The Best Character-driven Movies to Watch

When we think of biopics, we think of underdogs overcoming all odds just through the magnetic power of one’s voice or mastery of their instrument, with the accolades a natural reward for all they’ve been through. Kneecap is not that. The biopic about the titular Belfast hip hop act acknowledges the Troubles, but right off […]

When two young brides are mistakenly swapped on a train, it’s a difficult situation, much more so when the brides in question are both veiled and wearing the same red bridal attire. This seemingly simple swap is the entire plot of Laapataa Ladies, but director Kiran Rao transforms this mishap into a hilarious, yet realistic, […]

Monster is a deceptively simple story about growing up and the many misunderstandings that come with it. It’s told through different points of view, a technique that could easily feel gimmicky in the hands of a lesser director. But with director Hirokazu Kore-eda at the helm, it feels natural and inevitable, as if there was […]

The first things that grab your attention in Nickel Boys are its beauty and technicality. Director RaMell Ross, a large-format photographer, ensures every frame relays something deep, intimate, and moving. Then there’s how he takes these shots: we see things unfold through the POV of Elwood and Turner, students at an abusive reform school in […]

Coming of age films are a staple in cinema, but rare is a great depiction of growing up on the internet, chatting with friends, and learning about the world through just a small screen. Dìdi is one of those rare films that remembers that pivotal era, which is why it’s often likened to Bo Burnham’s […]

There is nothing quite like The Substance right now. It’s unsubtle, it’s provocative, and its satirical humor can be a hit or miss for some viewers, but it strikes at the one thing that’s fundamental to everyone, that can make or break their lives, yet that is rarely given grace and consideration– that is the […]

Not everybody holds a good relationship with their sisters, but ideally, we get to reunite and repair things in a good time. Unfortunately, for some families, the only time they reunite is due to a parent nearly dying. This is the case in His Three Daughters, where the three sisters meet after years living apart. […]

“The healing power of art” sounds cheesy, but it’s a statement made beautiful and true in Ghostlight. It’s the sensitively told and wonderfully performed story of an ordinary man who, up until this point, doesn’t even know how Romeo and Juliet ends. That’s how detached he is from art. But when Rita (Dolly de Leon) […]

You would expect a courtroom drama to be built around damning pieces of evidence, passionate speeches, or certain social issues lending weight to the investigation. But what makes Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall so remarkable is how direct it is. Triet doesn’t treat this case like a puzzle for the audience to […]

The key to what makes this apocalyptic thriller from Mr Robot and Homecoming showrunner Sam Esmail so unnerving is how resolute it is about not taking place in an alternate timeline. Making references to memorable events in recent history and namechecking real brands and cultural touchstones (like Tesla and Friends), Leave the World Behind is […]

Oscar-winner Emerald Fennell got a lot of free reign with her debut, Promising Young Woman, which was a slightly modest ordeal even with a lead of Carrey Mulligan’s calibre. But now, with her sophomore film, she go to have some fun. Assembling a devout cast of particularly skilled actors—Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, and […]

Of all the Christmas-set films to have come out over the last couple of months that were, inexplicably, about grief and regret (you’d be surprised by how many there are), The Holdovers easily outdoes its contemporaries by being confident enough to just sit with its characters. Like the best of director Alexander Payne’s other films, […]

Challenging, strange, and utterly captivating from start to finish, Sanctuary takes the relationship between a pathetic, wealthy man and a desperate, plucky young woman—a relationship built on consensual acts of sexual humiliation—and makes it so much more dynamic and entertaining than it has any right to be. The film takes place entirely in one hotel […]

Real life tragedies, especially one that’s as sensationalized as the Miracle in the Andes, can be tough to depict on screen. On one hand, the film has to keep true to the story but also maintain some form of spectacle to keep people watching. Past depictions of the 1972 crash are preoccupied with the cannibalism […]

All We Imagine as Light is a political film that has many smart and moving things to say about the loneliness of migrating from the country to the city, the double standards women face on the daily, and the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. But thanks to director Payal Kapadia’s deft hands, these […]

A Real Pain is a deceptively simple film. There’s not a lot going on on the surface, but Eisenberg’s smart script and tight direction, coupled with Culkin’s firecracker performance fuel the film with heart and infectious energy. A Real Pain shines when it focuses on the cousins’ bond​​at once pained and precious—but it also works […]

In Aftersun, Sophie recalls a holiday she took as an eleven-year-old in the ‘90s with her father. Video recordings help jog her memory, but she’s looking for more than just a blast from the past. Rather, she seems to be seeking answers to fill in the gaps between who she knew as her father and […]

We Are the World is a charity single created for African famine relief. It was a smash success– it inspired plenty of other charity singles and already has a TV documentary about it. But The Greatest Night in Pop reveals new behind-the-scenes footage with a home video flair, intercut with interviews from those who were […]

