Featuring one of A.R. Rahman’s most outstanding songs (the title track), this is a generally solid work from Mani Ratnam about the complicated dynamics of family, with parts of it set against the context of Sri Lankan militancy.
Isabelle Huppert is indeed the mesmerizing star of this twisted psychological drama, oozing with suspense marked by unease, foreshadowing and dread.
This is one of Rohmer’s more styleless films, though it is inherently more political than most of his output as he intellectualises the nature of political ecology, which may occasionally if unexpectedly come across as a tad dry.
A Mexican family is irreversibly changed when drugs unwittingly enter their lives in this stunningly assured piece of cinema (winner of Best Director at Cannes) that may shock even the most seasoned of viewers.
Kurzel’s contemplative take on the events that led to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre is powerful in its quiet sensitivity, featuring Cannes Best Actor winner Caleb Landry Jones in a chilling performance as the mass shooter.
Edgar Wright’s engaging if offbeat heist film ticks like clockwork, and is accompanied by a terrific iPod playlist for a soundtrack.
Any film about the Holocaust is always essential viewing—this Oscar-winning documentary details the testimonies of five Hungarian Jews who survived the concentration camps during the time when the Nazis brutally intensified their extermination plan despite knowing they were losing the war.
A triptych of warm-spirited stories forms Hamaguchi’s worldly treatment of the serendipitous, in what is a perceptive work about connections and human relationships.
It may sometimes be a sensorial overload, but Hosoda’s invigorating reworking of the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ tale, now set in the virtual world of psychometric avatars, largely works and makes a point for the necessity of real human connection.
Royston Tan’s latest would make a strong double-bill with Kiarostami’s ’24 Frames’—a provocative and clever meditation on the ephemerality of mortal existence as captured through the meta-fictivity of his cinema.
Eternality Tan 