2000s

The Departed’s intricate construction of double-crosses and manipulations propels its gripping narrative forward with impeccable pacing, teasing out the parallels between an undercover cop and a criminal spy hellbent on uncovering each other’s identities, and yet in Martin Scorsese’s sly formal motifs there remains a nihilistic despair that these opposing forces may just cancel each…

Though it mourns the souls of the deceased in the way its title suggests, Requiem for a Dream even more fully evokes a nightmare of disorientating maximalism that oversees a total degradation of humanity, as Darren Aronofsky draws on the existential horror of drug addiction in his aggressive editing to pessimistically conjure up an ensemble…

The oscillation between isolation and intimacy is just as much a part of life’s cycles as the births, marriages, and deaths that the three generations of the Jian family experience through different lenses, but while these occasions lay the foundation of Yi Yi’s grand formal structure, Edward Yang spends much of the film chasing the…

It takes a truly charismatic movie star to command the screen the way Julia Roberts does as Erin Brockovich’s titular beauty queen turned lawyer, delivering whip-smart takedowns and monologues while on her pursuit of justice, and together with Steven Soderbergh energetically infusing an infectious passion into this gripping biopic.

Almost Famous rolls along with all the thrust and exhilaration of a rock concert, as steeped in 70s pop culture as Cameron Crowe himself, and showing off a skilful tonal balance that ties each comedic and tragic set piece together into a nostalgic reflection on a musical era as joyfully uninhibited as it was potentially…

From the moment Vero hits something with her car on a rural road in The Headless Woman, every second of her waking life is haunted by guilt and paranoia, closing in around her through Lucrecia Martel’s claustrophobic camerawork that keeps us removed from definitive answers regarding who or what she might have killed.