Let's start by resolving the question that has surely arisen as you've looked at this review: who on earth is Lee Cronin? He is a director with two previous feature films, A hole in the ground and the appreciable Possessió infernal: el despertarPossessió infernal: el despertar. Credits that hardly justify including his name and surname in the title of a work, a deference usually reserved for demiurges like Fellini. It is possible, however, that this christening has less to do with the ego of the Irish filmmaker and more with the marketing juggling of Warner Bros. and Blumhouse to try to retain the hook of an iconic figure of the fantastic like the mummy and, at the same time, distance it from recent filmic incarnations, the fiasco starring Tom Cruise and the adventurous, family-friendly franchise led by Brendan Fraser.

After several years navigating a purgatory of impersonal film projects and forgettable series, Gus Van Sant returns to the cinematic forefront with Prime Crime: A True Story, a title that suggests a made-for-television crime drama but hides other things. To begin with, a portrait of class struggle in which the director of Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and Elephant (2003) sides with a common man (an energetic Bill Skarsgard) who, in 1977 Indianapolis, kidnaps a banker's son in revenge for his financial scams (a well-delivered and sly Al Pacino).

At a moment of weakness, one might be tempted to agree with viewers who believe that The history of sound is fussy, soporific, and cutesy. It would be to deny the evidence that the film has a languid narrative, that the love story it tells is presented in a dull manner, and that the overall production of the film sometimes seems as if it were designed to be accompanied by the hashtag #OnePerfectShot. But if we think twice, in the end, there's no need to agree with them. Because if the sixth film by South African director Oliver Hermanus is this way, it's because, clearly, it wants to be. It's a stylistic choice, a fully conscious vote for creative rigor.

If we had to bet on whether Pedro Almodóvar likes or dislikes Mirrors No. 3, the recommendation from film betting houses would be to put a few euros on yes. Perhaps it's a film without pop inertia and without melodramatic or comedic moments to disrupt it, as in the cinema of the man from La Mancha. But the German Christian Petzold sets himself a challenge that runs parallel to those of Almodóvar's latest films: to try to make an implausible, even ridiculous, plot believable on screen.

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.

The Italian Paolo Sorrentino returns to the world of politics, this time through a fictional head of state: Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo), a veteran jurist who faces his last months in office with an euthanasia law and two pardons on the table. If the director portrayed former leader Giulio Andreotti through a bubbling pop artifact in Il divo, he has now opted for a more reflective approach and a surprisingly restrained visual narrative that refers to the prudence (or indecision?) of his new protagonist. The camera movements that marked The Great Beauty are reserved to express some moment of special unease of the character. The exception is a more histrionic scene that may make sense (ridiculing the inflexible ceremoniousness of power), but which may also seem an inadequate echo of previous works... or an authorial toll like Hitchcock's cameos.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the franchise, the quintessential video game icon returns to the big screen with Super Mario Galaxy. The film, a direct sequel to the successful film released in 2023 under the creative umbrella of the studio Illumination. To commemorate the occasion, the multifaceted plumber draws inspiration from one of the star games in its console catalog in a free adaptation that draws on references to the Nintendo universe. At a thousand revolutions, the inexhaustible frenzy takes the endearing characters from one side to another in an adventure that continually crashes into a series of precise coincidences that serve to celebrate a wild vitality.This festive tone becomes the colorful receptacle of a formula repeated to exhaustion. Formal guidelines, predictable conventions, and light humor shape a simple model that fits any surface. However, by assuming these schematic coordinates, the film opens up the possibility of indulging in the gratuitous sense of spectacle. And the immeasurable power of the imagery designed by Shigeru Miyamoto certifies the dimension of a world dreamed from the pixel, which sees its culmination reflected in precious movement and the imitation of a language that invites us to remember why we are fascinated by everything that surrounds the affairs of the Mushroom Kingdom.[You can see the screenings in the Spanish version at this link.]

Two Prosecutors begins with the gate of a prison opening and ends with another closing. This circular trajectory delimits the hero's adventure, Kornev, a young prosecutor in Stalin's Russia, who, upon discovering the torture and forced confessions to which the survivors of the old guard of the Communist Party in his region are subjected, wants to bring this scandal to the attention of the Soviet leadership. The problem, however, is that his idealistic view (that of someone who "is still a virgin," as some characters who see themselves in his path slyly insinuate) is the only one that doesn't realize the corrupt world he moves in.

The new movie by Pedro Almodóvar connects with Pain and Glory (2019) in its autobiographical inspiration. We find ourselves once again with a film featuring a director as the protagonist, although here in a dual role. Barbara Lennie She embodies Elsa, a cult filmmaker, a migraine sufferer, and haunted by her mother's death. This character, in a story within a story, is at the heart of a new screenplay being written by a filmmaker named Raúl, played by Leonardo Sbaraglia. In the film's first part, Almodóvar revels in his familiar imagery without injecting any new energy, and doubts arise from the images. Is the director from La Mancha aware that the reflection of himself shown to us by Elsa and Raúl isn't particularly flattering? Could there be a touch of artifice in his insistence on making Chavela Vargas a trigger for emotion? How is it that the best sequence in this segment is a striptease The male lead, directed by Patrick Criado, reminds us of Almodóvar's torrid early work? And is he clear that he's portraying his partner first as a pure object of desire and then (in the skin of Quim Gutiérrez) as a mere caregiver?

