Jordan Mintzer

There are definitely some unforgettable images in Heil Jupiter!, but good luck trying to make heads or tails of them.

At best, Hombre Al Agua is a passion project in which the Mexican star dishes out some thoughts on fatherhood, masculinity and moral purpose. But tighter scripting and less mayhem would have helped make his message heard, instead of diluting it with too many shenanigans.

In Too Much Sugar, such an approach coaxes Holliger and Midgyett into facing some of their many demons, revealing themselves to the camera in ways they haven’t necessarily done before. Their machismo gradually gives way to something more disarming and sincere.

The film is tense, realistic and compellingly performed — Alba Rohrwacher, who plays the lead, is as good as she’s ever been — but also a bit schematic and didactic, hammering home a familiar message about people crushed by the weight of shareholder value until there’s barely any life left in them.

Is the film cheesy and a tad ridiculous? Certo. But it’s also rather watchable if you accept its mass of coincidences, hopping to multiple destinations (Rome, Oslo, Turino, San Sebastian and Mumbai) like an Alitalia frequent flyer and spanning several decades to tell the tale of two lovers who keep serendipitously crossing paths but can’t seal the deal.

At once immense and intimate, political, historical and personal, it’s the kind of shoot-for-the-moon feature that rarely happens anymore, and certainly not like this.

This sober and thoroughly documented bombshell of an exposé, in which two dozen IDF intelligence officers detail the systematic targeting and murdering of civilians in Gaza since October 7th — how it was carried out deliberately and with state-of-the-art precision — also leaves one with a deadening feeling, as if humanity may have lost all hope.

Framing her subjects in medium close-ups, [Loktev] creates an intimacy that goes beyond the international crises and political upheavals to focus on the human costs of an unending conflict. The journos may all be hardworking and heroic; they’re also normal people trying to conduct their lives amid the chaos.

Making the most out of one location, one vehicle and four actors, the film milks as much as it can out of a far-fetched scenario that keeps the suspense level relatively high, although it doesn’t amount to much once the gas runs out.

What makes this hand-drawn and painted coming-of-ager stand out from other entries to the genre is Clichy’s superb attention to detail, especially the way he portays rugged country living in the 1980s, at a time when French agriculture was consolidating and family farms faced extinction.