Jenny Nulf

Admirable efforts aside, I Carry You With Me is still an enchanting mix of drama and romance, but also a timely, poetic love letter to Iván’s home country, Mexico.

Downstream to Kinshasa is a simple narrative, with a group of resilient survivors getting from point A to B, but its simplicity is impactful. It is clear and concise about its purpose, and by the end his subjects’ desires are explicit.

Introduction feels like a mediation on how time chips away at first impressions: What started as something beautiful and simple can become complicated, unattainable, and hard to hold on to.

There is a raw sexiness to Benedetta that’s deeply engaging and thrilling.

Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man is a gritty, nasty piece of work.

Causeway is at its most successful when the film is patient, giving the space to have its characters ruminate over how their past experiences don’t have to define their futures. It’s the kind of film that only succeeds with incredible performances to back it up, and Neugebauer achieves that with Lawrence and Henry guiding her film in such a touching, beautiful way.

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s latest film Close is a devastatingly heavy watch, a delicately filmed tragedy that takes hold of your emotions and never lets go for the duration of its run time.

Parmet’s ability to repackage a story that oftentimes can feel exploitative and gritty through a more mature and compassionate lens is quite sincere – a challenging film that’s worth the effort.

Atlantis isn’t an easy film to watch, and it’s not meant to be. It’s an anti-war film without solutions, but what it clear is that Vasyanovych believes in humanity rebuilding from tragedy.

Where the film loses steam is in its configuration; the slow-paced journey from setting to setting builds the tension a bit unevenly in service of the film’s themes. These bumps in the road leave Emergency imperfect, but it’s still a chaotic and thoughtful ride worth hitching onto.

Thorough and competent, The Dissident works as an essential political documentary. It covers Khashoggi’s assassination in detail, and very clearly makes it known that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the one behind it. However, it’s certainly a step down for Fogel, and while its production is glossy and polished, the lack of inertia keeps The Dissident from reaching its full potential.

There are echoes of Greta Gerwig and Dunham, and Barr’s voice never fully comes through in her homage. Instead, Sophie Jones feels like bites from these auteurs Barr so clearly admires, with brief blips that feel genuinely her own.

Gran Turismo is perhaps a more basic film for Blomkamp, but a welcome reminder that his breakthrough first feature District 9 wasn’t a fluke. He manages to give a film that is more or less an ad for a video game a little bit of heart.

The longer it goes, the more True Mothers gets weighed down by its melodrama. Kawase is just hopeful and soft enough to keep her film glowing, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing, and is a bit frustrating with its blatant red herrings.

My Donkey, My Lover & I isn’t going to break the mold, but it’s an easy stride of a film that’s bubbling with joy.

As an introductory lesson to what it means to be intersex, Every Body serves its purpose well enough, but there’s no bite to the storytelling, no immediate call to action.

Stephens’ film is a sweet gesture, a personal ode to a hometown hero of his, and while the filmmaking itself is rusty, there’s enough love from Stephens and Kier alike to keep this little film afloat.

It’s a film you can easily fall into and out of, a breezy walk through the park. French Exit is simply an enchanting day at the movies.

Tunisia’s first Oscar-nominated film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, is an emulsion of ideas, each as ambitiously thought-provoking as the next.

It Lives Inside at least isn’t just another mainstream horror weepy about grief – there’s a lot more that it’s playing around with, which is so refreshing in a time where horror is either extremely insane for the purposes of camp or about extremely damaged people who should just go to therapy. It’s nice to see a spooky movie that is having fun with a new box of tools.

Goran Stolevski’s dreamy debut You Won’t Be Alone is a poetic glimpse at generational trauma.

Sachs’ downward spiral into her father’s personal life has been in the works for roughly 26 years, with footage collected from 1984 to 2019. By using a mixture of 8mm film to pristine digital, her experimental documentary feels worn, an eclectic mixture of home videos that blends in with the film’s familial nature.

Hatching does its best at cracking the surface, but never quite sinks its claws as deep as it wants to.

For a film that’s rooted in genre tropes, there’s no genre atmosphere to visually anchor down the film’s themes. With the spectacle fizzled out, visually Williams’ film isn’t enough to take it over the edge and make it memorable. Still, first-time direction hurdles aside, it’s a serviceable, fun goth romp.

Hit the Road is stuffed with thoughts, ideas, and metaphors, which can leave the film feeling weighty and thick, but for those willing to dig and see past its simplistic charms, it’s quite an ambitiously layered debut.

Maijidi’s latest was Iran’s submission for the most recent Oscars, a film that’s gentle, packed with all the familiar beats you find in these City of God-like child POV gritty fairy tales.

A film that is equal parts a celebration of a young woman’s life and a horrible document on her death, Finding Yingying brings humanity to the often stale true-crime subgenre while also giving us a unique perspective from someone on the outside of the American justice system.

When de Armas’ performance is given the space to be quiet and chilling, Blonde suddenly hits, and what once felt hollow feels painfully visceral.