Dao, named for the Taoist belief in an unceasing motion that flows through and unites all things, is a film of anthropological self-reflection, but it is also a surprising exploration of cinematic process.
Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, an exceptional historical fiction, doesn’t so much transport you to the past as it brings you to the edge of the translucent curtain that often obfuscates history from view.
At its core is the kind of cinema that has long sustained the medium at large: the family drama. But it’s presented here with invigorating flourishes that encircle the story within specific moments in time, while also granting it a stirring dramatic transcendence. The scope of its ambition is met, at every turn, by deft control over what is witnessed, and how.
Part guerrilla prank saga, part heartwarming friendship story, and part riff on Back to the Future, the result is an incredibly fine-tuned mishmash of styles and ideas that keeps evolving in surprising ways.
Mason Reeves delivers one of the most stunning child performances in recent memory, while Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan lean into their familiar acting hallmarks but find uncomfortable new layers as a mother and father bound by their own upbringings. The result is visceral, gentle, and ultimately, shattering.
Both as drama and as science fiction, In the Blink of an Eye doesn’t probe these questions, but rather, drops definitive answers like anvils, leaving little room to ruminate, wrestle, or consider.
While trying to confront grief with a sense of mischief, the movie’s impish tonal approach takes the sting out of death a little too often, rendering its catharsis null. It’s hard not to respect a big swing, but Wladyka ultimately misses.
I Want Your Sex may not ultimately have much to say, but its livewire comic scenarios yield the kind of raucous, sexually charged entertainment seldom seen in Hollywood of late.
Although it eventually leans into traditional genre hallmarks, its introductory musings are novel, taking the form of a one-woman performance showcase that makes ingenious use of visual and auditory negative space.
