“Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon”
One of our favorite Venice titles from last year, “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night,” director Ana Lily Amirpour hasn’t treated audiences with a feature film since 2016’s “The Bad Batch” (having been working in television). Already establishing herself as one of the most singular artists in all word cinema with a Vampire Spaghetti Western, her third feature, “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” is a twisted escapist fantasy about a mental patient (Jeon Jong-seo) with untamed power and potential. Describing the film as “a sweet, scuzzy surprise made all the sweeter/scuzzier because you don’t know quite what you did to deserve it,” Amirpour’s style is the definition of aesthetic originality, and her latest may tap into her DJ David-Lynch side more than ever before. – Review by Jessica Kiang
“Neptune Frost”
Written and co-directed by slam poet/alternative hip hop artist Saul Williams (alongside his partner, Anisia Uzeyman), “Neptune Frost”—part of an ambitious transmedia project called “MartyLoserKing,” which also includes three albums and a graphic novel—was developed as a musical before morphing into something more imaginatively far-reaching. Shot in Rwanda, Williams’ Afrofuturist vision takes place in a world where “a hacker collective operates in a secluded enclave disrupting the workings of first-world finance and industry… decked out in vests made of keyboards and jewels made of circuitry.” It might take viewers a minute to orient themselves in “Neptune Frost” ’s experiential vision, “[it’s] a polyrhythmic experience, aligned to Black film storytelling traditions,” one that spotlights “several spoken and sung languages—Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English.” – Review by Mark Asch
“Nitram”
Winner of Cannes’ Best Actor award for his seething portrayal of convicted mass shooter Martin Bryant, Caleb Landry Jones (“Get Out,” “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri”) proves himself to be “a master of character work in both subdued scenes and intense ones… “[evoking] the erraticism of a ticking time bomb.” Directed by the often extremely dour Justin Kurzel (“The Snowtown Murders,” “The True History of the Kelly Gang”), “Nitram” (Martin spelled backward) “still reproduces the raw pain of recent history,” but compared to the Australian filmmaker’s period genre work, “probes a delicate subject matter.” Some viewers may rather avoid a deep-dive into the disturbed mind of an unhinged gunman; however, “Nitram” is an “uber-powerful display of filmmaking” with an unsettling performance at the center. – Review by Caroline Tsai
“Paris, 13th District”
Having made some of the most punishing and galvanizing French dramas of the last two decades, Jacques Audiard follows up his curiously insouciant Western “The Sisters Brothers”–which seemed to mark the beginning of a less severe period in the career of the “Rust and Bone” filmmaker.– with “Paris, 13th District” (“Les Olympiades”), co-written by none other than “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” director Celine Sciamma. A vibrant look at young romance where Audiard’s sense of joie de vivre is fully present and accounted for, “Paris, 13th District” “manages to capture both the real pitfalls and bouts of joy inherent to twentysomethings’ relationships… the film feels at times like a sociological manifesto on modern love penned by an older generation.” – Review by Caroline Tsai
“Petit Maman”
While so many of us saw it during the festival circuit last year, it was included on our Best Films Of 2021 list (those rules relatively fast and loose), “Petit Maman” has not yet received an official release via Neon yet, so that’s likely coming this year. “What if you could experience your mother’s youth with her?” In less than 75 minutes, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” filmmaker Celine Sciamma solidifies the slow burn, emotional power of her storytelling reach. Fittingly describing it as “a soft interlude of a film,” a magically realist coming-of-age fable that’s a twinge “Bridge to Terabithia” (the novel, not the movie). Starring twin sisters (Joséphine & Gabrielle Sanz) as a mother and daughter who find themselves meeting at the same age in a small fort in the woods. Mournfully “gentle in approach and quiet in tone, [“Petit Maman’s”] a poetic return to the focus on childhood and the anxieties of growing up found in her previous work from “Water Lilies” to “Girlhood.” Review by Caitlin Quinlan