True to Bong Joon-ho’s savage class critiques, the endless cloning of expendable workers in Mickey 17 examines the fragility of identity in a capitalist system, aiming its broad satire at the repackaging of exploitation and colonisation as economic progress.
As two amusingly dissimilar cousins reconnect to their Jewish ancestry in Poland, A Real Pain also sensitively examines their reconnection with each other, binding polar opposites together through humour, compassion, and generations of unresolved trauma.
When Brazil’s plague of forced disappearances reaches a beloved father in I’m Still Here, it is up to his resilient wife to keep the shattered pieces of her family’s lives together, transforming her sorrow and trauma into a testament of selfless, compassionate resistance.
Opera singer Maria Callas’ astonishing talent is both her greatest gift and curse in Pablo Larraín’s impressionistic, melancholy biopic, simultaneously giving her reason to live and eroding her tormented soul as she wanders through the final week of her extraordinary life.
Jacques Audiard is no hack, and there is some merit to the outlandish ambition of this pulpy, musical melodrama about a cartel kingpin’s transition, yet its constant misfires keep Emilia Pérez from ever settling on a coherent direction.
The unity of art and politics was not exactly a new concept in the 1960s, but Bob Dylan’s refreshing brand of celebrity that is both radically outspoken and mysteriously private inspires awe in A Complete Unknown, soulfully capturing the countercultural icon’s elusive, inscrutable essence.
As we traverse Brady Corbet’s epic saga of a Hungarian-Jewish architect forging a new life, his ties to both America and his homeland intertwine, yielding complex artistic fusions born of bitter nostalgia, soured dreams, and deep-seated cultural trauma.
What unfolds behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel in the wake of a pope’s death makes for a tantalising source of intrigue in Conclave, yet Edward Berger brings a solemn gravity to his staging of this suspenseful political thriller, exposing the secrets and moral weaknesses of those who vie for that newly vacant position of power.
Sean Baker captures the whirlwind marriage between a New York stripper and wealthy Russian bachelor with spontaneous realism in Anora, colliding two worlds in euphoric, chaotic romance, and dragging it through the disenchantment of even messier heartbreak.
Count Orlok’s carnal voraciousness is more heightened than ever in Robert Eggers’ meticulously handsome remake of Nosferatu, underscoring the shameful, psychosexual desire which exposes each character to the vampire’s disturbing pull, and manifesting an archaic horror that feeds on our guilty hearts.
