Even though Emily Dickinson would become one of America’s most celebrated female poets, she led a hard life in the 1800s. She didn’t share her family’s ecclesiastical leanings, her passion was firmly rooted in poetry (not homemaking), she judged those around her too harshly, and, of course, she was a she. Beside her innate urge to express herself through poetry, which she would write in the quiet of night while the rest of the world slept, Emily’s other passion was her bottomless love for her close-knit family. Through exquisitely framed medium shots, supple camera movements, and a screenplay full of wealth and wit, legendary British filmmaker Terence Davies creates a lush biopic that does justice to a unique artist, slightly meandering on a few tangents along the way.

It feels like Cynthia Nixon is in the middle of her own Nixonassance, especially when you consider her searing portrayal of last year’s indie hit James White in addition to the powerhouse portrayal she conjures up here in A Quiet Passion. She so wholly embodies the poetess, you’d think she found a time machine to travel back to the 1800s and trace every inch of gesticulation and countenance befitting the introverted and rebellious woman. Emma Bell does a fine job as Young Emily in the first part of the film, when we get introduced to the Dickinson household and get a taste of conservative life in Massachusetts. But once Nixon enters the stage, you hear pins drop till the final curtain.

Scenes flow into one another like liquid being poured by The Queen’s butler, tracing the ebbs and flows of Emily’s emotional and mental state as she comes to terms with her own personality, the love she feels for her family, and her growing bitterness towards high society values. Her sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle, continuing to prove how unforgivably underused she is), her brother Austin (a slightly spotty Duncan Duff), her father (a brilliantly stoic Keith Carradine), her sweet mother (an outstanding Joanna Bacon), and Austin’s wife Susan (a revelatory Jodhi May)—all play vital roles in shaping Emily. Outside her immediate family, no one makes a bigger impact than Miss Buffam (a sensational Catherine Bailey); with a wit and banter second to none, she outplays every man in the room and always leaves room for more. It’s little wonder that Emily becomes instantly infatuated with her spirit. A Quiet Passion exposes a singular personality through the relationships and conversations she has with those closest to her. And for much of the running time, it’s consuming to the point of forgetting everything else in the world.

Davies’ bountiful screenplay takes the cake in terms of how rhythmic and effortless the viewing experience feels. It’s so vibrant with its verbiage, 1800s colloquialism, and sharp comebacks that there are scenes where it almost trips over itself, creating the “too much of a good thing” excess feeling. The first half of the film also overflows with a wonderful sense of humor. Then there’s, of course, the director’s signature painterly camera movements, pivoting around interiors to create an astonishing sense of intimacy and closeness. He would stay on characters during their most fragile moments (especially during the heart-wrenching scenes featuring Bacon) and gradually grind the viewer’s emotions into sawdust. The way he transitions from the early to the later years during a photo shoot sequence is breathtaking. All this is helped by Florian Hoffmeister’s brilliant work with lights and shadows; whether by candle or by sun, the glow that overwhelms A Quiet Passion is palpable.

Moving beyond the formal aesthetics and award-worthy performances, it’s Emily Dickinson’s character that keeps the film’s heart beating. Her flaws, her virtues, her desires, her idiosyncrasies, her painstaking love and love-wound pain—all are ironed gently to create a truly complex and mesmerizing personality. Affronted by obviousness in every aspect of life and art, so sharp in demeaning the overt piety and patriarchal Puritanism she was faced with on a daily basis, the Emily Dickinson that emerges is one fiercely intelligent, determined, funny, empathetic, and infinitely interesting woman. This, above all else, makes A Quiet Passion the magisterial film that it is, and confirms Terence Davies as director who knows how to tackle femininity from all angles.

While all this stands, the picture does tend to lose the plot on a few occasions, especially towards the end during what looks like a fever dream sequence involving Emily and an anonymous man. It’s a jarring moment that broke the magic spell for a few brief minutes, and though I understand its intention, I find myself wishing that it were executed in a more refined way. A blasphemous thought to have considering this is Terence Davies, but there it is. The in-and-out narration of Emily’s select poems will also ignite frustration in a lot of viewers I imagine.

