Josh Kupecki

Holland has honed an impressive ability to sustain nerve-fraying tension, and her brutal, field-level depictions of trauma orchestrated by oppressive political structures seeking to manipulate the hearts and minds of some, while dehumanizing others renders Green Border an angry, visceral masterpiece.

To its credit, the film never feels like a patchwork, but rather a cohesive whole. Or to be more specific: a haunting and meditative yet often hilarious cohesive whole.

Aside from the requisite wide shots of sweeping desert, sea, and cityscapes marking the various stages of the journey, Garrone (the Italian director of Gomorrah and Tale of Tales, among others) keeps the camera close to Seydou, and Sarr’s skill at the subtle transformation of his emotional responses from, say, heartbreak to happiness (and back again) is incredibly compelling to watch.

She Is Conann is a politically charged, blood-, sex-, and tears-soaked sword, carving through the helpless arteries to the heart of cinematic mediocrity, and it is Mandico’s strongest vision yet.

Apart from a handful of tracking shots, the film is a series of middle-distance static shots, giving us the same detachment the Höss household possesses living next to a concentration camp. But The Zone of Interest’s coup de grâce is never showing any activity within Auschwitz itself, allowing only the sounds of the camp to be a constant, nerve-racking presence.

Field trips to a cheese aging facility, a winery (of course), and a cattle farmer, whose methods of grazing are plotted out with mathematical precision, highlight the care and passion that are instilled into each and every morsel dropped onto the plate with the tiniest of tweezers. Menus-Plaisirs is a fascinating exploration of that passion, and perhaps the closest many of us will get to experiencing it at all.

One of the many charms of Kaurismäki’s films is the way he fuses the impassive emotions he’s subtly evoking with his characters with his absurd, hilarious signaling of the form of filmmaking itself.

Following James, I couldn’t help but think that Mackenzie and Collier had found a real-life David Brent (I know, they’re probably everywhere). The sheer force of his belief in his own skills (clothes designing, particularly) and the unflappability he exhibits is constantly stupefying.

Effortlessly charming and more than a little generous with its asides, The Delinquents is a film that lays out surprises and delights like a lavish feast – although it’s no surprise for those who’ve been paying attention.

Radical may hit all the requisite narrative arcs, but it does so with a level of nuance and examination that other films of this type either gloss over or ignore entirely.