Rory O'Connor

This is Kore-eda at his very best, facing up to the hardest truths with honesty and a nervous laugh — uncomfortable, invigorating, and ultimately cleansing, like the cinema’s equivalent of a cold shower. And I mean that in the best way possible.

Two Lovers and a Bear is at its most vibrant and enjoyable when Nguyen allows the surrealism to flourish. There’s a good film in there somewhere — one with fewer lovers and more bear, perhaps.

Despite there being no dialogue and very few characters, the film consistently celebrates the excitement of exploration and invention while also keeping the audience aware of the man’s growing frustrations.

The nonsense really is rampant throughout, but the writing is on the wall (quite literally) from the opening introductory paragraph.

We’re asked to empathize with Rosa from the get-go despite barely being able to make out whatever anguish she’s been suffering. Mendoza will rectify this late on in an emotionally earth-shattering final sequence, the type that lingers with you like a faint cry for help.

It’s often warm and quite funny, but is, at heart, a damning critique of the Tory government in Britain and their belt-tightening austerity measures, as well as a rallying cry for those who fall through the cracks.

It is a weepy Sunday matinee melodrama of the most run-of-the-mill variety, full of pretty people in pretty clothes feeling Big Emotions.

David McKenzie’s Hell or High Water is a gritty, darkly humorous, and fiendishly violent neo-western.

It’s visually astonishing and often devastating, too. This might be the freshest film about young people in America since Larry Clark’s Kids.

Nichols has crafted a beautifully moving and tasteful document of a quietly groundbreaking event, told from a very human perspective.

Riffing on Spanish telenovelas, Hitchcock, and film noir, Almodóvar and his production team have put together a slight, but undeniably gorgeous bauble with a simple sort of story that nestles in somewhere between the high and lowbrow.

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.

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 great theme of Dickinson’s life, Davies argues, is finding solace — not in religion, but in art, and A Quiet Passion itself can boast such moments of quiet catharsis.

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.

The heist sequence alone is a confident mix of visual inventiveness and nods. What the film does lack, intentionally or not, is a clear moral arrow.

Lean on Pete is certainly not a film without qualities (credit to the supporting cast and Magnus Nordenhof Jønck’s cinematography in particular), but viewers might just feel the gnawing sense of a director losing his grip on the reins.

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.

Are the grand and absurd moments of our lives perhaps more closely acquainted with one another then we’d like to admit? Grass seems to think so, and it delivers that assumption with a welcome–indeed, almost humane–dose of humor.