Jose Solís

Anybody who watches Ponyboi knows there is probably nothing Gallo can’t do. Their charisma and screen presence alone make this worth a watch.

Amachoukeli knows there isn’t a version of life where pain doesn’t exist, and with Àma Gloria she offers an unadorned warning––a place of refuge for when we need it.

What’s most admirable about Veni Vidi Vici is that Hoesl and Niemann avoid being too obvious about satirical moments.

An expertly crafted but extremely reverential, biographical documentary that uses extracts from the artist’s diary as narration to suggest we’re listening to the story from the artist herself.

The filmmakers leave the gaucho community the same way they arrived, a tracking shot that turns the camera into a train that stopped briefly in a place we otherwise wouldn’t know existed, each viewer taking a custom souvenir. For some a lesson in courage and tenacity or curiosity about how this culture came to be; for others, it may be simply the snapshot from a trip they won’t regret taking.

It’s a film about the chaos of creation, about the violence that occurs in the creation of new worlds, deftly playing with genres to endlessly fascinating means.

That Silva achieves to both criticize the overuse of online personas (particularly in the white gay world) while becoming a piece meant to be meme-d and TikTok-ed into oblivion is truly remarkable.

Mánver takes on the part with ferociousness, creating a portrait of womanhood that challenges dogmatic ideas about the limits of desire. With her delicious Mamacruz, she makes us realize not much separates religious and sexual ecstasy, both of which can often connect us to our higher selves.

In Gods of Mexico, we are seeing the Aztec gods still hard at work, not correcting the imperfections of creation, but sitting with us and basking in its glory.

Whatever its pictorial beauty, often significant, this adaptation of Paolo Cognetti’s bestseller exemplifies my distaste for films that depict toxic masculinity without questioning it, or even suggesting there is nothing heroic or brave about refusing to leave behind damaging practices as long as they perpetuate some limited idea of what constitutes manhood.