Boyd van Hoeij

Muylaert does a deft job here of plotting her story and setting up her characters and their predicaments in ways that immediately invite reflection.

The chemistry between the men is palpable, but what's more important, they convey their characters' complex emotions, expectations and thoughts without necessarily opening their mouths.

An explosive combination of highly personal moral drama and a wider, scathing portrait of a country in which corruption and greed seem to be the only shared values left, this well-oiled narrative machine is further aided by a clever ticking-clock mechanism that actually ratchets up the tension the longer the characters’ vodka-soaked, blame-game speeches are allowed to go on.

Though clearly not a proposition for either devout Christians or audiences for whom the multiplex is a temple, this is the kind of take-no-prisoners art house fare that advances and deepens the understanding of a singular director’s oeuvre as a whole.

Gorgeously shot and produced, impressively acted and with a lot of fascinating things on its mind, this is yet further proof that the 35-year-old Mascaro is one of Brazil’s most audacious and gifted filmmakers of his generation.

The camera often seems to capture seemingly quotidian moments, but Koberidze’s painterly eye elevates them to intimate flashes of poetry and delight.

Taken separately, these two medium-length works would be diverting but also rather minor Hong, with their typical dry humor and observations about life and love. But taken as a single, 120-minute work, the small differences in the dialogue and attitudes of parts one and two reveal nothing less than the humanity, inner life and subconscious decision-making processes of the characters, turning the whole into one of Hong’s strongest features to date.

Two minor problems in the closing reels hold the film back from instant-classic status.

Beguiling in its strangeness, yet also effortlessly evoking recognizable emotions such as loneliness and the feeling of being stuck in a dead-end town and life, this moody and gorgeous film is finally more about atmosphere and emotions than narrative -- and none the worse for it.

Jean-Francois Laguionie’s consistently enjoyable, inventive and beautifully crafted tale is a color riot suitable for all ages.

The sobering message of the film is that independence doesn’t really mean anything in Africa if you’ve got resources that richer countries have an interest in and a general population that remains woefully poor and uneducated.

The film’s only weakness is its ending, which is so subtle it risks being interpreted by the majority of viewers as enigmatic or unclear.

Newcomer Van Acken is a phenomenal find and she’s never less than believably torn between doing the right thing and being her own person.

It’s an utter delight to see that theoretical academic musings on gender, love, sexuality and politics can be packaged and reflected upon in such a jocular and constantly entertaining way.

Watching large chunks of this film feels like being transported into a trance-like reverie, albeit a reverie that quite often has nightmarish contours.

Much of the feature’s quietly accumulated emotional power derives from the fact that viewers have to connect some of the dots themselves. Indeed, just like in the subject’s own work, the imagination of the audience is as important an ingredient for the final result as what is actually written or suggested.

[An] evocative and atmospheric feature.

While Titane wants to shock and surprise — two things a lot of contemporary films seem to have forgotten how to do — it also wants to tell the strangely affecting story of two royally f***ed up human beings who, despite all the odds, and lack of shared DNA, share a father-son like bond.

Even though the movie barely provides any backstory or other details, the characters’ emotions are always immediately accessible in this vivid depiction of the all-consuming nature of nascent amour, as well as the pain, heartbreak and confusion that come with trying to channel all these pure emotions into something as structured as your daily life.

This captivating hybrid of a movie mixes fairy-tale and storytelling elements with a vividly drawn backdrop of heightened realism — no one would mistake this prison for a luxury resort — and relies on images and sounds as much as the human voice to tell its multiple stories.

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.

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 soft-spoken and perceptive film set in the Modernist small-town marvel that is Columbus, Indiana, this is a specialized art house treat that announces the arrival of a new director who combines small-scale, Ozu-like humanism with an impressive command of the formalist possibilities of film.

The way in which Ozon again uses mirror images, which reveal the similarities between the French and the Germans just after the war, or the way Fanny and Anna come to possibly mirror each other again suggest that a master storyteller is at work.

The unknown cast is aces, and Moshe inscribes his loquacious film in the Western tradition without overdoing the references to the classics.

Beautifully played and impeccably lit and composed, this high-quality family drama takes its time to introduce its flawed but human protagonists and then steadily builds toward a payoff that’s at once cathartic and artfully restrained.

Though more an atmospheric and sensorial experience than strictly a narrative one, this languorous and handsomely produced (by Call Me by Your Name producer Rodrigo Teixeira) feature is a lovingly textured addition to the coming-of-age genre.

This is essentially an absorbing and intelligent exploration of queer desire spiced up with thriller elements.