Ben Croll

Almost never offscreen, Hüller — and Braun, who has less screentime but is no less affecting — navigate unfamiliar situations with small, precise choices and reactions that cut through the deliberately alienating period setting, imparting an emotional energy that feels both current and relatable.

You can only linger so long with such a parade of oddities making ever stranger choices before your eyes grow weary of gawking at a pageant of hideous beauty, and you start checking the clock.

Few leave unscathed as the handheld camera whip-pans and fast-zooms between cringe-comedy and genuine pathos and back again — especially once the hapless prof paves his own road to hell with his good intentions.

The result is an always engaging, sometimes enraging, and occasionally revelatory doc, stretching from Civil Rights to Substack, that every so often reveals something more jarringly (and appealingly) adversarial.

One of Ozon’s richest and most satisfying works in years — that rarest of literary adaptations, one that honors a foundational text precisely by finding something new to say.

Ben Hania shows little interest in agitprop. By burrowing into the granular details of this one tragedy on this one day, she arrives at an extraordinarily far-reaching articulation of an acutely contemporary emotion.

Instead, the film skewers and sympathizes in equal measure, mocking the pipe dreams suggested by its title and stirred by even the faintest hint of recognition, while still making clear that Ed’s literary gifts are genuinely worth the fuss.

Playing like variations on a theme, Jarmusch’s shaggy-dog triptych affably loops through moments of awkwardness and family strain, finding fresh notes in the repetition.

The Testament of Ann Lee is a loud film about the quiet within, almost always choosing to impress rather than entertain.

As filmmakers, Covino and Marvin are singularly committed to each bit, pushing all premises to the comic extreme. Their characters, however, are less than steadfast and true.

Yes is a tortured film, from a tortured artist, about a tortured man, meant to torture us with a kaleidoscope of anguish and a coterie of grotesques. Formally, the film nearly bursts at the seams, as Lapid’s camera spins fast and frantic and out-of-control, with the color contrast and soundtrack turned all-the-way up, keeping the film forever on assault mode.

Many might come up with a sequence that overlays gangster and horror tropes with bursts of violence and dance; few would then toggle between first-and third-person perspectives; and only Bi Gan would have that first-person camera start singing karaoke.

Taking a sturdy, mainstream premise — a big-city careerist reflecting on her life path during a trip back to the holler, in a setup that faintly echoes “Sweet Home Alabama,” among a hundred other rom-coms — and shading it with moral grays, natural light, and a more unvarnished turn from a well-known star, Leave One Day plays uncannily like a Gallic cover of a Sundance movie, gussied up and vaunted onto the international stage.

A procedural is never just about the case, even as the inquiry barrels along. To his credit, Moll ably recognizes as much, making his procedural a fine example of the form.

A labor of love and a product of considerable craft, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague — which chronicles the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless — is more than just a valentine to the French New Wave; the film is also a stealth showcase for a filmmaker rarely heralded (or for that matter, tribuned) for his technical sophistication.

Aster has always had a knack for confrontation, while Phoenix works best as an open-nerve. That the duo should prove so adept tapping into a vein of neurotic action is one of the many brutal surprises in a social satire as blunt and broad as America itself.

Without ever leaving the bar, Blue Moon offers a snapshot of wartime America expressed wholly through shifting public tastes (and the attending egos left shattered.)

The film, in short, exhilarates and exhausts in equal measure, abundant in ambition and arduous, at points, in execution. And after six long years of waiting, one can hardly fault a bit of excess generosity – even if the feast leaves you stuffed if not quite satisfied.

The themes are broad and brassy as the film that explores them, and all the better still. It was about time for someone to take such a big swing, and to hit the ball so far out the park.

While Youth (Homecoming) certainly benefits from the seven hours of weaving-machine whir that preceded, the film quite ably stands alone.

If the three main draws are too confirmed in respective talents to deliver a subpar performance or a slipshod composition, their shared billing can never quite deliver this film from listlessness.

Though adapted from the book (and life) of William S. Burroughs, this carnal film builds just as much on the filmmaker’s ongoing interest in unmet desire, finding greater ecstasy in the wait than in the act.

Don’t let the name fool you: April is a wintery affair. By far the most uncompromising vision to play at this year’s Venice Film Festival, director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s slow cinema horror show might also be the most audacious.

The Order might be the filmmaker’s most accomplished work to date, offsetting a kind of broody fatalism against natural splendor, and punctuating the bloody affair with an action beat.

Taken as a whole, The Brutalist both mourns and celebrates American ambition –the ambitions of an immigrant class trying for a new life with no guarantee of success, and the ambitions of a filmmaker filling a canvas with a lifetime of obsessions.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice goes all-in on the legacy front, offering everything you want and less, playing as a Burton buffet that leaves you stuffed if not quite satisfied, and in no real hurry to go back for thirds.

Like a sheep in wolf’s clothing, Halina Reijn’s surprisingly genteel Babygirl might bare the occasional fang, but it doesn’t have much bite.

Those with buy-in might find themselves won over, as, on its own terms, Marcello Mio offers a heartfelt and even occasionally moving show of artistic trust and collaboration, playing as an unambiguous love note from a filmmaker to his favorite star.