I had a terrific movie year — you? I saw hundreds of new films with a variety of plots and styles made on every imaginable scale and budget. Some were from newcomers like A.V. Rockwell and others from the ever-new Martin Scorsese. Some you’ve heard of or will, while others scarcely made a ripple. Some were released by independents like A24 and the tiny KimStim; others came from tech companies and still others from what are now often called legacy studios, a vaguely eulogistic term that suggests influence but also obsolescence.

这一年我的观影体验非常棒——你呢？我看了几百部情节和风格各异的新电影，制作规模和预算各不相同。有些是A·V·洛克威尔等新人的作品，还有一些来自长盛不衰的马丁·斯科塞斯等人。有些你已经听说或者将会听说，也有些几乎没有激起任何水花。有些是由A24和小型的KimStim等独立公司发行；也有些来自科技公司，还有一些来自现在通常被称为“老牌片厂”的地方，这是一个模糊的赞美词，暗示着影响力，但也暗示着过时。

The movies have ostensibly been at death’s door at least since the shift to sync sound, which isn’t to undersell the industry’s business woes. When the year began, it was still recovering from pandemic-forced shutdowns and slowdowns. “As 2023 Begins, Worry and Fear Linger After a Topsy-Turvy Year,” The Hollywood Reporter fretted, calling the ups and downs of the 2022 box office “dramatic.” Yet some Wall Street analysts were bullish on moviegoing. “We’re seeing a resurgence of interest back in the theaters,” one analyst told Yahoo in late January. I had just returned from the bounty at the Sundance Film Festival and was feeling bullish, too.

至少从转向音画同步时期开始，电影就一直被人声称处于死亡的边缘，但这么说不等于无视这个产业面临的经营困境。今年年初，电影业仍然没有从疫情导致的停工和减速中恢复过来。《好莱坞报道者》(The Hollywood Reporter)担忧地说：“2023年伊始，经历了混乱的一年，担忧和恐惧仍然挥之不去。”该报称2022年票房的起起落落是“惊人的”。然而，一些华尔街分析师看好影院观影市场。一名分析师在1月底对雅虎表示：“我们看到人们对影院重新燃起了兴趣。”当时我刚从圣丹斯电影节看完电影回来，也觉得前景看好。

As winter gave way to spring and summer, several of my favorite movies had been released in theaters and I had previewed several others at Cannes, where I had again been buoyed by what I had seen. At the same time, the drumbeat of worrying industry news continued when the Writers Guild went on strike on May 2 and several sure-bet blockbusters failed to charm audiences into theaters. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was “cursed,” read one headline; “‘Mission: Impossible 7’ falls short of expectations,” ran another. The moaning in the trades gave way to klaxon horns when much of SAG-AFTRA went on strike on July 14. Two days later Barry Diller, who once ran Paramount, warned that the strikes could lead to the industry’s “absolute collapse.” Five days later, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened.

That phenom dubbed Barbenheimer buoyed the box office, the strikes ended, and here we are. It’s tempting to repeat William Goldman’s axiom that “nobody knows anything” and leave it at that. Except that this year also reminded us of some things that we have known for a while, including that women directors can make any kind of movie, from the intimately scaled to larger-than-life productions that become monster hits. This year also reminded us that a mass audience will happily get out of the house for movies without superheroes. And, on occasion, it won’t show up for movies with them, which was evident after disappointments from both the DC and Marvel studios as “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash,” “Blue Beetle” and “The Marvels” sputtered in theaters.

那个发明“芭本海默”这个戏称的奇才提振了票房，罢工结束，情况就是这样。人们很想重申威廉·戈德曼的那句格言：“所有人都一无所知，”然后就此打住。不过，今年也提醒了我们一些我们早已知道的事情，包括女导演可以拍任何类型的电影，从怡情小品到惊天动地的大作。今年也提醒我们，广大观众会乐于走出家门，去看没有超级英雄的电影。而有时候有超级英雄却没人要看，这在DC和漫威工作室的《蚁人与黄蜂女：量子狂潮》(Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania)、《雷霆沙赞：众神之怒》(Shazam: Fury of the Gods)、《闪电侠》(The Flash)、《蓝甲虫》(Blue Beetle)和《惊奇队长》(The Marvels)在影院遭遇惨败之后，就已经很明显了。

Two other words that popped up regularly in the news this year were “superhero fatigue,” which should have surprised absolutely no one. Old Hollywood embraced genre films but it also banked on variety, churning out musicals, westerns, dramas, comedies, historical epics, detective and gangster tales and genre hybrids. Some were interchangeable; others had fresh stories, distinctive visual styles and authorial flourishes. Now, though, the big studios are largely in the business of action-adventure franchises and serials; they bank on similarity, not variety. As of Nov. 30, half of this year’s top 20 grossing domestic releases fall in the action-adventure category, including a clutch of superhero flicks.

