Rafaela Sales Ross

The End We Start From is a muddy post-apocalyptic drama that fails to nail the human connection at its core.

Schrader’s gaze is patient — tired, almost. He frames Gere’s aged face in tight close-ups, and it is as if we are seeing him for the first time, wrinkled and ragged and oh so very beautiful.

Despite this welcome insight into the muddy rules of their relationship, the approach to Kerr’s addiction is the only time “The Smashing Machine” feels a tad slight, the filmmaker proving perhaps a bit too close to its subject to properly gnaw at the ugliness of chemical dependency and rehabilitation.

In an oversaturated market for pandemic-themed films, Coma is a delirious marvel of a reminder that, in the right hands, there is no such thing as an unfeasible subject.

Abbasi manages to thread the lines between tabloid fodder and veiled endorsement with great skill.

This is the director at his tenderest.

By creating — and persisting — on this on-the-nose parallel between the tragedy of opera and the one of Callas’s life, the duo sees this woman solely through the tragic value of her woes, denying her talent and her craft from the light that is true human connection, built not only through shared griefs but the deep understanding of one another that only great art can promote.

Shot in a way reminiscent of classic ’70s cinema while commenting on the woes of the contemporary, Williams builds a timely film that still feels timeless, an expansive chronicling of a slice of America ripe for many a rewatch.

A tightly-paced action thriller, Plane competently delivers on the deliciously formulaic tropes of the genre.

At a time when more and more filmmakers seem to be looking back at the basics of classic genres like cop procedurals, romantic comedies and crime thrillers, Watts brings to the table a tightly written and directed action comedy that is reminiscent of the era that crowned the genre without alienating itself from the time in which it was made.

The bitter aftertaste of dullness remains in its place, an unforgivable sin within the art form Constanzo seems so set on paying tribute to.

As a visual offering, The Silent Twins has moments of sheer, raw imaginativeness. As a worthy study of the two central characters, sadly, it lacks the same level of vision.

“Lost in the Night” functions as a study of absence — the absence of others, of talent, of answers, of peace, of love. By amalgamating all those lacks, Escalante reaches an unsurprising yet chillingly effective conclusion.

I’m not yet convinced it works, but my goodness, am I thrilled it exists.

It is an exercise in self-punishment disguised as self-aggrandisement, by a director powered by confident resignation and – for those unlucky enough to have experienced the gaping hole of yearning for home – it is entirely worth the self-indulgence.

The wretched allure of this process makes “Inside” worth the investment even when Katsoupis proves unable to resist the charming hands of cliché, bloating the script to serve the idea of an unconventional heist movie, when in his hands lie a much more interesting proposition.

She Came to Me lacks the palpable chemistry of a rom-com and the sobering relatability of a Nicole Holofcener dramedy, but it does find moments of inspiration thanks to its A-lister cast.

It is a shame that The Tender Bar never truly capitalizes on the quality of its few moments of comedic inspiration, leaning instead towards a melodrama doomed to be forever trapped in afternoon reruns.

With Another End, Messina unites one of the most gifted actors of the last two decades with one of the most gifted of the last two years to venture into one of the most fertile territories of any creative practice, the questioning of life and death, body and soul, presence and absence. It is almost unbelievable to see it result in an apathetic exercise of low-fi sci-fi that drags its way toward an eye-rollingly predictable twist.

A bothersome, ever-present sense of constraint permeates this twisted drama on the complexities of Gen Z morality. The Italian auteur, renowned for gnawing at the knotty edges of controversy with the unrestrained hunger of the unbothered, seems somewhat hesitant to fully dig into the messiness of the piping hot issue at hand.

Golda fails as a war movie, impenetrable to those unfamiliar with the Israeli-Arab conflict. It fails as a biopic, too, by refusing to scrutinize how Golda rose to power — and, most importantly, how she kept at it.

If it wasn’t for the highly-publicized scandals that envelop “Jeanne du Barry,” it is likely the film would make a swift turn from the red carpet into ostracism, and while the hubbub certainly delays the process, it will do little to prevent Maïwenn’s dire latest from the merciless hands of oblivion.

If the script plunges into the frustrating waters of predictability, Manodrome finds some solace in the asserted cast.

It is a great disappointment that we had to wait a decade for the Danish director to return to filmmaking, only to wind up with something that much more resembles the drivel of Copenhagen Cowboy than the fresh panache of Drive.

Black Flies offers plenty of nihilistic entertainment. But don’t be too tempted to look for any depth in a film far too comfortable in the formulaic confines.

The always great Farrell attempts to imbue his doomed gambler with a sliver of naïveté́ as he stumbles towards the story’s foregone conclusion, but there is little that can be done to compensate for this feeling of inevitability.

Of all the things Phillips does better in Joker: Folie à Deux than he did in Joker, the best is by far his course correction in catering to radical misogynists. The director isn’t subtle in his nods to the controversy stirred by the original.

Trained to precision and cute to the bone, the four-legged cast serves as a much-needed distraction from the trainwreck labeled by many as Besson’s return to the limelight. If this is all he’s got, then I guess the director will deservedly remain in the murky limbo of mediocrity.