Staff writer, copy editor and film reviewer

Following a young, put-upon assistant (and Andrew Tate parody influencer on the side) at a media agency going through the soul-crushing process of casting a workplace safety documentary for a multinational company, starring one of their own employees who suffered a life-altering injury, Radu Jude paints a mesmerizing picture of life trapped in a black and white hellscape of capitalist dystopia, life lived very briefly in between endless car pile ups, shouting matches with other drivers, burocratic gauntlets and the existential agony of having to submit and be a part of the Machine that is slowly grinding you and most of everyone else, with little reprieve besides wishing death upon your bosses, some quick sex and enlisting Uwe Boll for a cameo in one of your TikTok videos.

A fascinanting, deeply layered radiograph of an extended family caught in an existential limbo what oscillates between down-to-earth grittiness and mild surrealism to unforgettable effect. Life as unconnected moments, a puzzle with pieces that go missing all the time; love that is as jagged and painful as it is regenerative, prejudices and empathy both passed down like genetic code, inequality embedded into the societal fabric to the point that it's almost imperceptible, the desperate need to see a divine purpose in a life of hardship.

It's hard to believe this was Lucrecia Martel's debut, the feeling is that of a seasoned veteran at the height of their craft.

Some of the best physical comedy in all of cinema and pioneering special effects in service of a tale that denounces, through mockery, the disregard for the value of human life and rights in the face of cold, ruthless automatization, uncaring capitalism and it's oppressive, uniformed enforcing arms.

A masterwork of physical comedy. The genesis of Jackie Chan, of current day Tom Cruise, and pretty much every single action film of the past century that favors elaborate choreography, creative slapstick and astounding feats of perilous practical filmmaking.

William Friedkin presents a stripped down, captivating paranoid thriller that's both terrifying and tragic in its almost entirely single-location portrait of a pair of broken people degenerating together inside a vortex of fear in the middle of the vast indifference of the American expanse.

A stellar debut for director Molly Manning Walker that portrays a female journey of uncertainty in the face of sexual awakening and the transitory state in between adolescence and adulthood (set in a Greek limbo of parties, booze and pulsating club music) that feels, nevertheless, universal.

An impressive feat of precision filmmaking that traffics heavily in faces wearing smiles and adult intent that often, for the briefest of moments, betray painfully authentic looks of lingering adolescent anxiety as the aura of unrestrained enthusiasm that the film starts with slowly recedes in the face of the tightening grip of sexual insecurity, pangs of jealousy and non-consensual sex.

Star Mia McKenna-Bruce rises up to the challenge of a complicated lead role, one that requires an incredible amount of emotional complexity communicated austerely. One of the great revelatory turns of its year.

An engrossing noir nightmare where identity becomes blurry and attraction becomes a catalyst for a descent into Eldritch madness. Lynch makes sex feel both undeniably erotic and filled with inscrutable dread, and his protagonists become the playthings of forces beyond their control or comprehension.

A stunning epic where Kurosawa casts a partly melancholic, partly mocking stare at men and women of power caught in a constricting web of grudges, alliances, human mortality and the whims of random luck that erodes titles, dilutes blood ties and casts history into uncaring fires.

A nightmare of isolation, filmmaker Federico Adorno writes the entire recent history of his country and dumps it on the shoulders of his protagonists, three workers dragged to the middle of nowhere in the vast, hostile, lush but arid Chaco region to build fences for a rich Mennonite land owner. With gorgeous photography, Adorno turns the wilderness into a natural hell, an open prison, as the realization dawns on the three men that their future is to work till death for the benefit of the rich and powerful that they have been allowed to be kidnapped by or, in the best of circumstances, escape into an uncertain future.

It is only logical, under these insane circumstances, for insanity to ensue, and Adorno captures the despair of the replaceable pawns in haunting fashion.

S. Craig Zahler's masterpiece of roadkill cinema, and easily the high point in Vince Vaughn's entire career. In the skin of an affable monster, Vaughn plays a man trying to salvage something of the wreckage of his life after losing the American Gamble, and tumbling down the US prison system from its fluorescent-lit, antiseptic facade all the way down to its medieval dungeon-like innermost depths.

A massive improvement over the often impressive but uneven Bone Tomahawk, BRAWL shows Zahler in complete control of the pace of his story, stretching pauses between tense interactions into uncomfortable lengths, the suspense turning unbearable, before unleashing his particular brand of violence, one that exists in the limbo between shockingly realistic and cartoonishly gory, like watching unedited news footage of a Mortal Kombat fatality.