Rory O'Connor

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.

It’s an immersive poetic-realist dive into the artist’s fractured memories of his parents during the time he spent growing up in Birmingham in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

It is a film of surfaces, admittedly, but one made by perhaps our era’s best director of surfaces.

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.

Despite the echoes of Fellini, the result feels almost new in a way and given the immersive nature of Roma it doesn’t seem so radical to consider experiencing its cinematic beauty with a clunky headset on.

As effectively violent and entertaining as Birds may be, there is a real current of bitterness and tragedy running through it. That bitterness speaks not of the physical colonization we saw with the conquistadors and rubber barons of Serpent, but more of a sort of colonization of ideas.

It is a film that will entice the viewer’s senses, if not necessarily their brain activity.

The staggering emotional payoff — a transcendental moment so beautiful in its simplicity that the previous three hours of seriousness appear to melt away — is worth every last minute.

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.

By drawing our empathy for such morally dubious and potentially damaging characters, Shoplifters remains a real heartbreaker, the kind of which only this director seems capable.

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.

You could argue that Lazzaro Felice owes a debt to Pasolini with its fascination for peasants, saints, and faces, or even Gabriel Garcia Marquez with its mix of rural life and magical realism, but that would be to discredit the shear vivacity and boldness of Rohrwacher’s directorial hand, not to mention her incredible warmth as a filmmaker.

This effort to show Lara’s struggle like a coming-of-age story is what sets Girl apart. Dhont fleshes out his story with little growing-up moments everyone can relate to.

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

If talk is cheap and deceptive — maybe even dangerous at times — in Cold War, music certainly is not.

Burning might not have a huge amount going on below its gorgeous surface, but it drags the viewer along with all the seductive intrigue of a frothy page-turner.

A perfectly decent comedy that will be accessible enough for a wide mainstream audience.

Ash is Purest White is a tremendous, funny, heartbreaking, sprawling vehicle for Zhao, and what a gift it is to see her exploring the furthest reaches of those talents.

In The Realm of Perfection is in essence about that most slippery of topics: the beauty of the game. Sport might tell the truth, but perhaps only cinema can capture it.

What first appeared to be a fun riff on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest soon transforms into something much darker.

One does not necessarily have to be fond of canines in order to love Isle of Dogs, but it helps. It may also help to have a fondness for the meticulous craft of stop-motion animation itself or, even more interestingly perhaps, for Japanese cinema. It is a delightful, exquisitely-detailed production.

McDonagh’s latest work is simply exceptional; a film so rich with narrative fluidity, profane laughs, standout performances and complex character studies that its tremendous emotional hits–often arriving when you least expect them–might just leave you agog.