Thanks to these quibbles, the film is a step below the enchantment of Sunset Song and The Deep Blue Sea. But no matter how well versed you are with Emily Dickinson’s poems, A Quiet Passion still manages to envelop the senses in warm, gentle waves of cinematic opulence for most of its running time.

Simplicity can be the most effective method sometimes, especially in the case of Ron Mann’s documentary Altman. Instead of taking an ambitious approach to legendary director Robert Altman’s life, Mann shows the life and career of his subject with a concise, linear presentation. Framing the film around the definition of “Altmanesque,” Altman goes through the filmmaker’s work one at a time in chronological order, starting with his work on television up to his swan song A Prairie Home Companion. Through this (what appears to be) basic approach, Mann creates a touching tribute to one of film’s greatest directors, a profile that never feels hagiographic because it lets the work speak for itself.

It also lets Altman speak on his own behalf. Culling from hours upon hours of interviews and footage taken before Altman’s death, Mann ends up turning Altman into the posthumous narrator of his own biography. After leaving the Air Force, Altman took up writing before lying his way into directing industrial films, a time of his life he refers to as his film school. From there he directed The Delinquents, and that led him into doing TV work through the 50s and 60s. This is the same time when Altman met his wife Kathryn who, along with other members of Altman’s family, take over narrating duties from time to time.

According to Altman’s wife, pushback from producers over Altman’s attempts to add realism to the shows he worked on (including one time when producers refused his suggestion to cast a black actor in a lead role) led him to quit television altogether, making his way into film instead. That didn’t turn out so well at first, with the head of Warner Brothers kicking him off of the 1967 film Countdown. The reason? After watching footage of Altman’s work on the film, the studio head was horrified to discover he had actors “talking at the same time.”

These kinds of neat anecdotes from Altman and his family make up a lot of the film, something fans of Hollywood gossip will thoroughly enjoy hearing about. These stories, mostly involving techniques used by Altman on his films (including his ground breaking use of the eight-track stereo sound system in California Split) or battles with producers and studios, also paint a vivid picture of the kind of filmmaker Altman was. His films were all over the place in terms of genre, whether it was a war movie like M*A*S*H or a Western like McCabe and Mrs. Miller, but they were all distinctly Altman.

Also unique for Altman was how much he defined himself by his work. Once his sons got old enough they began working as crew members on his projects. At one point his son Stephen talks about how, for Altman, his work took priority over his family (it’s one of the only times any criticism is heard, which isn’t surprising considering the direct involvement of Altman’s family with the production). As Mann goes through the years of Altman’s life, his formal approach starts to make perfect sense. Altman lived for filmmaking, as evidenced by the countless film and TV productions he worked on for over 5 decades, so defining his life through a career-based perspective feels like the most accurate portrayal. According to Altman’s family, there’s no need to delve into his life off set; the film set was his home.

Mann’s use of archival footage and narration to form a biographical narrative, while familiar, also feels somewhat unconventional, a welcome departure from the blandness of most filmed biographies. Mann does make one bold choice, though: peppered throughout are clips of Altman collaborators (including Robin Williams, Bruce Willis, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin and Elliott Gould, among many others) giving their own definition of “Altmanesque.” The fact that Mann only uses his interview subjects for these brief moments feels daring, like a defiant move to avoid relying on a talking heads format. The segments also provide a chapter-like structure, with each person’s definition relating to the next phase of the director’s career.

This kind of smart, neat structuring makes Altman one of the year’s finest documentaries, a shining example of how to properly examine the life and career of such a prolific figure.

There’s no way around it. David Lowery’s darkly romantic Texas tale, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (love the title), starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as bandit lovers, begs comparison to the films of Terrence Malick, one of the cinematic masters of our era. It isn’t bad company to be in—the comparisons are a high compliment, actually—but being examined next to the very best can diminish a film’s individuality. With Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Lowery leaves me no choice.

