What would have happened if Broad city had continued until Ilana and Abbi had turned thirty and were mothers? The answer is Babes, written and starring Ilana Glazer, the comedic whirlwind responsible for that cult series. Glazer no longer has Abbi Jacobson by her side, her colleague in that foundational fiction about the absurd misadventures of being twenty and living in New York, but she is very well accompanied. Directed by Pamela Adlon, creator of Better things, another autobiographical series about another type of female misadventures: those involved in being a divorced mother in charge of three daughters.

It's not so common for the best performances to win an Oscar. Often, many other elements come into play, one of which is the star power of the nominee, her suitability for what, supposedly, a star should be—an indefinable category that, according to Jeanine Basinger, is characterized by "an exceptional physique, excellent talent, a series of personal gestures, a sex appeal "Palminable glamour… and the luck of being in the right place at the right time." Irish actress Jessie Buckley (Killarney, 1989) embodies some of these characteristics, but her meteoric career seems to exhibit an absolute disdain for the others.

It's hard to resist comparing The brutalist with Ann Lee's WillTwo films written by Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbett, in which this creative and romantic couple alternated directing duties. Both films can be interpreted as critical reinterpretations of the founding myth of the United States through the portrayal of two unorthodox characters who, in different ways, propose utopias that challenge thestatus quo of her time. The similarities end here, since, in her second feature film as a director, Fastvold proposes a risky and unusual look at an unclassifiable female character.

It's hard to remember a breakthrough in cinema indie recent from such a personal perspective as that of Eva Victor, who in her excellent debut work manages to address a theme often explored in contemporary fiction created by women (fromA promising young woman to It could destroy you(appears absolutely renewed.) Victor is Agnes, a brilliant literature professor at a sleepy East Coast university who must grapple with the aftermath of a sexual assault she suffered while finishing her doctoral dissertation. The film's episodic and disordered structure underscores both the persistence of the trauma and the disruption it causes in the lives of survivors, but it is its tonal complexity, as well as its singular protagonist, that gives the film its unique personality.

James L. Brooks's first film as director in fifteen years could be a charming anachronism if its development weren't so chaotic and its characters so archetypal that, at times, they're downright embarrassing. Brooks, a renowned director of actors who helped Jack Nicholson win two of his three Oscars (for The power of tenderness and It couldn't be better.), seems to have abandoned its star-studded cast (Jamie Lee Curtis in a histrionic role, a wasted Woody Harrelson, and a charismatic Albert Brooks, whom it's always a pleasure to see again) to make believable characters as superficial as the democratic values ​​of the politicians the filmmaker wants to criticize.

In one of the episodes of the animated series Adventure TimeFinn and Jake find a floating iceberg carrying zombie businessmen obsessed with efficiency and productivity. Sam Raimi, a filmmaker who has managed to build a career in the mainstream (the first trilogy of Spiderman) without ever denying its independent origins and its love for B-movie horror (Infernal possession), addresses in Send Help Another kind of corporate castaway. After a plane crash, Linda, a brilliant but socially challenged employee, and Bradley, her arrogant and misogynistic boss, arrive on a remote island.

The first feature film by young Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes, awarded at Cannes, addresses his country's memory (it is set in the 1980s, at the beginning of the HIV epidemic) from a political perspective that takes up the question of identity and familial and affective dissidence as its banner. In a remote part of the Chilean desert, in a mining community, Lidia, a pre-teen, lives with her mother, a magnetic trans woman named Flamenco, and her companions in a nightclub run by the powerful matriarch Mamá Boa. This unorthodox family unit is threatened when a mysterious illness begins to spread, affecting both the miners and the residents of the nightclub.

If the father of the Lumière brothers predicted that cinema was "an invention without a future", the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague turned it into an art of the absolute present: in the cinephile Paris of the fifties, nothing mattered more than the films, not even life, as Truffaut stated. Richard Linklater He has created a free and joyful work, vital and luminous, seemingly light and full of humor, but which contains within it a defiant and countercultural discourse (the defense of filmmaking as a radical artistic gesture) and which addresses a key moment in the history of cinema, refusing to explain it as something of the past. The legendary filming ofAt the end of the getaway, debut work Jean-Luc Godard's emblematic film of the French New Wave serves as Linklater's excuse to map (or rather, fabricate: in this film about the art of invention, the choice is always to print the legend rather than recount reality) that cinephile Paris where Rossellini's cinema coexisted. But, above all, the director of Boyhood It uses Godard's film and the people who made this crazy adventure possible (from the actors, the absolutely modern Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, to the director of photography, including thescript) to advocate, from the present, a freer way of making films and to defend cinema as an art that is also a work of craftsmanship created, in a tumultuous and miraculous way, as a team.

