Mubi
MOVIE REVIEW
Crossing (2024)
A movie that revolves around two Georgians in Istanbul, Turkey, looking for someone they know, “Crossing” is very reminiscent of “Central Station.” Ain’t nothing wrong with that! The Walter Salles film is a masterpiece that others should aspire to emulate. It also sets the bar impossibly high.
Tribeca Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
Winter Spring Summer or Fall (2024)
The story of an average Joe being in love with a woman way out of his league is nothing new. It’s like every Woody Allen movie ever. Or Adam Sandler. Or Judd Apatow. And so on. This is a trope, or maybe an entire genre, in Bollywood and its adjacent film industries – the impossible intercaste relationship dynamic – and yet somehow it never seems to get old over there because they’ve discovered the formula for making viewers’ cheeks blush and hearts flutter. “Winter Spring Summer or Fall,” which has its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, gives this premise the Y.A. treatment.
Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Kinds of Kindness (2024)
Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the few European directors from non-English-speaking countries (in his case, Greece) in recent years to successfully pivot to full-time filmmaking in America. Unlike, say, Lars von Trier or Nicolas Winding Refn, Mr. Lanthimos has been recognized by the Academy with multiple nominations. He’s also lucky that he’s never had to placate Harvey Weinstein.
Caesar Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Megalopolis (2024)
The kindest way to describe “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s latest grasp at relevance, is that it is somewhat late-career Felliniesque, with its Art Deco production designs, costumes that range from ancient Greek to prerevolution French and the decadent life-as-circus motif. But let’s face it. Late-career Coppola gonna late-career Coppola. The film is bloated, unfocused and self-indulgent.
Jasin Boland/Warner Brothers Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
Reviving the “Mad Max” franchise in 2015 after a three-decade gap turned out to be a very good idea for George Miller. So instead of another “Babe” or even “Happy Feet,” we’re getting a Furiosa origin story. Well, there’s apparently a sequel planned for “Mad Max: Fury Road” as well, but that’s a whole other conversation for another time.
Diaphana Distribution
MOVIE REVIEW
The Second Act (2024)
Quentin Dupieux’s “The Second Act,” which opened the 77th Cannes Film Festival, is a somewhat interesting, if half-baked, objet de curiosité about the blurred line between fiction and reality. It’s the classic film-within-a-film, except that realities of the film set and behind-the-scenes drama pretty much hijack and drown the threadbare plot of the fictional project herein.
Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Krazy House (2024)
Many European artists – Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke, to name a couple – have very skewed ideas about what defines Americana, deduced exclusively from our pop culture exports. The Dutch filmmaking duo Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil is yet another example. “Krazy House,” premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, can best be described as “Funny Games” reimagined as a sitcom.
A24
MOVIE REVIEW
A Different Man (2024)
“A Different Man” reunites filmmaker Aaron Schimberg with his “Chained for Life” leading man, Adam Pearson. If you think deeply about it, the new film, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, is actually incredibly sweet in its attempt to normalize the actor’s deformity caused by neurofibromatosis type 1. For the uninitiated, though, it’s more like some mashup of “Face/Off,” “The Elephant Man” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It may look like body horror, but it’s a comedy . . . maybe?
Anna Kooris/A24
MOVIE REVIEW
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
“Saint Maud” auteur Rose Glass returns with something more deliberately A24-y, a gonzo pulp fully in the mode of ’70s grindhouse and its ’90s Quentin Tarantino-led renaissance. Ms. Glass disclosed at the Sundance Film Festival premiere of “Love Lies Bleeding” that she originally set it in Scotland, but the story just makes much more sense in the States. She ain’t wrong. This toxic mix of unhinged bloodlust and sleazy softcore is basically cinematic apple pie.
Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Presence (2024)
Perhaps the only filmmaker who has successfully bounced between commercial and indie careers, Steven Soderbergh returns to Sundance Film Festival, where his breakout arrived via 1989’s “sex, lies, and videotape,” with another lean and mean production perfectly appropriate for the annual Park City event. You can almost venture to guess that principal photography for “Presence” took something like 11 days; and I don’t mean this in a bad way.