A small-town doctor embarks on a journey to find his nephew in Bi Gan’s formidable meditation on time and memory, where the director functions as a medium in which his alchemistic ways reveal moments of pure symbolic and poetic wonder.
A visceral and elemental tale of survival and revenge by Team Inarritu-Lubezki, fronted by a physical, tour-de-force performance by DiCaprio.
A past-present diptych by Bellocchio that isn’t always tonally executed well, but it remains intriguing as a work about “how we got here” and “where do we go”, as the story of the sinful nun Benedetta and another about an old, vampiric man haunt its similar locale.
Minervini’s work about the real America i.e. the disturbia of the working-class provokes with its sheer no-bullshit honesty, with an invisible camera that gives zero distinction between drama and documentary.
Panahi is literally in the driver seat, as he charts a new course for Iranian cinema (of the oppressed) in this powerful docu-drama that is as defiant as any in his oeuvre.
Stunningly shot in black-and-white, Tseden shows immaculate control over his long take, slow cinema-style as a Tibetan sheep herder becomes stuck in a Kafka-esque scenario making his identity card, but an encounter with a hairdresser suggests the possibility of a new life.
Explicit unsimulated sex as an attraction aside, this is probably Noe’s worst film—too meandering, overlong and built around an annoying ‘inner thoughts’ voiceover that quickly becomes tiresome.
A faltering work of great ambition, or an artistic triumph bogged down by chronic unevenness, Gomes brings to it a plethora of aesthetical styles and nonchalant attitude towards film form to deliver a biting satire on Portugal’s politics, economy and culture.
A terrific and beautifully-shot melodrama full of warmth and pathos as Kore-eda invites and immerses us into the lovely world of three adult sisters and their much younger half-sister who has come to join them.
A sentient buffalo, a foolish servant sent across time and a shepherd whose days are numbered become mythical figures in Marcello’s magical realist docu-tale that features ravishing images of bucolic Italy, though the film rarely resonates in a deeper way than imagined.
Eternality Tan 