Lowery’s outlaw tale owes a bit of its spirit to Badlands. Just a bit, though—it owes even more to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. The Malick comparison that’s hugely unavoidable is the film’s unmistakable resemblance to Days of Heaven—both are stunning with sun-soaked natural lighting, a melancholy Texas setting, and ephemeral editing that flows like the breeze. Though the film feels derivative on certain levels, there’s also a sense that Lowery is staying true to himself here. He does have his own voice—it just happens to be one of a film-lover and student of the game who’s been touched by Malick’s work. Other influences are clear—‘70s road films, Paul Thomas Anderson, Cormac McCarthy, and Robert Altman (the latter two of which Lowery has frequently cited as influences)—but Malick’s rings the truest, or at least the loudest.

Like AMC’s The Walking Dead, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints shows you what happens after most movies cut to credits. The setting is a tiny town in Texas, and we start at the end—after a heist gone wrong, Bob Muldoon (Affleck) and Ruth Guthrie (Mara), a dusty pair of outlaw lovebirds (Ruth is carrying Bob’s child) are arrested after a classic shootout with the police. Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster, an excellent character actor who is uncharacteristically soft-spoken and tender here), one of the cops on the scene, is shot by Ruth, but Bob takes the fall and is sentenced to 25 years in prison. Cut to four years later, and Bob’s escaped from prison to return to and run off with Ruth and his daughter, Sylvie (now 4 years old). Of course, we see nothing of the breakout, as Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is all about emotion as a result of action, not the action itself. The town is alerted of his escape, and Wheeler takes to keeping an eye on Ruth and Sylvie in anticipation of Bob’s impending arrival.

Ruth has come to terms with the fact that she and Bob’s relationship is a doomed one, but she and Sylvie are Bob’s only desire, and still he comes. Bob’s unfettered determination to return to his family is moving, if a little tragic. Affleck and Mara have precious little onscreen time together, but fascinatingly enough, their chemistry is the driving force of the film. In true Malick-ian fashion, they exchange whispers of devotion and mythic romance in thick Texas accents as they’re drenched in melancholic magic-hour sunrays. Though their exchanges are few, Affleck, Mara, and Lowery (who also penned the film) make every word, every longing glance, count. We feel their longing whether they’re both on-screen or not.

Lowery makes time for tender moments like Ruth singing Sylvie an achingly sweet lullaby or Bob laying is head on Ruth’s lap in their parked truck late at night. This is a quiet, almost muffled film, relying on atmosphere to convey the brunt of the emotion. Dialogue is sparse by design. Keith Carradine (a throwback to a time when Hollywood was full of men, not boys in men’s clothes) plays Skerritt, Bob’s adopted father and guardian to Ruth and Sylvie. He says things once, clearly and with authority, because he doesn’t care to repeat himself.

Lowery and cinematographer Bradford Young communicate most of their ideas not through plot, but through dark, dark imagery—the murky, smudged lighting and thick, almost impossibly black nighttime scenes (honestly—I don’t know how they shot them) reflect Bob and Ruth’s bleak and ill-fated future. The rusty, dusty atmosphere is so palpable it’s almost tactile—when Bob kicks up piles of dust while evading the police, you almost want to cough. Another nice touch is that we’re never given a definitive time period in which the story takes place, which lends the film a sense of timelessness.

Here’s the thing—all signs point to this movie being a larger-than-life, soul-rattling Americana tale like Malick is known to gift us with, but the signs lead nowhere. The components of the film—the breathtaking imagery, the superb performances, the tasteful narrative, the tender, perfectly captured moments—ultimately don’t add up to greatness. Malick can shake emotions buried inside us that we didn’t even know we had. He offers grand ideas that can shift your state of mind or even your values. With Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Lowery has all the pieces to the puzzle, but just can’t put them together like the master can, though his creation is undeniably beautiful in its own right. Perhaps the darkness that pervades the film is the long shadow of Malick, watching over his apprentice as he struggles with his homework. I imagine Lowery would receive an encouraging wink and a B-.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints trailer: