Ema is Larrain’s best film yet, a technical marvel and narrative step forward that hopefully anticipates the tenor of his next stretch of work. It hasn’t…
Annette is somehow both Carax’s weirdest and safest film, a letdown even as its vision remains bold. One-time enfant terrible Leos Carax, foremost contemporary purveyor…
Tsai’s latest, like the director’s best works, revels in the unexpected, sublime textures of daily routine and understated tenderness. Those familiar with Tawainese auteur Tsai Ming-liang will…
Stillwater tiptoes around complex, potentially rich discourse without ever committing to any real ideological principle. Who is Tom McCarthy, really? Once a semi-successful TV actor, he’s…
Her Socialist Smile is yet another landmark work from Gianvito, more intimate than his usual but no less fiercely and formally intelligent. John Gianvito’s Vapor Trail…
The Woman Who Ran continues Hong’s run of affecting personal exorcisms, here crafting a memorable protagonist who is equally mysterious and familiar. Hong Sang-soo’s excoriating relationship…
Siberia takes on nothing less than the very nature of reality, and is an emphatic statement on the necessity, not luxury, of creativity. Relating to an…
Summer of 85 is a weightless trifle, built on an unsophisticated narrative and featuring a patently ridiculous ending. The trailer for Summer of 85, the…
In the cinema of the filmmaker Christian Petzold, it’s not hard to notice a motif of water that stands out across his work and often…
All Light, Everywhere is a Herculean effort meriting praise, but one in which the parts prove more impressive than the whole. If it hadn’t already…
Jia’s latest is a didactic, propogandist exercise, and something of a punctuating about-face from his best work. In a 2003 essay, Jia Zhangke — now…
Mainstream is a depthless, toothless attempt at satire that was out-of-touch at conception and arrives well past its expiration date. Social media, as captured in…
About Endlessness is a gentler than usual work from Roy Andersson, one that reflects humanity’s ability to create both great beauty and profound suffering. Those complaining…
The Human Voice is a recent high water mark for Almodóvar, a masterful exercise in depicting both interior and exterior surfaces. In the late 1920s, the…
The Father can veer into indulgence, but largely works as a nuanced, compassionate portrait of aging’s ravages. Like the captain of his soul, Anthony — played…
French Exit is an absolute disaster. The end. It takes truly talented people both in front of and behind the camera to make something as abysmal…
Red Post on Escher Street is a powerful, insurrectionary refutation of the larger culture’s nihilistic star-gazing and obliteration of art. Red Post on Escher Street, the…
True Mothers bears Kawase’s familiar textures and ambiance but is hampered by a few too many banal plot beats. Adapted from a 2015 bestseller by Mizuki…
Notturno is at times oddly diffuse, but the harrowing brutality it captures bears undeniable power. The echoes of war reverberate throughout Notturno, a film of unnerving…
The Salt of Tears is a pensive film that finds the aged director again reckoning with notions of parenthood, permanence, and familial legacy. Over the course…
Promising Young Woman does its best to reshape the rape-revenge narrative into a novel form, but it ultimately fails to muster much ambiguity or thorniness. Heavy…