Leslie Felperin

It is immaculately performed by Zischler and especially Hüller, grounding the film throughout with an uncanny, expressive stillness.

It’s such a seamless, harmoniously composed work, effortlessly edited and elegantly shot, that it’s almost too easy to just drift along with it, like floating down a river on a canoe, letting its currents take control. This isn’t a grabby, attention seeker of a film, but a quiet, watchful sort of movie that whispers its secrets sotto voce.

Cookie Queens serves up an eminently accessible and easily meme-able serving of American-girl cuteness, featuring a diverse cast of well-chosen young women.

Borenstein and Talankin keep the focus mainly on the kids and the slow creep of authoritarianism, rather than the adults, but Pasha’s voiceover and occasional address to camera hint at qualities the filmmakers seem hesitant to discuss.

There’s nothing radical or groundbreaking about either that message or the film-making on show here, but Ricciardi and Janice’s honesty and indeed that of all those around him, prove to be very moving in the long run, underscoring that there’s as many ways to face death as there are to live life.

Similarly to his writings, Franz the film is interested in a distilled, abstracted meditation on power, the law, control and desire that transcends the banal borders of realism.

Writer-director Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s script leans perhaps a little too hard on the show-don’t-tell theory of construction, but she and her team make evocative use of simple but effective flourishes.

Premo’s commitment and grit are palpable — especially when one notes how close to the action he gets during the Capitol insurrection, so that the camera shows every jostle and bump. The sequence, full of shots and footage never seen before , is as chilling, horrifying and disgusting as the many other clips we’ve already seen shot by others.

There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space for itself somewhere in the region of Eric Rohmer wistful romances, Richard Linklater ensemble stories, and Sixth Generation semi-underground Chinese filmmakers like Jia Zhangke.

Kotevska depicts the growing bond between man and bird with warmth and humour, and while the musical score is a bit on the sappy side, there are enough drolly astringent touches to make this cockle-warming family viewing, if you have a family that likes stories of unhappy agrarian workers.

It’s too soon to know for sure, but this may end up being ranked as one of the best nonfiction films of the year.

What’s quite novel about this work, as opposed to any number of well-made docs about (mostly male) war photographers, is that it directly addresses how Addario’s job impacts her as a mother.

At heart, it’s a story that shows no clear ending yet, and Noam makes for a fine guide to this purgatory.

Bring tissues for a doozy of an ending that will have everyone bawling in the aisles.

Kudos are due to supervising editor Mark Becker and his team, who never put a splice wrong. That deft level of craft is maintained throughout, while the aching musical bed by contemporary composer Nico Muhly adds just the right tone of plangent despair tinged with hope.

The end result is a nifty ethical puzzle about balancing the needs of individuals versus those of the community. Still, it’s best not to take the plot too seriously given the wild implausibilities that come into play in the third act.

It’s the audacious austerity of Farsi’s film-making that really makes the material sing.

What saves this from being just best-of list bait for upmarket film critics is the sincerity of the performances, especially from the core trio of Wu, Lee and Panna, each of whom projects a profound loneliness that’s never more apparent than when they’re in the middle of a crowded place. Which, this being Singapore, is just about everywhere.

For all its playfulness, there’s an intellectual heft to A Useful Ghost that exerts its own gravity.

It feels confident, inventive and as grippy as duct tape throughout.

This works well just as simple drama, directed and performed immaculately, and as a glorious promise of films to come from Lin.

The film is to its credit much more interested in psychology rather than tech, and the fine lines between avarice, rage and impotence that make the capitalist world go round.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore does offer an engaging, exuberant portrait of the relentlessly likeable Matlin.

Love, to quote that woozy old ballad, is indeed a many-splendored thing that takes many forms — a multiplicity that Love the film is quietly alive to.

The script, by Roderick Warich and Kröger, isn’t quite as nifty as its famous models, but it has its own grim integrity, especially with the jarring last frames.

All in all, this is a powerful example of a bricolage-like editing technique that relies heavily on exploiting the copyright laws around fair use to create a prismatic, provocative style of cinema that’s very 21st century.

Out of all the film’s many achievements, perhaps the most impressive is the ability to keep the tone balanced just on this biting point between tragedy and comedy in scene after scene.

By the end it’s nearly impossible not to shed a tear after the touching finesse and shape of this story.

