It could have done with fewer plot devices, but it is ultimately far more satisfying than countless less ambitious and risky films.

It is difficult to watch, but it's also impossible to take your eyes off the screen. It does not blench at the things that Hollywood routinely blenches at: substance abuse, dying, family dysfunction, love.

Sumptuously hued in its emotional and visual tones, this drama is also a fairy tale, its plot contrivances beautifully justified by its minimalism.

Norway's hallucinatory, edge-of-the-world beauty imbues the story with a woozy, alcoholic haze and a sense of the marginal spaces into which the messiest aspects of private life are shoved.

A film of rare beauty, lifted by some of the best acting you may see in any film this year.

It is an uncompromising family tale, one that's dark but lyrical and moving in its rendering of the ties that bind even the most dysfunctional families, despite valiant efforts to destroy them.

It's clean and transparent, with no movie director tricks. The characters, not the montages, speak the loudest.

Skarsgard and Headey deliver perfectly meshed lead performances in a small, beautifully acted film that will make you squirm.

A humanistic, warts-and-all battle of wills between a dissolute father and an emotionally ravaged daughter.

Writer-director Hans Petter Moland (The Last Lieutenant, Zero Kelvin) has a fine eye for landscapes, but an even surer touch with actors.

Intelligent, moving and often beautifully photographed, Aberdeen boasts superb performances.

A journey that goes from prosaic to existential. Director Hans Petter Moland's raw drama of father-daughter reconciliation features an excellent cast.

In the end, grips us precisely because its actors are so utterly absorbed in their roles, so unfettered and nakedly expressive. This is the kind of acting we always look for, but rarely see.

Behind the narrative twists and contrived dramatic complications is a searing and scary look at dysfunction.