90 Movies on Netflix That Will Absolutely Blow Your Mind

This untamed, high-octane portrait of the Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap follows real-life members —aliases Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, and DJ Próvaí, all playing themselves—as they forge a path from lost teens to unlikely cultural icons. Being the first hip-hop act is their native Irish, they’re met with disdain both from their community who think they are misrepresenting the Irish cause (DJ Próvaí translates to DJ Drug Dealer), and from the British for things like playing the same venue where King Charles spoke the night before and one of them exposing their butt with the words “BRITS” and “OUT” written on either cheek.

The story ends up being as much as about the group as it is about identity, artistic freedom, even the Ireland of today – and yet the core of Kneecap, perhaps not just the movie but the group itself, seems focused solely on the importance of having fun while dealing with all of it. The ride is exhilarating, often very funny, and even in tough moments, upbeat. Hang tight.

A hot summer night, around 2 a.m. You’re outside talking with a close friend about life, happiness, and the human condition. That quality and depth of conversation, which you reach at best a couple of times a year is present throughout the 106 minutes of The End of the Tour.

In the case of this movie, you become the witness of five days of conversation spent between two fine writers: the once-in-a-generation American author David Foster Wallace and best-selling Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky, as they travel the US during the 1996 publicity tour for the former’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Twelve years later Wallace will commit suicide.

Like a good podcast, the James-Ponsoldt-directed road movie makes you feel being part of a deeply personal conversation of the kind you would have with a long-time friend. At times, it can feel like eavesdropping on a genius at work. This effect is helped along by a flawless Jason Segal, who delivers an award-worthy performance as DFW. The fierce intelligence exuded by Jesse Eisenberg as David Lipsky is also nothing short of amazing. As they stuff their faces with junk food, their conversation is insightful, immediate, and unpretentiously relevant, making The End of the Tour a rare and important film.

Phenomenal and heartbreaking, Wind River is a true masterpiece by Taylor Sheridan, the man behind Sicario and Hell or High Water. In a Native American Reservation, a local girl is found dead and a young detective (Elizabeth Olsen) tries to uncover the mystery. She is accompanied by a tracker (Jeremy Renner) with his own dark history in the community. It’s not a very rewarding movie at first, so don’t expect an incredibly fast-paced story from the get-go. However, when everything unfolds, it’s not only action-packed, its reflections on indigenous communities are deep and poignant. How this remains a relatively known movie is shocking, it has to be one of the best mysteries of the past 20 years.

After his first serious role in The Truman Show in 1998, Jim Carrey got a shot at playing his idol, the late comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufmann, in Man on the Moon in 1999. When he got the role, a role of a lifetime, Carrey decided to honor Kaufmann’s legacy by transforming into him (and his alter ego Tony Clifton) and, in true method-acting fashion, never to leave character. Jim & Andy is the result of 100 hours of behind-the-scenes footage shot at the Man on the Moon set, which was withheld for 20 years over fears of Universal Studios that people would think Carrey was an a**hole. While Carrey was a complete and utter imposition to the film’s director, Miloš Forman, and everybody else on set, including Danny DeVito, his transformation (or obsession) was a unique, transformative experience for Carrey, who had been sick of fame and acting before he took on this gig. Whether you buy into this view or see it as a vanity piece of a complete maniac, this is one of the most unique and insane documentaries on Netflix. A mind-blowing portrayal of a complex mind.

Do today’s political talk shows often feel like meek, scripted, and predictable affairs to you? Would you rather have that euphoric feeling you get when watching someone smart and eloquent talk about important ideas? Multiply that by two and you get Best of Enemies. In 1968, ABC covered the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach and the historic Democratic National Convention in Chicago by airing a 10-part series of nationally televised debates between two ideologically opposed and sharp-minded public intellectuals: Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. The former was an ardent and openly bisexual liberal and progressive. The latter an elitist cultural conservative, whose magazine, National Review, vowed to always support the most far-right candidate viable for office. This confrontational set-up is not only credited with ushering in an era of pundit politics, but also with producing some of the most entertaining intellectual debate ever to be seen on TV. When’s the last time you saw anybody unironically being called a “crypto-Nazi” on national television?

More simply called La Vie d’Adèle in its native language, this French coming-of-age movie was hugely successful when it came out and was probably one of the most talked-about films of the time. On the one hand, the usual puritans came to the fore, criticizing the lengthy and graphic sex scenes. On the other hand, Julie Maroh, who wrote the source material that inspired the script, denounced Franco-Tunisian filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche for directing with his d*ck, if you don’t mind me saying so, while also being an on-set tyrant. Whatever you make of this in hindsight, the only way to know is to watch this powerfully acted drama about the titular Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and her infatuation with Emma, a free-spirited girl with blue hair, played by Léa Seydoux. The film beautifully and realistically portrays Adele’s evolution from a teenage high-school girl to a grown, confident woman. As their relationship matures, so does Adèle, and she slowly begins to outgrow her sexual and philosophical mentor. Whatever your final verdict on the controversial sex scene, Blue Is the Warmest Color is without doubt an outstanding film as are the performances from Exarchopoulos and Séydoux.

Orlando von Einsiedel’s epic documentary is at once a stunning natural film, an intimate human drama, and an intense political thriller slash investigative report. The titular Virunga National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site in Eastern Congo, serves as the magnifying glass through which we witness the natural, human, and political crisis of this embattled and volatile region. There are poachers killing endangered gorillas, the bloody business of Big Oil companies, government forces fighting a myriad of militias, and, lastly, the three individuals struggling to protect Virunga and its mountain gorillas from death and destruction. The result is a snap-crackle-pop-type situation, like sitting on a powder keg. The film captures all this superbly with great editing, compelling real-life material, and gripping action. Virunga’s intensity can rival a well-made fictional thriller any day of the week.

Ex Machina is the directorial debut of Alex Garland, the writer of 28 Days Later (and 28 Weeks Later). It tells the story of Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson from About Time), an IT developer who is invited by a billionaire CEO to participate in a groundbreaking experiment—administering a Turing test to a humanoid robot called Ava (Alicia Vikander). Meeting the robot with feelings of superiority at first, questions of trust and ethics soon collide with the protagonist’s personal views. While this dazzling film does not rely on them, the visual effects and the overall look-feel of Ex Machina are absolutely stunning and were rightly picked for an Academy Award. They make Ex Machina feel just as casually futuristic as the equally stylish Her and, like Joaquin Phoenix, Gleeson aka Caleb must confront the feelings he develops towards a machine, despite his full awareness that ‘she’ is just that. This is possibly as close to Kubrick as anyone got in the 21st century. Ex Machina is clever, thrilling, and packed with engaging ideas.

From Selma director Ava DuVernay, 13th addresses the second clause of the 13th amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” A clause that was immediately exploited and for which the consequences and interpretations explain a significant part of the current American societal landscape. What also unfolds is a highly instructive and thought-provoking film that deals with the idea of progress, and justly pays tribute to the horrifying number of lives mass criminalization ruined.

If you don’t know much about him or high fashion, don’t fret because this intelligent and informative film by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui will chaperone you into this world with ease. Simply titled McQueen, this documentary is a poignant portrait of the British fashion icon that goes to great lengths to do him justice. With a reputation for shock tactics and controversy, McQueen grew from humble beginnings in a British council flat with three sisters into a world-famous enfant terrible of the 1990s for his quote unquote unwearable fashion and extravagant shows. Music fans might recognise his designs from Bjork’s album Homogenic or the music video to her song Alarm Call. Despite the documentary’s scope and depth, this is the type of film that leaves you wanting more and you might find yourself browsing through Wikipedia and YouTube for another hour to stay in the vibe. Alexander McQueen died of suicide in 2010.

In this powerful documentary, Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa intertwines her own family history with the democratic journey of her home country. As she says herself, Costa and her country’s democracy are of the same age. This is not the only reason why she was uniquely positioned to make a film like this: her parents were left-wing activists in the 1970s, who went to jail for their beliefs, while her grandparents were part of the ruling class have made Brazil’s strong-man politics and right-wing backlash possible. Her mother was held at the same prison that ex-president Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) was sent to. Costa tells the story of Rousseff’s demise as well as that of Luiz Inácio da Silva (2003-2011) aka Lula, whose future remains up in the air. The Edge of Democracy is thus a gripping and urgent warning that democracy in the world’s sixth most populous country is under attack. In content and form, Costa is obviously opinionated, but she makes a strong point.

Abuse is bad and should be reported, full stop. But it’s not so easy to do so, when abusers stay in positions of power, and the people who are assigned to keep them in check are cowardly against them. Silenced depicts true crime novel The Crucible, which in turn, is based on a real life case of the Gwangju Inhwa School. Through the perspective of a new art teacher, Silenced systematically outlines how difficult it is to deliver justice, from the way the school administration bribed police and the education department, to the way the court didn’t even think to hire a deaf interpreter. It’s a horrific watch, but the intensity of the depiction was needed, given that this film’s release pushed South Korea’s government to change their laws and the actual school shut down within the same year.

When asked about starring in First Reformed, Ethan Hawke said it’s the kind of role he would have never dared to audition for 10 years ago. This is coming from the same goatee icon who did Gattaca 22 years ago, and Training Day 18 years ago. 

Needless to say that his performance in this movie is exceptional, and we hope that it will be rewarded with an Oscar. The film centers around his character, a reverend of a church in New York, who is trying to help a couple with marital issues (deciding the fate of a pregnancy). Instead, he uncovers a deeper story and becomes unexpectedly involved. 

Religion intersects with ethical questions on activism, abortion, and environmental issues. I know that sounds like a lot, but First Reformed delivers on everything. The writing by Paul Schrader is delicate yet ensures that the movie keeps a gripping pace.

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 participate in solving; instead she fashions this trial into a portrait of a family being eroded by even just the suggestion of distrust. It ultimately has far less to do with who’s responsible for the death of a man, and more to do with the challenge of facing the reality that the people we love are capable of being cruel and callous to others.

Which isn’t to say that Anatomy of a Fall doesn’t still possess qualities that make it a great courtroom drama—doubt only continues to pile up with every new piece of information that’s revealed to the audience, until we begin to interpret characters’ expressions and actions in a contradictory ways. But the way Triet executes these reveals is just so skillful, choosing precisely how to let details slip and obscuring everything behind faulty memory, intentional dishonesty, or any other obstacles that usually come up during an investigation.

A young bisexual woman attends a shiva, caught between her parents and their expectations, her ex, and her sugar daddy. Rachel Sennott’s Danielle is yet to find her path in life and everyone is determined to remind her of that. Taking place almost entirely in real-time, the film’s sharp wit is contrasted with constant anxiety, complemented by Ariel Marx’s horror-like score, full of discordant pizzicato that sounds like every last bit of sanity snapping.

It’s a sex-positive take on 20-something life, treating bisexuality as wholly unremarkable and passing no judgment on Danielle’s sugar daddy income. Its specificities about Jewish customs and traditions are non-exclusionary, while its social claustrophobia is achingly universal. It’s comforting in the way it portrays the social horrors we all face, the feeling that everyone but you has life figured out, and that – ultimately – those who matter will pull through, eventually. One of 2021’s best.

Perhaps the most depressing but vital movie produced by animation giant Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies is a searing and sweeping drama that covers the horrors of World War II through the eyes of teenager Seita and his young sister Setsuko. Between the violence of war and the tragedy of loss, the siblings struggle to preserve not just their lives but their humanity. In typical Ghibli fashion, there are moments of gentle beauty to be found, but instead of conflicting with the overall stark tone of the film, they successfully underscore war’s futility and brutality, making Grave of the Fireflies one of the most important anti-war narratives ever told.

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 portrayed by big name actors, but Society of the Snow takes a different route. The actors are newcomers, the threats to their lives don’t require daring action stunts, and the cannibalism is limited to small chunks indistinguishable from animal meat. Instead, the spectacle of Society of the Snow is the human spirit– the vulnerability, the respect, and the generosity they’ve given each other in order to survive. It’s still an uncomfortable watch, especially since we get to know some of the survivors before the crash, but it’s definitely a transcendent addition to the genre dedicated to the miracle of existence.

With the success of non-resident Indians all over the globe, one has to wonder: Why not the ones back home? How can a country that raised such talented individuals have trouble taking care of the rest of its citizens? Swades considers this question through the return of one such successful NRI, NASA Project Manager Mohan Bhargava. It’s a perspective of India that doesn’t brush aside the country’s struggles– if anything, it understands the full weight of their challenges. Mohan’s return pulls him to schoolteacher Gita’s issue of teaching the kids in the village, leading him to bump against the interconnected problems of caste, class, and corruption. But it doesn’t end in just despair. At times, Swades can feel heavy-handed, but its earnest belief in community reflects a love that could be transformative, if the country would care for its people rather than slip into inertia.

In the first few minutes of Mass, hushed tones, solemn movements, and awkwardly averted eyes hint at an unspoken tragedy that haunts everyone in the film. The four main characters discuss it during a sit-down, but even then it remains unspeakable; such is the dedication of first-time full-length director Fran Kranz in depicting the reality of tragic events. Not much is done in the way of plot twists and shocks, but in place of those, Mass makes clever use of close-up shots and unmoving settings to portray the privacy and paralysis of grief. For this reason, Mass often feels like a masterful play brought to life, but also more than that, a brilliant portrait of healing—or at the very least, coping with the everlasting aftermath of loss. 

Art is a hobby for most people, but for musician Jon Batiste and writer Suleika Jaouad, art is part and parcel of this thing called life. Of course, it’s part of their work, and it’s how they make a livelihood, but it’s more than that– it’s almost a spiritual ritual they cling to, especially when Jaouad finds out that her leukemia has returned. American Symphony mainly depicts the creation of said orchestral work, but director Matthew Heineman translates the symphony into cinematic form, culminating in a performance played over the intimate moments between Batiste and Jaouad. It’s not just a documentary of a performance, but a documentary about art, about creation despite life’s pains, perhaps to survive life’s pains. It’s a powerful work that makes it easy to believe in art as imperative for life, and vice versa.