The subject matter alone could be enough to trigger geysers of tears in viewers, but what makes Le Fanu’s direction especially impressive is its lack of sentimentality. Instead, she focuses on daily rituals — the little murmurs of gratitude and kindness, and the sense of exhaustion that stretches out for hours, days and weeks as one waits for someone to die.

Hardcore Ozon fans will have fun arguing about where exactly this falls in the ranking of his substantial body of work, but it’s surely somewhere in the top 10 or even the top five, a rock-solid demonstration of his control over storytelling, technique and ability to get the best from actors.

The film is exceedingly funny, even in translation, right up to the point where the tone shifts dramatically. Deeply endearing on every level, from its anti-authoritarian politics to its body positivity to general joie de vivre, this is a crowdpleaser through and through (unless the crowd happens to be made up of moral policemen and dogmatic clerics).

Harvest stands strong and tall, a work solid as an oak. Full of a sensual love of nature and a distinctive vibe, it’s tangy like a home-brewed ale.

The portrait of a nearly vanished rural way of life remains compelling, and the melodrama engaging enough to suggest this might have been improved by being spread thinner as a TV series.

The long, unbroken rhythm of Wang’s filmmaking somehow casts a spell, and he certainly has a good eye for characters. That’s a blessing considering how slow and considered the takes are here, watching with equally intense absorption whether the subjects are sleeping on a train or constructing seams or making food. But overall, the lack of differentiation can be wearisome.

The surreal bolt-on doesn’t work all that well, but the limpid cinematography and more quotidian dramatic elements are impactful and striking enough to distinguish this as one of the stronger films to emerge this fall festival season.

Like an unusually designed coat featuring quirky details and an interesting fabric choice from a young designer’s first collection, Swedish writer-director Mika Gustafson’s feature debut has raw edges and some sloppy stitching in places, but the whole is fresh, directional and beautifully cut.

Although Coup! has a small cast and unfolds mostly in a secluded mansion during the 1918 influenza pandemic, it packs a lot of flavor, suspense and droll comedy into its slim 97-minute running time, making it fun enough to deserve an exclamation point in its title.

It’s all a lot, as they say, but those with a taste for maximalism will swoon over the goods on offer here.

Norwegian writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel takes some big swings with his first feature Armand, not all of which connect, but the ambition and risk-taking are largely impressive.

Like the best comic fantasies, Rumours has more than a grain of tragic truth to it.

In the end, the film feels too rollicking and self-parodying to be taken seriously, but it strikes just the right tone to make it a fun Midnight movie.

It all could be too much reality to handle if it weren’t for the fact that mercifully, the film ends on a hopeful note, with the most wicked characters punished for their sins and the good given a second chance. It’s undoubtedly something of a fairy-tale ending, but the kind we need these days.

Thanks to the director’s magisterial knack with actors (especially non-professionals such as terrific adolescent discovery Nykiya Adams, who, as the protagonist, is in nearly every frame of the film), the result is quite entrancing.

I can think of few documentaries that are more honest, self-scrutinising and revelatory about ageing, familial love and its limits, and the whole tragicomic process of dying.

The result is a finely observed study of modern manners and mores on a micro-budget that’s nevertheless rich in feeling, especially the cringeiness one might experience from watching other people bicker or hearing people have sex through thin walls.

Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners (Domakinstvo za pocetnici) is a fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family.

Amusing, uplifting and about as sugary and teeth-sabotaging as caramelized popcorn, The Beautiful Game celebrates the healing power of team sports for those who might feel more pushed to society’s margins by misfortune or choice.

It’s a work suffused with emotional tones and shades, surprisingly not all of them sad even though the subject knew at the time of filming he had mere weeks left before he’d die of cancer.

The film gets across the weird weight of lockdown, a time of tension and anxiety but also an opportunity for creative growth none of us saw coming.

The camera’s gaze isn’t pitiless but there isn’t a scrap of sentimentality – just an unflinching willingness to look at all of life straight on, without blinking.

There is a fair number of gags and wisecracks that will go over the head of many viewers not steeped in the local lore, argot and history. But the film’s infectious energy, use of in-camera effects, animation and all manner of jiggery pokery is as mesmerizing and giddy as it was when Danny Boyle used many of the same tricks for Trainspotting.

This is not a cuddly version of Godzilla. He is rageful and entirely incomprehensible, seemingly not even motivated by hunger, desire or revenge. Like a god, he just is, an entity that has become death, the destroyer of worlds, as ineluctable as history itself.

