Eric Lavallée

After disappearing into television for the past decade, Nicolas Winding Refn once again rears into the cinema with Her Private Hell, which unfortunately is an insufferable, nonsensical exercise suggesting his narrative coffers remain empty.

Nuisance Bear is many things at once – a critical look at the traces the erosion of long-held practices and vanishing ways of life added to technological encroachment and human interference making for another tangle of unintended consequences.

The choreography feels restrained and intimate and when Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! swerves into fantasy its catchy and feels vibrant — and is methodically threaded with the notion of letting go, and that even finality can be cheerfully addressed.

While examining the broader implications of political polarization and on a lesser frequency the fragility of democracy, journo-director Michael Premo’s debut often captures crucial moments of civil unrest with a well-placed camera.

A Sad and Beautiful World captures the tension between the desperate need to leave and the eternal longing to return but the playtime that Akil and Akl do get together plays more like a highlight real than dramatically compounding.