Luke Hicks

All We Imagine as Light may not transcend form or style the way Kapadia did in her first feature––perhaps the only thing they share is dreamy titles––but that doesn’t make it any less transcendent. If anything, this is a more universal transcendence, one predicated on the strength of being together, the innate spark in people, and the potential we all have to see everyone as someone.

Anora is a devastating, gut-busting beauty––regular cinematographer Drew Daniels lending his brilliance to yet another Baker triumph––the kind that hurts your heart and holds you tight to recover at the same time, tears of laughter streaming down your face.

Martin Scorsese triumphs yet again.

Diaz makes a mockery of Magellan in his depiction of the revered globetrotter, his take on the Age Of Discovery damning to say the least.

There hasn’t been such a delightfully strange and thoroughly developed cast of characters in years.

It isn’t the most entertaining version of a Velvet Underground documentary, but it’s the truest to the group. Haynes hones in on character and new elements they brought to the table which, like elements of modern art, are best captured through philosophies and conceptual understanding, as they are here.

Without his trademark vulgarity and narrative absurdity, McDonagh’s challenged himself to draw humor and meaning from the mundane. And he does.

It would be very fair to expect a movie about a woman who raped a child and her future family’s reckoning with that to be dark, heavy, even overbearing. But May December is more funny than it is fervent, a bona fide spring suburban anthem, an American malady in chrysalis.

The characters are so fleshed-out, the diction so lived-in, the backstories and present stories so engaging. Their conversations seem less like scripted scenes than real moments lucky to have been captured. In creating a relatively small and recognizable film that can feel revelatory, Trier shows sleight of hand that could only belong to a young veteran at the height of his career.

There’s never a moment of grand revelation; rather a subtle, perpetual sense of understanding what’s going on, a fact that takes some pressure off the film and will likely make for a richer rewatch.

Minh Quý’s slow-cinema sensibilities are nothing short of spellbinding, the trance of rumination within reason enough to seek it out. And if that’s not enough, go for the best final shot of the year: a breath-stealing beauty that will leave you frozen in your seat even after the credits are over.

At a lengthy 140 minutes, the film flashes by. The deeper you go the more you want to know, and the more there is to know.

Hit Man is far from one of Linklater’s best, but in the context of his career it’s a welcomed addition, and on its own a damn good time.

With Costa’s nearly unfettered access to the main characters of modern Brazilian politics, the events of Apocalypse in the Tropics practically unfold in real time––a thrilling, profound documentary horror.

The Eternal Daughter buries us in the apprehension and frustration of writing and self-discovery as if they were one act, inextricable necessities. It’s spectral; much of what’s going on or being said doesn’t actually connect, but feels like it should. In a world of ghosts, somehow it does—a phantom connection that hovers brilliantly over everything.

What starts as a relatively clear story about sinister pyros, “pig-brained” kids, and abusive teachers transforms, through labyrinthine story mechanics, into a maze of limited perspectives crafted by loss, misinterpretation, and rejection.

At the end of the day, Priscilla’s multifaceted brilliance comes back around to Coppola’s immaculate sense of restraint in both screenwriting and direction.

It’s textbook Petzold, which I mean as a major compliment. Don’t expect all of the mysteries to be uncovered. There is no big explainer moment or narratively satisfying closure, the likes of which Petzold rejects, but the enigmas that do reveal themselves yield rare treasures.

The aspirations are admirable, but at 140 minutes it’s overlong, arriving at a pretty natural end before another act begins and we launch into what suggests an unwarranted second film. (Still, one that also ends up being good.)

Broker marks a thematic continuation of career-length fascination with alternative families and the legal, social, and philosophical values that paint such complicated ethical portraits of them. The director still has plenty to say, and does so quite eloquently.

Steve McQueen’s first documentary feels more like an unedited podcast with dizzying visual accompaniment than a feature film, despite ruminating on its subject, Amsterdam under Nazi occupation, for more than four hours.

Asteroid City is an absolute delight, Anderson’s best since The Grand Budapest Hotel.

At worst it’s preachy and, I fear, will feel “old” to younger audiences. At best, Nouvelle Vague is the kind of movie that emboldens people to make films themselves, and even more so, to adopt filmmaking as a way of life.

Paris, 13th District wades in the strange, true interconnectedness of life and evokes the banality within, so much that it starts to become banal itself.

The screenplay is overflowing with memorable meditations, blunt-but-heartfelt exchanges, and piercing affection for its people, all rooted in the natural world around them.

Where other filmmakers fall flat with the same material, Kurzel nails every emotional beat, wrenches your gut more than a few times, and immerses you in a primal modern history you likely don’t know this well. He weds the cinematic elements to a relatively memorable whole that envisions the past with clarity and hyper-relevance as only film can.

Goswami gives a subtly powerful performance grounded in perpetual shock, patience to act, and measured wisdom. And the enigmatic screenplay devises a grey area so hazy you’ll be going over it in your head for weeks, if not months, asking yourself what you would’ve done in Santosh’s impossible situation.

Despite the cool, screeching, horror-like score and some memorable moments, Kidnapped plays more like a heavy sigh than an absorbing adaptation of history.