Perhaps the most remarkable moment comes at the end when the elderly Aurora reflects that she doesn’t want revenge, she just wants those connected to the genocide to be made accountable for it: “sat in the chair” of justice.

Sometimes God is just too on the nose when he makes his creations suffer; but at least Alberdi’s humane, profoundly empathic film-making offers some balm.

There’s nothing sentimental about this documentary, which looks at people with the clear, unflinching gaze of a portraitist.

The Kitchen also has plenty of inventive ideas, creates heady atmospheres in both its dark and lighter moments, and features vivid performances with a large ensemble.

Extensive archive news material is drawn on to explain key moments in the struggle over reproductive rights, but mostly the story emerges organically from the interviewees themselves.

Unsurprisingly, it all builds to a bleak conclusion, and the film as a whole is a powerful statement that lingers in the mind long after the final credits roll.

Like so many of his other movies, it’s pithy, punchy, a little shouty at times, but made with brio and swagger.

Gasoline Rainbow pays homage to all the road movies that ever were but is still its own quirky thing, uniquely of its time.

While the landscapes, especially in the parched Sahara section of the story, are dazzling, Carnera’s camera always keeps the focus on the humans, sometimes specks seen from great distances moving through the sand and sometimes studied in close-ups that fill the widescreen canvas.

If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.

Given the chemistry between the two leads that could restart a dormant nuclear power plant, viewers are likely to come away sated with pleasure after seeing this delightful work.

It’s nice to see the old tension between selling out and staying pure never goes away in any corner of the film-making world.

Let’s just say that morally, The Killer is all over the place, which may alienate some viewers. Others may delight in both the protagonist and the film’s puckish, zero-fucks-given attitude, one that seems entirely, atheistically uninhibited by fear of a punitive deity or higher moral purpose.

If Asteroid City was a too-rich 20-course tasting menu, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a deliciously calibrated amuse-bouche.

Truly, this covers the whole spectrum of experience, all of it eloquently explained by the subjects, an assortment of women who tell their truths about clients who can’t be honest with themselves, their complicated relationships with friends, family and cis women, the legacy of slave culture, and their favourite portable electric shavers.

The result is a sly, often playful but ultimately moving study of community, generational anguish and atrocities covered up by the state that blends documentary technique with originality and polished storytelling skill.

The whole collaboration feels undeniably stagey, but it’s still an empathic and frequently moving work that touches on the sheer volume of callers that workers like Thompson’s character, often unpaid volunteers, must contend with every day.

While the cast’s dancing is very good, on the whole, the acting suggests less training. But that fits the semi-professional vibe even better, creating a work that feels light, quick and quite dirty in every sense.

The inevitable North American remake will no doubt pump more technology into its iteration, but a more efficient, streamlined approach toward pace and editing wouldn’t have hurt this original and striking work.

Wim Wenders’ latest documentary Anselm offers a mesmerizing, cinematic catalogue of German painter-sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s deeply tactile, maximalist oeuvre.

Youth (the parenthetical subtitle Spring heralds a projected series of films) is consistently engaging, even if it’s not always easy to see what the whole package is trying to say that couldn’t be said with more brevity.

This challenging, extremely violent, ravishing-looking, intricately plotted adaptation by Kitano of his novel is of interest for its fresh take on a musty genre. That said, it could feel like a slog to watch for viewers who aren’t fans of sword-wielding, screaming samurai movies.

Like so many Bildungsroman, it’s a tapestry crammed with incidental details, just as busy as the fantastic vintage-style prints on the women’s dresses and the flammable upholstery in the interiors. But then Crialese, who’s always been good with performers, will serve up a moment of achingly sad stillness.

Somehow it works on every level: as a moving melodrama about maternal sacrifice and grief, as a domestic comedy, and even as a glorious musical.

Like a lot of topline Korean films, this prestige action thriller is a little too long at 137 minutes, but it’s consistently entertaining throughout, and quite well-suited given the length to being viewed on a streaming platform.

Noisy, joyous and as exhausting as the multi-generational bash at the heart of its story, Totem packs a hefty wallop for a film that’s only 95 minutes, and should further solidify Aviles’ reputation as an auteur with a unique vision and remarkable skills with actors, especially non-professionals.

Shinkai never skimps on the human level. Suzume, who at first seems like just another standard-issue anime ingenue, grows and becomes more interesting throughout.