今年新闻中经常出现的另外一个词是“超级英雄疲劳”，这应该不会让人感到惊讶。旧的好莱坞喜欢类型片，但也重视多样性，不断推出音乐剧、西部片、剧情片、喜剧、史诗、侦探和黑帮故事，以及各种类型的混合片。有些是千篇一律的；也有一些拥有新鲜的故事、独特的视觉风格和华丽的作者电影风格。但现在，大型电影公司主要推出动作冒险大片和系列大片；它们依靠的是相似性，而不是多样性。截至11月30日，今年票房收入最高的20部美国影片中，有一半属于动作冒险类，其中包括一些超级英雄电影。

The mass turnout for both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” has been credited to everything from timing to originality, their meme-ability and people’s fear of missing out. Whatever the reasons for their success — and talent played a part, too — they proved that those Wall Street analysts bullish on moviegoing were onto something. That’s what else this year reminded us, and what I’m reminded of each week: Films can be great! They can embrace genre, play with it, transcend it. Their stories and their telling can be diverse, their quality thrilling, their art transporting. There’s more to movies than the industry, its crises and convulsions. In 1951, David O. Selznick, the producer of “Gone With the Wind,” rued that “there might have been good movies if there had been no movie industry.” The thing is, there have always been good movies despite the industry but, then, I’m a shameless optimist — I’m a film critic.

《芭比》和《奥本海默》的热映可以归结于各种因素，从时机、创意、它们制造米姆的能力，到人们害怕错过的心态。不管成功的原因是什么——才华也起了一定作用——它们证明了那些看好影院行情的华尔街分析师是有道理的。这也是我们今年得到的提醒，也是我每周都在得到的提醒：电影可以很棒！它可以接受类型，玩转类型，超越类型。它的故事和讲述可以是多种多样的，它的品质可以激动人心，它的艺术可以引人入胜。电影的魅力远不止于电影业，以及这个行业的危机和动荡。1951年，《乱世佳人》(Gone With the Wind)的制片人戴维·塞尔兹尼克曾哀叹道，“如果没有了电影工业，也许好电影就会出现。”问题是，不管这个行业如何，好电影总会出现，但我是一个不怕羞的乐观主义者——我是一个影评人。

Here are my favorite movies of the year, all of which opened (or will open) theatrically in the United States.

以下是我今年最喜欢的电影，它们都在美国影院上映（或即将上映）。

In this harrowing epic, Scorsese revisits a murderous crime spree perpetrated by white Americans — lovers and friends, ranchers and bankers, local lawmen and federally appointed guardians — against oil-rich members of the Osage Nation. The emotional center is an unspeakably cruel story of love and betrayal, a baroque conspiracy fueled by greed and an unshakable belief in white superiority. Manifest Destiny makes a hell of a gangster movie. (In theaters)

在这部令人痛心的史诗片中，斯科塞斯重新审视了一场由美国白人——恋人和朋友、农场主和银行家、当地法律人员和联邦政府指定的监护人——对石油丰富的奥塞奇部落犯下的凶残谋杀罪行。影片的情感中心是一个难以言喻的残酷故事，关乎爱与背叛，是一个由贪婪和对白人优越性的坚定信念推动的巴洛克式阴谋。“天定命运”（美国历史名词。指的是19世纪美国定居者所持有的一种信念，他们认为美国被上帝赋予了向西扩张至横跨北美洲大陆的天命。——译注）带来了一部出色的黑帮电影。（影院上映）

With his customary pointillist detail and monumental sweep, Nolan tracks J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb, from his tortured youth to later anguished years. Much of the film involves Oppenheimer’s role in researching and developing the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, world-defining catastrophes that eventually killed an estimated 100,000 to upward of 200,000 souls and helped usher in our self-annihilating, human-dominated age. (In theaters)

