Elena Lazic

The film’s very long takes feel extremely rich with meaning and texture even as they often show a whole lot of nothing.

It is a moving healing journey, but one that feels almost too smooth, a best-case scenario with few bumps in the road and, more significantly, very few surprises.

The Five Devils feels like the inevitable encounter of indestructible drives, which send sparks flying both when they are satisfied and when they are denied.

The film ends on a slightly too simplistic, almost crass note regarding that point, but it cannot take away from its overall highly sensitive and formally rigorous exploration of nostalgia and of the other, different relationships people can afford to have with their past.

It is this direct line to the characters that keeps the film relatively interesting, even as it does become rather exhausting to watch these very kooky and carefree young people gallivanting about.

More impressionistic and less definite than a diagnostic, our understanding of why the two protagonists behave the way they do builds up cumulatively rather than didactically. It generously makes space for the entirety of their lives and histories and allows for the possibility of change.

Bold acrobatics in editing and ambitious creative choices feel all the more superfluous next to Mescal’s effortless charisma.

Lecoustre and Marre have the good sense to avoid ending the film on too positive a note — their protagonist has carried her grief for a long time, and she will not let it go overnight — but in delicate, truthful touches, they suggest for her the possibility of a future

Most remarkable about Deep Water is the fact that beyond being a sexy and gruesome thriller, it is also an absolute riot.

Together with the firm confidence of its execution, perhaps it is this sincerity that marks Dark Glasses as a touching late work from a master.

Dupieux, a director who has always been attuned to the absurd humor and casual beauty of the every day, effortlessly aligns us with Alain’s perspective.

Monroe does a lot to sustain what tension there is during the more perfunctory moments, delivering a seemingly effortless performance as a dejected young woman who approaches both her confusing new circumstances and the mystery that occupies her thoughts with calm and pragmatic patience, as well as curiosity.

Dunham has not lost her habit of exploring taboo and shocking scenarios. But just like this new film’s fluid, low key visual style and bright, poppy production design, the coming-of-age story it presents feels so organically conceived that what would surely be completely unacceptable in another context appears to obey the film’s own perverse set of rules with warmth and a refreshing lack of judgment.

Neither an exciting thriller nor a satisfactory (“elevated”) horror metaphor for one of society’s ills, FRESH is certified meh.

In Kent’s beautifully balanced and exquisitely shot film, this is the best you can do for someone without negating their experience or agency. The Nightingale similarly does not ask its audience to identify with, root for, or relate to any of its characters. It only tells us to watch and to listen.

Eggers understands that fairy tales and superstitions don’t persist because they are true or because they are absolute fantasies, but because they are both at the same time.

A winning adaptation that never condescends its audience.

That is why, as over-the-top and broad as it sometimes is, Summer of 85 is also one of Ozon’s most moving films to date.

Far from a humiliating and cruel character assassination, this film is a study of the limits of perception that is tender and unsettling in equal measure.

While this is ultimately a film about taking the time to appreciate what you have and enjoying every step of your way, the overall impression remains one of haste and only occasionally contagious overexcitement.

Panahi manages to keep an impressive amount of plates spinning all at once in Hit the Road, a breath of fresh air and a truly original work that marks him as a talent to watch.

Lamb indeed is more of a slow build-up of dread than it is a real shocker, and Jóhannsson does know how to rack up the tension with long takes, long silences, and sparse set design.

Despite being shot during the pandemic, In Front of Your Face is one of the South Korean director’s most open films of late, poignant in its use of a simple structure to touch on the eminently difficult question of how to live happily between past, present, and future.

Taking a step back from the many odd beats that make up the film’s rich tapestry, one can vaguely identify a method to its madness: Three Floors attempts to uncover the darkest impulses in man and to paint a stark picture of a confused world in which people seemingly have little control over what they’re doing. But like most melodramas, this one tends towards ideas of reconciliation and forgiveness, and there too, Moretti stumbles more than once.

Léa Seydoux’s hypnotic performance helps keep the film from sinking too fast into utter boredom.

Through the character of France, Dumont crafts an entertaining critique of the media more interesting for its formal and stylistic oddities than for its arguments, especially in the way he radically slows down a usually frenetic world.

No matter which way one looks at it — whether at cow-level or not — the lives of these animals are not happy ones. Therefore, the ethical question that remains isn’t about whether these animals are being treated well or not, but simply about what we are willing to live with.