Rory O'Connor

There is something quite reassuring about the fact that — infuriating as it sometimes may be — he has not lost that particular passion nor that roving eye, and that maybe, though he might not admit it, that love of images, too.

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

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

In taking a centuries-old piece of mythology as its source material, Undine ultimately forgoes the inventiveness and sensuality of its first half by slipping into relatively bland predictability. And for a filmmaker who thrives on disregarding narrative conventions, it feels a fatal error. “Relatively” is the key here. This is still Petzold after all, if not peak Petzold.

Verhoeven, as always, is more interested in playing games and is always at his best when needling an audience’s ideas of good taste.

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures provides a snappy, confidently explicit overview of the photographer’s work and life that chooses not to sugarcoat the man’s ruthless ambition or seemingly exasperating personality.

The director’s charms and gamely energy make foreknowledge something of a moot point here. The passion has clearly remained, most keenly pronounced in the moments when the octogenarian reveals his own influences.

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.

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.

Were The Plagiarists merely this observation of liberal minds in duress it would have made for a more than enjoyable watch but with credit to Kienitz and Wilkins’ terrific script, it becomes more nuanced and haunting only after that first act.

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

Ruizpalacios’ film has style to burn but little interest in subtlety, and even the most high-grade hammers can lose their sheen after 139 minutes of hammering.

A House of Dynamite is a ruthlessly effective thriller, nothing if not timely, and has the potential to be seen by a gazillion eyeballs. These are all good things.

It is a boiling-hot provocation: funny, revolting, spicy as hell, and with a striking subtext of gender fluidity and sexual identity.

Haigh’s debut really nailed the insecurities of discovering a lover’s idiosyncrasies and flaws, those that grate and those that charm. Paris 05:59 manages to capture that as well, and in doing so creates a sense of ambiguity as to whether any sort of love between the men can last.

While the viewer might appreciate Brizé’s lack of compromise, for such a stoic and rather long period piece, A Woman’s Life offers little else for the audience to cling on to.

Romería‘s exploration of closure and self-discovery makes for an absorbing watch.

I couldn’t bear another minute of A Couple, but I’m perfectly happy it exists.

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.

Assayas, who has dotted his ever-surprising career with brisk, self-aware, sophisticate-centered comedies, has rarely played things quite so close to home.

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.

The director has gestured toward magical realism in her work before (think of the white horse in Fish Tank or the elemental yearning of her Wuthering Heights) but this first foray into anthropomorphism feels strangely surface-level and does more to break the film’s spell than enhance it.

Riotous, if undeniably stagey.

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

It is a thoughtful, unquestionably moving piece of work with much to say about the inner lives of the women at the center, but it could have used another gear

Shot in gorgeous turquoise and cerulean blues by that fine cinematographer, it is often a remarkably beautiful film and, with that suggestion of real experience, an inevitably sad one. Such qualities might not be enough to entirely disregard any feelings of familiarity, but they might just be enough to forgive them.

A deeply personal piece of work that offers both an introduction (or re-introduction?) to the director’s uncle — a once-burgeoning independent filmmaker who died of AIDS in 1989 at just 31 years of age — and a somber meditation on talent lost.

Chen is never blatantly forthright in showing the prejudice at work in Ling’s day-today, allowing it instead to subtly seep into the film; we need only sift the tea leaves.