Flicks with The Film Snob

The Film Snob names his favorite films of the past year.

It was a good year for movies, if your viewing is not confined to Hollywood films. Many of the best reflected the unease of our times.

Here is…

A Parisian woman who has survived a mass shooting feels compelled to remember the traumatic event that she has blocked out.

Revoir Paris is the latest film from French director Alice Winocour. I’ve …

The matter-of-fact depiction of the family life of the commandant of Auschwitz conveys our horrifying capacity of living with and condoning the greatest evil.

The Zone of Interest is the name of the …

In 1877, the owners of a Swiss clock and watch factory constantly time their employees’ performance, while the workers organize one of the first anarchist communes.

Swiss filmmaker Cyril Schäublin ha…

Two 12-year-olds with crushes on each other are separated when the girl’s family emigrates from South Korea to Canada. 24 years later, the boy, now an adult, travels to America to see her again.

Past…

Clouzot’s 1947 crime film is an apt portrait of the complex and difficult urban life in postwar France.

Quai des Orfèvres was the third film by French director Henri-Georges Clouzot, released in 1947…

A drama about a boy’s troubles is presented from three different points of view, and we see how judgment from appearances prevents our understanding.

For some time it’s been evident that Hirokazu Kor…

Aki Kaurismäki continues his devotion to stories about lonely people looking for connection in this low-key drama about two working class people who almost don’t get together.

Aki Kaurismäki has made…

The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki comes out of retirement to present a fantasy adventure about a boy seeking to work through the loss of his mother.

Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s preeminent creato…

The story of a paid assassin’s quest to get even with a client who tried to have him killed is a bracing satire on the modern culture of violence.

The hit man. The professional assassin. How many suc…

In the late 19th century, a Danish Lutheran priest is sent to Iceland to build a church, but the overwhelming power of nature threatens to destroy his plans.

Godland is a film by the Icelandic write…

Tom Hardy portrays Britain’s most violent prison inmate, a man who refuses to cooperate.

Bronson, the film from 2008 directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, is based on the life of an actual criminal name…

An actress studies a woman who was the subject of a scandal involving sex with an underage person, in order to play her in a movie.

It’s hard to believe that American director Todd Haynes has been ma…

The guests at a wealthy dinner party find themselves unable to leave the premises, in Luis Buñuel’s satiric fable.

Spanish director Luis Buñuel went into exile from his native land after Franco’s mi…

Martin Scorsese’s latest film dramatizes the true story of a series of murders in 1920s Oklahoma, in which the Osage Indians were targeted for wealth gained from oil being found on their land.

Martin…

The husband of a famous author falls to his death, and the wife is prosecuted for murder, in a film about the conflicting truths of intimate relationships.

Film marketers and critics always try to fi…

The great American singer and activist reveals the fear, insecurity, and private struggles of her inner life that lay behind her public persona.

When the singer Joan Baez was planning a farewell tour…

A Jewish teenager dreams of acting and romance and the future, and she lives in Nazi-occupied Paris.

A Radiant Girl, the first feature written and directed by the veteran French actress Sandrine Kib…

Laurence Olivier’s 1948 version of Shakespeare’s great tragedy won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor.

Laurence Olivier was one of the 20th century’s greatest Shakespearean actors. He also direct…

A man tries to reach his troubled son from a previous marriage, learning his own shortcomings as a father in the process.

A couple of years ago, Florian Zeller directed a film version of a play that …