Adam Nayman

She doesn’t rotate her head 360 degrees or spit pea soup, but in Requiem, the West German–born actress Sandra Hüller creates the definitive screen portrait of supernatural possession. If director Hans-Christian Schmid’s film operates smartly outside the confines of the horror genre, its star inhabits her role with a fervor......

With more than 50 cooler-than-thou films to choose from, the American Cinematheque’s seventh-annual “Mods and Rockers” festival is a veritable retro smorgasbord — and many of the selections in the series’ first week are still fresh, despite being packaged several decades ago. Take Nicolas Roeg’s bent debut film Performance (1970):......

Like any filmmaking nation, Poland is known for its auteurs — Wajda and Polanski, Holland and Kieslowski. But two of the more notable selections at this year’s Polish Film Festival pivot on superb performances, rather than especially confident or distinctive filmmaking. In Feliks Falk’s uneven drama The Collector (2005), Andrzej......