Rory O'Connor

Even by the director’s meditative standards, this one cuts close to the bone.

It’s a solid stab at the socially conscious mainstream flick for Akin, especially after he faltered somewhat with his last political film.

The character’s thinly sketched beliefs combined with Phoenix’s uncharacteristically vague performance keep him constantly at arm’s reach. We never really get into his head, which makes his eventual downfall (or Falling Down) feel both nihilistic and dramatically undercharged.

The movie never achieves a real sense of urgency, but the fault is not Johnson’s to bear. The actor is relentlessly watchable, disappearing into the role while managing to locate Kerr’s towering vulnerability even as he’s felling doors with a single swing of his fist.

It’s compelling viewing, if a bit uneasy—not just for the flashbacks to those early COVID days of respiratory machines and people in HAZMAT suits, or the film’s second half, which covers the lack of egalitarianism in the vaccine rollout, and how those decisions ravaged non-Western countries and accelerated the rise in variants.

Downsizing is arguably the most flawed of Payne’s work, but despite its apocalyptic overtones, it’s also his most optimistic. The resulting emotional hit of Paul’s final actions — like that of Miles’, Woody’s, and Schmidt’s — is no less moving, either.

It’s clever, cold, and devoid of the one thing it assumes to be interested in: humanity.

Master Gardener is another of the old Calvanist’s prayers of absolution—honest and personal to a fault, and a satisfying close to one of the great contemporary trilogies.

What first appeared to be a fun riff on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest soon transforms into something much darker.

Ruben Östlund might like his fish in a barrel but he’s a ruthless shot.

Larraín keeps much of the film quiet, and as a result Maria can feel a little empty: a conceptual touch, perhaps, but one that leaves Knight’s script and Jolie’s performance (presence to burn, a bit limited for interiority) with a lot of heavy-lifting.

It’s an interesting and quite tragic saga, as if Linklater were to cut his Before trilogy into a single film.

Railing against conventions has the potential to become conventional after a while, and the film eventually suffers from a case of diminishing returns, but there’s more than enough to warrant such lulls. And of course Williams ends it with a lot of swagger.

We’re asked to empathize with Rosa from the get-go despite barely being able to make out whatever anguish she’s been suffering. Mendoza will rectify this late on in an emotionally earth-shattering final sequence, the type that lingers with you like a faint cry for help.

As Cuckoo moves to its final third the fragments of its ideas never quite form a convincing whole. Luckily, Schafer is there to guide us through.

There is a great deal to savor here and yet it’s hard to shake the sense that The Bad Batch is a film stuck in neutral. We await that kick into a higher gear but it’s just too cool to be bothered.

Moral quandaries aside, Evolution‘s beginning (which, significantly, is almost dialogue-free) is a well-executed nail-biter; yet the project soon buckles under its own self-importance, and I found it difficult to stomach the queasy neatness of Mondruzco and Wéber’s parable.

Two Lovers and a Bear is at its most vibrant and enjoyable when Nguyen allows the surrealism to flourish. There’s a good film in there somewhere — one with fewer lovers and more bear, perhaps.

The characterizations are threadbare and simple: Saul and Zama are the downbeat 99% (his creepy mask recalls both Joker and Anonymous); Miller’s character represents soulless commerce. What Funny Face lacks in social commentary, however, it makes up for in mood.

It is a film of two contrasting halves: Solange’s warm and fuzzy naivety and her cold coming of age.

Dead for a Dollar is derivative by nature, but not in unpleasing ways.

The Whale is Aronofsky at his most trimmed down.

As swings go, Three Thousand Years of Longing is a miss, but there is something infectious about Miller’s confidence here: you’re never too far from an idea to enjoy.

There is much to savor in this beautifully-crafted movie.

That the plot points are familiar and conventional is less the issue than a nagging unevenness along the way.

Cooked with a broth of a few too many ideas, A Land Imagined is a so-close-to-being-great Singapore neo-noir that does all the right things, but simply does too many of them in its snappy 95-minute running time.

The movie tries a great deal and ends up stretching itself thin.

For all its merits, however, Joker relies on perhaps a touch too much exposition as it attempts to shape a digestible origin story.

Nagy’s is a story of bleakness, a test of endurance, and a reminder that war is a hell that, atypically, refuses to rely on gratuitousness. And it ultimately, just about, earns that overbearing solemnity.

It often fizzes as much as it lulls, but in Mikkelsen’s Dr. Schmidt the film can at least boast a worthy antagonist, and one with enough personality to cover some of those cracks.

The Laundromat is an air-tight, tumultuous info-graph about our rotten to the core financial systems and, in particular, the 2016 Mossack and Fonseca leak, when millions of the Panamanian law firm’s files were anonymously leaked to the press.

It can feel a touch contrived, even on-the-nose, but there is more than enough quiet confidence and seasoned quality in performances and filmmaking to stick the landing.

Jan Komasa’s Anniversary should be in the running for least-subtle movie of the year. It should also be in the running for most terrifying. This ruthlessly effective thriller rarely beats around the bush with what it’s trying to say, nor does it ask its famous actors to rein in their performances––despite occasionally needing to––but it certainly hits its mark with unnerving accuracy.