诺兰用他惯用的点彩画式的细节和宏大的画面追溯了被称为原子弹之父的J·罗伯特·奥本海默的人生，从饱受折磨的青年时代到后来的痛苦晚年。影片大部分内容都是关于奥本海默在研发“二战”期间投放在广岛和长崎的原子弹方面所扮演的角色，原子弹的投放是一场定义世界的灾难，最终导致大约10万至20万人死亡，并让我们进入了自我毁灭、人类主导的时代。（影院上映）

In this deeply pleasurable movie, Wiseman focuses on the Troisgros family, a dynasty of French chefs. Much of the film takes place in their celebrated restaurant-hotel in the Loire where the paterfamilias oversees a team that with love, ingenuity, choreography, sublime technique and a regard for the larger world create one astonishment after another for the delight and delectation of others — much like the genius behind the camera. (In theaters)

在这部令人愉悦的电影中，怀斯曼将镜头对准法国厨师世家——特鲁瓦格罗家族。影片的大部分场景发生在他们位于卢瓦尔河畔的著名酒店餐厅，在那里，家长们监督着一个团队，用爱心、创造力、编排、高超的技艺和对更大世界的关注，创造出一道又一道令人惊叹的美食，为他人带来极大的快乐与享受——本片摄像机背后的天才们也是如此。（影院上映）

In his startling and formally rigorous four-and-a-half-hour documentary, this British director (“Twelve Years a Slave”) uses everyday scenes from contemporary Amsterdam to map — street by street, address by address — the disastrous fate of the city’s Jewish population during World War II. The movie was written by Bianca Stigter, McQueen’s wife, and informed by her book “Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945.” (Opening Dec. 25 in theaters)

在这部长达四个半小时的纪录片中，这位曾拍摄《为奴十二年》(Twelve Years a Slave)的英国导演用当代阿姆斯特丹的日常场景，逐条街道、逐个地址地描绘了“二战”期间该市犹太人的悲惨命运。这部纪录片令人震惊，形式严谨，由麦奎因的妻子比安卡·斯蒂格特担任编剧，并参考了她的书《被占城市地图集——阿姆斯特丹1940—1945》(Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945)。(12月25日上映)

In her knockout feature debut, Rockwell follows a young woman (a wonderful Teyana Taylor) across the years — it opens in the mid-1990s — as she raises her son in a rapidly gentrifying New York. Rockwell was born and raised in Queens, and she has a deep feeling for the city and the people who, far from the corridors of power and despite the onslaughts of power’s rapacious mercenaries, have always given New York its lifeblood. (Stream it on Prime Video)

In the small fictional Southwest town where much of this movie takes place, worlds collide, a love story (or maybe two) blooms and fades, children outwit adults and an extraterrestrial makes a surprising touchdown. With dexterity and complexity, tenderness and deadpan delivery, meticulous technique and mesmerizing colors, Anderson plays with different media and performing arts for a story about storytelling that’s wry, comic and tragic. (Stream it on Peacock)

In this unsettling, perverse movie about that performance called life, an actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), visits the inspiration for her next movie. That would be Gracie (Julianne Moore), a homemaker who likes to bake cakes and happens to be an ex-con, having been imprisoned for having sex with an underage boy she later wed. (A terrific Charles Melton plays her tragic husband.) Things get very complicated, and then crushingly sad. (Stream it on Netflix)

Reichardt’s latest follows Lizzy (a delicately restrained and revelatory Michelle Williams), a sculptor in Portland, Ore., as she prepares a new gallery show while contending with friends, family, her very bad cat and a wounded pigeon. For Lizzy, making art is an act of self-creation and a way of being, which I suspect means that this lovely, modestly scaled movie is also somewhat of a directorial self-portrait. (Available for rent on most major platforms)

In this essayistic documentary, Preciado — a Spanish-born transgender philosopher and activist making his directing debut — uses Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography” as a springboard to explore the complexities and many cages of identity. Drawing on a wide range of sources and aided by 20 trans and nonbinary performers, Preciado has made a movie that’s playful, urgent and as intellectually inspiring as it is emotionally exhilarating. (In theaters)