Despite being entombed in all that prop flesh and wrinkles, Mirren manages to emote very effectively with her voice, mimicking Meir’s midwestern twang, gait and posture.

The Disappearance of Shere Hite ponders this paradox, and while somewhat vexingly it doesn’t fully explain why or to what extent Hite “disappeared” from public view in the decades before her death in 2020, it draws a vivid portrait of a complex, fascinating woman.

This lively, likable, if somewhat on-the-nose work grabs viewer attention with fourth-wall-breaking monologues, jocular explanatory graphics, and tightly choreographed dance numbers to vintage American and Iranian pop songs.

Due to the fact that the canvas is broader this time around — and the subjects Lears has chosen to focus on don’t have four discreet, parallel narratives that we can see through to the end — there’s inevitably less coherence to this film strictly in terms of storytelling. Instead, each of these women is trying to make a difference in the climate crisis in very specific ways, but for all of them history keeps interfering.

It seems almost frivolous to note this, but the hyper high-definition cinematography is both beautiful in a savage way and adds immediacy to the viewing experience.

Director Lorenzo Vigas, who collaborated on the script with Paula Markovitch and Laura Santullo, adeptly manoeuvres things so that the film slides effortlessly from mystery to criminal story to quasi-Greek tragedy, changing registers with subtle alterations of tone. The landscape – vast, desiccated, menacing – is practically a character in its own right, full of inscrutable secrets like Hatzín’s own deadpan face.

Luxuriating in a wealth of archival material that encompasses radio and TV interviews, privately recorded conversations from reel-to-reel tapes (Armstrong could swear like a sailor), and good old-fashioned newspaper clippings (remember them?), this documentary about the great Louis Armstrong is a real keeper.

Vesper plays like a cult film waiting to be discovered. It adeptly fuses a compelling YA-friendly story about a teenage girl’s survival in a hostile environment with dense, thoughtful world-building, the sort required to draw in nerdy-minded viewers. That savvy combination creates a narrative that breathes and expands, like one of the freaky mycelium-like life forms that populate the story.

Assembled with seemingly deliberate disjointed editing that scrambles the time line, and shot through with unsettling shock cuts backed by Oliver Coates discordant, droning minimalist score, The Stranger definitely feels like an elevated genre exercise — more challenging than the average crime drama but also more interesting.

Beneath the crazy candy-coloured palette, there is actually some real human warmth in the love story, and the acting ensemble features some great comic performers in supporting roles.

Although Hill certainly puts in a few sly tips of the hat to canonical and cult favorites and is clearly enjoying exploiting the audience’s expectations of the genre, Dead for a Dollar isn’t an empty nostalgia exercise. Nor is it a revisionist postmodern deconstruction. It’s somewhere between the two, built on a narrative architecture as classical in its vernacular as Doric columns on a bank, but with details that will surely remind audiences of the future that it was made in the 2020s.

In the end, it plays a little too often like an academic pastiche of horror tropes even though its emotional core rings with resonance.

The result is an expressive and moving portrait of a tempestuous marriage, one told with elan that feels rich in feeling even if its entire budget probably wouldn’t have covered the cost of croissants on an average film shoot in France.

Simply designed animation, modeled on the look of cool cartoons of the time such as Daria, adds an extra comic jauntiness. You could say, to use a popular slang term from the 90s, this puts the “mental” back in experimental, but in a good way.

This tense dystopian horror-thriller feels geographically non-specific, almost as if it were taking place in some kind of dream world. That touch of hazy vagueness is just right for SA director and co-writer Kelsey Egan’s cracking feature debut (co-written with Emma Lungiswa De Wet).

It’s not so much the running time of 156 minutes that will tire you out as the incredible sonic, visual and emotional overload generated by the work itself; perhaps this is ideally seen first in a cinema for maximum impact and then again in small, digestible chunks at home.

The Sea Beast gets the balance just right between rollicking action scenes, the inevitable didactic anti-hunting message about respecting other species’ right to exist and family-friendly humour.

This is undoubtedly a work of historic significance, made by a master in his field – but beware that it often feels like a film-making notebook, full of doodles and ideas but not especially cohesive as a story.

Dhont and his team know just how to turn up the emotional dials with stunning magic-hour lensing that gives golden-haired Dambrine a halo of backlit suffering as he stands in fields of nodding dahlias, that most gloriously domestic and benevolent flower.