Reel Encounters

My Top 20 films of 2022 1. “Women Talking” (d. Sarah Polley) 2.

When was the last time two films in a major Oscar category featured varying interpretations of a single character?

Four feature-directorial debuts at this year’s Sundance Film Festivals interrogated dynamics of family – whether filial or parental – offering distinct social commentary while doing them.

The prize-winning documentary features at this year’s Sundance Film Festival suggested an audience, and jury, that were drawn to experimentations in the documentary form on film that sought out a variety of different approaches to what the documentary could be.

Three of the films in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival find writers directing their own scripts engaging with socially urgent issues that feel destined to be conversation starters.

When the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) launched in 1989, it was part of a concerted plan to provide a launching pad for international cinema.

This review contains some mild spoilers Writer/director Rian Johnson would like you to know that very wealthy people are generally awful, exhausting, and immoral.

2022 feels awash with the metatextual on the big-screen, whether direct contemplations on the film industry or more general ruminations on art and artists.

The sequel to 2009’s megahit “Avatar”, this one subtitled “The Way of Water”, arrives in cinemas to a markedly different world than its predecessor.

Mainstream cinema remains preoccupied with the exigencies of history on film, recent or distant.

In 2020, German actress Maria Schrader made her directorial debut with the Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox”, the first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish.

Last month, the publicity team for Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”, a semi-autobiographical account of the filmmaker’s life from 1952 to the mid-1960s, revealed that Michelle Williams would be campaigning for awards attention as Lead Actress rather than Supporting Actress.

“The Wonder” feels like an important step in the maturity of Florence Pugh onscreen.

“Black Adam”, the latest in our current reality of multiple CGI superhero spectacles per year, feels built on paradoxes.

Somewhere, in a seaside town, an ageing couple invites an older – ailing – friend to convalesce in their home.

It feels important that “Catherine Called Birdy” and “On the Come Up”, both films about girls coming of age in ambivalent circumstances, are directed by actresses turned directors.

Somewhere, in a seaside town, an ageing couple invites an older – ailing – friend to convalesce in their home.

At its world premiere at TIFF in September, “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” director Peter Farrelly introduced the film to audiences by giving a brief account of its journey to the screen.

It feels important that “Catherine Called Birdy” and “On the Come Up”, both films about girls coming of age in ambivalent circumstances, are directed by actresses turned directors.

Olivia Wilde’s new film, a “psychological thriller” about a woman in an idyllic 1950s suburb who begins to realise that something is very wrong is a far cry from her directorial debut, the teen comedy “Booksmart”, but the two have more in common than you would think.