Rory O'Connor

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

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.

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

No director of her genius would ever really make a bad film––if such a thing even exists––but we can be wary of a change in sensibilities here. Lazzaro‘s transcendental moments felt earned because his world was coarser to the touch. With Le Pupille and La Chimera, Rohrwacher is moving towards a cinema of fewer rough edges, and a poorer one for it.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

There are things to cherish: busily moving between sterile offices and boxy, lived-in apartments, the film keeps you guessing about the practicalities and implications of its central conceit to such an extent that its moments of real poignancy can catch you off guard. A lot of this comes down to Baisho’s heartbreaking central performance.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Alcarràs appears simple, even slight at first, but is deceptively far-reaching; enough at least to have impressed a Berlinale jury led by M. Night Shyamalan (and including no less than Ryusuke Hamaguchi), who collectively awarded Simón the Golden Bear.

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.

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.

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.

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