Rory O'Connor

Stiller and Sandler strike a warm and believably awkward brotherly connection, hitting some real on screen highs as they sit around the piano with Marvel singing Sandler’s catchy tunes.

Moghaddam and Sanaeeha obviously have things to say about the state of their country, but at heart this is a romantic, even nostalgic film.

Lean on Pete is certainly not a film without qualities (credit to the supporting cast and Magnus Nordenhof Jønck’s cinematography in particular), but viewers might just feel the gnawing sense of a director losing his grip on the reins.

Hansen-Løve’s cinema has reached higher ceilings than this, but it is a restorative sojourn just the same.

Trobisch’s screenplay hits all of the nightmarish beats you would expect it to ... but they never feel too forced or unearned.

The protagonists of Wife of a Spy often act out of character, which all bodes efficiently well for the film’s slippery web of conceit, but ultimately quells a great deal of something the film is otherwise lacking in: feeling. It is, for my money, Kurosawa in low key; an interesting inclusion to a wonderfully idiosyncratic career.

Perhaps the most impressive thing is Miyake’s refusal to succumb to the material’s mawkish pull—like its protagonist, Small, Slow But Steady is occasionally salty and only sparingly sweet.

A blistering work of meta filmmaking.

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

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.

A great deal of Buster Scruggs might ultimately be a touch undercooked by the mercurial siblings’ standards, but dagnabbit if there isn’s a whole lot to like.

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.

Ly makes a concerted effort to go beneath the topsoil of conventional Parisian crime films. Indeed, his script takes the time to show seemingly inconsequential things that go on behind the suburb’s closed doors, moments of rich contextual value if not obvious narrative importance.

Baruchel and Johnson, bouncing off each other in a classic straight man/loudmouth two-hander, are a fine double act. As their would-be foil, Howerton is even better, and I loved the contrast between the actor’s soft mouth and the foul-mouthed stuff spewing out of it. Michael Ironside and Rich Sommer are given welcome cameos.

Though ambitious in reach, its tone is one-note, stilted, and saccharine sweet; its ideas as disjointed as they are ultimately unsatisfying.

Indeed, this is not just a sporting film but, like Amy or Senna, a film about the volatility of fame and genius and what those two things can do to humans. An interest in the game is probably as essential here as an interest in Formula 1 was for Senna. Which is to say: not a lot.

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.

Credit to both Weinberg’s no-nonsense performance and the director’s surrealist instincts. There is a late sequence in this film, wherein Tereza visits a floating casino, that contains some of the most vividly beautiful images I’ve seen so far this year.

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.

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

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.

Like the ramshackle family it so fondly depicts, Babyteeth is not without its flaws but it does suggest a confident new voice in independent cinema.

In Urchin, Dickinson blends issue-driven social realism (a British staple) with the trendier look of a Safdie film: all medium shots, real streets, non-professionals, and the occasional trip down a colorful drain. These might not always blend smoothly (this is an uneven film at the best of times) but it is an interesting combination that even expresses a clear political perspective.

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

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.

Where the film succeeds in drawing you into all that life, however, it does so in a patchwork of moments that never quite suggest a whole.

The pacing is breakneck but the economy with which Miike establishes his various narrative threads and characters is astonishing.

This is a movie that exists for the sake of existing, art for the sake of art: the kind of thing that doesn’t need your attention and isn’t particularly eager to offer a huge amount in return.