The finest film Farhadi has put out in years—here he skilfully draws out a complex, delicate drama with weighty themes of morality, truth and honour from a simple premise: a debt-ridden prisoner and a bag of gold coins.
PTA’s indelible 1970s romance between a teenage boy and an older woman (Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim are sensational) is akin to a cinematic relaxant, suffused with good, nostalgic vibes yet there’s enough of a slight overdose of unpredictability and peril to last the course.
A light-hearted Taiwanese romance starring Feng Fei Fei that sees Hou dabbling in commercial genre cinema early on in his career—there’s little in the way of depth but it is still moderately entertaining.
Three quite indelible stories about people in love (or not) as coincidences threaten to derail their intimate intentions in this charming Rohmerian comedy set around the beautiful spaces of Paris.
Radu Jude’s debut feature takes cinematic tedium to mesmerizingly hilarious levels as he follows a young girl who is obliged to shoot for a commercial after winning a car in a lucky draw.
Featuring arguably a career-best performance by Romy Schneider, Zulawski’s work here is enigmatic and indescribably haunting as it dissects the meaning of love and desire through the psychological destabilisation of its characters.
Told in five chapters in reverse chronological order, Ozon charts the disintegration of a marriage in this well-acted bittersweet film.
A gentle, heartfelt and beautifully-shot piece about why movies inspire us, from the point-of-view of an inquisitive village boy who befriends a 35mm film projectionist.
A stunning return to form by Ridley Scott, who revived the swords-and-sandals movie in the 2000s.
Akerman’s last fiction feature is an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Malaysia-set first novel in an assured slow cinema style that is evocative of the tropical landscape (shot in Cambodia) where a white man is facing an existential crisis dealing with his estranged mixed-race daughter.
Eternality Tan 