Ariel It is the result of the collision between two creative universes: that of the Galician filmmaker Lois Patiño (Samsara) and that of the Argentinian Matías Piñeiro (Hermia & Helena), who had already jointly written and directed the short film Sycorax...a kind of prequel to this film. In ArielFinally, Piñeiro only appears as a co-author of the original idea, but his influence can be traced from the synopsis itself: an actress (Agustina Muñoz, a regular collaborator of the Argentine director) arrives on an island in the Azores to participate in a theatrical performance of The storm, by Shakespeare. There he will encounter the mysterious Ariel (Irene Escolar), who explains that the islanders are not people of flesh and blood but characters from Shakespearean plays eternally repeating their roles.

Derek Cianfrance's new film (Blue Valentine) is built around the main qualities of its star, Channing TatumA rare combination of imposing physical presence, playful charisma, and emotional vulnerability. Jeffrey Manchester, the amateur criminal who in real life robbed several fast-food restaurants and ended up living for six months in a Toys 'R' Us, is a character not far removed from thestripper sensitive and –only seemingly– self-assured, the character Tatum portrayed in Magic Mike, Soderbergh's torrid film. The actor seems comfortable, then, within the confines of a characteristic American cinematic archetype: the shameless opportunist who, cast aside by an unjust system, sabotages it by setting traps.

The new movie by Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha) proposes a fascinating game of mirrors. In it, Jay Kelly, the mature movie star played by George Clooney, functions simultaneously as a reflection of the actor and as alter ego from the filmmaker. The result is an emotional and lighthearted take on earlier films that have reflected on celebrity as a simulacrum, the personal cost of creative work, and cinema as a substitute for life. Baumbach, who had already dissected his divorce in Marriage Story, now carries out his particular 8 1/2This theme is revealed in the film through its protagonist, a dazzling star with a distant relationship with her daughters who, in the midst of a midlife crisis, looks back melancholically on her past and wonders who she really is, and if all the sacrifices have been worth it.

The crime genre (or its apathetic reinterpretation) is nothing new to Kelly Reichardt, one of the most important American filmmakers of the last three decades. Since her debut, River of grass, even the masterful First cowpassing through Night movesThe crime – blowing up a dam or stealing milk from someone else's cow – appears as the only possible act of dissent for the outsiders unavoidable themes that abound in his films. Shot on celluloid by his regular collaborator, Christopher Blauvelt, The mastermind From the opening credits, we are transported to the turbulent United States of the early seventies, newly awakened from the utopian dream of the sixties. In a small town, JB Mooney (an excellent Josh O'Connor who changes the wrinkled white dress of The chimera (wearing worn-out wool sweaters), a failed art student, family man, and unemployed carpenter, organizes what he imagines as the perfect heist: the theft of artwork from a local museum.

I am writing these lines the day after it was made public the cover of Rosalía's new albumwhere she appears dressed in what looks like a nun's habit. The coincidence of this possible shift towards spirituality with the premiere of Alauda Ruiz de Azúa's third and remarkable feature film is curious (Five little wolves), winner of the Golden Shell at San Sebastián. Ainara, a teenager (Blanca Soroa, a true revelation), tells her well-to-do family that she wants to become a cloistered nun. Tensions flare and opposing viewpoints clash: on one side is the widowed father, unable to care for his three daughters; on the other, the aunt (Patricia López Arnaiz, a whirlwind), who, by stubbornly trying to change her niece's mind, ends up undermining her initial role as the voice of reason.

It took Julian Fellowes six television seasons and three feature films to bring the story of the Crawley family and the people who work for them to a close. The universe Downton Abbey It ends fifteen years after the premiere of the first season, covering a period in British history from 1912 to 1930, the year in which this, for the moment, definitive outcome takes place. Written by Fellowes with his usual skill in interweaving the private lives of the protagonists with the social and cultural context that surrounds them – the portrayal of divorced women as pariahs of the British upper classes of the time is especially relevant in this last film – the film opens with the Crawley family attending London Bitter sweet Christmas Coward.

What is the human cost of the immediate availability of consumer goods that digital technology provides us with? Who is behind the packages that flood the homes of the techno-capitalist society in which we live every day? Without raising her voice or adding insult to injury, Portuguese filmmaker Laura Carreira answers these questions by painting a portrait, with exemplary rigor and empathy, of one of the people who make up this new social class that Guy Standing defined as precariat.

The title of thedebut film by Basque filmmaker trained in chess, Sara Fantova admirably captures the intermittent and hesitant nature of this transitional stage between adolescence and adulthood in which Jone, the young protagonist, moves. What the title doesn't allow us to guess is that doubt and insecurity are light years away from the creative maturity of a filmmaker (also very young) who resolves her first feature film with a stubborn and surprising confidence in what she is narrating.

The new film by popular Italian director Paolo Genovese seems conceived more as a clever commercial move than a comedy. It's a logical decision, after all, since Genovese is the creator of the film with the most remakes from history: Perfect Strangers. Like that film, Madly (FolleMente) is a massively popular ensemble comedy (and therefore not very keen on subtleties) that takes place in a single space and seems designed to sell lucrative international rights. Unlike the other film, the premise of Madly is not even original, and the inventiveness and success of the very similar Inside Out, Pixar's animated gem, work against them. In this romantic comedy with a supposedly contemporary sensibility, a man and a woman on their first date must confront the different personalities (reason, love, passion, apathy) that battle inside their boss, embodied by four characters who dictate conflicting orders. Madly It doesn't work as a romantic comedy because the constant jumps between the outside and inside of people's minds prevent us from getting to know, or caring about, the two protagonists, who end up coming across as schematic. However, the most irritating aspect of the film is its apparent intention to deconstruct and update the romantic comedy, ultimately establishing a traditional discourse on heterosexual love and the supposed differences between genders that doesn't miss an opportunity to include some stale commentary on feminism.

In Chinese-American filmmaker Constance Tsang's surprising debut, spaces serve to portray the oppressive lives of her subjects, but also to encapsulate their fleeting moments of happiness. Didi and Amy are two Chinese friends who work and live in a massage parlor in a New York City neighborhood under conditions of labor and sexual exploitation. Their lives intersect with that of Cheung, a lonely, older Taiwanese immigrant who works for a construction company. To tell this story of diaspora, grief, and second chances, Tsang moves away from the aesthetics of cinema. indie American to construct a radically personal film that is closer to the formal rigor of Chantal Akerman than to the tragicomic empathy of Sean Baker's cinema.

Everything is impeccable in Indomitable, the film debut of experienced television director Daniel Minahan: the atmospheric photography, the careful setting that recreates post-war United States, the yellow jacket with which he Jacob Elordi emulates James Dean Rebel Without a Cause…Almost everything in this immaculate product evokes in form and substance the universe of Ryan Murphy (Minahan has directed episodes of series such as Ratched, Halston and Hollywood) and it seems as artificial as the protagonist's jacket: its bright yellow and immaculate appearance remind us that we are looking at a simulation of 1950s Hollywood cinema.

As in a popular song, in the cinema of the French director Robert Guédiguian There are notes that repeat themselves. This repetition means that most of his films are hardly surprising, but it also means that his regular audiences find a certain pleasure in recognizing a melody that can be hummed without even realizing it. My dear thief, a short, naturalistically staged story that joyfully refuses to judge its very imperfect characters, functions as both a synthesis of Guédiguian's previous work and a twilight commentary. In it, we find the working-class neighborhood of Estaque in Marseille, where most of the director's filmography was shot. And above all, we find the aged, but still luminous, faces and bodies of the trio of actors who have accompanied him for nearly three decades: Ariane Ascaride, Gérard Meylan, and Jean-Pierre Darroussin. The intriguing narrative anecdote that begins the film (Ascaride plays Maria, a humble caregiver for the elderly who commits petty theft to pay for her grandson's piano lessons) sadly loses its weight when an adulterous romance between two younger characters enters the scene. Despite this unintended detour, it's hard not to be moved by the interactions between the three lead performers, who seem to embody melancholic and mature, if not yet completely defeated, versions of their characters in films like Marius and Jeannette either Marie-Jo and her two loves.