While the script co-written by Kusijanovic and Frank Graziano is hardly revelatory, Murina is nonetheless a strong directorial effort from a first-time feature helmer.

Half mock-doc, half sci-fi two-hander, all bone-dry L.A. satire, Something in the Dirt takes a bemused look at those all too happy to exploit phenomena and each other—with the typical small-scale charm of an Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson project.

With its giddy and hypnotic mix of oil painting backgrounds and digital animation in service of a wonderfully inventive story surrounded by kooky, immediately lovable characters, Tito and the Birds is also one of the most original animated works of the year.

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint is wry with a side of quirk, unblinking in facing its subject matter head-on while refusing to pull punches; it isn’t without mercy, either.

Handsomely odd and yet evocative of universal adolescent experiences, Boys Go to Jupiter trades in familiar coming-of-age sentiment, but looks like no other film you’ve ever seen in doing it.

For all its flaws, the film interrogates the limits of a biopic. And what better subject to do it with than the most beloved media fixation in recent history?

This could well be the old-man-yells-at-cloud meme in avant-garde cinematic form. Yet amid countless examples of pessimism both verbal and visual, Le Livre D’Image also occasionally ventures into hopefulness.

[A] triumphant narrative feature debut.

Regardless of whether or not Soderbergh once again made iPhone filmmaking look more visually elegant than most modern Hollywood blockbusters, No Sudden Move suffers from low stakes and a disconnect from the world of our characters.

Though director Reinaldo Marcus Green finds winning performances away from his lead, the milquetoast script serves the tennis patriarch a soft lob—one without potential to inspire or excite, and one that’s constantly reminding us that we already know how it ends.

Despite its important subject and impressive access, the surprisingly surface-level film doesn’t have much to say.

With such a fascinating “friendship” at work, Shirley could have spent less time on the impact of the husbands on the creative and personal endeavors of their wives, but it doesn’t.

Aronofsky can be a moving, almost disorienting stylist, but he’s all blunt force trauma here.

Despite stellar direction and cinematography, Holler’s pacing can feel gnawingly languid at times, due in no small part to Riegel’s inclination for brooding sequences with sparse dialogue over all else.

The frequently complicated relationship between mother and daughter has fostered plenty of cinematic investigation, but El Planeta easily distinguishes itself as a uniquely meta and universal addition to the canon.

Those unfamiliar with the director’s penchant for narrative opacity might find Music falling on deaf ears. For those up for the challenge, there are splendid moments of visual poise to soak in, but little to actually take away in terms of tangible storytelling.

The Woman King is confident of its indulgences—a few moments of melodrama, a natural but questionable romance subplot—because it earns them. It invests in its characters so that each new wrinkle feels meaningful. It may feel like an assemblage, but I could stand to sit longer in the beautiful space it cobbles together.

American Symphony itself is at its most mundane when focused on the professional life of the rousing, youthful musical multihyphenate. And, because it builds its structure around the creation and premiere of his first symphony, much of the film bundles that mundanity into the kind of behind-the-scenes footage accompanying a concert doc.

Asteroid City may be a minor work by this artist, but it’s still a magical one.

What makes How to Blow Up a Pipeline great, is that it so deftly wins us to its cause anyway. It’s absolutely electric filmmaking.

One could argue that the fairly straightforward biographical approach is meant to act as a primer for those have never once tuned into Turner Classic Movies; on the other hand, rapid-fire references to Godard’s contemporaries, including petty feuds and clashing reputations, are calibrated so that cinephilic savants can pat themselves on the back for getting the reference.

While West’s sleazy ‘70s slasher remains one of my champion horror titles of 2022, Pearl is more like giddily deranged add-on downloadable content that makes for an unexpected bite-sized treat. Kudos to the accomplishment, and it’s an ax-swinging slice of bad-vibes hoedown kookiness, but there’s a particular substance missing that X oozes.

The luminescent cityscape of Paris is captured through an honest, loving gaze in Paris, 13th District, a melancholy yet tender-hearted exploration of millennial romance.

What remains so compelling about O’Connor is that she actually used her popularity to challenge powerful institutions well before anyone else was even remotely comfortable with doing so.

The noir thriller takes us on a contemplative tour of a thoughtfully considered future, where traveling between Lunar and Martian colonies is as easy as flight today.

The hateful stance that property is more valuable than certain people’s lives, for example, is still very much with us. And Final Account demonstrates that it takes all levels of cooperation—including the most passive—for tyranny to thrive.

Yes, Ali & Ava is messy, and overly stuffed, and not quite as satisfying as it could have been—but if anything, that makes it feel all the more true to life.

While Plaza continues to make her case as a versatile A-lister capable of leading the more complex version of this kind of heist film, Emily the Criminal is a little like an initiation that never needed to happen. Her bonafides are proven. But it still stands as another showcase for her, as she shines even through its uninspired racket.