Rafaela Sales Ross

It is an experience as moving as it is unnerving, and as the piercing screeching of iron rods announces the Rose of Nevada is to leave port once more, it is we the audience there to wave a pained goodbye, quietly stunned by the ethereal aura of Jenkin’s striking creation.

Alas, for a film that sets out to understand the specific malaises of the bourgeoisie at a time of increasing sociopolitical unrest around class inequality, Mundruczó’s drama feels not only tone-deaf but also egregiously vapid.

The Secret Agent is, of course, a film of its own, and feasibly Mendonça Filho’s most refined, outright-auteurist work yet. Moura anchors this tale of history as an afterlife with a terrific encapsulation of the kind of hopelessness that masks itself as resilience, his gaze infused with the aching longing of a future condemned to remain possibility.

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.

Despite the frustrations of its labyrinthine rhythms, Landmarks is a worthy companion to Martel’s Zama in its prodding at the contradictions of a country whose denial is so grave it will bend its language and its laws before acknowledging truths that shed light on the horrors of its past that painfully echo in the present.

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.

Although the narrative is faithful to the book, del Toro rewrites the dialogue almost completely, an exercise whose only chance of success relies on his ingrained understanding of Shelley’s writing and tonal cadence. The result is a stunning piece of text, acutely aware of the labyrinthine nature of our most primitive emotions, and zigzagging through musings on love and loss and want with the careful rhythms of a writer who gets that tackling the grandiose often merits delicacy.

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.

It is Clooney, of course, that anchors and crowns this dramedy milimetrically envisioned to tug at the hearts of cinephiles (and, for the sake of addressing the elephant in the Netflix room, awards voters).

Earnest, pulpy fun at the movies is always a welcome sell. Still, it’s hard to settle into the easy rhythms of amusement when looking for answers not to the film’s central mysteries but to the nagging gaps in a story that seems carelessly scribbled together to accommodate a character that, although compelling enough, has very little to chew on.

Whenever it leans into these poignant metaphors to ask questions of guilt and duty, A Private Life grasps at something real and raw. It’s a shame Zlotowski so willingly refuses to take her finger off that pulse, even if the result remains a pleasurable ride.

This is a film about anger, felt as deeply by the characters whose lives unspool in front of the camera as by the filmmaker who sits behind it. Such anger is a long river that bifurcates into two opposing forces: violence and empathy.

Lawrence is the undeniable propulsive force of “Die, My Love,” a performer whose rare ability to swing from the effortless charm of the classic movie star straight into the dark abyss that houses the odd and the grotesque lends itself perfectly to a role as tangled as Grace.

Urchin puts forward a sensitive, promising director. And an even more promising writer.

No one is more seen in The Chronology of Water than Poots, who allows herself to be consumed with the urgency and hunger of Lidia.

The director is an expert in this precise kind of world-building, one intricately related to yearning – for another, for belonging, for redemption.

It is a disorienting, all-consuming sensorial experience and made all the much better to those willing to surrender to its mysteries.

I’m Still Here triumphs in pairing Salles’s intrinsic understanding of the emotional potential of realism with two brilliant performers in Mello and Torres.

The horror comes from seeing seismic consequences closer to newspaper headlines than history books. Figureheads die, but words live on, with grifters always waiting in the wings, spouting the same hate.

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.

There is something not quite right about this one Almodóvar film, a dramedy that emulates all that makes a story Almodovarian but bypasses its essence entirely.

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.

It is hard to conceive of a director this young and early in his career to be able to deliver a film that comes out of the gates with the confidence and grandeur of a classic. And not a classic in the making, but one already made.

This back and forth between assuredness and doubt also makes “Babygirl” a refreshing look at BDSM and questions of consent and desire. Reijn is unafraid to have her characters play out all the wobbles that come with negotiating one another’s boundaries, reinforcing how pleasure comes from good communication. That the Dutch director manages to do so while crafting some of the hottest sex scenes in a major film in years and without dropping the ball in pacing this satire on the era of the politically correct feels almost impossible.

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.

While the first act feels dynamic despite its stationary setting, the latter sections unravel oppositely. The gags that played so well the first time around grow tiresome through repetition, and the mystery around the big event that seems to lead them all into doom takes center stage to the detriment of the relationship between the characters.

What is grief if not a non-linear, mood-spanning, incongruous mess? In this, The Shrouds feels like one of the greatest encapsulations of loss and one we might look at more and more fondly as time goes by.

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

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.

There is so much beauty in Bird, both within the relationships unraveling onscreen and on the screen itself — bright reds and whites and blacks lusciously captured in the film, the edges of the image burnt and remade, almost like yet another bird, the phoenix.

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

By gambling with the flimsy dice of morality, the director crafts a film that successfully bypasses the traps of the gratuitous to find its way towards an uncomfortable but ultimately rewarding catharsis.

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.

Briones and Mara are perfect dance partners in this waltz between reality and possibility, stark opposites and doomed lovers united by a hope they know to be foolish.

In this deliberately stunted teasing of information, Mielants builds a muted drama that cleverly harnesses horror tropes to paint a picture of what happens within the convent’s walls.

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

Society of the Snow humanizes the gruesome tale of a group of rugby players trapped in the Andes.

Love is put to the test in Greek director Christos Nikou’s Fingernails, a sleek sci-fi film about a near-future where couples can scientifically test their love by removing one of the titular body parts.

The result is a visually rich film that finds moments of entertaining inspiration but suffers from a frustrating lack of focus.

The two veteran actors share a lukewarm chemistry but settle into a competent balance between the diametrically opposed nature of their characters. Alas, as sharp as the duo might be, they cannot fight the moroseness that sets into the film’s latter half.

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

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.

