Ceylan’s meta-filmic sophomore feature feels like a Kiarostami-esque attempt at self-reflexivity, while occasionally drifting into dreamy, subliminal scenes, as a filmmaker broaches the idea of getting his parents to act in his next project.
Guadagnino’s meta faux-documentary is messy, tonally jarring and insensitive, but Tilda Swinton as actress-narrator-interviewer makes it more palatable to accept as his debut feature reconstructs a ghastly real-life murder with curious sensationalism.
An unusually weaker stab by Morita in this mystery within a mystery, as his uneven and unnecessarily convoluted film about a murderer with a split personality explores the intersection between law and psychology.
Visually stunning, contemplative and disruptive, Denis’ brilliant take on toxic masculinity—for men, and by men—revolves around one French Foreign Legion sergeant’s attraction and repulsion towards a new recruit.
A disappointment from Kaurismaki in this way too simplistic and monotonous tribute to silent era filmmaking about a young and naïve wife of a farmer husband who is lured away by a rich old man promising a better life.
Told in reverse chronology, this is a masterpiece that deals with South Korea’s ‘80s military dictatorship and its ensuing socioeconomic changes, and does it with such profound emotional and psychological clarity.
Probably Fincher’s zeitgeistiest film, this initially misunderstood but now modern classic traverses effortlessly between popular and cult realms as its unflinching takedown of capitalism and consumerism is marked by a thick, poisoned air of existential malaise.
Gritty, downbeat and cynical, Seidl’s provocative first fiction feature uses the camera like a privacy-intruding one-way mirror as it observes several women and their exploits with cheap modelling, perverted men and toxic relationships.
A docu-fiction that explores the process of history’s becoming as De Leon boldly if cheekily subjects his country’s anti-colonialist national hero, Jose Rizal, to an artistic interrogation, yielding interesting takeaways on art’s discourse with the past.
A man is accused of being a paedophilic killer in Chabrol’s effortlessly-mounted small-town crime mystery, shot with breezy naturalism by the acclaimed cinematographer Eduardo Serra.
Eternality Tan 