As they said at the end of Hell or High WaterSometimes we do crazy things for our children. In the last year, in fact, two of the most talked-about films feature a father on an epic quest to find his lost daughter: Sirado and One battle after another, with a classic narrative structure that comes from Desert Centaurs, clear. A daughter in Tokyo It has less of a sense of adventure and more of injustice, but it's also about a father who does strange things to find his daughter. In this case, working as a taxi driver in Tokyo for nine years (a Frenchman in Japan: a curious and unusual approach to immigration issues) hoping to stumble across her someday, perhaps hailing a fare on a street corner in the Japanese capital.

French cinema maintains a particularly close relationship with its musical stars. From Juliette Gréco to Benjamin Biolay, many musicians have stepped in front of the camera in projects that don't appear to be mere promotional vehicles, but rather natural extensions of their artistic aspirations. One of the most recent additions to this tradition is Juliette Armanet, a singer who seems to have developed a taste for acting in recent years, and who finds in Choosing my life The intersection of their talents.

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.

In his approach to the true story of the conception and construction of the Grande Arche de la Défense – one of the architectural landmarks of 20th-century Paris –, The architect It adopts a unique perspective, far removed from the usual approaches of cinema that seeks to study artistic forms. Instead of foregrounding the emotional and sentimental drama of the protagonist—the Dane Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, the unexpected winner of the competition to design the Parisian Arc—the film focuses on the artisanal dimension of the pharaonic architectural project. Thus, director and screenwriter Stéphane Demoustier manages to portray, from an almost microscopic perspective, the planning, sketching, and material selection tasks that Spreckelsen undertakes during the process of creating his magnum opus. These sources of pleasure contrast sharply with the anxiety caused to the architect by bureaucratic obstacles and the constant negotiation with political interests.

How difficult it is to externalize certain intimate feelings and thoughts. And how difficult it is also to translate these inner processes to the screen. It's not enough to simply show a character occasionally sitting on a bed in a bedroom, staring out the window with a questioning expression. For images to resonate with the viewers watching them (and those of The little daughter They have been a phenomenon in France, where they have dominated conversations beyond film circles) and must portray fragments of a life in which everyone feels represented. Is this the case with the life of Fatima Daas, the protagonist and author of the book on which this film is based?

Maybe The bride! (The bride!) has as its starting point The Bride of FrankensteinBut it's neither a sequel, nor a remakenot one reboot nor any other label affiliated with Hollywood's franchise logic. Maggie Gyllenhaal, an actress who has never shied away from risk (she revealed herself with the sadomasochistic romance of Secretary) and that in The Dark DaughterHer directorial debut, while acknowledging influences like Claire Denis and Lucrecia Martel, presents the film as a fiercely autonomous manifesto of pop feminism. This is clear from the opening scene, in which Mary Shelley confesses that in Frankenstein She was only able to capture a fragment of what she wanted to tell. Then, the writer's specter cracks the diegesis and literally possesses the body of a prostitute who will become the protagonist of a feverish fiction.

Pillion It is the English word that designates the rear passenger on a motorcycle, what we would call the packageBy metonymy, in the slang of gay biker subcultures, it also refers to the passive figure in relationships based on dominance and submission. Because that is the context in which this unexpected romantic comedy unfolds, about a conventional young man, Colin, who falls in love with the leader of a biker gang, Ray. Harry Lighton's first feature film is based on the novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, to turn a few expectations on their head.

The author of the black comedy Riders of Justice He teams up with the actor again. Mads Mikkelsen to construct another bewildering mix of film genres and tones. The protagonists of the story are two brothers who seem to have been taken from different films: Anker is a tough man who belongs to a thriller The criminal, while the ultrasensitive Manfred could inhabit a drama about the challenges of autism spectrum disorder. Manfred has been guarding the loot from a robbery while Anker was in prison, but, when the two meet again, the former claims that he is John Lennon and that he knows nothing about any hidden money.

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.

Hamnet It is no longer the only film currently showing that revolves around Hamlet. In Scarlet, Mamoru Hosoda It draws inspiration from Shakespeare's immortal text, although it takes considerable liberties, such as changing the name and gender of the main character to transform her into a medieval princess who travels through time and space in a purgatory to bring to justice those who murdered her and her father. Unlike its literary model, Scarlet She doesn't need any specter to drive her to revenge; she alone possesses a rage of epic proportions, as befits the emotions that characterize adolescence, which is precisely the territory most frequently explored by the director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Boy and the Beast.

It is quite possible that this year we will not see any film as enamored with the power of words as this one. A Day with Peter Hujar It recreates the conversations this photographer had with Linda Rosenkrantz over the course of a single day in 1974. Rosenkrantz's idea was for this intense conversation to be part of a collection of interviews chronicling 24 hours in the lives of different artists in 1970s New York. But despite being recorded, the encounter with Hujar took a long time to be published: it wasn't released as a book until 2021.