Jose Solís

Amachoukeli knows there isn’t a version of life where pain doesn’t exist, and with Àma Gloria she offers an unadorned warning––a place of refuge for when we need it.

An expertly crafted but extremely reverential, biographical documentary that uses extracts from the artist’s diary as narration to suggest we’re listening to the story from the artist herself.

What’s most admirable about Veni Vidi Vici is that Hoesl and Niemann avoid being too obvious about satirical moments.

The filmmakers leave the gaucho community the same way they arrived, a tracking shot that turns the camera into a train that stopped briefly in a place we otherwise wouldn’t know existed, each viewer taking a custom souvenir. For some a lesson in courage and tenacity or curiosity about how this culture came to be; for others, it may be simply the snapshot from a trip they won’t regret taking.

It’s a film about the chaos of creation, about the violence that occurs in the creation of new worlds, deftly playing with genres to endlessly fascinating means.

That Silva achieves to both criticize the overuse of online personas (particularly in the white gay world) while becoming a piece meant to be meme-d and TikTok-ed into oblivion is truly remarkable.

Mánver takes on the part with ferociousness, creating a portrait of womanhood that challenges dogmatic ideas about the limits of desire. With her delicious Mamacruz, she makes us realize not much separates religious and sexual ecstasy, both of which can often connect us to our higher selves.

In Gods of Mexico, we are seeing the Aztec gods still hard at work, not correcting the imperfections of creation, but sitting with us and basking in its glory.

Whatever its pictorial beauty, often significant, this adaptation of Paolo Cognetti’s bestseller exemplifies my distaste for films that depict toxic masculinity without questioning it, or even suggesting there is nothing heroic or brave about refusing to leave behind damaging practices as long as they perpetuate some limited idea of what constitutes manhood.

Cassandro instead is a love letter to anyone who dares to be different by being themselves in a world that truly could do with more glitter and sequins.

To say director Emanuele Crialese’s camera falls in love with Cruz would be an understatement. She is lovingly shot and framed (even her Sophia Loren bob brings attention to her expressive eyes) and we don’t even need to hear her speak to know whoever’s gaze she’s under has completely fallen under her spell.

That they met in a place the Nazis had created with the purpose of eradicating life, and that they would go on to live in an extraordinary way in a world that didn’t understand them, is nothing short of a miracle. That they left behind this record of joy puts us in debt to them for as long as we shall live.

Framing Agnes is not a film about ultimates. It doesn’t pretend to have answers to all the insightful questions it poses; instead it just brims with the thrill of discovery.

Although Lemercier isn’t a Dion doppelgänger, in the scenes where she lip syncs and moves to Dion’s tunes, she embodies that divinely picaresque energy Dion radiates. And just like a TikTok rabbit hole of Dion challenges, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her.

By attempting to capture the universal instead of focusing on the specific, the film feels like a collection of ideas put forth in an amorphous collage.

Meneghetti might be a first-time director, but in his assured pace, his determination not to provide easy answers, and his ability to suggest without manipulating, his career can’t help but look promising.

The film is at its best when it lets Audrey be her own story. There is something quite beautiful in the unassuming way she carries herself walking in refugee camps, hugging orphaned children not because there’s a camera around, but because she couldn’t live in a world where a child had no one to hug them.

Free Time doesn’t perform the duties of a nostalgic travelogue. It lets itself find a journey by avoiding a destination, a wanderer without purpose who finds humanity because it’s impossible not to.

The film’s greatest achievement is the effortlessness with which Sandoval captures several microcosms simultaneously happening in New York City.

The wisdom of Stoll and Whiteside’s América is that it may not have answers but it dares to observe and listen.

If nothing else, Perfect Strangers is a film about how limited we are in the way in which we use technology. Rather than using it as a tool to advance our ways of storytelling and means of unique self-expression, we’re allowing its pettiest aspects to tell us who we are, becoming strangers to ourselves.

It fails as an insightful look at the class system in England because it sees every party with utmost contempt.

For all the times I applauded the film based on its sociological achievements, I found it deeply unsatisfying artistically.

In Dyrholm, Nicchiarelli found the ideal partner to bring to life such an iconic figure. The Danish actress channels Christa’s larger than life presence, her sardonic charm, and most surprising of all: her singing voice.

Unlike several nonfiction works that try to create defining portraits of the figures they chronicle, the filmmakers behind McQueen know that their subject is ultimately larger than life, so they bask in the creations he left behind and invite us to join if we’re willing to lose ourselves in them.

While Fifty Shades Freed, like its pair of predecessors, has many laughable elements, Anastasia’s reclaiming of her well-deserved pleasure is certainly not one of them.

Director Trish Sie knows better than to mess with the formula and the film plays out like a reunion with the characters you love.

With this, Cone also continues to be one of the few directors who has chosen to contextualize faith rather than demonize it. He shows greater interest in the places where we are like each other, all while celebrating what makes us different.