Maryam Touzani’s delicate and intimate directorial approach to The Blue Caftan helps it alluringly explore the juxtapositions between the loss of tradition and repressed desires.
With Corsage, Marie Kreutzer delivers an elegantly haunting portrait of self-determination and vanity amidst restlessness, which includes an astonishing performance by Vicky Krieps.
With R.M.N., Cristian Mungiu presents the harsh reality of European xenophobia through a gloomy atmosphere, excellent performances, and a staggering seventeen-minute-long scene.
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica unflinchingly captures the inner workings of the human body through mesmerizing and provocative images.
Albert Serra’s latest feature, Pacifiction, mesmerizingly blends thriller genre tropes with surrealism to put the audience into a dread-induced hypnotic trance.
Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul is honest, delicate, and complex, painting a portrait of contradictory emotions and fragmented family ties amidst adoptive abandonment.
The grittiness of Sean Price Williams’ cinematography and atmosphere carries Owen Kline’s Funny Pages, but the rest falters – a coming-of-age feature lacking focus, coherence, and laughter.
Beast relies on B-movie aesthetics and Elba’s acting chops to survive, but Kormákur’s vision lacks inspiration, leaving this animal-horror thriller left for dead.
Orphan: First Kill isn’t as gripping as the original film, but its self-aware tone helps make this prequel better than one might expect.
When I Consume You may deal with interesting concepts on paper, like addiction, loss, and guilt, but its presentation has plenty of faults.