Nicholas Bell

Lifting directly from Camus’ prose in the final throes, Ozon’s take on The Stranger effectively administers the source’s intentions—and clearly, there is a point, even if Meursault himself would reject it.

While The Blue Trail ends on a tenuous note, it envisions a troubling, slippery slope of a future which doesn’t seem inherently unimaginable.

Guilt certainly becomes her, and the narrative, which consists mainly of a handful of one-on-one interactions, yields often funny, sometimes surprising results.

Destined for instant controversy and an eventual time capsule documenting Israel’s normalizing of barbarism, Lapid’s latest is an admonition of almost shocking import, an increasingly rare example of modern art speaking truth to power.

Rosi approaches obscured angles of Naples, going above and below, inside and out.

Hüller is quite exceptional as the disfigured human grimly determined to succeed, sacrificing pleasure and comfort for control.

Chan-wook takes his time in unwinding his devious tale, a masterful neo-noir about following dangerous fantasies to their logical conclusion in job markets further compromised by a dependence on AI.

As a sumptuous visual spectacle shot by the formidable DP Manu Dacosse, it’s a labyrinth worth getting lost in

Elegant, moody, and intense The Secret Agent mines through the rubble of the past, reconstructing the beauty and terror of a time long gone but still haunting the present.

Layered, almost kaleidoscopic metaphors evolve through religious and politically minded themes, and the end result feels like a Gaspar Noe adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Dedicating the film to his sisters, Khatami dives into the toxic attachment styles fostered and reinforced through repressive gender roles in a traditionally heteropatriarchal culture, where the absorption of oppression cements endless intergenerational trauma. But Khatami explores the aftermath of a reckoning, the consequences of which prove to be significant.

Hypnotic and transfixing, it’s a film experience demanding marination, only bothering to explain itself in stops and starts, like an amnesiac slowly puzzling together constantly shuffled memories.

Lawrence is exceptional, and as committedly bleak as the film is, her empathetic portrayal allows this to feel less like miserabilism and more like an honest depiction of a woman who feels indefinitely trapped.

Where Sentimental Value tends to feel somewhat overwhelmed is with an extensive amount of running time spent on the fussiness of Borg’s production with Rachel, treating us to publicity (the film is being financed by Netflix), which sometimes bogs down the pace and distracts us from the beating heart of the film.

In essence, Cactus Pears is about taking the time to search for meaningful fulfillment, which means not holding your discoveries hostage to a future no one can predict.

Arguably less sensational and surprisingly straightforward, it’s another expertly crafted bit of bizarre theatrics from an auteur who remains fascinated with exploring characters struggling to comprehend situations from obscured vantage points, puzzling skewed realities together often too late to avoid disaster.

At times startlingly funny, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is arguably familiar in scope. But for all its dysfunctions, discomfort and disrepair, it’s also relieving in its relatability to how exhausting it can be when you’re actually living through the experience of ‘rolling with the punches.’

Blue Moon provides us with a myriad of its own words with which to approach the essence of Lorenz Hart, who it would seem, died much too young and without a love of his own. But the lasting impression of the film and its subject is, indeed, ineffable.

While Del Toro’s version isn’t without some slights, as the saga’s momentum eventually begins to deplete under the significant running time and Alexandre Desplat’s score feels as if its skirting into Danny Elfman territory, this is an elegant reincarnation of Mary Shelley’s original horror novel, and to paraphrase her words, the film is a ‘creature of fine sensations.’

The set-up is familiarly threadbare, with numerous lackadaisical interactions between some sort of creative type confronted by new people whose orbits slowly circle one another as they engage in an eat/drink/be merry scenario. But it builds to a surprisingly weighty climax in a third act which is more confrontational about duplicitous human behaviors than most of his past works.

Bizarre, but not without its own unique brand of narrative and visual rewards, The Hyperboreans is an eclectic, disturbing, and formidable foray into the creative possibilities of what cinema can be.

Hadžihalilović’s undeniable command of tone and directorial vision remains impressive. The Ice Tower depicts a cruel, unhappy realm and successfully elicits a corresponding emotional response.