An extraordinary work of hard-hitting social realism that recalls the Dardennes’ ‘Rosetta’ and Mungiu’s ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’, set in the harsh wintry conditions of Moscow as a young Kyrgyz woman abandons her baby to find work to pay off insurmountable debts.
Excellent performances of nuance and subtlety aside, Hamaguchi’s work here is emotionally rich but its plot shifts remain unconvincingly executed.
Don’t think too much—this is Spielberg channeling his geeky gamer self, and darn, it is enjoyable.
Too overly-plotted, Petzold’s attempt at revising Casablanca for the modern age—and in his own oblique style and sensibility—doesn’t come out as deeply compelling as his best works.
It gets dull after a while, but the context—a Soviet fabricated show trial ordered by Stalin to frame and prosecute ‘anti-communists’ in the eyes of the public—is still an eye-opening look at character assassination on a national, ideological level, nearly a century ago.
Wes Anderson’s quirky set-in-Japan dogs’ tale is breathtaking in its stop-motion animation detail, while accruing a rhythmic sense of movement and storytelling momentum from start to end.
Yann Gonzalez’s decent sophomore feature continues his penchant for stylish, hallucinatory and provocative filmmaking in this serial killer mystery centering on a French gay porn producer.
The great Jacques Audiard’s first English-language film entertains with strong performances by Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly, tackling the Western genre with rare wit and verve.
A return to form in some ways, Zhang’s monochrome martial-arts drama is visually gorgeous but not always compelling.
Superbly-edited and exuding a sense of ‘new wave’ energy, Welles’ previously incomplete film before his death is now complete (or not?) in this strange, kaleidoscopic but rather uncompelling work.
Eternality Tan 