clever title, literally “superior force”, is a clause commonly found in contracts that refers to a freak, unavoidable accident that exonerates both parties from fulfilling an agreement. Indeed, the main characters are met with an chaotic and unforeseen incident but it’s the chilly aftermath of that event that is the true focus of the film’s narrative.

We are introduced to Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) as they find themselves in the French Alps for a week-long skiing trip with their two children. While eating lunch on the hotel balcony one afternoon, a controlled avalanche creeps dangerously close to the restaurant and the patrons initial reaction of wonderment devolves quickly into mass hysteria. A panicked Tomas makes an instinctual dash of self-preservation, which leaves an incredulous Ebba to protect the children on her own. While the physical threat of the avalanche is later revealed to be a false alarm, a metaphorical avalanche of doubt and misconception begins to slowly threaten the relationship between Tomas and Ebba.

“Slowly” is the key word here, as director Ruben Östlund displays tremendous patience in generating scenarios during which the two characters can suss out what happened on the balcony that day. I was struck by how intently the camera focuses on the faces of the actors as they subtly confront one another about their reactions to the seemingly life-threatening event. Instead of just having Tomas and Ebba talk with just each other the entire film, he not only includes other pairs of couples during theses conversations but chooses to linger on their awkward and uncomfortable facial expressions to break the tension.

The two leads are fantastic here, as Kuhnke constructs a naturalistic portrait of crumbling masculinity and Kongsli conveys notes of mounting insecurity with considerable nuance. Kristofer Hivju, of Game of Thrones fame, also turns in a very funny performance as a sort of devil’s advocate who defends the virtue of Tomas’ intentions but does well to point out to Ebba that he would have personally reacted with more courage if he had been placed in the same situation. I should also say that child actors don’t very often get much credit but children in this film (real life brother and sister Clara and Vincent Wettergren) do a convincing job with some tricky material.

While the film builds nicely to a cathartic climax, it does stumble to find its footing afterwards. There are about 2 or 3 different moments that felt like sufficient stopping points but instead, the actual ending comes abruptly with a puzzling last exchange of dialogue. Nevertheless, Force Majeure is a thoughtful and bizarrely funny look at the failure of the male ego and the slow climb of redemption up the mountain of patriarchal expectations.

Documentaries can serve many roles: they can inform, they can influence and yes, they can bore. But some, like genre greats Hoop Dreams and Capturing the Friedmans, take a seed of an idea and pursue it with the dramatic precision of a fictional feature film. The result is an exquisite experience: watching a true story that feels like it’s being created before our eyes. That’s how I felt while watching The Overnighters, which I found to be one of the most compelling and transfixing documentaries that I’ve seen all year

The movie’s title refers to a program started by Pastor Jay Reinke at his church in Williston, North Dakota, which allows men who are effectively homeless to find shelter as they hope to take advantage of the rampant growth in the area’s fracking jobs. While this is clearly an overwhelming act of charity, Reinke’s plan soon comes under fire from a community whose recent population spike has also seen an increase in the number of felons and criminals residing in the small North Dakota town. When details of an Overnighter’s criminal past come to light, Reinke finds himself in a very public act of moral tug-of-war that threatens to erode his career and his family’s trust.

Even if you take the weighty and worthwhile topics of economic inequality and the nature of charity away from The Overnighters, you would still be left with a fascinating and deeply personal character study. Reinke is compelling for the same reason the main character in a fictional drama would be: we root for him and yet we can’t be entirely sure of his motivations. He consistently refers to himself as a deeply flawed man when confiding in the men that he shelters, although he generally comes off as a thoughtful, charismatic and generally kind person. “It’s easy to become a facade,” he states at the film’s opening, and we don’t fully learn the weight of what he means until the concluding moments of the story.

The entire structure of The Overnighters is similarly purposeful, which can be attributed to the keen eyes and ears of director Jesse Moss. In interviews, Moss has revealed that he originally went to Williston to capture the fracking story and how it affected the community but he shifted his story’s focus when learning of Pastor Reinke and his mission. This spontaneous shift in storytelling makes Moss’ film even more admirable, especially considering that Reinke’s culminating moment in the movie was almost entirely unplanned by the filmmaker.

I also admired Moss’ level headed approach to this material. This is a documentary potentially ripe for loads of political posturing but he gives each character room to express their thoughts and feelings freely instead of editing together a series of talking head interviews to hammer home a point. The Overnighters often plays like a parable for the cynical notion that “no good deed goes unpunished” but in Reinke’s case, the unravelling of that good deed reveals universal truths about the resiliency of the human spirit.