作为出生于西班牙的跨性别哲学家兼活动人士，这部散文式纪录片是普雷西亚多的首部导演作品，他借用弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫的小说《奥兰多传》(Orlando: A Biography)为蓝本，探索了身份认同的复杂性和诸多束缚。普雷西亚多从大量素材中汲取了灵感，并在20位跨性别和非二元性别演员的帮助下，创作出这部有趣、真挚、启发性十足且很能调动情绪的影片。（上映中）

It’s 2019 when this understated, formally rigorous heartbreaker opens and the painfully young Lynn (Yao Honggui) is facing a series of daunting hurdles, including her rotten boyfriend, bickering parents, no job and an uncertain future. By the time the story ends it’s early 2020, everyone is wearing surgical masks and Lynn is exhausted, having tried every imaginable gig and hustle. She is also pregnant, and now has something of exchange value. (Streaming on Criterion)

Ten more: “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” “Earth Mama,” “Fallen Leaves,” “Ferrari,” “John Wick: Chapter 4,” “Past Lives” “R.M.N.,” “Scarlet,” “Will-O’-the-Wisp,” “Youth (Spring).”

This was the year of evil at the movies: gut-wrenching, bone-chilling, ordinary evil. It didn’t wear villainous capes, nor did it often arrive in the expected horror movie package. That’s why it was so terrifying.

这是电影中的邪恶之年：令人撕心裂肺、毛骨悚然的日常之恶。它没有披上罪恶的外衣，也并没有在恐怖电影的预期桥段中如约而至。而这正是它如此可怕的原因。

The movies this year posited that evil’s opposite isn’t goodness; it’s reality. Evil was something for men of science, like J. Robert Oppenheimer, to wrestle with, realizing that when the physical universe intersects with human ethics, no decision can really be neutral. Evil was discussed at Cannes in the news conference after “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a film about how barbarous civilization can be. In “The Zone of Interest,” unspeakable evil is obscured, willingly, by people who are just going about their everyday business. Bureaucratic language and euphemism keep them from having to acknowledge the horrors they’re perpetuating.

在今年的电影中，邪恶的预设对立面并非善良，而是现实。邪恶是让奥本海默这样的科学家陷入挣扎的事物，它令他们意识到，当物理宇宙与人类伦理相交，任何决定都不可能真正中立。邪恶是在戛纳电影节的《花月杀手》新闻发布会上被讨论的东西，这部电影讲述了文明可能是多么野蛮。在《利害攸关》(The Zone of Interest)中，只顾忙于日常事务的人们心甘情愿地掩盖了难以言喻的邪恶。官僚用语和委婉说辞使他们不必承认自己正在维持的恐怖。

In fact, the way language can mask and produce evil — especially the banal sort that stems from self-delusion — was all over the movies this year. Todd Haynes’s juicy “May December” is loaded with willful blindness on the part of characters who can’t even form the words to tell the truth about their lives. Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” takes a marriage built on linguistic compromise — the partners communicate in English, a second language for both — as the jumping-off point for a story about the everyday violence that careless words incur, whether in the courtroom or the living room. And perhaps the strongest and most daring of these was “Reality,” which uses a real interrogation transcript to show the bendiness of words, the way power and justice can be warped to manipulate, well, reality.

事实上，语言掩盖和制造邪恶——特别是自欺欺人的平庸之恶——的方式在今年的电影中随处可见。托德·海恩斯作品《五月十二月》就充满了角色的视而不见，他们甚至都无法说出自己生活的真相。茹斯汀·特里耶作品《坠落的审判》(Anatomy of a Fall)以一段建立在语言障碍基础上的婚姻（双方用第二语言英语交流）为起点，描绘了在法庭上和客厅里由于言语不慎而引发的日常暴力。《告密者》(Reality)可能是最激烈也最大胆的一部作品，用真实的审讯记录呈现出言语的曲折特性，以及权力和司法是如何被扭曲以操纵现实的。

When the great novelist Cormac McCarthy, no stranger to the movies himself, died this year, I found myself thinking about him because his vision of evil was far more in line with these depictions than the cartoon villains Hollywood typically serves up. To McCarthy, evil was a force or a being that stalked humanity, the basic fact of the human condition, nearly impossible to resist and embedded somehow in language. In his 1994 novel “The Crossing,” a character says that “the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it.” In fact, “men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.”