Frida Kahlo is an iconic Mexican painter, not just because of her outstanding art, but also because of her outlook in life, despite her ill health and tragic accident. Because of this, she has been talked about in multiple books, movies, and exhibitions, but a new documentary has popped up, this time from her own […]

The concepts of roads not taken and domino effects have received plenty of cinematic attention in their showier forms by way of multiverse comic book movies and dimension-hopping films like Everything Everywhere All At Once. But, though there’s no hint of sci-fi in Past Lives, Celine Song’s gentle film can count itself as one of […]

The Royal Hotel sees Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) resorting to take up a dire live-in job behind the bar in a remote desert part of Western Australia. Although they’re warned that they’d “have to be okay with a little male attention” in the outcast mining town, their financial precarity overrides the potential […]

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon isn’t a whodunnit; in fact, it’s closer to a who-didn’t-do-it. We know from the very beginning who is responsible for committing the brutal serial murders of wealthy Osage Native Americans in 1920s Oklahoma that the film chronicles: pretty much every single one of their white neighbors, spearheaded by […]

Often deemed as South Asian John Wick, Monkey Man, of course, has plenty of the stylish action that’s been captivating today’s filmmakers and audiences alike. Dev Patel, now writing and directing alongside leading the film, created a crazy combination of action sequences that mess around with perspective, that’s fuelled by insane choreography, and that take […]

Be prepared to have the expectations you form after reading Scrapper’s synopsis shattered: though it is about a 12-year-old dealing with grief following her mother’s death, it’s remarkably upbeat. It gets that quality by positioning itself in the buoyant headspace of young Georgie, a resilient, cheeky youngster who retains much of her whimsical childlike spirit […]

At times of great societal turmoil, sometimes stars are born, not just to entertain the masses but to challenge the way things are done. Amar Singh Chamkila is one such star, and his music captivated all of Punjab in part due to his brash lyrics. His assassination remains unsolved, but director and co-writer Imtiaz Ali […]

Going to sleep is something we do every day, though, when we were kids, it certainly wasn’t easy. With family-friendly source material and a new (and adorable!) sleepytime ensemble, Orion and the Dark plays with this fact of childhood, but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman transforms it into something more as the title characters journey into literal […]

Just based off its title, Mutt is already a film that tackles a state of in-between, and perhaps what makes it already precious is how honest and personal it can get, while remaining a good fictional story. This striking debut took Chilean-Serbian filmmaker Vuk Lungulov-Klotz more than six years to make, at least from the […]

Exhibiting Forgiveness does what it says in the title. The plot moves when a repentant family member returns to the protagonist’s life to reconcile with them, and in doing so, there’s hope that things would work out between them. Many a depiction would often treat this moment as a simple hurdle to jump over, but […]

We sacrifice so much for our dreams, so if it all fails, whether that be because of ourselves or because of extenuating circumstances, sometimes, a bit of perspective is needed to get back up. The Taiwanese-Japanese romantic drama 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days is centered on two young adults that meet in a karaoke bar in […]

Before she captivated the film world with her performance in Scorcese’s crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone starred in Erica Tremblay’s feature film debut Fancy Dance, earlier in 2023. It’s a tragic drama, wherein Gladstone portrays Jax, a lesbian woman dealing with the government that failed to find her sister, and that […]

Set in the British colonial era, Captain Miller is more unapologetically violent than its counterparts, but it’s not mindlessly so. Sure, the film has plenty of spectacle with numerous battles between townsfolk versus British colonialists, some scenes having gruesome, gory deaths. But in between these battles is Dhanush as the central character, contemplating the oppression […]

The film opens with Julie in her early twenties, longing to pursue a career in medical school. But after briefly testing the waters, she switches over to psychology, only to drop completely out of school and transform her hobby of photography into a professional career. This indecisiveness carries over in most aspects of her life, […]

Written, directed, and scored by Viggo Mortensen, The Dead Don’t Hurt is a visually stunning, emotionally potent, but still impressively restrained period drama that flips the script on typical Westerns. On the surface, it looks like it could be one—there’s even a bad guy clad in black who slings guns outside a saloon—but the film […]

If given the outline of this film, it might be easy to just call it poverty porn. But there’s a genuineness to Mambar Pierrette that keeps this film from sliding into melodrama, a certain subtlety that captures the everyday life in Douala, Cameroon. Filmmaker Rosine Mbakam, who made her start through documentary films, brings her […]

After years of relatively tame, tearjerking LGBTQ+ dramas, finally comes a sexy, erotic thriller made for and by sapphic women that pushes past convention. Love Lies Bleeding is an unexpected sophomore film from British director Rose Glass, not just because it’s set in New Mexico, but because of the 80s B-movie vibe literally on steroids […]

Just a few minutes in, you can already feel the immensity of The Brutalist. The rousing score stirs you. The weight of The Holocaust and Toth’s immigration story, which is also one of xenophobia and addiction, pulls you in. The visuals, shot in VistaVision, demand your attention. The period setting calls for nostalgia, but the […]