Most modern horror films don’t have as much patience or trust in their audience’s intelligence as The Babadook does. While most work on a surface level that mainly involve knee-jerk reactions and amped up music cues, there is a select class of films like this one that work on an intimate psychological level of dread and discomfort. For those reasons, among others, it stands out as one of the best horror movies of the past few years and certainly the most unique that I’ve seen this year.

Essie Davis stars as Amelia, a struggling widow and mother of a troubled seven-year-old named Samuel, played by Noah Wiseman. Through an early flashback, we find that Amelia’s husband Oskar, played by Benjamin Winspear, passed away the night of Samuel’s birth as he was rushing to drive Amelia to the emergency room. It’s made clear that the seven years of single parenthood haven’t been easy on either Amelia or Samuel and when a macabre pop-up book titled “Mister Babadook” begins appearing around the house, it unleashes the titular supernatural force that cruelly threatens to rob them of their sanity and their lives.

While the creature is only seen briefly during its moments in the film, its ominous silhouette alone creates a lasting impression and when seen in full, the Babadook reminded me most of a twisted combination of Nosferatu and Jack the Ripper. This archaic aesthetic is fitting, as the lighting and staging in the most climatic scenes feels like a throwback to silent era films. Even the majority of the effects are practical as opposed to computer generated, which lends a more realistic and grounded approach to scenes that may have otherwise come off as cheap or lazy.

Grounded is also a good word to use when describing the storytelling as well, which does involve supernatural elements like ghosts and monsters but is rich with subtext on human issues like the persistence of grief and the hardships of single parenthood. Amelia’s feelings of resentment and exhaustion towards Samuel exist long before the Babadook arrives in their home and director Jennifer Kent does a great job at materializing these impulses in a way that feels psychologically convincing and dramatically satisfying. While some scenes may be a bit too on-the-nose when tying the allegorical elements together, it’s hard to fault a debut film that’s striving to push an entire genre into more narratively complex territory.

It’s difficult, too, to understate the importance of Essie Davis’ performance to the film’s success. She’s a marvel to watch, conveying depths of anguish and rage underneath the guise of a mother trying to put on her best face for her child. When moments of brutal honesty do arrive, Davis delivers them with a frightening amount of conviction. She, along with director Jennifer Kent, have created a very special scare-fest that I hope will haunt audiences for years to come.

Dan Gilroy’s dynamic directorial debut Nightcrawler finds Jake Gyllenhaal in the middle of a fascinating character study that also manages to operate as a first-rate crime thriller and a piece of well-tempered social commentary. Gyllenhaal finds one of his very best roles in Louis Bloom and he crafts a visceral and vicious performance that should merit Oscar consideration in the coming months. Bloom is, above all, an opportunist. He observes the world from a detached, objective point of view devoid of any semblance of moral or ethical code. He steals anything from copper fencing to an unattended bicycle with no remorse and the sole intention of getting ahead of the pack.

One evening, he happens upon a fiery car accident and takes intense interest in the video journalists that quickly swarm the scene. He engages one of the “nightcrawlers,” played by Bill Paxton, and soon enough, he finds himself hitting the Los Angeles streets with nothing more than a video camera and complete lack of journalistic integrity. After a series of increasingly provocative news tapes, he piques the interest of the city’s most desperate local news director, played by Rene Russo. He also takes on a struggling homeless man as his oft-berated and beleaguered assistant, played by Riz Ahmed.

Bloom’s obsessive workmanship often plays like the demented confluence of every self-help and success based audiobook played on repeat. He has every conversation as if it’s a job interview and even lectures a potential employer about promise of job loyalty from generations past not being afforded to the current job market. Clearly he has drive but it’s never made clear what he’s ultimately after. This kind of empty ambition seems like the making of a potentially dull character but Gyllenhaal somehow makes Bloom compulsively watchable throughout, much like the footage that his character films every night.

Gilroy makes it clear that we’re in antihero territory throughout this film and as that’s the case, it boasts the kind of narrative thrust and frantic unpredictability of other genre greats like Taxi Driver and There Will Be Blood. We are shown these men doing, saying and thinking terrible things, but we can’t look away. We want to see them get it but we’re also still somehow rooting for them, if only for the fact that the director has taken away all other rooting interests. I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of car chase scenes but I would count the one in the film’s third act as one of the year’s most effective, mainly because I still cared about Lou’s fate throughout.

My main misgiving with Nightcrawler comes down to the music score by James Newton Howard, who is obviously an accomplished film composer but simply out of his element here. The electric guitar motif on the title track is far too hopeful and proud to represent a character like Bloom and oboe/string combination that underlies a scene between Gyllenhaal and Russo is incredibly maudlin and unnecessary. In fact, I would have preferred more scenes with less or no music to interfere with Gilroy’s well-crafted dialogue. That aside, Nightcrawler is a transfixing thriller with plenty to recommend.