Breillat’s film is devastating because it exposes at the heart of a seemingly normal family a black hole where empathy should be.

As with her other works, La Chimera is a gift of a film, a philosophically stimulating piece of cinema that has the rare capacity to genuinely transform the way we look at the world.

The people in Sang-soo’s latest are given the time to exist within the frame without having to respond to the sometimes constricting expectations of fiction, the director’s observational style a perfect match to the film’s titular purpose: to observe a not-so-regular day in the lives of regular people.

“Lost in the Night” functions as a study of absence — the absence of others, of talent, of answers, of peace, of love. By amalgamating all those lacks, Escalante reaches an unsurprising yet chillingly effective conclusion.

Unfortunately, Cailley’s conventional cinematic aesthetic is also often akin to a contemporary streaming movie (the first thirty minutes or seem like a television pilot) and while the visual effects are solid, there are few images that will stick with you hours after you’ve left the theater. What saves “The Animal Kingdom” is the genuine horror over this happening to anyone (Cailley gets that right, at least) and Kircher’s fantastic performance.

It is refreshing and endearing to watch as Gondry lets his protagonist, a version of himself, go to the end of his thoughts, even if they apparently lead nowhere.

Frustration is quickly diluted in service of reinforcing the central character’s enlightenment, a repeating arc that muddles the refined treatment of the film’s accompanying themes.

While this doc lacks a few crucial interviews, it nonetheless charts the course of one of ’60s television’s most recognizable stars. For fans of Mary Tyler Moore, James Adolphus’ doc is a must-watch.

Over the course of three and a half hours, Bang both refutes and affirms the criticisms over working conditions for these workers, many of whom are migrants, traveling hundreds of miles (or more) to make money for their families back home.

Its unflinching depiction of the brutal genocide of the Selk’nam people intermingles with pointed contempt for the egotistical yet pathetic colonists.

The couple’s pursuit of true, deep, sincere beauty in all things — in body and mind — despite these obstacles is infinitely touching.

Kubi is an outrageously exhilarating update of the samurai epic, dialing up the blood and guts and sprinkling in the sick humor to match.

While the filmmaker has a better grasp on conveying well-staged melodrama than many of his contemporaries half his age (Fabio Massimo Capogrosso’s score and Francesco Di Giacomo‘s cinematography assist), the heart of the story somehow still gets lost. Even a final scene that should capture the tragedy of this tale falls surprisingly flat.

There is a little bit of everything in A Brighter Tomorrow as it maneuvers through different narratives, jumping from the film production to Giovanni’s film to his domestic life. There are even moments when characters randomly break into song and dance, transforming it into a quasi-musical that doesn’t quite flow well.

In place of new, at least, we get to see Butler in his element as a man of compassion first and blazing guns second.

Despite Ben Hania sticking to her cinematic formula “Four Daughters” is genuinely hard to forget. It will linger with you for days afterward. That’s mostly due to Olfa’s heartbreaking perseverance to find her children and a wee bit of Ben Hania’s storytelling skill too.

Taken as a bone-dry satirical comedy, this would be a cruelly glib treatment of material sensitive enough to merit a trigger warning in bright yellow prior to the opening credits. But this agonizing tour through private agony deserves to be taken more seriously than that.

The use of body horror allegories in cinema to address the physical, physiological, and mental changes brought on by puberty could hardly be called original. However, by delightfully and intelligently remixing symbols and metaphors Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu refreshes the concept in her zesty debut feature Tiger Stripes.

The film never returns to the strength of its opening scene, and by the end, the spark is gone.

The minor problem of it all is while what Anderson is trying to say can be read across the sky like a beautifully glistening moonbeam; it does often lack the craterous depth of feeling we know he’s capable of when doing his best creative and emotional astrography.

Shot in a way reminiscent of classic ’70s cinema while commenting on the woes of the contemporary, Williams builds a timely film that still feels timeless, an expansive chronicling of a slice of America ripe for many a rewatch.

Its radical sweetness arises from a wellspring of empathy. Its radiant colors and lucid conception of vulnerability in the face of a largely inconsiderate world, sink deep beneath the skin in the liminal space between the soul and the heart that can make animation such a wondrous medium. Berger’s “Robot Dreams” is its stunning reality.

Writer-director Rodrigo Moreno methodically unfurls a genius tragicomedy on the elusive nature of freedom: an idealized state in which, in theory, one does as one pleases at all times.

Its interweaving of powerful performances and spiritual complexity, eventually melded with local folklore, is nothing short of beautiful.

By bringing to the screen a conversation painfully reserved to private spaces built upon the frail structures of shame and guilt without ever losing the type of loving lightness one can only get through unwavering support, Molly Manning-Walker confidently steps out of the gate right foot forward.

At its best moments, the extremely straightforward construction of Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case allows for fascinating dynamics and images to occur apparently unforced, as if by themselves, for the viewer to seize on their own.

For a movie that seeks to establish the ferocious fire within the great, shunned Catherine Parr, it doesn’t take long for the flame to fizzle out.

Magic is something that children of all ages desire to experience, and The Little Mermaid has magic to share because Halle typifies that enchantment.