No one quite knows what to do with director Fatih Akin. His explosive early movie Head-On was about the complex convergence of immigration and mental health issues between two Turkish-German punks. It’s one of the most violent and romantic movies ever made and also one of the smartest about intersectional …
In Cuerpo Celeste, the symbolically loaded debut feature from Chilean writer-director Nayra Ilic García, the past not only fractures the present and future but actively exists along with it as if they are all one and the same. The film explores that threshold, the possibility to re-encounter even something we …
In his debut directorial effort, French director Laurent Slama joins forces with Alex Lawter and Agathe Rousselle to deliver a story about a woman on suicidal watch in A Second Life. Set on the opening day of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, we follow Elisabeth (Rouselle), who is living …
Sentimental Value won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival thanks to the three central performances by Renate Reinsve, Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård. Director Joachim Trier has a real talent for pulling out the emotional subtexts of ordinary lives and figuring out why people make the choices …
Romería is the movie above all others I have been recommending from this year’s Cannes Film Festival. That is because this is such a powerful story, told with such an incredible amount of love, that it is utterly impossible to be unaffected by it. And that is before I mention …
Without knowing absolutely anything about Deep Cover, I began watching it at home with zero expectations – sometimes, that’s truly the best way to discover little cinematic surprises throughout the year. The lack of anticipation allows one to fully enjoy the unpredictability of the humor and the narrative lightness of …
The Uruguayan director Lucia Garibaldi presents her sophomore feature, Un Futuro Brillante (A Bright Future), at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Her first film, Los Tiburones (The Sharks), premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Consequently, her subsequent work became a highly anticipated title on the festival circuit, and it …
Romane Bohringer is a French actor who, for her second film as director, has chosen to make an extremely personal story about her search for more information about her mother, Maggy, who left the family before she was a year old and died when Ms. Bohringer was in her early …
This enormous, sumptuous, magnificent movie is almost too much, which is not a complaint. Resurrection is one of those movies that decided to tell the story of a universe starting with a kitchen sink and then built out from there. It’s very long – 160 minutes in this edit – …
In her sophomore effort, Suzannah Herbert premieres her film Natchez at the Tribeca Film Festival. The documentary title borrows its name from the city in Mississippi. In the 1800s, it was the city with the most millionaires in the world; cotton plantations and the slave trade were the main commercial …
The movie with the best title at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is also the kind of movie filmmakers love to make: a movie about making a movie. But less joyously, the setting here is present-day Egypt, a nation not currently enjoying the delights of democracy. The creatives involved, beginning …
The French/Polish director Julia Kowalski recently premiered her Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite (Her Will Be Done). It is a Quinzaine Des Cineastes selection and the director’s sophomore full-length feature, Crache Cœur (Raging Rose). The film narrates the story of Nawojka (Maria Wróbel), a girl from rural France whose parents …
What is a “feel-good” movie? Is it just an uplifting story? Or something even more? That’s a tricky question that doesn’t have a distinct answer. Something that may be heartfelt to one person may be found schmaltzy and manipulative to another. Adding that idea to 2025 films makes the prospect …
Why is a movie about the aftermath of a Parisian career woman’s mental breakdown, set in a small town in eastern France, named after an area of the west coast of Ireland? Because in 1981 a French singer, Michel Sardou, had a massive hit with a song called “Les lacs …
It’s funny that the humble beginnings of Steven Spielberg — arguably the most iconic filmmaker working in Hollywood — can be traced back to Playboy Magazine. His directorial debut from 1971, Duel, began as a short story published in Hugh Hefner’s adult-oriented magazine. Author Richard Matheson (The Omega Man, Stir …
This Japanese movie is named after an art print a preteen girl buys her terminally ill father. This strange misdirection fits this quietly misguided film, about how that girl passes the time while her parents are too preoccupied for her. This includes some topics on the very edge of what …
Bold, primary colours take centre point within the animated tale Death Does Not Exist (La mort n’existe pas) which convey the film’s blunt messaging effectively. Political in nature and economic in scale, the film lays bare its stance within its opening sequence leaving no doubt about its eat the rich …
The 1980s were perhaps the best decade for high-concept, low-budget, effects-driven horror films. There are many examples, but one that has stood the test of time and become a cult classic for horror fans is Stuart Gordon’s 1984 feature Re-Animator. Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, it tells …
Paul Mescal has the very rare talent of making unusually good choices. He has made a few damp squibs; nobody loved Carmen but me, and while his charisma carried his stage performance of A Streetcar Named Desire from London to Brooklyn, the whole show was misguided. That said, he has …
Japanese director Masayuki Suô’s 1996 romantic comedy, Shall We Dance? Follows Shohei Sugiyama (Kôji Yakusho), an accountant who is surprisingly discontented. Despite his successful career and a wife and daughter who love him dearly, there’s something missing in Sugiyama’s life. On his daily commute, he spies from the train a …