Rory O'Connor

It’s visually astonishing and often devastating, too. This might be the freshest film about young people in America since Larry Clark’s Kids.

McDonagh’s latest work is simply exceptional; a film so rich with narrative fluidity, profane laughs, standout performances and complex character studies that its tremendous emotional hits–often arriving when you least expect them–might just leave you agog.

The only thing that beats the lightning bolt of discovery is seeing a filmmaker build on it with each passing work, stretching out to explore the further reaches of their talents.

The great theme of Dickinson’s life, Davies argues, is finding solace — not in religion, but in art, and A Quiet Passion itself can boast such moments of quiet catharsis.

With The Mastermind, Reichardt has made a unique film, even amongst similarly cryptic genre exercises. . . I left the cinema gripped and unusually rattled.

The Untamed does that very rare thing in cinema in that it blends mystery, horror and pseudo-reality with a kind of dark subconscious arousal.

It feels a complete whole––a wry intertwining dialectic on modern desires––yet each scene is uniquely bracing: beautifully poised, exquisitely observed, and even erotically charged––rife with unabashed seduction, though always close enough to farce to keep things kösher and to keep you guessing (it’s telling that we barely glimpse a kiss).

You could argue that Lazzaro Felice owes a debt to Pasolini with its fascination for peasants, saints, and faces, or even Gabriel Garcia Marquez with its mix of rural life and magical realism, but that would be to discredit the shear vivacity and boldness of Rohrwacher’s directorial hand, not to mention her incredible warmth as a filmmaker.

The Brutalist is less-than-perfect (for all his charms, Guy Pearce is no Philip Seymour Hoffman or Daniel Day-Lewis) but it offers an all-too-rare reminder of how it feels when this artform is at its very best, and that has less to do with the scale of its ambitions than how effectively it combines movement, emotion, and sound.

With all its sex and brutality, and the allegations surrounding its megalomaniacal creator, Khrzhanovsky’s project might not be for this world. However, it remains that rare thing: an artwork with the capacity to tap into our fears and even our hatred; to live in the imagination and to astonish. A shock of the new.

It’s a shocking piece of audio-visual art that only further cements Glazer as one of the 21st century’s most original and influential filmmakers.

Ash is Purest White is a tremendous, funny, heartbreaking, sprawling vehicle for Zhao, and what a gift it is to see her exploring the furthest reaches of those talents.

In The Realm of Perfection is in essence about that most slippery of topics: the beauty of the game. Sport might tell the truth, but perhaps only cinema can capture it.

Pacifiction draws you in with its sense of mystery and surrealism and leaves you ultimately agog.

It’s difficult to think of another debut that combines such crowd-pleasing sensibilities, political resonance, and cinematic sweep.

This is Kore-eda at his very best, facing up to the hardest truths with honesty and a nervous laugh — uncomfortable, invigorating, and ultimately cleansing, like the cinema’s equivalent of a cold shower. And I mean that in the best way possible.

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

Taormina achieves a singular tone.

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

Best of all, Lojkine’s film comes with a refreshing generosity of spirit.

As effectively violent and entertaining as Birds may be, there is a real current of bitterness and tragedy running through it. That bitterness speaks not of the physical colonization we saw with the conquistadors and rubber barons of Serpent, but more of a sort of colonization of ideas.

This effort to show Lara’s struggle like a coming-of-age story is what sets Girl apart. Dhont fleshes out his story with little growing-up moments everyone can relate to.

Aftersun is a beautiful film, albeit one with too many endings, brimming with inner life and creativity, and worthy of comparison to Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and other debuts of that ilk.

Devos’ films can feel overly studied, slick to the point of being contrived, yet with each passing work––each reduction to the most potent flavors––he edges closer to something truly great. Here is his finest yet, an almost-perfect little film.

It’s a graceful, aching film that sculpts and stretches Murakami’s story into an enchanting three-hour epic (my, do the minutes fly by) about trauma and mourning, shared solitude, and the possibility of moving on. The narrative also doubles as a lovely ode to the car itself, and the strange ways that people open up when cocooned inside them.

Jenkin’s script is peppered with comedy, occasionally of a more subtle variety than men dressed as penises—even if that drew the biggest laugh.

Much like The Witch, there is something quite mesmerizing about the meticulousness in the period detail here and how Eggers so seems to revel in it.

It’s a twinkling surface examination of how humans try to coordinate their dreams with their reality (a very Hollywood conundrum), but also a celebration of just how wonderful old filmmaking techniques and emotions look and feel on modern L.A. streets.

A rare and elusive sense of myth is captured in The Tale of King Crab.

Dazzled and conflicted are some of the best things a documentary like this can be, and that clear passion for the subject, as well as Bezinović’s cinematic flair, makes for infectious, often-hilarious viewing.

