New York Film Festival — A–Z of films

Hamaguchi’s most pointed provocation is not that the nursing home becomes excessive in its care, but that ordinary neglect has trained us to see basic tenderness as excess.

For all the strangeness of the premise there’s not a lot of meat on the bones of this story.

Eisenberg’s obvious love of amateur dramatics provides The Debut with a foundation that feels akin to a warm hug.

The way Zischler and Hüller play their relationship is so wonderfully real and subtle and appropriately opaque for all us non-Mann family members, that it at times brought tears to my eyes.

Mungiu’s eye moves between the juggernaut and the barely visible.

Pompeii becomes a place where fantasy is tested against historical violence, and where looking too closely can break the story one came to preserve.

Worse than incomplete, Haigh's film lacks a fully developed soul. This is in spite of striking aesthetic moments and sharply written scenes complemented by strong performances from the cast.

An in-depth portrait of the production, a rare opportunity to see how a film on that scale is put together.

There exists no safe ground when you are part of a regime that uses fear and threats as casual tools.

Zvyagintsev handles this material with his familiar control: psychological realism, cold visual restraint and an aversion to overt flourish.

Abraham and Szor’s approach is systematic and sobering.

The issue is that if you strip out the elevated craft and A-list performances, what is left is the sort of bread-and-butter plot arc Cagney & Lacey used to rely on back in the day.

Apart from setting the tone and maintaining it, the strongest point of Schleinzer’s filmmaking is casting and directing the actors' interactions between one another and the environment.

Tender Loving Care is all about the little bits of conversation that make the world a bit more comfy for others.