For anyone who’s read even a smattering of smut in their lives, ‘Tell Me What You Want’ will offer precious few surprises.

Chava Méndez has captured some amazing emotion and horror in his short ‘What’s Kept Inside’, which although is his directorial debut, is no doubt the beginning of a great career.

On the surface level, ‘All of You’ is a film about how often technology distracts us from connection, but it also works as a lesson that true love is measured by the lengths we go to protect the relationships that matter most. 

At long last, director Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio collaborate for ‘One Battle After Another’, an offbeat, thrilling, and often hilarious adventure that earns its keep in the talented director’s already stunning filmography.

‘Ed’ is a short film that further shows how far deep the hollowness within porn addiction really is, and what sort of price it robs men of.

Watching Jeremy Renner’s music video ‘Wait’ isn’t just enlightening in how it beautifully showcases a father’s bond with his daughter, it further succeeds in using the trauma of Renner’s accident as a background aesthetic that although never mentioned, can still be felt in the soul of Renner’s music.

‘Sunny Side Up’, a short film at this year’s Seattle Film Festival, is done with such masterfulness that its baffling that such a beautifully well acted, and whimsically playful film was made under a budget of just five hundred Euros. 

‘Anyhing Helps’ may not illustrate how to solve the problem of global homelessness, but it does show that communication and the love emulated from simple companionship can go a long way as a first step.

Romance stories are a dime a dozen, but Kogonada’s ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ dares to be different. However, despite the star power of its two considerably talented stars, this unconventional love story fails to leave a mark.

With a more contemplative approach to filmmaking, Steven Soderbergh reflects on his legacy through one of Ian McKellen’s best-ever performances in ‘The Christophers’, and marks the beginning of his late stage.

Thanks to its assured sense of style and magnifying performances from Tessa Thompson and Nina Hoss, director Nia DaCosta crafts her best-ever film with a modern adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and takes ‘Hedda’ in more daring directions than its original author ever envisioned.

Park Chan-Wook redefines his filmography with his adaptation of Donald Westlake’s ‘The Ax’ in ‘No Other Choice’ and offers a once-in-a-generation lesson of pure cinema that anyone who appreciates the art form must see.

In recent years film has entered a reflective period where there seem to be more and more works that are about looking back and honoring what was. Nic Pizzolatto’s ‘Easy’s Waltz‘ slips right into this milieu, following a down-on-his-luck Las Vegas entertainer, Easy (Vince Vaughn) navigate his way through the Vegas show business.

While Oliver Hermanus stuns with its patient visual language and soul-shocking musical sequences, ‘The History of Sound’s structure — and a miscast Paul Mescal — leaves a lot to be desired by the time the movie reaches its admittedly devastating epilogue.

Guillermo del Toro and Toronto have a special relationship, and debuting the filmmaker’s passion project, ‘Frankenstein’, at Toronto’s festival just seems fitting.

For Channing Tatum fans, this is definitely not a film to miss – as always, he is a standout as his natural charisma brings a lot of life to ‘Roofman’ and makes the film more than worthwhile. Other audience members may not be convinced.

While ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ may be inconsistent at times, Rose Byrne stuns in role as chaotic and spiralling mother who, despite her best efforts, is trapped in one dark spiritual hole after another.

Even for the areligious viewer, Amanda Seyfried’s Ann, her passion and her fervor are tremendously transfixing in Mona Fastvold’s ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’.

While ‘The Lost Bus’ follows the 2018 Northern California Camp Fire, the prevalence and recency of what seems to be an evermore common occurrence of mass wildfires in California makes the timely release of this project all the more topical.