With everything going on, Nocturnal Animals is the sort of narrative and tonal minefield that a lesser director could easily have gotten lost in. Ford allows us to consider and cherish each unique thread and wonder just how it could all possibly come together.

While The Square is not as slick and streamlined a film as Force Majeure it still hunts for that same meaty psychological game and is never afraid — no matter how close to the bone — to twist that knife.

It’s often warm and quite funny, but is, at heart, a damning critique of the Tory government in Britain and their belt-tightening austerity measures, as well as a rallying cry for those who fall through the cracks.

Everything from the film’s humanist energies, down to the timbre of the dialogue, rings like an endearing, never-labored homage to Persian cinema.

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.

It is a staggering film; one that defies categorization and a unique achievement that must be seen to be believed.

On the Beach at Night Alone, a bittersweet tone poem from South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo, thinks many a thought about the universe and the future, mostly expressed through nature and the characters’ anxieties about growing old.

It is a remarkably vivid and fresh piece of filmmaking, one that builds on the directors’ previous outings without being overly familiar.

One does not necessarily have to be fond of canines in order to love Isle of Dogs, but it helps. It may also help to have a fondness for the meticulous craft of stop-motion animation itself or, even more interestingly perhaps, for Japanese cinema. It is a delightful, exquisitely-detailed production.

The staggering emotional payoff — a transcendental moment so beautiful in its simplicity that the previous three hours of seriousness appear to melt away — is worth every last minute.

It’s amongst the smartest, funniest, and saddest films in the studio’s history.

Marriage Story shows Baumbach reaching an entirely new level in his most consummate film to date.

Corbet’s second feature owes a debt or two to filmmakers reveling in provocation, but it is no doubt the work of a daring original.

It’s an immersive poetic-realist dive into the artist’s fractured memories of his parents during the time he spent growing up in Birmingham in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

In order to enjoy the myriad pleasures of del Toro’s world — with all its counterpointed humor, quicksilver pacing, endearing humanity, peculiar eroticism, and sudden eruptions of violence — one must simply take the plunge.

It is difficult to find comparisons on a formal scale, and that the plot relies on a few reliable tropes does not distract from how clearly this is the work of a master.

Are the grand and absurd moments of our lives perhaps more closely acquainted with one another then we’d like to admit? Grass seems to think so, and it delivers that assumption with a welcome–indeed, almost humane–dose of humor.

Two Seasons is the rare film that begins with mundane clarity (remember, “scene 1, summer, seaside”) and works its way back, leaving you with the knottier stuff of life. Along the way, Li remembers what it’s like to have fun; the movie dutifully follows her lead.

It is a swan song but not a melancholy tune, more a joyous celebratory coda to the director’s life and work, a film that feels purpose-built to dispel any notions of solemnity around her passing.

The most remarkable thing about Dominik’s film is that we are not only humble witnesses to such personal grief, but that we are seeing it actively articulated by such a fascinating mind.

Much like his beleaguered lead character, Jude manages to maintain a rousingly lewd sense of humor for the duration of the film’s substantial running time.

It all comes together beautifully, a film to stimulate curious corners of the mind and adventurous parts of the spirit.

In My Room is not so much about loss, but self-discovery.

It’s a cool film and never less than interesting, even as it meanders a bit too sleepily toward its final denouement.

Needless to say, Hüller is magnificent in a role that relies heavily on her abilities as a physical performer. Schleinzer is, naturally, not in the business of cheap sentiment, but when something vaguely resembling happiness presents itself in the story, the restraint with which Hüller allows Rose’s heart to thaw is still remarkable.

It is an incendiary, playful, and wonderfully exasperated piece of filmmaking that shows a director trying to draw some threads of sense from our current malaise.

Nichols has crafted a beautifully moving and tasteful document of a quietly groundbreaking event, told from a very human perspective.

Unrest leaves the mind purring. How did we, you begin wondering, get ourselves into all this? Humans, the film argues, have only ourselves to blame for constructing a system that would eventually imprison us, yet Unrest is not short on levity, and not least in its beautiful closing image or in the energizing sensation it leaves in the nervous system. If a quieter work of agitprop exists, you might struggle to hear it.

Anytime it feels that Before We Vanish is getting too caught up in its thought process, the director is always ready with a flash of ultra violence, slapstick humor, or a pithy line.

It is not a flawless achievement, but The Disciple has that feel of a burgeoning master: the patience and sureness of touch; the controlled surrealist flourishes; the sheer ambition and scope.

Woman Who Ran looks and feels like a pleasant farce in comparison to much of Hong’s recent output.

Ferrara has never been so concerned with making people like him–just wait for the audacity of the last 10 minutes. But given the brutal honesty of his latest, one of the most candid movies of its kind, it is difficult to not simply be happy for the man when Tommaso reaches its surreal point of catharsis.

