The first feature film as a director by Aina Clotet, Viva, begins with an image in which many women recognize themselves, especially those over 50, but which is not often visible in audiovisuals: a close-up of the protagonist Nora's flattened breast as she undergoes a mammogram. This unusual representation of the female body announces the filmmaker's cinematic positioning regarding two concerns that run through Viva. The first, the direct and unvarnished focus on Nora's medical situation, who has just overcome breast cancer with a mastectomy included, but still lives awaiting a possible relapse. In fact, the film takes place in the following weeks, while she awaits the results of this initial check-up. This temporal arc places the film in direct affiliation with Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 to 7 (1962), in which the protagonist confronted a similar scenario and the same process of rediscovering herself. The second concern anticipated by this opening scene is the uninhibited relationship with her own body expressed by the character, embodied by Aina Clotet herself.

Above the vibrant opening credits of 15 Loves an actual sound bite can be heard: that of the announcement, by the President of the French National Assembly, of the result of the vote on same-sex marriage, approved in April 2013. Alice Douard's powerful opera prima therefore begins with a historic event (the film takes place in 2014) to portray with sensitivity and empathy an event that belongs to the intimate sphere: the earthquake that a young lesbian couple, formed by Céline (Ella Rumpf, on the rise to stardom) and Nadia (Monia Chokri, a regular in Xavier Dolan's cinema), experiences when deciding to start a family, and the discriminatory legal and bureaucratic labyrinth this entails.

Michel Franco's cinema is the visual equivalent of the phrase “I'm not racist/sexist/classist, but…” Addicted to strong themes, the Mexican director tries (or believes) to find the right distance so that the controversies he stages are imbued with shades of gray. However, when it comes down to it, he almost always lets slip a gesture that reveals his satisfaction at being a provocateur, or a plot twist that condemns the most disadvantaged. It must be said, however, that considering the unhealthy precedents, Dreams relatively easily places itself at the upper end of his filmography. This is because for a good part of the running time, Franco allows the faces and bodies of his actors to express themselves: the relationship between the wealthy American philanthropist played by Jessica Chastain and the virtuoso Mexican dancer she patronizes is driven by a genuine desire that crystallizes in carnal choreographies. In these moments, the film manages to prevent the clear allegory about the balance of power and dependence between the nations represented by the protagonists from crushing the human scale of the effects. But in the universe of the author of Nuevo orden, good things never last long, and the narrative advances with deterministic resignation to bring out the worst in human nature and punish characters whom, for a naive moment, we had believed the director considered something more than an instrument for his thesis.

In one of the most celebrated and viral moments of the interview program for cinema personalities Inside the Actors Studio, host James Lipton speaks with Steven Spielberg about how the divorce of the director's parents when he was young inspired some of his films. “Steven, your father was a computer specialist and your mother was a pianist. And in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), when the spaceship lands, humans and aliens communicate by making music with computers,” Lipton points out. Spielberg listens and smiles, between surprised and moved: “I would like to say I wanted it to be a metaphor for my parents' relationship, but I hadn't realized it until now”.

Although it is set in present-day New York and stars a charming young couple, Un talento único seems conceived to stir the nostalgia of veteran cinephiles, those who in the 90s enjoyed the regular release of intimate films with characters facing vital, emotional, and moral dilemmas. In this sense, the story of a meticulous piano tuner who suffers from a hearing impairment and discovers an ability to pick locks is reminiscent of the uplifting drama As Good as It Gets – the tuner finds salvation in the love of a pianist – as well as the mix of crime thriller and quirky comedy from Manhattan Murder Mystery.

Before Hollywood's studio system began manufacturing film stars, Europe was ruled by divas, theatrical actresses who achieved massive acclaim and critical prestige, turning them into true national icons of popular adoration. Pietro Marcello revives the figure of Eleonora Duse, a myth in Italy at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, to explore, from the actress's mature stage, the rise of fascism in her country. A subject the filmmaker had already addressed in Martin Eden (2019), a more balanced and brilliant film in its revision of cinematic historical drama. Marcello understands well that the fascination with divas, also as people, lies in their contradictions and in how they embrace life's most tempestuous dimension.

