You don’t think you want to watch a seven-hour mid-1960s Soviet adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace , but I’m here to tell you that you do, actually.

The latest movie from acclaimed documentary filmmakers Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV, called Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets , was a sensation at last year’s Sundance Festival, and when you step back and look at what they’ve done, it’s kind of astonishing.

Miranda July began her career as a performance artist, but I hadn’t heard of her until she directed her first film, 2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know , a movie that still sticks in my mind with its strangeness, charm, and empathy. She followed that up with The Future , in 2011, which was at least equally strange, but much more difficult emotionally. And now, she’s released Kajillionaire , which has been billed as a heist movie, although it’s not, exactly… although it is, sort of.

It’s the end of the year… but it’s the end of this year, so rather than a usual best-of list, I bring you: the top five movies I saw this year—from any era—that gave me the most enjoyment . Because goodness gracious, we’ve needed to find that where we could.

To talk about Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom , we’ll begin at the end. The very last scene of the film is not in August Wilson’s original play, but it’s a gut punch that reminds us of the pervasive theft of black culture, and that what might appear anodyne could be covering layers of struggle and pain. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in 1920s Chicago, and tells a fictional story of the recording of the titular song by the very real “Mother of the Blues,” Ma Rainey, and her band. It thankfully doesn’t

Before this year, the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon had produced three feature films, all of which were nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. All three were magnificent, but their newest, Wolfwalkers , may well be their most accomplished yet and has to be a lock for another nomination.

Back when I was in college, one of my classes was talking about Christmas movies, and a guy in there railed against essentially all of them, saying that, at their root, they were all about acquisition and consumption. To his credit, he made good arguments, even if he’s clearly wrong, but my favorite part of the whole ordeal was when he was asked if he thought there were any good Christmas movies. Without missing a beat, he replied, “ The Ice Storm. ” Me, I’m not a Christmas movie nut, but there

The Danish film Another Round , like a lot of great movies about people, is fairly simple on its face. Four middle-aged men, all of them high school teachers, decide to test a theory that humans live with a blood alcohol level that’s actually just a bit too low. This goes about as you might expect—the men begin by having a glass or two of wine before work, and maybe a bit during the day, just to keep a constant slight intoxication, and that’s pretty successful. They’re more engaged with their

It’s become clear to me that other people are way more into Christmas movies than I am. That’s not to say I don’t like them, it’s just that every year it seems like there’s something almost everyone is talking about that I’m surprised almost everyone is talking about.

Last week, Amazon Prime began airing a series of five films from the British director Steve McQueen, who’s best known for winning Best Picture at the Oscars with 12 Years a Slave . The anthology looks at the black experience in the U.K., primarily of West Indian immigrants in the 1970s and ‘80s. It’s called Small Axe , a reference to an African proverb that says, “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe,” and that you may remember from the Bob Marley song. I’ve seen the first two movies,