Rory O'Connor

The worlds of contemporary geopolitics and narrative independent filmmaking collide in You Resemble Me, a movie that shape-shifts from a first act coming-of-age tale into something searing and provocative, and ripped straight from the headlines.

The director over-simplifies the killer, portraying a perpetrator of some of the most heinous acts imaginable as a basic fool with mommy issues. It’s crass and careless stuff in a crass and careless movie. Avoid at all costs.

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.

The experience is nothing if not grueling, and Fists‘ willingness to heap misery on characters who are already truly down ultimately leaves a callous taste in the mouth.

The Bleeder isn’t attempting to reinvent any wheels, but it is consistently gripping — slick as a skip rope and just one hell of a story.

This is not exactly landmark stuff. Many viewers may feel they’ve seen familiar things in the work of David Attenborough, or even in films such as Koyaanisqatsi or Samsara. However, Malick might be singular in his earnest search for the sublime.

It’s dazzling and uneven, seductive and flawed, and only [Cronenberg] could have made it. There’s no beating the genuine article.

Van Sant imagines this tale in a way that echoes Dog Day Afternoon: an unhinged and stranger-than-fiction fable about good intentions gone wrong. It’s kind of a hoot.

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

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.

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.

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 most interesting thing about Lola is what Legge achieves with such economy—it feels kind of big at times.

This is a film that knows what it’s doing and does it very well

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.

Leigh translates the defining moment–and those in the immediate lead-up–to the screen with tremendous weight and great clarity, making the sense of tragedy all the more potent.

Nobody could fault the detail of the art department’s work here, but there is an odd sluggishness to the imagery, as if the whole film is playing a half-measure behind. This proves troublesome for any of the larger-than-life action sequences, but even more so with the comic timing.

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.

Côté’s film does work very well for the most part as a somewhat cold, ornamental study of what our epidermal tissue looks like at terminal mass.

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.

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.