Rory O'Connor

The Laundromat is an air-tight, tumultuous info-graph about our rotten to the core financial systems and, in particular, the 2016 Mossack and Fonseca leak, when millions of the Panamanian law firm’s files were anonymously leaked to the press.

For all its merits, however, Joker relies on perhaps a touch too much exposition as it attempts to shape a digestible origin story.

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

Ad Astra is, for all other intents and purposes, as straight faced as they come, a film that considers the big questions of interplanetary travel and contact but signposts its conclusions too early–and can’t help getting bogged down by them.

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 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.

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.

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

For better than worse, Covino directs it to within an inch of its life, presenting the modest narrative as a series of meticulously choreographed vignettes; each shot in what appears to be a single take.

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

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.

Huppert is great at this, and of course she is. It’s elsewhere that the film falters.

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.

They don’t make ’em like they used to, Tarantino’s film seems to say, but nobody makes ’em like this, either.

To its detriment, this has the feel of a film that has been constructed in service of one absurd idea.

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.

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.

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

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.

In spite of it all, the cast members do themselves justice for the most and I couldn’t help but be charmed by Riseborough’s wide-eyed decency as she hosts her frequent “forgiveness” meetings–not to mention be seduced by Nighy’s signature suave detachment.

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.

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 clever, cold, and devoid of the one thing it assumes to be interested in: humanity.

Wiseman is well known for his objectivity but another of his most enduring traits has been a dedication to showing audiences the hard, under-appreciated work that is constantly being done by small social organizations and local councils.

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.

Cooked with a broth of a few too many ideas, A Land Imagined is a so-close-to-being-great Singapore neo-noir that does all the right things, but simply does too many of them in its snappy 95-minute running time.

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.

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.