It is always appreciated when a film doesn't lecture you. This applies to any film, of course, but it is especially relevant when dealing with works that touch on social issues. Iván & Hadoum, in this sense, gets into many tricky situations right from its premise: Iván is a young trans man who falls in love with a colleague from Morocco at the fruit and vegetable greenhouse where they both work in Almeria. That is to say, the film touches on gender, sexual identity, class, and race. But none of these is the narrative axis. In any case, class ends up having more weight, because the friction between the two characters ends up being work-related (Iván has a complacent attitude towards the bosses; Hadoum is combative). Be that as it may, the opera prima as a director by Ian de la Rosa is not about that either: it's about the moment when two people, regardless of their identity, converge until they diverge, like any other pair of human beings in the first stages of falling in love.

From the mid-eighties animated series to the contemporary version, we have accompanied Prince Adam on different adventures, always adapted to the audience of the moment. Travis Knight's proposal, more focused on the fantasy universe than the 1987 one —which solved a tight budget by placing most of the action on Earth—, focuses on the protagonist's identity crisis. After being forcibly exiled from Eternia at ten years old, and living for almost two decades trying to fit in with the human species, Adam finds the sword that allows him to return home. There he meets not only Teela, a childhood friend who functions more as a buddy than a potential romantic interest, but also a host of ghosts from the past that he will have to face if he wants to make his planet a habitable environment.With self-awareness and humor as weapons and a generational update of the superhero, this new He-Man leaves behind the security of knowing his destiny to approach the usual conflicts of the new viewer. The quest for power becomes an introspective journey where doubt and fluctuation lead the way, a journey in which the character embraces the opportunity to ask himself who he is and, above all, who he wants to become. In this collective party that is He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, diversity is the norm and sensitivity a language to discover. Who says the most powerful man in the world can't wear a kitten sweatshirt?

When he was sixteen, Kane Parsons made short films based on a creepypasta (chilling legends that originate and go viral on the internet) called The Backrooms. Conceived as short, stylized horror films Obsession), the renewal of a certain current genre cinema comes from the collision with the strange universe of some of the most talented internet creators.

If he has to choose, Fernando Franco will always choose the most arduous path. His filmography speaks of a filmmaker who doesn't like to make things easy for himself, and who imposes a double challenge on himself: to frontally address uncomfortable issues – the unstable nature of a woman with borderline personality disorder in La herida, the agony of a terminally ill patient in Morir, the sexuality of a person with cerebral palsy in La consagración de la primavera– without falling into the morbid sensationalism that these offer. This purpose makes more sense than ever in La luz, which features the most unassailable protagonist of all those the director has portrayed: a priest who becomes aware of the gravity of the abuses he inflicted on minors three decades ago.

The general shot of an athletics track constitutes the inaugural image of Corredora, the stimulating opera prima by director Laura García Alonso, awarded at the Malaga Festival. As the credits appear, a female figure runs on the track until, after two laps, she stops exhausted. From its beginning, the film opts for the staging of physical effort and the search for the limits of bodily (and mental) endurance as the backbone of its narrative and visual proposal. The camera soon abandons the safety distance provided by this initial general shot to approach, dizzyingly, the continuously moving body of its protagonist, Cris (Alba Sáez, fantastic), a high-performance athlete for whom running and competing are substitutes for life.

In his book Tale of cinema, critic Dennis Lim points out the importance of hotels in the cinema of Hong Sangsoo, as if his characters were unconsciously gravitating towards spaces they cannot make their own. In recent times, however, the filmmaker has become increasingly interested in habitable locations, such as the finca d'Up There or, most notably, the large family home that, at the beginning of What Does This Nature Tell You?, awakens the admiration of the young poet Donghwa. His girlfriend Junhee explains that it was her father who built it and, curious, Donghwa approaches the door to contemplate it better, precipitating the accidental encounter with her in-laws, who invite him to spend a day with them that will turn out to be equally revealing and humiliating.

Due diligence is an exhaustive investigation or review carried out before a major purchase, investment, or agreement to detect risks, problems, or relevant information, usually conducted within financial, business, or legal frameworks. What is not so common is to activate this audit in a romantic relationship. Can you imagine initiating an informal due diligence on your partner days before getting married? Kristoffer Borgli, yes. In fact, The Affair is a risk analysis that opens up completely by accident, at a dinner between a future husband and wife with the wedding godparents to taste the banquet's fare.

This little comedy is late about a chauvinist who, after an accident, wakes up in an alternative reality where women are in power and men receive the discriminatory treatment they have had to endure all their lives. Perhaps 25 years ago this film would have made more sense than now... or perhaps not: the similarities between this work by Thea Sharrock and Family man and "What Women Want", both films from the year 2000 and both also moral fables with a very similar plot, are many. They all use a redemption arc for the main protagonist that goes from censurable behavior to ethical awakening after a fantastic event.