You get the sense that Moverman may just have bitten off a little more than he can chew.

Butterfly Jam is usually at its best whenever Keough is in the room, and the rare moments in which her and Keoghan’s performances click perhaps offer a glimmer of what might have been.

The juxtaposition of supernatural thriller tropes and urgent socio-political issues in Kornél Mundruczó’s latest movie — an original take on the superhero origin story set to the backdrop of the refugee crisis — might prove a delicate one for some viewers to take. Those unperturbed, however, should find much to relish in Jupiter’s Moon.

Like the film’s many predecessors, Spaceman is a story of how far a person might go to escape their traumas––a journey outward that leads to one within––yet even if Renck is out to give us his Solaris, the director knows better than to take this conceit too seriously.

Club Zero is less a cautionary tale about eating disorders than a satire on environmental anxieties, extreme activism, and the sometimes-competitive nature of those who get swept up in it. That’s a tasty premise, but Hausner’s take is frankly a cynical one and, much like the plate of vomit that dominated headlines after the film’s premiere last week in Cannes, it leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.

Huppert is great at this, and of course she is. It’s elsewhere that the film falters.

It’s more Pastiche du Godard than Histoire(s) du Godard in Michel Hazanavicius’ Redoubtable and that’s not a bad thing.

Dumont’s space oddity might not always land on the right side of its jokes and provocations, but every now and then it takes the breath away.

The vast majority of the film functions as a hypnotic if frankly monotonous dialectic (ruminations on Christ, honor, “we were just following orders,” war, love etc. that become more heated as time goes on) that is assured to alienate most anyone without a minor in philosophy or the vocabulary of academic text.

Contrary to the setup’s illusions, Brühl distances and thus absolves himself by making Daniel a nasty caricature–arrogant, speaking in brooding actorly tones, eager to pose for selfies and flirt with fans. Had he played it straight, Next Door might just have been vital.

A fevered, hypnotizing, meticulously detailed period piece with a protagonist so monomaniacal the film could almost be considered high camp.

Costner hasn’t forgotten where to point a camera, and outside all the table-setting, Horizon has moments designed to astonish.

The subcultures in Manodrome are ostensibly a work of fiction but, exaggerated as they may be, are no less plausible or rife with intrigue.

Yes, Dario Argento’s first film in ten years is pretty fun, for a while—and no, not near his best.

It is, quite frankly, a bit dull as it plays out in a near constant melodramatic key.

The meat of Suburbicon is certainly Grade-A, but no expense has been spared on the trimmings either. Even the briefest supporting players are fully formed and often quite memorable.

It is a weepy Sunday matinee melodrama of the most run-of-the-mill variety, full of pretty people in pretty clothes feeling Big Emotions.

Indeed, the strangest thing about Mainstream (and it is a strange, strange film) is just how out of touch it feels. Granted, if it were easy to make a viral video we would all be doing it; yet what Coppola and her team have come up with is just so lame and off the mark and nauseatingly self-satisfied.

In spite of it all, the cast members do themselves justice for the most and I couldn’t help but be charmed by Riseborough’s wide-eyed decency as she hosts her frequent “forgiveness” meetings–not to mention be seduced by Nighy’s signature suave detachment.

While often a bit of a slog, the film is not without a sense of humor, and the director still knows how to execute a sharp surrealist flourish from time to time.

The nonsense really is rampant throughout, but the writing is on the wall (quite literally) from the opening introductory paragraph.

This film lives off the warmth between its actors but boasts a throwback charm that appears in keeping with recent resurgences of other seemingly past-it directors.

Narratively it’s nothing if not succinct, and whatever In Water lacks for plot it more than makes up for in mood and ideas, as well as a kind of raw artistic honesty.

The director of Astrakan is David Depesseville (frankly just a touch too close to Depressville for comfort). Astrakhan is his first film and suggests something of a stylistic calling card, not least at film’s close: a late flurry of exposition and offcuts that are less in service of plot or character or even mood and more an artist showing what else they can do. It’s not entirely a turn-off.

Cinema rarely looks towards solitary old age with such a sense of pleasurable relief. That Blackbird does so feels revelatory; thus I couldn’t help feeling a touch shortchanged to see the film lose its nerve at the very last, giving in to easier laughs and less-satisfying sentiment––even if Naveriani ends things less on a full stop than a question mark.

Like much of the director’s work, it’s the kind of thing you could have seen late night on television when you were much too young. It would have also left a mark.

It’s a wonderfully inquisitive film, as searching as it is sincere.

Bestiari, Erbari, Lapidari offers an incredible study of our place on this planet, our fascination with it, and our duty to record and remember.

It is often a beautiful film, not least when Carneiro pulls back and allows the landscape to take over. It’s in those moments that Savanna really makes its point, watching from above as locals navigate their way through the same narrow pathways their families have walked for generations––the gradualness of that process a stark antithesis to the bluntness of what may come.