Ho Wi Ding’s new feature, a seemingly complex intersecting lives psychological drama, tackles without moral judgment the desires of young Taiwanese adults who are desperate for intimacy and connection.
There’s both a sense of energy and listlessness to the filmmaking, with a story or two waiting to pop out, but that never materializes through the course of this sprawling, ambitious road movie.
Excellent performances of nuance and subtlety aside, Hamaguchi’s work here is emotionally rich but its plot shifts remain unconvincingly executed.
A meandering misfire from Chahine, this family conflict drama infused with superfluous sequences of song-and-dance fails to stir the senses in the way that his best works effortlessly do.
Oscar Isaac headlines this low-key, slow-burn thriller about a poker player with a haunted past, directed with the minimum of fuss by Schrader.
Ducournau’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning sophomore feature is a body-horror shocker about the desire for connection, featuring strong performances from Vincent Lindon and Agathe Rousselle.
Sen at his thought-provoking best, this highly-layered meta-filmic behind-the-scenes drama sees a film crew enter a poor village to make a movie about the 1943 Bengal famine, only to find it increasingly difficult to engage with the people, traditions, history and filmmaking itself.
This superb debut feature is a confidently-mounted campus cannibal horror film with a fascinating character arc for its leading lady.
This rarely-seen work by Chabrol is a major accomplishment, set in a Nazi-occupied French town about the courage and deception tactics of French civilians as they support the resistance in secret.
There’s a case for this to be Malick’s opus – it may be slow-moving but will be rewarding for anyone willing to enter a personal journey with the director as he attempts to lift us into a spiritual realm of meaning and purpose.