The audiovisual universe of Star Wars continues alive on streaming platforms, but for some years it had been fallow on the big screen. The mandalorian & Grogu is an extension of a series led by the strange duo formed by a hitman hero with John Wick airs and an endearing little Jedi-in-training. No protagonist from the original trilogy is included, but the action takes place in the near future of the events described therein (the Mandalorian bounty hunter seeks those who try to resurrect the Galactic Empire after the collapse shown in Return of the Jedi). And the beginning of the film winks at cinematic memory: the snowy landscape and the appearance of certain technologies invoke the memorable The Empire Strikes Back in a version adapted to the conventions, more accelerated and showy, of current action cinema.Later, the thing perhaps gets a little stuck. The digital effects and visual creations of alien worlds (some of which may recall the classic sci-fi landscapes of pop illustrator Roger Dean) seem superior to those executed in other nine-figure blockbusters. The plot of crossed searches and rescues, on the other hand, is quite routine. Like other highly commercial films embedded in larger sagas, such as Wonder Woman 1984, the result recalls what in comics was called fill-in: a somewhat timeless and not very relevant story that filled a gap in continuity while waiting for more ambitious narratives.. from pop illustrator Roger Dean) seem superior to those executed in other

The ghost is always an image that insists on making itself present. In The Sixth Sense (1999), or even in Ghost (1990), for example, what prevented the eternal rest of the deceased were the matters they had not resolved in life. The ghost has a debt and cannot rest until it has paid it off: the extension of work beyond death. For the Thai Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, the reasons that mobilize spirits could be summarized in two: revenge and love, although the only thing that makes their existence possible is the memory that the living have of the dead.

What if cousin Greg, one of the most hilarious and, at the same time, despicable characters in the series Succession, were the protagonist of a film? And what if, instead of servilely savoring the crumbs left by his ruthless and wealthy family, he dedicated himself to murdering them one by one to become the sole heir? The result could be similar to this crime comedy written and directed by John Patton Ford, whose inspiration oscillates between the series created by Jesse Armstrong and the nihilistic neonoir of the Coen brothers. The references are obvious and the political discourse (the super-rich are the worst and the world would be a better place without them), as transparent as the crystalline waters in which Beckett (Glen Powell) drowns one of his cousins, a brainless broker who probably deserved it. The problem with this entertaining and original film, which continues to surprise throughout its runtime, is that it only stays on the surface of the criticism it poses against hoarding and extractivist classes, and that, despite his stellar charisma, Glen Powell seems a bit out of place as the loser and disinherited Beckett (what would the clumsy Nicholas Braun, the actor who played Greg in Succession, have done with this character?). To no one's surprise, the best thing about the film is Margaret Qualley, who has a great time embodying a dangerous femme fatale with endless legs.

In a moment of The Silent Friend, the neuroscientist brought to life by Tony Leung (the protagonist of Happy Together in his first role in European cinema) weighs figs in front of the TV. The professor has little to do because he is stranded at a German university in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Until a program with a French scientist catches his attention. The expert argues that plants communicate with us, we just need to find the right communication channel to decode what they are telling us. Spurred on by this idea, the protagonist dedicates his efforts to finding a device that will allow him to connect with the proud ginkgo that presides over the university's botanical garden.

Aziz Ansari is still finding himself. After the 2018 accusation for a strange episode of inappropriate sexual conduct that left him semi-canceled, he hasn't quite found his voice. The 2019 Netflix stand-up special, the third installment of the 2019 Netflix special, the third installment of Master of None in 2021 and now his film directorial debut show an audiovisual creator with an intermittently off-key voice. It works best when he moves away from comedy: the last season of the series that made him famous was magnificent, but it seemed written by Ingmar Bergman. When he wants to make people laugh again, on the other hand, he treads carefully and confuses white humor with insubstantial humor.

It is not common for a director specializing in animation to pivot to live-action convincingly. And it is even rarer for the leap to be even more successful than their previous work. A notable surprise, then, is The Sheep Detectives, where Kyle Balda, one of the barons of the Gru and Minions franchise, brings to the screen the homonymous novel by Leonie Swann (published in Spanish by Salamandra), starring a woolly flock that sets out to solve a murder. It could be argued that the fact that the animals talk and move thanks to digital effects places the film on a borderline with Balda's previous experiences, but far from resorting to caricature, the filmmaker optimizes hyperrealistic technology to make it the humorous pillar of the proposal, reserving eccentricity for details that enrich the background, such as the abundance of neons that incongruously illuminate the small British town where the story takes place.