Like every title on this list, Hou Hsiao Hsien ’s tale of a female warrior in ninth-century China lingered in my mind long after I saw it. The pictorial beauty of “The Assassin” — which was shot on 35-millimeter film — is astonishing, as is Hou’s narrative approach, his use of stillness, silence and ellipses. The movie is a sublime testament to the visually expressive power of cinema, its ability to convey interiority, emotions, feelings and moods with images. It is also a reminder that digital largely remains a diminished substitute for film. (Stream on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube.)

In 2002, Richard Linklater assembled several actors to shoot part of a fictional story about a fractured family, a process that he annually repeated over the next dozen years. The result is an intimate epic that seamlessly tracks a boy (played throughout by Ellar Coltrane) from childhood to early adulthood. In 165 captivating, deeply moving minutes, Linklater conveys the sweep and quotidian detail of life. It goes so fast. (Stream on IFC Films Unlimited, Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube.)

Agnès Varda died in March at 90. Toward the end of her life, she was sometimes patronizingly mistaken for a cute old lady. And yes, she was old; true, she was occasionally cute; but she was also a giant of the art whose legacy remains underappreciated. She once said that cinema is about “a re-examination of time, movement and especially the image,” and, in this documentary, she reminds us of this truth as she and her co-pilot, the artist JR, travel across both France and time. They stop in villages, speak to people and make images while Varda reminisces about her past, turning “Faces Places” into a time machine and an indelible memento mori. (Stream on Amazon.)