The sophomore writer-director adapts to the requirements of the genre, expertly sustaining tension, peppering big scares throughout and earning our emotional investment in the key characters. Plus a cat.

Accompanied by a dreamy soundtrack and philosophically flowery narration by Miranda July, it’s a doomed love story on every level, a gorgeous collage of a film in which romance, scientific inquiry and death do a 93-minute dance.

Not only does it offer a damning lesson about how the United States abandons its veterans, but it tries, with honesty and feeling, to honor a man who just wanted to survive.

Building on the strengths of his justly celebrated debut, maintaining its distinctive point-of-view while broadening the scope of its sympathy, Cooper Raiff‘s Cha Cha Real Smooth is a more mainstream film than 2020’s Shithouse without feeling the least bit generic.

Intimate in every sense, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande represents an affirming, immensely likable British comedy-drama.

If Am I OK?‘s tone occasionally tilts too far toward comedy (including in an oddly staged climactic confrontation) its laughs land far more often than not, and bring us closer to the characters by inviting us to laugh with them.

A cool, confident debut whose steady build mirrors the increasing stakes faced by its namesake, John Patton Ford’s Emily the Criminal is a nail-biter that makes the most of the tough side Aubrey Plaza has shown in even her most comic performances.

Although astute viewers may easily predict God’s Country’s final moments, the journey there is still a wild and satisfying one.

A fascinating window into the psychological and emotional minefield of early puberty and the torn feelings of a vulnerable child watching her darkest instincts play out, Hatching delivers.

Mars One revels in the lives of its characters, taking a leisurely and scenic route to understanding their dreams and realities.

With Nanny, Jusu crafts a contemplative, thematically rich story that deftly explores the emotional and spiritual costs of leaving your homeland behind for an uncertain future in a strange land.

Sympathetic and perceptive.

With its stark portrayal of abuse, Palm Trees and Power Lines won’t be for everyone. But the director’s assured approach to a thorny topic, the way she needles at assumptions about grooming and the care with which she treats Lea’s story will linger with me for a long while.

Tantura finally attempts to get the record on that incident straight, but as a movie, it serves an even greater purpose by bringing it to a wider public than ever before.

Utama is very much a pessimistic film, never shying away from the realities faced by those who still inhabit the highlands of Bolivia. And yet it’s also convincingly, and sometimes movingly, optimistic.

The fact that the outcome is wide open to different interpretations makes Men a more ambiguous work than Garland’s sci-fi horror hybrids, Ex Machina and Annihilation. It’s also more menacing and viscerally creepy.

It should be noted that sometimes this feels like just weirdness for weirdness’ sake. Nevertheless, Strickland builds his own worlds with such a distinctive style — down to the fonts, the bilious shades of green and the textures of the silks — that the viewer can’t help feeling pulled into his crazy maelstrom of quirk.

The sense of love dissolving and lives thrown into chaos as a dormant past violently breaks through the surface is unexpectedly moving, all the more so because of the film’s rigorous rejection of sentimentality.

What makes it quite fun, and definitely funny in spots, is how realistically Dupieux depicts events, turning the outlandish into something entirely credible, at least for the main characters. We never doubt the sincerity of their actions, which makes us believe things even when they can’t be true.

This hilariously meta reboot — excuse me, comeback — is everything the recent Space Jam sequel desperately attempted but failed to be. Premiering exclusively on Disney+, it’s the funniest movie of the year so far, either animated or live-action.

The film spans several years in her life and that of her family, covering moments both important and relatively inconsequential. It’s a credit to Hers’ contemplative, never intrusive observational style that by the end of the two-hour running time we know them intimately.

This stands as one of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s better but not quite best features in a pretty consistent career, not as scurrilously seedy as him at his worst, or as merciless, but not as ambitious or startlingly insightful as his best.

Lovely, unforced Chekhovian notes grace the gently observed snapshot of a summer of unstoppable change and momentous upheaval. Even if there are moments of frustration in which Simón and co-writer Arnau Vilaró pull away just as conflicts are heating up, the film’s immersive, lived-in nature has a transfixing grip.

Perhaps more than anything, the doc celebrates the remarkable creative union between Cave and his chief collaborator and bandmate Warren Ellis.

There’s a depth of feeling and a disarming sincerity to the movie that keeps you watching. Even the inevitable triumph seems refreshingly understated.

This is no more than a minor piece of social history, but it wins us over with humor and a pointed touch of melancholy.

Uplifting yet speckled with a flinty perspective on life, Fly Away Home is a terrific PG family film, one that will appeal to grown-ups as well as kids. [03 Sep 1996]

It’s easy to capture the frenzy of a new fling or the seductive meeting of two bodies; what’s more difficult, and what A Tale of Love and Desire does quite well, is study the inner tensions that accompany early sexual experiences — when the heart, mind and body refuse to be in sync — without becoming overly cerebral.