Boyd van Hoeij

The Eyes of My Mother is both strange and strangely enthralling.

Escalante struggles to illuminate how sex and violence are connected and what this, in turn, means for more specialized types of aggressiveness and oppression, such as misogyny and homophobia.

An intriguing exposé of a gripping story.

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 film is much more about the way in which people perceive one another than about the way people really are.

Taken together, the shorts offer some scraps on Berger the man and the artist and thinker without really supplying a full overview, while also exploring some of his main preoccupations in ways that would benefit from at least some prior knowledge of his work.

A low-fi but beguiling mixture of intellectual discourse and emotional rollercoaster from Spanish maestro José Luis Guerin.

If some anime films also feature more painterly details in the backdrops, especially when depicting nature, what feels new here is the attention to details such as the glow of light sources, including candles and lanterns, that are warmer and more realistically detailed than usual.

Though blessed with a spectacular true story and character to work from, director and co-screenwriter Lars Kraume...fails to breathe much life into the stuffy, overly complex enumeration of the historical facts.

Though only an adequate singer, Medhaffer practically explodes with energy when she’s behind the microphone, making for a very charismatic performer.

It’s rather odd that Ellis, who co-wrote the screenplay with former Kubrick assistant Anthony Frewin, can’t come up with anything more action-packed or tension-filled in the first hour than a broken teacup. Valkyrie this is not.

Visually, the results are quite often striking, and they are also sharply cut together. But there’s a nagging suspicion throughout that there’s been more preparation for especially the set-pieces than would normally be the case on a documentary.

McCarthy more often seems to apply a generic style to his substance, rather than actually use a stylistic choice to help suggest or demonstrate something about his story and characters.

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.

The story’s anchored by strong performances from Belgian star Cecile de France (The Kid With a Bike, Hereafter) and French singer-turned-actress Izia Higelin (Mauvaise fille), who have a natural chemistry that’s not only credible but actually infectious.

The first couple of reels are very loosely structured, with no one identified onscreen, which gives the film a verite edge but which also means that it takes a good while for the material to find its footing and make it clear what and, more importantly, who, the film is exactly about.

The actors impressively give it their all.

Unlike the films he’s co-written for Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone…), which often rely on Audiard’s stunning capacity to foreground grand emotional sweeps, this is a much more constructed narrative that could only be described as a writer’s film, though one with several pleasant — if shocking is your idea of pleasant, that is — surprises up its sleeve.

Another effective, great-looking and well-acted Scandinavian crime film based on a bestselling novel.

Absent any real sense of who these three women are as individuals, most of their behavior is reduced to what feels like tics that are meant to illuminate character in a rather crude way.

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.

Without a strong point of view, it becomes hard to care about either the people or the issues with which they are grappling.

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

A serviceable piece of B-movie entertainment without an ounce of originality

Some individual scenes are certainly striking and the couple’s complex relationship and chemistry are believable but the overall narrative retains an erratic and somewhat jerky quality as the various elements don’t always logically build on what has come before.

Staying Vertical slowly morphs into something closer to a dark — and darkly funny — myth or fairytale, though this transformation isn’t entirely smooth.

It is absolutely fascinating to watch how Puiu X-rays his characters to show how every single person onscreen belongs to several groups or affiliations at once...and how every one of them is either willing or forced to compromise parts of who they are to continue belonging to all these groups.

Troy Espiritu’s plot-driven screenplay and Mendoza’s preference for a gritty, documentary-like style mean that the final result is neither as deep nor as resonant as it could have been.