In the first twenty minutes, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin seemed to be quite unremarkable, with the usual way a biographical documentary would go, that is, loved ones waxing poetic about how great the dead person was in life. But the documentary takes this to introduce Ibelin the same way his parents discovered the online life Mats Steen lived. It’s a unique documentary, mixing in the usual home videos with the animated gameplay of the archived life Steen lived in Ibelin, but it’s grounded by, and somewhat co-created through the words Steen himself typed about his life as a disabled man, and the game history he shared with the community he formed online. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin ends up being quite a remarkable depiction of living online, that feels much more honest, human, and creative than the condescending or cautious narratives we’ve previously heard about the online world.

There are three big reasons to watch Paddleton. The first two are Ray Romano and Mark Duplass, who play the two neighbors at the center of the story. And the third is Alexandre Lehmann, the director, who also is responsible for Blue Jay (on Netflix as well).

These two misfit neighbors find themselves together when one of them is diagnosed with cancer. They embark on a trip to the nearest pharmacy (a six-hour drive) which turns into an adventure.

This premise gives Paddleton a lot to play on: it’s a comedy, but it’s also a drama about a fatal disease. It’s a bromance, but it’s about a fragile friendship. All these contradictions make Paddleton a great slice-of-life movie. And again, both actors are amazing. Watching it just for them is worth it.

Two storylines take place in this Parisian animation: one of a Moroccan immigrant who works as a pizza delivery guy, and the other of his hand, somehow no longer part of his body, but also going on a trip around Paris.

The hand storyline is not gory by the way, except for one or two very quick scenes. Mostly, this is a film about loneliness and not being able to find your way back, both as an immigrant who misses how they were raised and as a hand who misses its body.

Sporting some of the most beautiful animation work this year, this movie premiered at Cannes where it became the first-ever animated film (and Netflix film) to win the Nespresso Grand Prize.

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. It’s a common plotline, mostly depicted in the feel-good, family friendly variation, but writer-director Azazel Jacobs makes the three sisters distinct by taking the easy assumptions many people would make about them, and naturally push them to reveal the opposite. Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen form a great trio, delivering equally excellent performances under the same roof.

Paul Giamatti, man. Ever watched Win/Win? What a performance. I didn’t think he could do any better than that. But here he did.

This movie is now on Netflix. It’s about a couple that is trying to have a kid but can’t. Their frustration grows, but so does their willingness to do whatever it takes to become parents. They try to adopt, go to fertility clinics and ultimately ask their niece to donate her eggs. To really work, such a plot requires well-written, multifaceted characters one can relate to. I did, and it really worked.

Director Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer) does something quite amazing with the $50 million budget Netflix gave him: he makes a simplistic movie. But man, is it good. Okja tells the story of a “super pig” experiment that sends genetically modified pigs to top farmers around the world. In Korea, a farmer’s granddaughter forms a special relationship with one of these super pigs (Okja). When the company who originally ran the experiment want their pig back (performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton) – the two find an ally in an animal advocacy group led by Jay (Paul Dano). This is a straightforward movie, but nevertheless it is entertaining and full of thought-provoking themes and performances from an excellent cast.

Although Descendant is built around the finding of the Clotilda—the last ship to bring African slaves to the United States—this documentary knows that there’s so much more potent drama in the stories of the ordinary people of Africatown, Alabama. As this painful reminder of the roots of their community is salvaged from the water, their view of history itself begins to change. Now they face the responsibility of making sure that the Clotilda doesn’t just become a tourist attraction, and that their call for reparations unites the Mobile region of Alabama more than anything else. Its a gripping, complex documentary that feels like reading a great novel.

Between its maximalist production design and increasingly dark comedic set pieces, the most striking thing about Damien Chazelle’s critically misunderstood industry satire is how it strikes a tone closer to tabloid gossip than anything else. As opposed to the clockwork precision of Chazelle’s Whiplash, or the dreaminess of La La Land, Babylon’s restlessness doesn’t resemble Hollywood spectacle so much as it begins to feel like an unscratchable itch, desperate to feel anything. The film ends up trying to say so much that it threatens to say nothing at all, but its vision of cinema becoming reality is so potent that just the experience is more than worth getting lost in.

“As fragile as she was strong, as vulnerable as she was dynamic, she was African royalty. How does royalty stomp around in the mud and still walk with grace?”. What Happened, Miss Simone? will surprise you no matter how much you thought you knew about the soul singer – not only in its exploration of Nina Simone’s personal life and complexities, but by being both a personal and political documentary. As you discover an original singer with talents that reach all the way to performance art, you will also learn about a Civil Rights activist’s journey and an unstable woman’s struggle. The documentary is not about answering the question of what happened, Miss Simone? – it’s an exploration of why that question is so important.

You wouldn’t expect two old men discussing God and politics to be deeply intriguing, but I suppose it’s different when you have Hopkins and Pryce leading the whole thing. Nothing overly dramatic happens between the two (those parts are saved for the flashbacks, which are just as compelling), but they manage to make every discussion, every point, and even every word feel heavy with the weight of their guilt and hope. These two are proof that good acting can be carried by the tiniest lilt in tone and shift in gesture. You don’t have to be a Catholic or be interested in God at all to appreciate the great performance and touching vulnerability at the heart of The Two Popes.

From countries like Finland to North Korea, this amazing documentary explores the most fascinating active volcanoes on our planet. But as it unfolds you realize that Into the Inferno is a movie as much about volcanoes as it is about the people obsessed with them. And who can be called obsessive more than the film’s own director, Werner Herzog, who, with such an explosive career had to eventually make a film about volcanos (bad pun intended). Beautiful scenery, interesting interviews, and Werner’s majestic delivery all make Into the Inferno both an interesting and satisfying documentary.

Iceland is a country of vast lands but limited population – only about 300,000 people can call themselves Icelandic. On the other hand, 8 million people have connecting flights through Iceland every year. 

In this setting of mass movement, a single mother dealing with poverty is offered a chance to turn things around – a job as a border agent. One of her first days, she comes across an asylum seeker on a connecting flight from Guinea Bissau to Canada, trying to cross with a fake passport. 

Their stories don’t only intertwine as border agent and asylum seeker, but as two mothers. And Breathe Normally is about struggling with poverty both in Europe and coming from a place like Guinea Bissau. It’s a beautiful, plot-heavy statement on the importance of solidarity and of seeing the human behind the country of origin or race. 

In the Mexican film A Cop Movie, director Alonso Ruizpalacios mixes fact and fiction, documentary and narrative, to tell the tale of Teresa and Montoya, two police officers whose dreams are dashed by the corruption of their trade and who, eventually, find love and comfort in each other.

Ruizpalacios takes thrilling risks in structuring this genre-bending story—cutting stories into parts, jumping back and forth between the harrowingly real and captivatingly non-real. For all the experimental maneuvers he makes, however, the through-line is always Teresa and Montoya: particularly, their love for each other and for an institution that should have, in an ideal world, supported them and the people they vowed to protect.

To its credit, instead of merely humanizing the controversial police force, A Cop Movie adds some much-needed nuance to the big picture. At the end of the day, they’re no different than any other underpaid laborers working desperately to make end meets. A Cop Movie doesn’t gloss over the fact that the police, like so many other workers, are stuck in a rotten system that’s long overdue for a major overhauling.

It’s bold to make a film about a legendary icon of cinema, but it’s even bolder to make one about Orson Welles. Best known for making Citizen Kane (universally agreed upon as one of the best movies ever made), Orson Welles is the renegade filmmaker whose works and techniques form the foundation of modern narrative filmmaking today. In his eyes, he asserts that the best films are made by accident. However, armed with archival footage and interviews with those closest to Welles, director Morgan Neville dares to question one of cinema’s biggest geniuses by examining the production of his last unfinished film, the Hollywood satire The Other Side of the Wind. While Welles was undeniably genius – able to inscrutably visualize a film without scripts – it’s easy to see how his tendency to stoke conflict for art could be so self-destructive. This film presents Welles as he is – both a cinema maverick and also an overly demanding artistic tyrant.

After years of documentaries covering Thailand’s controversial issues, some of which have been temporarily banned by the Ministry of Culture, Nontawat Numbenchapol takes a step into feature film in Doi Boy. The plot covers plenty of the topics he’s previously depicted– immigration, prostitution, and corruption– but it unfolds naturally into a slow-paced, but moving drama where an undocumented sex worker tries to find home. Awat Ratanapintha as Sorn excellently leads this journey, but Arak Amornsupasiri as reluctant cop Ji, and Bhumibhat Thavornsiri as passionate activist Wuth also make their mark. While the film doesn’t delve into the intricate intersectionality, it feels like that’s part of the point. The notion of a nation doesn’t care about people’s dreams, even if that dream is for the nation to be better.

Given the title, it isn’t surprising that Falling in Love Like in Movies would be a metanarrative with the main romance mirroring the filmmaking and the filmmaking reflecting the main romance. It’s a familiar approach, and at first, Falling seems to follow the inevitable ending where the couple falls in love, but right on time, in around Sequence Four, writer-director Yandy Laurens chooses a more honest, less chosen path– a path that plenty of previous romance films hasn’t examined– that still falls within the eight sequence screenplay structure Bagus talks about. While Bagus is pitching his film to Hana, and to his producer, Jatuh Cinta Seperti di Film-Film pitches a new way of thinking about love, grief, and of course, filmmaking.

For the longest time, television seemed to be the antithesis to reading– part of that belief still lingers to this day. However, just before the turn of the millennium, there was a show that didn’t find itself opposite to it, instead, it wanted to be its ally. That show was Reading Rainbow. Butterfly in the Sky tells its story. It’s quite nostalgic, as the show’s former cast and crew recall what it was like, and the way the film structured its sequences captures not just the show itself, but the cultural weight it represented, as it encouraged reading not just as a skill you need to learn, but as a way to interact with the wider world around us, which is worth protecting. Butterfly in the Sky believes in stories, and believes in the story that it wants to tell about Reading Rainbow.

I think it’s safe to say you’ve never seen a Pinocchio adaptation quite like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. It still largely stays true to the source material, which is to stay it’s still about a father grappling with the loss of his son and a boy figuring out where he figures in the world. But the movie departs from it in significant ways too. Instead of a fairy tale setting, for instance, this Pinocchio has 1930s fascist Italy as its background, lending the film a realism and historicism that weren’t there before.

Stars Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, and newcomer Gregory Mann lend their voice in this tender and stellar stop-motion animated movie.

COVID-19 raised concerns about sanitation and cleanliness, but in a society that just banned discrimination against “impure” castes seventy years ago, these concerns feel reminiscent of previous caste prejudice. Writer-director Anubhav Sinha presents this social inequity through Bheed, a black-and-white drama set in a fictional checkpoint as the lockdown restricted travel between different Indian states. As the people in the checkpoint wait for the updated government regulations, tensions rise between the officers and the travelers, as the stuck migrants worry about hunger, thirst, and infection. While it’s definitely a heavy film to watch, this film doesn’t exploit the pandemic as fodder for drama. Instead, Bheed realistically portrays how a crisis like COVID-19 exacerbates existing social inequity.

Inspired by the Spiniak case, Blanquita reimagines the infamous scandal through mirrored interrogations and disorienting viewpoints. Blanquita rewrites the original witness, whose fictional variant, in turn, rewrites the abuse faced by victims as her own. She is transformed from a clueless liar, into someone still a liar, but one that did so when every other possible witness has been discarded for being unreliable, for being too traumatized to go through the judicial process unflinchingly. The film takes on a provocative subject matter, at a time when real life sexual abuse allegations are treated with the same scrutiny Blanca faces. However, Blanquita does so in a way that gives its complexities the weight it deserves. It’s a fascinating thriller, a quandary that tests the idea of ends justifying the means… But it’s one that’s disturbing, given the consequences to each crime.

Many comedians use humor as a way to ease into more serious subject matter, though there always exists a risk that a comedy special can skew too far down the silly or the self-reflective route. Mike Birbiglia has come about as close to the perfect balance as possible, in this recording of his one-man Broadway show at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Key to this is the fact that Birbiglia tells one very cohesive story throughout these 77 minutes, frequently branching off to other humorous anecdotes but always returning with a pensive self-consciousness to the real possibility of him dying sooner than he’d want.

This filmed version of Birbiglia’s show doesn’t give a full idea of its multimedia qualities (Birbiglia occasionally has words and images projected onto the curved screen behind him, which he also physically interacts with), but the comedian’s sincere style of storytelling more than makes up for the lack of audiovisual tricks we’re permitted to see. And don’t get it confused: this is a very funny stand-up special, whose jokes always come from the most unexpected places—it also just happens to contain some truly moving moments that come out of nowhere, but make total sense alongside all the laughter.

The colloquial phrase “May-December” refers to romantic partners with a large age gap, but leave it to Todd Haynes to craft a poetic and unsettling world out of this (slightly troubling) banality of life. His new film is loosely based on the real case of Mary Kay Letourneau, who in 1997 was convicted as a sex offender after being caught having a relationship with a minor, a student of hers, 12 years old (22 years her junior). May December begins twenty years after the tabloid scandal surrounding the marriage of Joe and Gracie has died down. Elizabeth, an actress, is conducting research in preparation to play Gracie in a film production, but she doesn’t know what to expect. Alongside her, we are welcomed into the family home, meet their teenage children, sit through their family dinners, marvelling at the levity and nonchalant atmosphere in the air. Something is missing, or at least that’s what Elizabeth suspects. A psychological drama-thriller-black comedy, May December is impossible to pin down. A profound film on human confusion, identities, and past traumas, it unites two of the best Hollywood stars, Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, in a delightfully eerie play of doubling and revelations.

While we would like to think that we would do all we can to fight against a tyrannical regime, it’s not as easy as we think, and there are plenty of consequences that we wouldn’t foresee, living in relative peace. Diego Vicentini’s debut feature is a portrait of Venezuelan dissidents forced to flee the country, expanding on the short he made five years previously to flesh out the double lives most exiles go through– the angry yet hopeful protests they left behind in their homeland, and the peaceful, yet guilt-ridden, traumatized lives they now lead in another country. While it’s easy to expect certain moments, especially for people familiar with the country’s situation, Simón nevertheless was a film that needed to be made in order to shed light on this issue.

We’re familiar with dick jokes from stand-up comedians, especially male stand-up, but Jacqueline Novak’s 90-minute show about the blow job feels completely new. Get on Your Knees feels like casual storytelling from someone experienced yet distant enough to be a cool authority on it (say, your best friend’s older sister’s best friend), but funnier. It’s like a gossip session about a first experience, except the breathless, dizzying stream of thought is peppered with philosophical thought and points out the absurdity around the language and common attitudes about sex. And as she does so, and as she talks about self-conscious fumbling and unanswered questions, she strides back and forth, in an easy, self-assured way, the way we’d like to feel going into the act.

When a man does things so different that it shifts the industry of an entire nation, but gets accused of shady business practices to get there, it can be tricky to create a compelling narrative to depict a complex man. It’s probably why Guru, suspected by most to be a depiction of one such polyester textile tycoon, is said to be fictional. But it’s also why while the first half is a dynamic, inspiring rags-to-riches story, the second half struggles to create a cohesive message. Still, Guru holds excellent performances, especially that from the film’s leads, and in writer-director Mani Ratnam’s hands, these performances are captured beautifully, scored wonderfully, and weaved into such a striking and memorable drama.

In the Dead Talents Society, ghosts haunting humans are less of a scare, and more a performance that can grant fame and fortune in the underworld. It makes for incredibly charming comedy. It affectionately satirizes East Asian horror in such a fresh way, comparing a ghost being remembered to today’s social media influencers, with views and validation directly tied to survival. However, as these ghosts scramble to scare unwitting humans, writer-director John Hsu resolves their need to be seen through the familiar path of fun and friendship, an approach that works with its offbeat humor and incredible performances. Dead Talents Society is very goofy, but it’s a unique horror comedy that won’t easily be forgotten.

A good biography remains fully faithful to the actual history, but a great one understands what their life story means as a whole, on a larger scale. Number 24 could have been one of many World War II biopics. It could have just celebrated Norwegian resistance fighter Gunnar Sønsteby and his numerous deeds. By simply being a biopic, it does so. However, by alternating between Sønsteby in a talk during his last years and him during his saboteur career, Number 24 also recontextualizes their more dubious tactics for a generation that holds violence as unthinkable. Number 24 is a well-paced, engaging biopic that not only commemorates the hero, but also explores his lasting legacy.

If it weren’t for the people involved, the English-language remake of the Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet might have gone the direction of many English-language remakes– that is, not well. Good news is that producer Ari Aster got the best people involved. Of course, that includes the original director Jang Joon-hwan, who had to step down from directing due to health issues, but their team-up with Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, who too is known for twisted comedies, was truly inspired, as the original story’s off-kilter, eclectic alien plot fits in just right with Lanthimos’ distinct style. Bugonia is the insane and terrific consequence of such an incredible collaboration.

At the fringes of society, sometimes, all you have is your family. You would do all you can to feed, clothe, and protect them, and your fate hangs in the balance of what they do in return. Abang Adik is centered on two undocumented orphans in Malaysia, and because they only have each other, Abang does all he can legally and within his capabilities as a disabled man to scrounge up some money, but Adik tries to gain more secretly, resorting to scamming fellow illegal immigrants. Writer-director Jin Ong portrays their plight realistically, but more importantly, the drama works because Ong prioritizes crafting the compelling dynamic between them, making it much more heartbreaking when the loss of their one chance changes everything. Abang Adik may not be a perfect drama, but it’s a daring debut that’s needed.

They Cloned Tyrone is a genre-bending gem. It combines Deep State conspiracy theories with sci-fi and social commentary, all while looking like a futuristic 1970s Blaxploitation film. It’s outrageous good fun and pleasing to look at (here is a film that knows how to properly light Black actors), but there are times when it feels too far fetched. The science can get wonky and its commentary on gentrification lacking, but all is forgiven when you have such a strong trio of leads. One of the smartest things They Cloned Tyrone does is pair Boyega with Teyonah Parris, who plays the call girl Yo-yo, and Jamie Foxx, who plays the pimp Slick Charles. They have a fun-loving no-nonsense chemistry about them that makes them easy to attach to and root for. They’re also just very funny, which might be expected of Foxx but it comes as a pleasant surprise for Parris, whose popular turns in Mad Men and WandaVision prove that she’s been severely underutilized as a comic.

As the first Zambian film on Netflix, Can You See Us? is an interesting portrayal of albinism. Inspired by the real-life story of musician John Chiti, the film’s plot feels grounded, even if it’s similar to other stories depicting discrimination. With newcomer Thabo Kaamba at the forefront, her performance of the albino boy Joseph shines brighter than even the older actors of the film’s cast. That being said, it is held back by repetitive dialogue and sped-up character development from certain characters. Despite this, Can You See Us? is still a remarkable film that stands out from the other tearjerkers available on the streaming platform.

In the years since Fan Girl’s original release in the Philippines, its ultimate message and execution has become polarizing: is it enough that the film shows the corruption of a parasocial relationship into an abusive one, without offering much hope? Is its vision of justice actually constructive or disappointingly limited? No matter where you fall, it’s exciting that a movie can stir up these kinds of questions through a bizarre dynamic between characters, in a place that’s clearly set somewhere between reality and delusion. The narrative is circular and frustrating for a reason—a constant push and pull as the titular fan girl keeps getting drawn back into the celebrity’s orbit—and the film only grows more disturbing with each repetition.

Factually accurate yet still earnest in its mission, Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate delivers what it promises. While the title comes from the club’s name, the film is less about the club and more about the LGBTQ+ experience in Nazi Germany. To do this, the documentary focuses on Eldorado’s individual patrons. Directors Benjamin Cantu and Matt Lambert interweave their stories with historical context. For example, patrons like trans pioneers Charlotte Charlaque and Toni Ebel shed light on historical advancements for the LGBTQ+ community. While it can be overwhelming when Eldorado introduces its patrons and their lovers and their political rivals, the film stays focused on what it sets out to do. Eldorado remains an important reminder of the LGBTQ lives lost and the love that still remains.

When everyone around you is cheating, the temptation to join in is tempting, especially if you’re not confident in your own abilities. 12th Fail is the story of IPS officer Manoj Kumar Sharma, and it’s a story about how one instance of honesty sets him on a path to become the same honest police officer that helped save his brother’s life. While it does take a fairly standard message, and the pace falters a bit as it goes on, the biopic depicts this from an understanding of how things are unfairly stacked against people like Manoj, but also with an understanding that the country needs more everyday people in their ranks. 12th Fail may be a familiar underdog story, but it’s lovely, well-made, and unironically sincere in its message to be honest, even when the odds are stacked against you.

Starting with Columbia Picture’s intro syncing into a rave, director Doug Liman’s sophomore feature Go instantly establishes its ecstatic energy– both in the hyper happy and drug-fuelled way– that made it a cult classic. All in one night, the dark crime comedy culminates in a wild Christmas Eve in three separate storylines: one with dissatisfied checkout girl Ronna, who needs fast cash, another with her drug dealer co-worker Simon going to Vegas, and the last with soap opera actors Adam and Zack, who want to get high while staying out of trouble. The cast is excellent, with witty quips and the twenty-something ennui of that generation, and each decision their characters make to feel good all turns Christmas Eve into a truly awful, yet terribly entertaining ride. While some of the humor is definitely dated, Go captures the insane chaotic energy just right before the new millennium.

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 Tainan, one who hopes to pass the summer with some money, and the other hoping to fulfill her dream of travelling the world. It’s a familiar coming-of-age concept, but it’s done so bittersweet and beautifully as the adult Jimmy recalls each moment they shared while on the journey to fulfill their promise to meet each other after they reach their dreams. 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days doesn’t tread new paths, but the film’s way of depicting memories as well as the charming chemistry of the leads transforms the real life travelogue into a moving testament of the connections we form while travelling.

The Centre Will Not Hold explores the life of the famous Joan Didion – professional observer and cultural spectator. The film gives only a small window into the complexity of her mind and the space in which she processes and understands the world, which stems from her capacity to sit above everything that is happening around her and just observe. From writing for Vogue, to war journalism, to her famous novels – from watching a child do acid, to reporting on the first gulf war – Didion is as prolific as she is insightful and majestic in her writing. Throughout the documentary she gives her first hand perspectives on love, relationships, motherhood, and grief – beautifully articulating it as “a place we do not know unless we’ve been there.” A beautiful woman, and an incredible film.

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 takes the event, and uses it to frame his life– the ways Punjab remembered him after death, the ways Chamkila showed his light as well as the ways he was limited by studio oversight and state censorship. The film isn’t a perfect contemplation of artistic freedom, nor is it the most comprehensive take on the singer’s life, but Ali’s direction challenges the way we view the artist and acutely recognizes the way stardom reveals the society’s conflicting desires.

While it plays the standard beats of the musician biopic, Ray is a fairly entertaining biopic centered on Ray Charles, the man that pioneered soul music, mixing in rhythm and blues, jazz, and gospel into a brand new sound. It goes through plenty of the melodramatic moments familiar to the genre– the prior hardships, the drug addiction, and of course, the moments of musical bliss– and there are some fictionalized moments, but Jamie Foxx’s excellent portrayal and Charles’ tunes are able to carry the film all the way through. Though the way Charles was parented in childhood is a tough watch, and isn’t the best way to parent, Ray sticks true to the singer’s life, with every scene personally approved by the legend before his death.

For many coming-of-age stories, there’s the dream of growing up, getting out of your comfort zone, and finding purpose, success, or maybe, just the simple case to earn enough money for a better life. It’s this dream that makes 7 Prisoners such a harrowing coming-of-age drama. The plot feels reminiscent of something Charles Dickens would have written, but writer-director Alexandre Moratto focuses more on the characters with the lever in their respective trolley problems, which male lead Christian Malheiros takes with such a dynamic performance, and which Moratto takes to a more depressing end. 7 Prisoners is much more bleak compared to many coming-of-age stories, but it’s one that works as a necessary exposé of a real life social issue that the world should have solved long long before.

A poetic and peculiar movie from Senegal about a girl who is forced to marry a wealthy businessman instead of her love interest. The latter, a poor construction worker, embarks on a risky journey across the sea to Europe. The story takes a supernatural turn thereafter, one that is unlike anything seen before in stories around immigration, but one which makes sense. Still, the excellent acting and the long takes that immerse you in what life is like in Senegal, both in and out of the margins of society, are the reasons to watch here. Atlantics’ characters are believable and will capture your interest throughout the usual and unusual parts of the movie. They provide rare insight into narratives that most of us have never been exposed to.

The movie follows Martha (Vanessa Kirby), a young wife who loses her baby in a failed home birth. She tries her best to trudge through the aftermath of loss, but her coping attempts prove to be near impossible, not least because her husband Sean (Shia LaBeouf) and mother Liz (Ellen Burstyn) continually domineer every aspect of her life.

Pieces of a Woman is harrowing and heartbreaking, with the actors giving their all in this realistic and revealing drama. But it’s Kirby’s performance as the unraveled yet apathetic Martha that is the film’s immediate standout, rightfully earning her a Best Actress nomination at the 2021 Academy Awards.

If you’re new to the story, I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me feels difficult to understand. The film adaptation portrays the novel through abruptly cut sequences, meticulously framed naturalistic frames, and monologue and dialogue that mean more than what’s being said, on top of Juan Pablo’s gradual descent into a criminal network. It’s as disorienting as being in Barcelona feels for Mexican couple Juan Pablo and Val. However, this film feels like a new approach in adapting novels – the multiple perspectives and epistolary portions adeptly portrayed through typed up screens and alternating perspectives (and direction) between the couple. It doesn’t feel like something that you’ve likely seen before.

Pollution disproportionately affects developing nations, and when governments continue to allow the lackluster waste management processes of large-scale industries, sometimes the only option is to leave. That’s what the six protagonists do in Blood Vessel, though escaping the situation isn’t as easy as it sounds. The first half starts out fairly slow, as we get to know the group, but it’s all to bring about emotional devastation as the film unfolds into violent ends. While certain plot elements don’t have a neat resolution, and certain technical aspects sometimes feel distracting, Blood Vessel works through the strength of its six lead performances.

For better or for worse, we have no choice in the country we’re born in, the citizenship we first attain, and sometimes we’re forced to leave that country for our own safety. My Name is Loh Kiwan depicts a North Korean defector seeking refugee status in Belgium, but while the government deliberates, it’s a hard life he has to face, one that changes when he meets a fellow Korean who may not be an immigrant, but who’s just as lost as he is. While there are some subplots that falter halfway, My Name is Loh Kiwan still manages to stick the landing of being both a moving romance and an empathetic survival drama that highlights the struggles of refugees.

If you want a powerful, masterful rendition of the ill-fated space mission, go and watch Apollo 13 (1995). But the documentary more than half a century after the mission, and two decades after the feature film, is not half bad. Of course, being a documentary, Apollo 13: Survival is much more factual, but the true tale still manages to hold the tension, the high stakes, and the emotional pull of the actual spaceflight, with excellent editing stitching the never-before-seen archival footage and key interviews into an exciting, compelling account. That being said, older viewers that already watched the Tom Hanks drama would likely not find anything new in this film, but Apollo 13: Survival would be a decent documentary to those who have never heard of the spacecraft.

Women are rarely depicted in prison for a serious drama– usually, it mostly happens in exploitation films. So when Lion’s Den was released in Cannes, it’s no wonder that it garnered attention, even to the point of being submitted as Argentina’s entry for the Oscars. It’s really mostly a realistic depiction of how an incarcerated mother raised her child, as per Argentine law, they remain together for only four years. However, it’s because of sticking to that fact that the law ends up becoming a time limit that helps drive the story forward. It’s a simple approach, but writer-director Pablo Trapero sticks to this straightforward style, and it ultimately works because of Martina Gusmán’s star-making performance. It’s tough to watch, with the assault, strip searches, and riots, but Leonera is a much more empathetic depiction that’s sadly rare to see.

Rather than portraying the yakuza as the badass, ruthless thugs that bring crime to the streets, A Family is much more subdued. That’s because, with fewer people joining their ranks, the yakuza aren’t the force they used to be, with only a few holdouts scrambling for the scraps. It’s probably a good thing for the country as a whole, but for the protagonists here, the people born and raised in that life, it means losing the community that once gave them everything. A Family still has some of the violence that makes the yakuza genre exciting to watch, but it’s the existential contemplation of the yakuza as a whole that makes the film compelling.

As the value of ivory appreciated by the Chinese middle-class, the demand for it has skyrocketed. This brought elephants to a dire outlook: extinction in as early as the next 15 years. “Traders in ivory actually want extension in elephants, the less elephants there are the more the price rises” as one of the commentators in the film says. To bring awareness to this threat, filmmakers went undercover for 16 months and followed the ivory from where it was stolen to where it hits the shelves of Hong Kong. The result is a genuine thriller, far more gripping than you’d expect from a documentary. It portrays the brave and hopeful men and women trying to combat these atrocities, the battle they may be losing, and all the obstacles they face. An extremely important watch.

Scarlett Johanson, in her best performance since Lost in Translation, and Adam Driver, in the peak of his career, star in this heartbreaking drama as a couple going through a divorce.

They are respectively an actor and a director living comfortably in New York. They’re keen to make the divorce go smoothly so as not to affect their son, but with entirely different visions of his future, this proves to be difficult. 

This premise makes for familiar territory for director Noah Baumbach who specializes in dramatic storytelling of the intellectual upper-class (like his other Netflix movie The Meyerowitz Stories). Here, Baumbach made his best film yet.

Divorce is a recurring topic of our daily lives, but somehow there hasn’t been a movie that treated it with as little melodrama and as much compassion as this one. It’s still a difficult movie, but it’s good difficult. Perfect difficult.

Toni Collette, Jessie Buckley, and Jesse Plemons star in this mind-bending drama from Charlie Kaufman, the writer of Being John Malkovich.

The Young Woman, as she is known in the movie, takes a day trip with her boyfriend to his family’s secluded farm in Oklahoma. On the way, she thinks about breaking up with him.

But once there, she meets her boyfriend’s unusual mom (Colette) and everything gets progressively weirder for The Young Woman. The dialogue of the movie is complex and so reference-heavy that it begs either a second viewing or a handful of explanation articles online.

Funny, sweet, and tropey, Badhaai Do is a unique Hindi dramedy about a lavender marriage. Gay policeman Shardul (Rajkummar Rao) and lesbian teacher Sumi (Bhumi Pednekar) agree to wed in order to satisfy their family’s wishes without exposing their sexual orientations. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop their family from other expectations, such as that of maintaining their marriage and having a child. After their immediate connection, Shardul and Sumi’s continuous bickering, through Rao and Pednekar’s chemistry, is hilarious, leading to elaborate lies about each other for their family. However, underneath their funny back-and-forth is an understanding between them that almost feels freeing. Their platonic partnership feels like a lifeline in an isolating closet. While India is portrayed here to have a thriving LGBTQ+ community, microaggressions, harassment, and legal discrimination are still present. Despite this, the film carves up moments where Shardul and Sumi actively seek connection, with each other and with other people, including their eventual lovers. The most touching of these moments come when they both allow themselves to be honest.

Third World Romance is what it says in the tin– it’s a love story that blooms in the rundown side of the capital of a developing country. The plot is familiar, especially for people familiar with Filipino rom coms, but writer-director Dwein Baltazar approaches this with a grounded approach. With fancy dinner dates substituted with shared packed rice meals and emotional apologies interrupted by their shifts in the grocery, Bree and Alvin carve out a love that still feels passionate, perhaps made even more so, as they navigate a city where they are disenfranchised. Charlie Dizon and Carlo Aquino’s excellent performances keep their characters’ struggles real, but also make their love feel joyful in spite of that.

While marketed as a family drama, Long Live Love! plays out more like a romance film between parents Sati and Meta. Where Meta has dived in, and accepted her role as a wife and mother, former model Sati still clings to the immature lifestyle he’s used to, to the glimmers of fame that he used to have. The premise is genius– there’s something poetic in the way someone who’s constantly obsessed with the look of a photo now has to go on the quest for its behind-the-scenes. There’s something here that questions previous portrayals of toxic masculinity and of marriage primarily because of how they’ll be perceived. However, there seems to be some missing sequences that could have made the ending more devastating.

Being a priest requires full devotion to God, so falling in love would naturally challenge a seminarian and make them question whether priesthood is the right path for them. I Love Lizzy portrays this conflict as the seminarian Jeff falls in love with Bicol tour guide Lizzy, on the break where he’s supposed to make his discernment. It’s an intriguing love story, especially as Jeff and Lizzy heal past wounds with each other, and Carlo Aquino adeptly navigates his second seminarian role with ease. However, it’s clear that more care and attention was given to Jeff’s storyline rather than Lizzy’s. Despite this, I Love Lizzy is a unique, if a bit uneven, take on the seminarian love story that continues to captivate the predominantly Catholic country today.

In the same festival where she showcased her screenwriting chops, Rachel Sennott also showcased her dramatic side in I Used to Be Funny, a difficult drama that garnered less acclaim than Bottoms (2023). It’s understandable– while both films have a witty, gen-Z slant in its comedy, this drama is much harder to balance and heavy to watch, dealing with mental health and PTSD. The non-linear narrative occasionally does make the film feel a tad disjointed as well. However, there’s a care and a warmth from Ally Pankiw’s direction that makes this exploration of Sam’s complex trauma feel heartfelt, and Sennott holds each scene with compelling charisma.

The atmosphere communicated within the title Hurricane Season comes off incredibly clearly on screen: this is a film that just feels humid and full of foreboding for a coming storm, with people feeling all manner of guilt while secluded in their own homes. Cinematographer María Secco’s gorgeous colors and brown tones fill the 4:3 aspect ratio nicely, and director Elisa Miller lets events unfold with the stately pace of a long novel. There’s something fascinating here about how each new “chapter” or perspective doesn’t really lead to more answers, but simply to more anguish closing in from all sides.

So it would be understandable if some may be put off by how unrelentingly dark Hurricane Season is, especially as the trans woman whose death becomes the central event never enjoys the kind of characterization everybody around her gets. Apart from how the film illustrates that discrimination against women, against repressed “taboo” sexuality, and against access to proper reproductive health only threatens to grow under poverty, it can be difficult to grasp what point the movie is trying to make. Social realism certainly has its place in cinema, but the different perspective in this particular film still don’t add up to more than the sum of its parts.

If you’re expecting a twisty and thrilling look at a dangerous group of hackers who hide deep within a military bunker in Europe, and who refer to their entire operation as “straight from a James Bond movie,” then you might be disappointed with Cyberbunker, a dragging documentary that relies too heavily on talking heads for momentum. It takes 30 minutes to establish the relevance of these figures, and a full hour before it finally explains the actual crime and wrongdoings they’re complicit in. The most interesting parts of the case, like the FBI’s involvement, Cyberbunker’s links to the propagation of child pornography, and the group’s advocacy on internet privacy, are completely buried beneath a stack of unnecessary tidbits. I appreciate the effort of the filmmakers and the interviewees coming together to make something decently informative, but by the end of it, you’re left wondering whether all this was better off as a Wikipedia article.