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

The Whale is Aronofsky at his most trimmed down.

It’s a wonderfully distinctive debut by Arnow, who lays it all out in both her script and performance.

Burning might not have a huge amount going on below its gorgeous surface, but it drags the viewer along with all the seductive intrigue of a frothy page-turner.

Thomas’ Bravo, recalling both Mikey Saber and Mickey Rourke, has a protruding gut, slicked-back hair, an alcohol problem, and some deep-rooted mommy issues. The film is all his.

Petzold’s latest, Afire, unfurls with all the page-turning seduction of a gripping novella.

One of the most fascinating things about Infinite Football is that Porumboiu never feels the need to feed his pal any rope in order to get these moments on camera. The two men are close and the director pointedly takes the time to let us in on his friend’s life.

It is a story about power and it needs to be told.

Its dizzying culmination of ideas proves more feature than bug.

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.

Playing out at breakneck speed, it is awash with flights of fancy: outbursts of sex and violence; aliens and murder; sepia-dripped nostalgia; jarring temporal and spatial uncertainty; homoeroticism; etc. That sense of dizziness is only further confounded by Vlad Ogai’s shifting sets and richly detailed production design, and cinematographer Vladislav Opelyants’ long roving takes. Its cast has the sense of a troupe. The frame is always packed.

If talk is cheap and deceptive — maybe even dangerous at times — in Cold War, music certainly is not.

Border is only really at its best when focusing on Tina’s rediscovery of her true nature.

It might not quite end on a satisfying note, but Have a Nice Day remains an urgent, thoroughly entertaining, and inventive piece of filmmaking.

As darkly comic as it is foreboding–and boasting an outrageously rich and nuanced central performance from the great Icelandic actor Ingvar Sigurdsson, who plays the larger than life Ingimunder, a man more than capable of living up to the scale of his own name–A White, White Day takes the tropes of a psychological thriller but presents them with a virtuosic and austere visual flare.

Affleck has always been a wonderfully understated performer and he has taken that minimalist approach with him behind the camera.

Menu Plaisirs is not amongst his masterpieces but it’s a fine late addition to the Wiseman canon––even in a media landscape so saturated with food shows and celebrity chefs, the director’s made a film that feels both fresh and artistically stimulating, unmistakably his own.

Coppola and her production team — including The Grandmaster cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd — have created a fully realized world of eroticism, humidity, and Southern Gothic atmosphere. The characters are simply engulfed by it, almost to the point that even the twisted willow trees appear to be reaching out to grab them.

Carax has delivered something gloriously gnarled and uncomfortable: a bludgeoning rock opera that takes aim at the entertainment industry and the dregs of toxic masculinity; that flourishes just as it drips with self-loathing; and that gestures toward such far-flung places as Dadaism, A Star is Born, Pinocchio, and even the director’s own life.

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’s a wonderfully busy piece of work, fraught with messy emotions but in too much of a rush for overt sentimentality; though it does allow for one or two softer moments.

A cold thriller with a dark, satirical edge that shows the master filmmaker at his leanest and meanest.

Satter’s fascinating film moves away from the rhythms of political thriller and into the eerie realm of the uncanny.

It’s coarse to the touch but The Adults is a tender film. That those moments come in flashes only makes them all the more profound.

It’s as if Herzog has made a narrative film based off a documentary film that doesn’t exist, which is obviously an entirely Herzogian thing to do.

Despite the echoes of Fellini, the result feels almost new in a way and given the immersive nature of Roma it doesn’t seem so radical to consider experiencing its cinematic beauty with a clunky headset on.

A deep dive into the complexity and soft trauma of seeing those we idolized as kids through fresh eyes and what exactly to make of that new vantage.

Amongst the stars, Love Life (named for an Akiko Yano song of the same name) is jarringly everyday in color palette and setting, but has just the right amount of scope, filmmaking nous, and unusual choices to hold its own and even stand out.

Reichardt takes a jab or two at some of the hippy-dippy practices of Lizzie’s art school, but Showing Up is compassionate toward the efforts of teachers, artists, and students. Whether or not it goes anywhere, Lizzie’s pursuit has been a personal one. You sense Reichardt’s has too.

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.

With The Killer, David Fincher returns to form in a film that plays to his directorial strengths and artistry.

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.

There are plenty of laughs but also, of course, moments to trouble the tear-ducts.

As a film, Fallen Leaves could hardly be simpler––two people living separate, lonesome lives meet and maybe fall in love––but there is beauty in that simplicity and, as ever, Kaurismäki’s characters live far richer inner lives.

All in, this is a brave piece of filmmaking that builds to a frightening climax: Nash’at creates an image of nervous ineptitude before pummeling you with the harshest of realities.

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