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There are plenty of great movie critics out there, but only a couple share Roger Ebert’s dedication to cinema. Ebert made it his mission to make not just movies but movie criticism accessible to the public by discussing it in the simplest yet moving terms. Even after he was diagnosed with a debilitating sickness, he continued to write. Director Steve James (The Interrupters, Hoop Dreams) understood that on a deep level, and so made Life Itself just as available to everyone, from diehard Ebert fans to the most casual moviegoer. Like Ebert himself, the film is smart but never offputting, wide-reaching but deeply personal. Most of all, it’s inspiring--unflinching but inspiring. We should be so lucky to view films, and indeed people and life itself, through Ebert and James’ point of view.

War Witch is depressing to watch. Having to choose between killing your parents yourself versus having them killed in a worse fashion by someone else is a cruel selection no child deserves to make, and War Witch poses that selection literally within the first five minutes, inspired by the real life recruitment mechanisms of child soldiers in Africa. But what makes the film still worth watching is the way writer-director Kim Nguyen focuses on how, despite everything, Komona clings to her humanity, albeit through the supernatural vision manifesting from a mix of hallucinogens and grief. War Witch won’t be an easy watch for most viewers, but it’s a unique story that has to be told, and we’re glad Nguyen rose up to the task.

While adoption doesn’t have the same stigma as it did back in the day, it doesn’t mean that the process is worry-free. There’s still a host of issues surrounding the process, plenty of which have been depicted in film. So, it’s no surprise that True Mothers holds more or less the same themes we’ve seen before, but where some films focus on mining the melodrama, filmmaker Naomi Kawase’s writing is much more restrained, keeping its take as naturalistic and detail-oriented as possible, and thus, demystifying the process. The slow pace may not be to everyone’s taste, but True Mothers is a thoughtful, sensitive portrayal of Japan’s adoption system today.

If there’s one obvious thing that keeps Kano from becoming great, it’s the fact that it takes a little over three hours just to get through. It certainly can be trimmed down by a lot, but going through the three hours isn’t too bad of a time, seeing as it celebrates the real life Taiwanese baseball team through a feel-good, if a bit familiar, underdog story of a small island team winning against some of Japan’s best high school rosters. The film shines when it focuses on baseball– It feels like you’re actually in the stands of the arena, with the matches moving the plot forward and realistically hammering home the love of the sport. That being said, the backstory of the characters plays out in a melodramatic fashion, and while it does depict some of the racism the team faced, the film seems to be reluctant on commenting on the immediate parallels to Japan’s colonization of Taiwan. For better or worse, Kano prioritizes the sport to the detriment of every other plotline.

While today’s moviegoers would likely pick Black Swan as the ballet film of choice, there is one film classic that brings the title of the best ballet film in contention. That is The Red Shoes. It first divided critics of film and ballet alike, but as time went by, the spectacular drama from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger deservedly garnered acclaim for the brilliant, novel ways of bridging the gap between art forms. Of course, the most obvious of this is the lush, stunning 17-minute dance sequence that first incorporated dynamic camera movement to the choreography, and captured Han Christian Andersen’s story to its essentials. But aside from just depicting the dance, The Archers reconfigured every other single aspect of film to bend toward the movement without breaking the beauty of every shot– the scoring, the casting, the production design, and the ballet-within-a-film plotline. It’s because of this that The Red Shoes garnered a legacy of being one of the best ballet films, one of the best British films, and even one of the greatest films ever made.

What would you do if your parents were Nazis? Based on the second novella of Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room, Lore tells the story of a Nazi officer’s children travelling together after the Allied victory. It’s a harrowing journey, of course, given the end of the war. But writer-director Cate Shortland takes that journey even further, as she pushes the children through terrible situations in such stunning naturalistic shots. The contrast makes it seem that while everything has gone right for the world, it’s only inevitable to dish out societal shunning towards them, but Shortland still manages a tightrope balance between empathizing with the kids, while still acknowledging the natural weight of the guilt, the shame of having benefitted, even if not complicit, in one of the world’s worst atrocities ever committed. It’s because of this that Lore is such an intriguing, complex, but necessary movie to watch.

Based on a stage play of the same name, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a masterful example of how vital blocking is in movies. The film takes place in a few locations--a New England home, the yard, and a roadhouse a few miles away--and is shot in simple black and white. There are only four characters here. And yet, the film feels dynamic, volcanic even--every scene erupts with so much anger, passion, love, and frustration. The characters move about like they’re in a highly charged dance, and each of their lines feels like a dagger straight to the heart. You could easily see how this worked as a play, but Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Charlie Wilson's War) translates it smartly into film. The camera is as restless as the characters, and each frame is a thoughtful decision of what to show and what not to show, betraying their actual ignorance despite their academia. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? remains a classic for a reason: it set the standard for a lot of dialogue-heavy, raw-honest films these days, but it’s also simply a riot to watch.

At first glance, Drug War is basically just what it says on the tin– cops crack down on kingpins, lords, and lackeys to save regular people from illegal addictive substances. Even the drug lord-cop dynamic would be a familiar plotline for crime thriller fans. But through this familiar plotline, Hong Kong director Johnnie To takes his first mainland China production to subtly comment on the dynamics between his native region and the larger country, taking the contrast to craft simmering tension each time Choi Tin-ming lies to his allies to save his skin. It’s less action-packed than To’s usual, but the subtext and the shift in style makes Drug War a surprisingly dynamic take on the crime thriller scene.

It won’t be a surprise that a movie titled Violent Cop would have a police officer smacking people left and right. But upon its release, Violent Cop surprised viewers when comedian Beat Takeshi took it upon himself to direct a moody, serious neo-noir where blood splatters come sparingly, knives are drawn on occasion, and the camera is much more interested in lingering between the men inflicting violence rather than flashy choreography– and somehow end up with a pretty solid effort. The film does have a somewhat familiar plot, but its bleak, depressing portrayal of how mundane violence has become makes Violent Cop such a brutal debut to watch.