Boyd van Hoeij

Perhaps it is precisely Dumont’s point that satire and the real world have been converging for a long time, but this alone is not enough insight to sustain a movie that’s over two hours long and contains a protagonist few will warm to. for such a high-powered auteur/leading-lady collaboration, France feels decidedly unspectacular.

Only in an extended sequence late into the proceedings...do we get a sense that Pineiro has tried to move outside of his comfort zone and does the film really become affecting.

By contrasting what the investigators are trying to uncover with the youthful adventures of the children, Dumont seems to suggest that the world of adults, despite appearances, is so rotten that it can only be stomached and perhaps even saved by two things: laughter of the tragicomic kind and a child-like innocence that somehow needs to be maintained into adulthood.

Perhaps Qu’s near-passive tone is meant to suggest that women don’t have much of a voice in society. But the story's almost complete lack of emotion also negatively impacts the viewers’ interest in the women’s plight. What does come through loud and clear is that Angels Wear White paints an unflattering portrait of not only how women are treated but also of how men try to protect their turf at all costs.

Admirably, the director maintains the documentary illusion throughout, opting for a third act that finds exactly the right, understated tone, neither glorifying Rike’s role, nor underplaying the character’s more than obvious compassion.

Directed by French director Anne Fontaine (Two Mothers/Adore, Coco Before Channel), this is another gorgeously appointed but also slightly overly formal film, with a muted emotional payoff that, while appropriate for the story’s convent setting, doesn’t exactly make for must-see cinema.

The director clearly takes depression and suicidal urges and the possibility they may be hereditary very seriously but that doesn’t mean that the film isn’t often very witty.

Though the story has undergone quite a few changes, what’s intact is the novel’s grittiness and emotional honesty, which more than compensates for the occasional coming-of-age cliche.

A step up in terms of complexity, with more subplots and a larger cast of protagonists to juggle and less instantly sympathetic characters or an evident cause to rally behind, this drama again offers many quiet, often character-driven rewards but struggles to become larger than the sum of its parts.

A gossamer debut feature that compensates for its lo-fi look with glimpses of profound humanism.

Jodorowsky keeps circling back to the question of who he is and how poetry is inextricably linked with how he experiences the world.

The film has two powerful, loosely connected stories to tell but not a unifying vision that could package the often-potent material for maximum impact.

The few instances of humor offer a welcome reprieve as the film's mood shifts from summery and sultry to increasingly dark and moody.

Like in all of the director’s work, psychologically reductive readings of the characters are absent, though intriguing performances give audiences a way into the material.

Audley (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), in practically every frame of the film, has to carry this feather-light narrative on his shoulders and does so with ease.

Like in any good genre yarn, there are a lot of unexpected twists and turns as characters run into each other — often quite literally and sometimes even with their vehicles — in the desperate hope of getting their hands on the money.

Because it wants to be a primer on a serious subject, an exciting cinematic exposé and an argument for more openness and some kind of regulatory framework, the necessities of these different strands end up getting in each other’s way.

[An] evocative and atmospheric feature.

What makes the film so accessible despite its controversial subject matter is Wnendt’s total command of tone, which is never vulgar or intentionally out to shock.

Though somewhat slow out of the starting blocks, this finally caustic drama, set in early 1980s Bratislava (then in Czechoslovakia), accumulates power and insight as it builds over the course of a tense parents-teachers conference, punctuated with the necessary flashbacks.

This bouncy and effervescent film often has the kind of timeless charms that can also be found in the early New Wave films, even if the screenplay, set against the backdrop of the massive 1999 student protests in Mexico City, unsuccessfully tries to smuggle in a slightly more serious and topical undercurrent via the backdoor.

One of Apprentice’s strongest selling points is how, in a very compact yet pleasingly dense way, it takes viewers into both the world of the executioners and the executed criminals’ family members who remain behind, two often almost ignored categories in films touching on capital punishment.

A scrappy but at times uproarious Romanian comedy.

Mikkelsen impresses here as a warm-hearted man who finds himself caught up in a situation way beyond his control.

There is no denying the visceral power of Wang’s insistence on looking encroaching death, as it were, in the eye and the filmmaker exercises appropriate restraint when the final moment does come.

At once an enjoyable genre ride and a feminist art house story, Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts might send some heads rolling but has its own head firmly on its shoulders.

By cataloging every spoon of food not eaten, every sip of water not swallowed and every sigh and every groan uttered, the myth becomes a man and the inherent paradox of being a divine ruler is revealed.

Though more mainstream-oriented audiences will not be on board with Ahn’s brand of subtlety, for those willing to fully invest themselves, Spa Night offers a carefully considered story about identity or rather identities.