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The Dreamed Adventure is, ultimately, not an easy or altogether conformable viewing experience. But Grisebach’s penchant for unfussy storytelling lulls us into such complacency with Veska that even the subtlest hints suggest the hard won comfort of the present is on the verge of crumbling at any minute. Perhaps the dreamed adventure is, rather troublingly, our ability to believe in stability or comfort because powers beyond our control can pull us into depths we pretend aren’t there.

With segments spanning Granada, Cantabria, Santander, and, of course, Madrid, it’s a topographical and historical saga dialed down to intimate dimensions. In a world currently backsliding into chaos, The Black Ball reflects on the importance of authenticity as the legacy to be inherited.

Most powerfully, Dhont stages a recuperation of queer representation as both resilient and hopeful. Happiness, or perhaps more importantly, contentment, is possible when you seek it and seize it.

The Birthday Party is perhaps familiar to a fault, playing with hoary genre conventions effectively (though arguably not transcendent enough to withstand the expectations associated with competing for a major film festival prize). Still, Mysius (co-writing with Laurent Mauvignier) knows how to write compelling characters, and her ability to squeeze new energies from routine ideas through shifting the perspective can be pleasurable to those willing to look past the conventional hook.

Hayakawa’s narrative isn’t so much experimental as it is unfocused.

A silver lining is how Herzi brings a tangibility to her heroine’s experiences, brought to blazing life by compelling newcomer Nadia Melliti. But there remains a core absence in the film’s trajectory, which utilizes familiar beats (set to a Kim Ki-duk reminiscent season cycle, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring) and cliched elements softening the blows, criticisms, and self-reflection penned by Daas.

Of the many significant issues severely hobbling The Wizard of the Kremlin, the latest film from French auteur Olivier Assayas, the most egregious is how incredibly stupid it believes its audience to be. Characters freely interpret for us the meaning behind every moment, like professors lecturing us through interpretive stage dialogue. Add to this a thick porridge of Europa flavored accents from the primarily English language performers, led by the shockingly miscast Paul Dano, and it completes a recipe for one of the esteemed director’s biggest failures.

Despite displaying a reverence for queer personas and artifacts, this is the first time Sachs has directly recuperated elements of the AIDS crisis, and it serves like an homage for the countless gay men who lost their lives during their prime.

A Man of His Time never justifies its subject or its methods, even if one wishes to make an argument for it being another embodiment of Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil.’

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.