Hong Sang-soo's two-part narrative in Tale of Cinema examines the cinema's effect on how we view love and see ourselves and others in relationships.  The tonal shift between the film-within-a-film to the film outside the film is abrupt and serves as an acute reminder that when all films come to an end, we are left suspended in the darkness to navigate through our own moral quandaries in the real world.  The endless series of small, repetitious interactions lead to misunderstandings and misperceptions and a film that is quietly observant of the ebbs and flows of human interaction.  This may be the breeziest and most unassuming of the four Hong films I've seen, but the emotions and revelations lurking beneath are among his most fascinating discoveries.

Knowing what little I knew about Gregg Araki - most notably that his Doom Generation was among the worst films ever made - I was appalled at the beauty and acuity with which he approached the controversial topic of child molestation.  The two separate stories - one of a boy who's self-hatred has led him down the path of prostitution and the other whose warped memories have him convinced he was abducted by aliens - converge  in one of the year's strangest and most heartfelt encounters.  At times it's difficult to watch, but the extent to which both boys struggle to confront and come to terms with their past makes it all worthwhile.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt's commanding screen presence (yes, this is that kid from Third Rock from the Sun) holds things together and Araki's impressive camerawork and creative color scheme paints an expressive tableau of the struggle in confronting our former selves and its necessity in growing as an individual.

Noah Baumbach's semi-autobiographical account of the disastrous effects of divorce on the traditional family unit has been called an assault on his father by a number of critics, but this complaint seems utterly silly in light of the complex and layered ways he shows its effect on even the most minor characters.  Daniel's performance as  the pretentious intellectual father suggests not his one-dimensionality, but the myriad of ways which remaining aloof in the bubble of academia  can ultimately be emotionally destructive.  His relationship with  his oldest son makes up the core of the film, but the multiple, ever-changing aliances between the once tight-nit foursome form a complex web of secrets and lies that implode in the finale resulting in one of the years most emotionally honest and tender films.

Heralded as the next John Cassavetes by the likes of Ray Carney, Andrew Bujalski's talky and not-so-hilarious Funny Ha Ha cuts through the bullshit in a way that few young filmmakers have figured out.  It's low-budget and not much happens, but the preciseness of the dialogue, the tone of his actors and the lingering gaze of the camera presents the confusion and ennui experienced by many a post-collegiate twenty-something.  At the forefront is the characters inability to articulate their discontent and confusion in the face of the mounting pressure to instantly become "mature adults" and while this could easily have veered into the banal, the delicate, attentive manner that he focuses on Marnie's attempts to find a place in the world perfectly express her inner turmoil.  The films deceptively simple approach leads not to personal epiphanies or discoveries, but a constant stream of disappointments and awkward conversations that evokes the mundanity of life after college and the difficult transition into adulthood.

Kings and Queen interweaves the comic and tragic is such original and exciting ways that it seems to have created a genre all to itself.  At once intensely "French" and genuinely humane, this is one of those films  where you never know where you're headed, but it always feels right on a purely intuitive, rather than plotted, way.  This is not to say it's not exceptionally organized as the editing and screenplay are among the years best, but that it's layering of human interactions against such vastly different backgrounds as a father dying of cancer on the one hand and a man mistakenly committed to an insane asylum on the other,  is seemingly simple yet so emotionally satisfying that its 150-minutes pass by in the blink of an eye.  Where so many lame films use the "you'll laugh, you'll cry", this one lives and breathes it and the brilliant performances of Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric (not to mention Catherine Deneuve whose lovely presence is always a plus) form the heart which makes this film beat.

Whatever you want to call Van Sant's style in his latest three films (heightened realism, perhaps?), they have such a unique sense of rhythm, taking the cadence of his vaguely formed characters and viewing and reviewing them from a careful distance and from a variety of angles.  With Last Days, my personal favorite of the trilogy, although Elephant is a masterpiece in its own right, Van Sant transforms the vision of a true icon - one whose look is ingrained in the American consciousness - into a ghost lingering in a state of non-existence before quietly exiting the world.  As in Elephant, Last Days focuses less on causes than effects, the events themselves rather than the psychology behind them, thus forcing the viewer to account for their significance and carefully construct their own opinions of Blake, what lead him here, and what is eating away at him.  As the film's time constantly folds back on itself only to bolt forward and jump back again, the immense complexity of even the most simple setups becomes evident and Van Sant's decision to present only their essence rather than placing them within an overarching rigid and definitive context shows him as both supremely generous and artfully brilliant.  This use of time-looping, a technique featured even more prominently in Elephant, is used throughout to recontexualize certain moments and events, offering different ways of seeing and pinpointing the extreme subjectivity that would drive a more traditional narrative film into banality and gross oversimplifications.  The camera is ever-observant, yet never judgmental, leaving ample room for the viewer to roam and interact with the images and emotions brought to the screen.  As a film focusing on a suicidal rock musician, the intricacy of the sound design adds even more resonance.  From distant church bells to serene noises of nature to the few rock music pieces that do show up, there is a constant interplay between sound and image, at times presenting Blake's junk-induced reality and other times fighting against what we see.  As empty and disinterested as the film may seem at first glance, once you make the necessary initial jump, it's quite an invigorating and rewarding experience.

Terrence Malick's latest film is unapologetically romantic in its vision of love amidst the crumbling of a natural paradise lost to the imperialistic impulses of the Europeans, but the tragic story that unfolds is one perfectly suited for this treatment.  Q'Orianka Kilcher is the film's soul and feels so at home among the gorgeous images in the first act that her transformation into the proper colonialized Englishwoman feels all the more powerful.  So convincing is the love between Smith and Pocahontas that her journey to move on and find a place in the other new world propels the film from its magical depiction of Eden in the opening to the overwhelmingly bittersweet montage that concludes it.  Malick's imagery is not just for show and his contrasting of landscapes is particularly relevant to it's themes.  The unfettered natural beauty where Pocahontas and Smith fell in love is replaced by the man-built stone buildings and controlled, neatly-trimmed shrubbery and when the two find themselves face to face after all those years, it is as they only met in another dimension.  The realization that their love, once so free and pure, is now dead is matched by the intensity of her newfound devotion to her child and husband.  That she is no longer the innocent child we met in the beginning and is now contained within the society responsible for destroying her people is a tough pill to swallow, but her core remains strong and untouched by the immense changes.  The furious montage that ends the film, accompanied by the recurring Wagner piece, reminds us of her immense strength and inner beauty and functions as a melancholy revery of a time when nature provided a spiritual sustenance that could not be replaced by religious or social order.