CINEMANIA:

Alan Partridge (2013, UK, Declan Lowney)

Ben Livant: 

I dunno.  I laughed a few times.  What more should be expected?

It's like so many of these movies that are feature-length treatments of what originated as a television sketch or a radio skit or a stand-up bit or whatever short thing now made long.  Anyone intimate with the original will probably enjoy the movie, although bigger is not always better.  I can't say in this case because I was not exposed to "Alan Partridge" until Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.

Mind you, I can testify that the premise of the plot in the movie is behind the times by decades, not years, decades.  The whole corporate takeover of the previously down-home station makes the entire affair a tad hokey.

Ida (2014, UK-Poland, Pawil Pawlikowski)

Ben Livant:

More often than not when a thing is described as icy, the description is meant to show how cold the thing is.  But as will be recalled during the Spring thaw, ice is not only cold.  It is also dry.  Ida is icy.  Very icy.  Dry as only ice can be.  Not the absence of water.  The arrested state of it.  Not an emotional desert, parched of passion.  So much wet feeling frozen in place.

Nightcrawler (USA, 2014, Dan Gilroy)

Dan Jardine:

If you want a telling and prophetic portrait of a 21st century successful businessman, you could do far worse than study the story of Nightcrawler’s Louis Bloom. Lou (Jake Gyllenhaal) is one creepy cat. With generic Dale Carnegie New Age-isms dripping off his lips, and a forced smile ever at the ready, Lou is constantly on the lookout for something, anything that will give him an edge to wedge his way to success.

Force of Evil (USA, 1948,  Abraham Polonsky)

Force of Evil helped define many of the elements of the post-war film noir. 

The film has developed a strong cult following as much for its influential stylistic touches (such as using shades of black, white, and gray to play on themes of good, evil, and the shades in-between) as for its gorgeously shaded cinematography, adapted from 1920s German Expressionist films.

The Killing Fields (USA, 1984, Roland Joffe)

Killing Fields is a brutally honest exploration of loyalty and fidelity during the Khmer Rouge's horrific Cambodian holocaust in the mid-1970s. 

Based on the true story of Dith Pran (played by non-actor Haing S. Ngor in an Oscar-winning performance), the harrowing depiction of the atrocities committed during dictator Pol Pot's bloodbath stays with the viewer long after the film has ended.