The thorny nuances of multiethnic relationships are deeply understood by Celine Song’s directorial debut, Past Lives.

Although it is true that The Beast would greatly benefit from a gentle trimming in its first hour, it is easy to forgive the indulgence when the result is such a remarkable commentary on the looming threats of artificial intelligence and the dangers of glorified emotional numbness.

Sofia Coppola proves to be the perfect choice to tackle the life of Priscilla Presley through a film that deeply understands the desires and dreams of a teenage girl

David Fincher is rarely dull, and The Killer cannot take the director’s filmography in that direction, but it won’t push itself toward the top of his work, either. A competently realized crime thriller made by a technical team just as sharply attuned to details as the director at the ship’s helm, the Netflix production is entertaining but a little orthodox.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar grants Dahl’s work a pop-out book feel in its theatrical storytelling.

Not only is the film’s portrayal of Felicia tainted by ethnically inappropriate casting, but her character itself is often reductive—she is but the modern wife of a modern man, coming forth with a loose agreement on fidelity that inched Leonard across the finish line of a lengthy road towards marriage.

Not only is Poor Things one of Lanthimos’ most refined philosophical musings, but it is his most accomplished visual work, too.

Leaning away from blood-pumping thrills and towards family drama, Ferrari benefits from another great turn by Adam Driver and a handful of masterfully choreographed race scenes but is ultimately too risk-averse.

If in his previous films about the regime Larraín often opted for subtlety, in El Conde elusiveness is a foreign notion. It is thrilling to watch the director repeatedly hit the nail in the head without much desire—or care—to engage with subtext.

The people in Sang-soo’s latest are given the time to exist within the frame without having to respond to the sometimes constricting expectations of fiction, the director’s observational style a perfect match to the film’s titular purpose: to observe a not-so-regular day in the lives of regular people.

“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.

Frustration is quickly diluted in service of reinforcing the central character’s enlightenment, a repeating arc that muddles the refined treatment of the film’s accompanying themes.

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.

By bringing to the screen a conversation painfully reserved to private spaces built upon the frail structures of shame and guilt without ever losing the type of loving lightness one can only get through unwavering support, Molly Manning-Walker confidently steps out of the gate right foot forward.

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.

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.

In this years-long dance between the two, The Eight Mountains plays as a gentle epic, equally accomplished in its minimalistic approach to intimacy as in its grandiose portrayal of landscapes, an immersive visual experience that needs not sacrifice the arcs of its characters to succeed in building arresting contemplation.

As it is, the enormity of these feelings is trapped, lingering unexplored with nowhere to go, and the frustration felt as a viewer eventually gives way to disengagement.

Had it kept prodding at the political parallels of 1990 Berlin and Maria and Henner’s romance, “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything” would have sat beautifully at the intersection between the coming-of-age of a young woman and that of an old country. Instead, Atef opts to stretch out the story, stubbornly tugging at the corners of the narrative, expanding a tale rich in its metaphors until it becomes see-through.

"In Viaggio” is far from a puff piece disguised as an unbiased account. The power dynamics at play are ever-present, the same interactions that bring the Pope closer to his subjects denouncing the hypocrisy of sanctifying a man who preaches for equality.

Subtlety proves a scarce commodity as the debuting duo chops at this cautionary tale until its fragile narrative bones are fully exposed, dialogue stripped of any valuable nuance.

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.

Anchored by its competent trio of protagonists, The Adults would have been a lovely time if not for the overused mishmash of twee gimmicks.

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.

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

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 loving — and highly entertaining — ode to the outcasts who dream of nothing more than a life filled with fixing whirring gadgets and afternoons spent in “Star Trek” matinees.

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

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 same ground that once bore the sturdy foundation of a loving home now stands eternally scarred by the searing cuts of imaginary lines, an irreparable fissure that – in Panahi’s heartfelt visual diary – cruelly severs the frail umbilical cord to the motherland.

The arresting visual competency of Scarlet, which includes the clever use of archival footage previously seen in Marcello’s Venice darling “Martin Eden” and the beautifully composed textures of its cinematography, can’t salvage its muddled pace.

As newly-elected president Gabriel Boric takes the stage to address the nation that placed upon him precious trust, it is hard not to be moved by the electric rawness of hope.

Other People’s Children is a moving rumination on the pains caused by the unbudging pillars of traditional parenting. It is a rare offering in its enlightened kindness, and a heartbreaking one, too.

This is the director at his tenderest.

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.

Having these two storylines run parallel provides for both disconnect and whiplash, a narrative choice that emphasizes what Goldin beautifully labels “the darkness of the soul” — to be plagued to feel everything while concurrently condemned to nihilistic numbness.

The beloved characters constructed by Austen are rendered insipid in this retelling that can’t quite seem to find its footing, trapped between a desire to dip into hip modernism and an inherent pull towards the original material.

Corsage succeeds precisely by ditching the myth of objectivity in favor of portraying a woman eternalized by the glory and dolor of her imperfections.

In its expert blend of vivid cinematography and naturalistic performances, Alcarràs creates a refined study of heritage that understands life’s permanent absence of resolution – with every hard-earned answer comes a new riddle.

Those who have seen "One More Time With Feeling" will undoubtedly have a deeper appreciation for this follow-up companion piece, but — even for the ones unfamiliar with either Dominik’s or Cave’s work— This Much I Know To Be True still proves powerful even if consumed as a concert film alone.

Gainsbourg is riveting in her portrayal of the intricacy of this pattern, her hands grasping for the tangibility of doorframes when words seem far too futile, her back arching and contracting to respond to ecstasy and sorrow.

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.

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.

The film feeds into the very power structure it sets out to debunk, a frustrating miss that threatens to cloud Comer’s poignant performance.