If he’s right, that may be why the antidote to cinematic evil could be found in people speaking words of healing to one another, facing truth together. The couples at the center of “The Eternal Memory” and “American Symphony,” the chaplains of “A Still Small Voice,” the family of “You Hurt My Feelings” — all are people who have found that in the midst of an impossible world, communicating with one another is what lets us go on.

如果他没说错，这也许就是为什么我们可以通过互相倾诉治愈话语，共同面对真相来找到电影之恶的解药。《永恒的记忆》(The Eternal Memory)和《美国交响曲》(American Symphony)中的夫妇、《深处的呼唤》(A Still Small Voice)中的牧师、《你伤害了我》(You Hurt My Feelings)中的家庭——他们所有人都发现，即便身处千难万险的世界，只有相互沟通才能继续前行。

Any form of art is capable of exploring the nature of evil. But there’s something about cinema — immersive, time-bound, hitting several senses at once — that feels uniquely suited for the task, since evil is something more readily identified in the gut than in the conscious mind. In a world increasingly unmoored from reality, where we can barely trust what we see with our own eyes, evil floats freely. Maybe cinema can give us language to face it courageously.

任何形式的艺术都可以探讨邪恶的本质。但身临其境、时长有限、同时触达多重感官的体验让电影特别适合成为这种讨论的载体，因为比起理智，邪恶更易于被直觉辨识。在愈发脱离现实的电影世界里，观众几乎不能相信亲眼所见的景象，邪恶才会肆无忌惮地徜徉。电影或许能赋予我们勇敢面对邪恶的语言。

From the start of his career, Scorsese has been obsessed with guilt: What does it mean to be guilty? Is anyone really innocent? Is forgiveness possible, or just a convenient fantasy? The many-layered “Killers of the Flower Moon” offers perhaps his broadest take on the topic yet — proceeding from the firm belief that guilt is generational, just like grief, and that telling the story (in this case, of the systematic murder of Osage members) is both fraught and impossible to avoid. (In theaters)

斯科塞斯从初执导筒开始就一直痴迷于罪恶：罪恶的含义是什么？是否真有无辜之人？宽恕是可能存在的，抑或只是一种自我安慰的妄念？内涵十分丰富的《花月杀手》也许是他对邪恶的最全面阐释，这来源于一种坚定信念，即邪恶与悲伤一样可以延绵世代，而讲述这个故事（本片的主题是关于奥塞奇族人的系统性谋杀）虽不讨喜但却不可逃避。（上映中）

Once in a while, an understated stunner from a debut director (in this case, the playwright Celine Song) arrives early in the year, grabs you by the heart and won’t let go. For me that happened all the way back at Sundance in January with “Past Lives,” about a woman (Greta Lee) contemplating the lives she could have led and thus the choices that created the one she does lead. With magnificent co-stars in Teo Yoo and John Magaro, it’s brilliant and moving, an examination of destiny, chance, love and the invisible thread that binds one soul to the next. (For rent on most major platforms)

有时候，一位新人导演（比如剧作家席琳·宋）在年初带来的低调惊艳之作总能抓住你的心，让你念念不忘。对我来说，这就是在今年1月的圣丹斯电影节上观影《过往人生》的体验。本片讲述了一名女性（格蕾塔·李饰）如何思考她本可拥有的人生，以及她为当下生活所做过的选择。本片由刘台午与约翰·马加罗联袂出演，情节精彩动人，对命运、选择、爱情以及将人与人的灵魂连结到一起的无形纽带进行了审视。（大多数主流平台均可租赁观看）

Based loosely on a Martin Amis novel, “The Zone of Interest” bone-chills by omission, its meaning contained in what’s not onscreen. The story concerns the family of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), commandant of Auschwitz, who lives an idyllic life with his family just outside the walls of the notorious extermination camp. His wife (Sandra Hüller) runs a peaceful household, proudly showing her life to her mother when she visits. But you can hear, and almost smell, what’s going on over the wall. It’s a nauseatingly and formally bold inquiry into the extent to which humans can, and do, willfully blind themselves to evil. (Opens in theaters on Dec. 15)

大致改编自马丁·艾米斯小说的《利害攸关》用弦外之音制造了阵阵寒意，影片的含义并没有出现在它的画面中。故事围绕着鲁道夫·霍斯（克里斯蒂安·弗里德尔饰）一家展开，在那座臭名昭著的灭绝营的高墙之外，这个奥斯维辛集中营指挥官与他的家人过着闲适的生活。他的妻子（桑德拉·胡勒）打理着一个平静祥和的家，骄傲地向来访的母亲展示。但是你可以听到——几乎可以闻到——高墙之内正在发生什么。影片以令人作呕的、大胆的形式探究了人类为假装看不到邪恶可以做到什么地步。（12月15日院线上映）

“Reality” stars Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner, the former N.S.A. translator imprisoned for leaking information about Russian interference into the 2016 elections. Adapted from a play also written and directed by Satter, the dialogue is a verbatim (and sometimes redacted) transcription of the F.B.I.’s interrogation of Winner at her home before her arrest. Sweeney is incredible in the role, the anchor of a furious, true thriller. But what stands out is the way “Reality” forces us to question what’s real on several levels — not just whether and when a government is trustworthy, but also when language deliberately obscures reality, and whether the movie itself is fiction, documentary or something uncomfortably in the gray area between. (Streaming on Max)

西德尼·斯维尼饰演《告密者》的主角里艾利蒂·温纳，这位前NSA译员因泄露俄罗斯干预2016年选举相关信息而入狱。影片改编自萨特尔写作和执导的舞台剧，台词照搬了FBI逮捕温纳前在其家中对她的审讯（有部分做了涂黑保密处理）。作为这部爆裂而真实的惊悚片的核心，斯维尼的表演令人惊叹。然而引人注目的是，《告密者》如何迫使我们从多个层面去质疑何为真实——不仅限于政府是否以及何时是值得信任的，还包括语言何时会有意掩盖现实，影片本身是虚构作品、纪录片，还是介于真假之间的某个令人不适的灰色地带。（Max在线播映）

Early in the pandemic, at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a group of chaplaincy residents are caring for patients and their families while dealing with their own grief and fear. Lorentzen’s observational documentary (which he largely shot himself) follows one resident, Mati, and her supervisor. Mati’s idealism is challenged as she ministers to people of all faiths and none in particular while simultaneously experiencing her own crisis of faith. The nature of mercy, mortality and belief in the face of unimaginable pain makes this, somehow, a hopeful film, though it’s a hard-won hope. (In theaters)

大流行之初，在纽约西奈山医院，一组驻院牧师在照护病患及其家属的同时，自己也要面对哀伤与恐惧。洛伦岑的观察式纪录片（大部分由他自己拍摄）跟拍了院牧马蒂和她的上级。马蒂的理想主义面临挑战，她在扶助各种不同信仰的人，并没有哪一种信仰格外显著，与此同时她自己也在经历着一场信仰危机。宽恕、品德和信仰在无法想象的痛苦面前显露的本质，造就了一部某种意义上能给人以希望的电影，尽管这希望需要奋力去获得。（院线上映中）

One-half of the year’s biggest moviegoing event, “Oppenheimer” is at its core an examination of power, both in the geopolitical and the atomic sense. Nolan’s choice to split the film along two power-generating acts, fission and fusion, underscores the point: While the film is largely about the Manhattan Project and the moral compromise Oppenheimer wrestles with, it’s also about man’s petty battles to gain power without regard for the future. Nolan is obsessed with the interplay between the scientific and the humanist, and thus it’s a perfect match. (For rent on most major platforms)

A number of good and much buzzier films from this year — “Barbie,” “Poor Things” — chronicled women’s journeys toward becoming their own heroes in a world still tilted toward patriarchy. But the Estonian documentary “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” is the one that’s stuck with me most. Women gather in a smoke sauna (we see their tightly framed nude bodies, shot from the neck down, for most of the film) repeatedly throughout a calendar year. They discuss the painful and joyful realities of their lives: fears and hopes, romances and abuses, weaknesses and strengths. Visually striking and uncommonly frank, it gets at an authenticity that few fiction films can fully capture. (In theaters)

It’s the 19th century, and a young Danish priest with plenty of self-regard has decided to lead a church in remote Iceland (at that time a Danish colony). What he discovers on the frigid shores is a beguiling landscape that’s wholly indifferent to his existence. Watching him disintegrate when confronted with the reality of his calling is both tragic and darkly funny, but the deeper meaning is what remains: We can plan all we want to change the world, but the world usually gets the best of us. (Streaming on the Criterion Channel)

Alberdi’s haunting documentary centers on Augusto Góngora, one of the most famous cultural journalists in Chile, and his wife, Paulina Urrutia. Góngora is living with Alzheimer’s, and Alberdi parallels his slowly deteriorating mental state with his lifelong fight to preserve Chile’s history and collective memory. Without memory, Góngora says, we are lost. What anchors him is Urrutia’s fervent love, a bond so strong that it can withstand tragedy — and there are lessons there for nations that wish to wipe away their own memories. (Streaming on Paramount+)

奥尔伯蒂这部令人难忘的纪录片的中心人物是奥古斯托·贡戈拉——智利最著名的文化记者之一——和他的妻子宝琳娜·乌尔卢迪亚。贡戈拉身患阿兹海默症，奥尔伯蒂将他慢慢恶化的心智状况与他保护智利历史和集体记忆的毕生斗争并列呈现出来。贡戈拉说，没有记忆，我们将迷失自我。对乌尔卢迪亚的炽烈爱情给了他重心，两人坚固的情感纽带经受了悲剧的冲击——这对那些想要抹去自己的记忆的国家是一个警示。（Paramount+在线放映）

Wiseman, America’s greatest chronicler of institutions, turns his observational documentary eye toward La Maison Troisgros, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Roanne, France, run by several generations of the Troisgros family. While the food looks delectable and the diners are often very funny, the true joy of Wiseman’s film is his subtle weaving of a point into it all. Future generations of artists and chefs, diners and growers depend upon balancing profit with careful cultivation today, whether it’s in the way a kitchen runs, the way grapes are grown or the way a family plans its business. That balance is evident throughout the film, which is a sensory delight and at times almost balletic in its touch. (In theaters)

And don’t miss: “Afire” (Christian Petzold), “American Fiction” (Cord Jefferson), “American Symphony” (Matthew Heineman), “Anatomy of a Fall” (Justine Triet), “Anselm” (Wim Wenders), “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” (Kelly Fremon Craig), “Barbie” (Greta Gerwig), “BlackBerry” (Matt Johnson), “Eileen” (William Oldroyd), “Fallen Leaves” (Aki Kaurismaki), “Four Daughters” (Kaouther Ben Hania), “The Holdovers” (Alexander Payne), “May December” (Todd Haynes), “Poor Things” (Yorgos Lanthimos), “Priscilla” (Sofia Coppola), “The Royal Hotel” (Kitty Green), “Showing Up” (Kelly Reichardt), “The Starling Girl” (Laurel Parmet), “The Taste of Things” (Tran Anh Hung), “You Hurt My Feelings” (Nicole Holofcener)

不可错过：《燃烧》(Afire，导演克里斯蒂安·佩措尔德）、《美国小说》(American Fiction，导演科德·杰斐逊）、《美国交响曲》（马修·海涅曼）、《坠落剖析》（贾斯汀·特里特）、《安瑟姆》（Anselm，导演维姆·文德斯）、《上帝你在吗？是我，玛格丽特》(Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret，导演凯莉·弗里蒙·克雷格）、《芭比》（格蕾塔·葛韦格）、《黑莓》（BlackBerry，导演马特·约翰逊）、《艾琳》(Eileen，导演威廉·奥德罗伊德）、《落叶》(Fallen Leaves，导演阿基·考里斯马基）、《四个女儿》(Four Daughters，导演考瑟·本·哈尼亚）、《旧物》(The Holdovers，导演亚历山大·佩恩）、《五月十二月》（托德·海恩斯）、《小可怜》（欧格斯·兰斯莫斯）、《普里西拉》（Priscilla，导演索菲亚·科波拉）、《皇家酒店》（The Royal Hotel，导演基蒂·格林）、 《开展在即》（Showing Up，导演凯莉·莱卡特）、《八哥女孩》（The Starling Girl，导演劳雷尔·帕梅特）、《各种味道》（The Taste of Things，导演陈英雄）、《你伤害了我的感情》（You Hurt My Feelings，导演妮可·哈洛芬瑟）