Natalie Portman gives a virtuosic, Oscar-winning turn as a sheltered but intensely driven young dancer who begins to buckle under the pressure of her dual role of the Black and White Swans in the company’s production of Swan Lake.

Twentysomethings Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) meet on a cross-Europe train. He convinces her to disembark in Vienna and kill time with him; over the next 12 hours, they walk, talk, look around—and fall desperately, unexpectedly in love.

Nine years after Before Sunrise’s open-ended finale, Before Sunset’s immediate question—did Jesse and Céline reunite in Vienna—soon gets eclipsed by other, knottier ones: questions of commitment, fidelity, responsibility, and the great subject of Linklater’s trilogy, time.

This Oscar-winning 1920-set action blockbuster charts an imaginary friendship between real-life anti-colonial revolutionaries, alternating the good-humored buoyancy and warmth of a classic buddy comedy with the earnest emotional and metaphorical intensity of mythically inflected melodrama.

This unabashedly farcical, deliciously irreverent reimagining of the Watergate scandal situates two bubbly teen blondes at the center of the storied incident: Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams).