Casablanca Beats (2021)
★★★★☆
In Casablanca Beats, director Nabil Ayouch blurs the line between fiction and documentary in the exhilarating story of a charismatic group of young would-be rappers in Morocco.
★★★★☆
In Casablanca Beats, director Nabil Ayouch blurs the line between fiction and documentary in the exhilarating story of a charismatic group of young would-be rappers in Morocco.
★★★★☆
In Cicada by Matt Fifer and Kieran Mulcare, a twenty-something in New York finds love but his life is clouded by the memories of childhood abuse and the pain of not knowing how to deal with it.
★★★☆☆
The Collini Case by Marco Kreuzpaintner is a slickly made German legal drama that hinges on postwar European history.
★★★★☆
Sometimes enigmatic and confusing, sometimes fiery with emotion, Pablo Larrain’s intriguing Ema peels the layers off a woman’s dance with death.
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2021 Day 7: What the Critics say – Petrov’s Flu by Kirill Serebrennikov.
★★★★☆
Deerskin (Le Daim) by Quentin Dupieux is an oddball, quirky black comedy about a suede jacket with killer propensities.
★★★☆☆
Another Round (Druk) reunites dogme director Thomas Vinterberg (Festen) and his brooding star Mads Mikkelson to earn a 2021 Oscar for Best Film in a Foreign Language..
★★★☆☆
A burgeoning connection with a stranger may deeply affect the life of an ex-diving champion in writer/director Stelios Kammitsis’s charming but slight The Man with the Answers.
★★★☆☆
Fátima is a fascinating glimpse of Catholic faith, respectfully translated to the screen by Marco Pontecorvo.
★★★★☆
It Must Be Heaven continues Elia Suleiman’s deadpan global quest for recognition of Palestinian identity and homeland.
★★★★☆
Written by, directed by and starring Billie Piper, Rare Beasts, a self-styled ‘anti-romcom’, is a manic Munch-like scream about what it’s like to be a modern, thirty-something woman trying to have it all while there’s a crisis all around.
★★★☆☆
In Frankie, written and directed by Ira Sachs, Isabelle Huppert stars in an ensemble piece that illuminates a terminally ill actress’s final attempts to control the tangled relationships of her extended family.
★★★☆☆
Undergods, Chino Moya’s disturbing first feature set in a dystopian future, has its world premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival and is released now.
★★★ώ☆
A creatively frustrated film director’s tumultuous visit to a young couple’s lake house may reignite her creative vision in writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear.