‘Problemista’ (2024)
The comic Julio Torres writes, directs and stars on this gleefully absurd, semi-surreal mixture of outsider comedy and New York artwork world satire. The protagonist Alejandro, like Torres, hails from El Salvador, coming to America with goals of success as a toymaker (his emo-tinged innovations are among the many image’s operating comedian highlights), however he finds himself trapped within the bureaucratic maze of labor visas, immigration sponsorship and under- the-table pay. His makeshift resolution is a thankless job serving to an artwork critic (a gloriously unhinged Tilda Swinton) assemble the works of her cryogenically frozen husband (RZA). Torres’s perceptive screenplay scores laughs in manners grand and small, from elaborate fantasy sequences to the deeply relatable frustrations of a boss’s attachment to outdated software program. He levels his comedian sequences with visible aptitude — a too-rare high quality lately — whereas smuggling in surprisingly poignant moments of reality and knowledge.
‘Stress Positions’ (2024)
The cussed insistence, amongst most mainstream moviemakers, that the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown merely didn’t occur has been some of the irritating parts of latest cinema. Fortunately, the writer-director-actor Theda Hammel is an exception to the rule, making her function debut with this raucous, transgressive and incessantly uproarious return to the summer time of 2020. She assembles an oddball ensemble of weirdos and hangers-on round a Brooklyn brownstone within the depths of lockdown — chief amongst them Terry (the comic John Early), a neurotic worst-case scenarist desperately clinging to his Covid security protocols, and Karla (Hammel) a cynical therapeutic massage therapist — and bounces them off one another, creating what initially seems like a blackout-sketch assemblage earlier than revealing itself as a keenly noticed portrait of that blurry, barely-remembered time.
There are so very many films (so few of them good) offered on a picture of Liam Neeson holding a gun that one might be excused for not giving “Within the Land of Saints and Sinners” the good thing about the doubt. However this dramatic thriller from the director Robert Lorenz is the most effective Neeson car in years, deftly merging the present, action-heavy thread of his profession together with his earlier, heftier work. Neeson stars as Finbar Murphy, a contract killer whose plans to hold up his gun are waylaid by a nasty little bit of enterprise with an I.R.A. faction. Neeson is great, discovering the character’s modest moments of melancholy, and Lorenz surrounds him with stellar Irish character actors like Colm Meaney and Ciarán Hinds. However the showcase flip right here comes from Kerry Condon (an Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin”), who’s totally ferocious as Neeson’s major antagonist.
‘Between the Temples’ (2023)
The prickly, knotty humanism and ’70s vibe of the director Nathan Silver and his writing accomplice C. Mason Wells, wielded promisingly of their 2017 indie “Thirst Avenue,” involves full flower on this typically heat and sometimes uncomfortable comedy-drama. Jason Schwartzman stars as a latest widower, unable to satisfy his duties as a cantor at an upstate New York synagogue. However he’s unexpectedly re-energized by serving to his elementary college music instructor (Carol Kane) put together for her very belated bat mitzvah ceremony. Schwartzman is marvelously morose, placing throughout the character’s ache and mourning with out asking for sympathy, whereas Kane is a firecracker, juicing each scene with the form of electrifying unpredictability that’s all the time made her an M.V.P. in supporting roles.
The newest function from the gifted unbiased filmmaker Kelly Reichardt pulls off a neat trick. Set in an artists’ group within the Pacific Northwest, it quietly acknowledges the shortcomings and insular nature of such an enterprise, with out snickering on the individuals who inhabit it or the work they do. The stakes are low, within the grand scheme of issues, however to not the folks concerned in them, and particularly to not Lizzy (Michelle Williams), a forcefully cussed sculptor trying to complete a brand new batch of items amid intense exterior pressures and annoyances. Reichardt and Williams have been collaborating for over a decade and a half, and Reichardt is fantastically attuned to Williams’s sophisticated interiority; she additionally surrounds her with a pitch-perfect ensemble, with André Benjamin, Hong Chau and Judd Hirsch making explicit affect.
‘Alice, Darling’ (2023)
Viewers impressed by Anna Kendrick’s latest directorial debut “Girl of the Hour” might need to queue up this barely earlier starring car; the types are divergent (it’s a character-driven drama), but it surely’s equally involved with the day by day psychological labor of merely present as a lady. Because the title character, Kendrick adroitly conveys the sense of a younger girl who appears to have all of it collectively — good job, good mates, good relationship — however is quietly withering beneath the controlling thumb of her domineering boyfriend (Charlie Carrick), from whom she hides an harmless weekend getaway along with her girlfriends (Kaniehtiio Horn and Wunmi Mosaku), lest he get … upset. The screenplay by Alanna Francis perceptively replicates the loaded interactions of a poisonous relationship, whereas Mary Nighy’s sure-handed route capably balances the complicated relationships of the nuanced characters on the story’s heart.
‘De Palma’ (2016)
When contemplating the cinematic influences of the writer-director Noah Baumbach, one would seemingly float the names of Eric Rohmer or Woody Allen. But this deliciously movie-crazy documentary, which Baumbach directed with Jake Paltrow, vibrates with affection for the erotic journeys and dazzling shoot-em-ups of Brian De Palma, the fashionable auteur of “Dressed to Kill,” “Physique Double,” “Scarface” and lots of extra. Comprised solely of movie clips and chatty interviews with the partaking De Palma, it’s an lively and entertaining journey by the work of some of the constantly thrilling filmmakers of our time.
