Sharp Stick is a more specific work than much of what Denham has produced in the last decade, but it’s hindered by an awkward, shaggy…
Ali and Ava is a more formally restrained work for Barnard, but one imbued with limitless compassion and hardscrabble authenticity. Clio Barnard’s 2010 debut…
Marx Can Wait is a beautiful late work from an artist still pushing the limits of his self-exploration. One of the great canonical directors…
Earwig is a welcome return for Hadžihalilović, but not a terribly memorable one, its more striking images and narrative subversions disempowered in their servitude…
Both Sides of the Blade is a work of true entropy, a unique film in Denis’ oeuvre that leverages a newfound sense of languor…
Terence Davies’ Benediction is beautifully melancholic work, one that bursts benevolently onto the screen with immense feeling. The cinema of veteran English auteur Terence…
Crimes of the Future is a fascinating, ambitious project from Cronenberg, who readily sources his own career-long preoccupations in the creation of something that…
The competing modes of The Tsugua Diaries result in the sense of one film slapped upon another, Gomes’ adventurousness sacrificed in the name of the contemporaneous.…
A New Old Play is a rich, complex contribution to the Chinese folk tradition, and a “theater” film for the ages. Without getting too far…
In Front of Your Face is a spiritual awakening of a film, tweaking Hong’s particular tenor from the past decade into something even more…
This Much I Know to Be True is a flowing, amorphous music-doc experience, both capturing and emulating the particularity of Nick Cave’s late-career art.…
Il buco is a rich, poetic film that seeks to articulate man’s existence both within and in tension with nature. Through a constant fusion…
Happening is a film of intense linearity and physicality, but it leaves one wishing for a film that had perhaps widened its scope for…
After Noé’s career peak with Climax, Lux Æterna represents a disappointing return to the director’s haphazard stylistic tics and overindulgent edgelord sensibilities. Like fellow provocateurs Lars…
Saturday Fiction is a formally enterprising and experimental work that delivers as an exercise in digital esotericism. Set amidst the spy games of Allied…
Vortex is as viscerally bracing as Noe’s previous efforts, but here also cut through with a new, impressive level of restraint. It’s become somewhat…
Petite Maman is both Sciamma’s most intimate and epic work, a gently profound fable about youth’s uneasy passage into adulthood. Celine Sciamma’s characters have always…
Despite its workaday subject matter, Cow is still recognizably an Andrea Arnold film, mostly for the better. Depending on your perspective — and depending…