Unfairly derided, Mann’s work here might not have come close to his best, but it’s still an intriguing 21st-century cyber-thriller set largely in Asia that deals with themes of geopolitics, technological fears, and agency versus anonymity in the digital world.
Loznitsa expertly puts footage together from Leningrad in August 1991 as tens of thousands of nervous Russians filled the streets, with the political fate of their country hanging in the balance after communist hardliners staged what would become a failed coup d’état to revive the collapsing Soviet Union.
Ridley Scott is back in some style with this largely captivating stranded-in-Mars sci-fi adventure that is a potent mix of science and thrills.
Boyle, Sorkin, Fassbender and Winslet deliver some of their best work in this talky if invigorating three-act ‘cinematic theatre’ centering on the Apple co-founder.
Akerman’s final film, shot in long takes that aren’t always compelling, features her late mother in the domesticity of her home as they enjoy the conversations and comfortable silences.
Feels modern in full-throttle blood-spurting style, yet also wholly in period with Shakespearean-speak – a violent, beautiful if occasionally emotionally distancing screen adaptation of the famous text.
For better or worse, this is possibly the director’s most accessible film to date, lacking the wondrous mysticism of his previous works, yet at the same time it feels more intimate as a personal elegy.
Polished and generally solid, this Cold War movie would rank as one of Spielberg’s good-but-not-great pictures.
For better or worse, it feels like you are watching a book unfold in this beautiful if unbalanced adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s well-studied novel.
Zhao’s naturalistic debut feature, shot largely at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, is part ethnographic, part poetic take on the communities living on the land.
Eternality Tan 