There’s no easy way to talk about racism – it’s a nebulous set of ideas that shift and change and manifests in numerous ways that many people can’t even identify as racism because of how prevalent it is. But Dr. Ibram X. Kendi has been able to write down a fairly comprehensive narrative that outlines key historical moments that shaped the world’s concept of race and Blackness, and this narrative is brought to the screen through vivid animations and strategic sequencing by director Roger Ross Williams in new Netflix release Stamped from the Beginning. It’s a provocative, passionate investigation, and it’s one that should be required viewing.

Ijogbon is a straightforward thriller centered on a pouch of uncut diamonds, which bring chaos to the four teenagers that find it. With the film’s young cast, the ensemble, understandably, makes poor decisions when given a stack of cash. The way they and their families handle difficulties, like deciding who to get the gun, or deciding what to do when they find random dead bodies, actually feel humorous – there’s something to be said about how, given the right circumstances, both kids and adults make the same mistakes. Thematically, there’s also something here about how natural resources in Nigeria are made for high end technology they can’t afford. However, the film doesn’t really delve into its themes, or play up the comedic potential it has shown, deciding instead to play out the same way similar stories do.

Suzzanna: Kliwon Friday Night is the second part of a trilogy dedicated to Indonesia’s queen of horror, billed as Suzzanna New Generation. The trilogy recreates three of Suzzanna’s iconic films, and the second installment is based on the 1986 film Malam Jumat Kliwon. The supernatural horror isn’t exactly scary– the film takes a bit too long between the scares, and there are moments that are downright hilarious. However, fans of the original scream queen would appreciate Luna Maya’s take on her demonic role, shifting the sundel bolong into a woman rightfully out for revenge.

Ordinary people don’t choose to join a war, but oftentimes, they are dragged into it, forced to fight, and become victims of it because of people in power. Adrishya Jalakangal takes this idea in a dystopic future, where war has turned India into a police state, and mixes in a watchman who’s able to talk with the dead. While the message is necessary and the idea is novel, the execution feels uneven, as the anti-war and magic realist elements feel like elements from what should be two separate movies. Alongside the sluggish pace and the dialogue that’s a tad too on the nose, it’s hard to get through Adrishya Jalakangal when it can’t decide what it wants to focus on.

With their personal life offered for consumption, carefully curated for viewers and sponsors, the social media influencer has become a fascinating character to study, especially with the job becoming Gen Z’s top career aspiration. As If It’s True examines this character through Gemma Stone, using the fake relationship trope to examine the lengths to which she would cling to her clout. John Roger’s debut feature blurs the line between real and the fake, not just for Gemma and James but also for the viewers, and it brings up much to say about how this aspiration can ruin people. However, the lines are blurred too much, as the ideas don’t mesh cohesively as it could. As If It’s True is an interesting character study, but the film hasn’t allowed itself to see the human side of the people highly incentivized to be fake for views.

Just like with its predecessor, it can be surprising how sober Street Flow 2 is. You expect stories about street gang life to be of a certain tone, but these films are more interested in the emotional and philosophical struggle to respond to violence and poverty in a just and proper way. This sequel continues this conversation from a more stable (but therefore less interesting) position: youngest sibling Noumouké is no longer torn between the influence of his older brothers, as all three try to move forward as a united front. But without a more distinct dilemma driving the action forward, the film ends up spinning its wheels—and rushes to an incomplete ending  that doesn’t say enough about survival, lawfulness, or the African immigrant experience in France.

Third dates usually feel more casual than that depicted in Longest Third Date, but with 2020 shifting everyone’s plans, it’s not surprising it shifted romantic relationships too. The documentary doesn’t feel like a factual and organized documentary, cobbled up together from the couple’s vlog and filmed interviews once they got back to the States, but it’s definitely a unique story, one that’s only been saved because of Matt’s influencer aspirations. It’s certainly watchable, with a spry 75-minute runtime, and with understandable conflicts, like flight cancellations and tipped over cars. The film does feel like it glosses things over, and Khani seems to be the private type of person, uncomfortable with the camera, but Longest Third Date, even with all its reality TV style, also feels somewhat like a cultural artifact. It’s not deep, but it does feel like opening a time capsule.

While the film attempts to depict teenage sexuality, Dear David misses the mark due to certain plot points. At the heart of the film, Dear David is all about expression – that teenagers actively seek for ways to explore their sexuality like fanfiction, photos, and clothing. In taking on this premise, the hope for these kids would be to be able to to express these feelings through safe and constructive spaces. But because the film only presents Laras’ work as porn without plot, her relationship with David doesn’t feel like it stems from genuine affection. David isn’t characterized as popular enough for everyone to have a good concept of him, to have a positive canon narrative about him, and so, as Laras’ work spreads, it’s only his objectified self people have in mind. Her creative work comes across as some form of sexual harassment, rather than innocent expression.

Sukhee depicts the struggles specific to adult women – the way women are encouraged to sacrifice their identity for the people that they love and to meet certain expectations that feel impossible or contradictory. This isn’t a common topic in film, but it has been portrayed before, with the likes of English Vinglish and Eat, Pray, Love. Sukhee does some things differently, with a fun girl’s out Delhi trip reminiscing over her past and reconnecting with her former self. However, the film loses its way in the second half. With plot elements that feel haphazardly thrown in, including a randomly placed horse race, the film never fully resolves the main issue at the core of the film – the lack of respect towards the housewife role, as well as the way the family needs better stress management skills.

Air Mata di Ujung Sajadah tugs at the heartstrings because it recognizes the pain of losing one’s child, whether that be to elopement, death, or to their biological parent. This, with a stirring score, and the tears of Titi Kamal and Citra Kirana, makes Aqilla and Yumna easy to root for, as they try to settle who would best be Baskara’s mother. It’s not an easy decision, and the film thankfully refrains from turning either woman to be an antagonist. However, all the sorrow, pain, and suffering hinges on Halimah’s decision, that, in the first place, shouldn’t have been possible. As the film plays out into its inevitable conclusion, the journey there is heartwarming, maybe even tearjerking, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it could have been if Halimah dealt with the consequences of her actions.

With the rise of fascism globally, and concerns about an upcoming world war, depictions of World War II have become popular, with the most notable being Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Einstein and the Bomb instead takes a look at the prominent scientist, whose theory of relativity made the atomic bomb possible, who had a personal stake in ensuring the Nazis were defeated, but who also had to reckon with the horrific consequences in pursuing the West’s promises of peace. It’s a needed perspective, and director Anthony Philipson pulls from Einstein’s very words, his own ideas about the society at the time eerily echoing the concerns about today’s society. However, there’s something off about the way these ideas are presented, as it feels like the film was less interested in Einstein as a man, and more interested in using him as a spokesperson, using his image to cry over today’s conflicts.

There’s something frightening about being consistently spurned due to circumstances out of your control. This is the main concern of Pulimada’s Vincent, since he’s not marriage material due to his family’s history of mental illness. The twisty plot is reminiscent of old gothic mysteries, complete with a tiger metaphor, but the execution is off, especially since it takes more than two thirds of the film before there’s anything to fear. It’s clear that Pulimada has an engaging, though dated concept, and Joju George’s transformation for Vincent could have definitely gotten there. But entering this tiger’s den feels like a letdown when there’s no risk, no style, no intrigue in the film’s approach.