Beginning with an intoxicating narration that sets the story on its path (and even sneaking a quote from Leonard Cohen into the first few minutes) “The Secret Kingdom” (helmed by former visual effects artist turned writer/director Matt Drummond) does something special, it takes viewers through a sweet but exciting tale that takes its audience seriously. Twelve-year-old Peter (a very natural Sam Everingham)

With the documentary “Playing with Fire: Jeannette Sorrell and the Mysteries of Conducting” Oscar-winning director Allan Miller explores the career of a woman who bleeds with a complete love of music and works to bring the vibrancy and stories of classical music to life.

When she was young Jeannette Sorrell was told by the Juilliard School and The Cleveland Orchestra that no orchestra would hire

In mid-19th century France, Eugénie has worked for twenty years alongside the famous gastronome Dodin. She’s an expert at preparing French dishes, poring over the writings of Antonin Carême, a pastry chef from the same era, preparing her foods, adding a touch of novelty and carefully choosing radishes and carrots from the vegetable garden outside Dodin’s home. Over time, a passion develops between the two of them and from their

My other favorite this year along with “The zone of interest” is “Anatomy of a fall” (“Anatomie d’une chute”), directed by Justine Triet. It’s a courtroom drama around a writer's sudden death at his chalet. His wife (Sandra Hüller) is also a writer. The disorder of their relationship, their child, who became blind following an accident that the father agonizes over, the woman’s need for space, her liaisons. At first considered a suicide

“Asteroid City” is a visual feat of a movie with little in the way of substance, in fact, this might be the most contrived Wes Anderson film I've watched. Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Liev Schreiber and Adrien Brody star in it, which adds heft but the photography is helliciously rendered in saturated pastels and so it's weird.

This film brought a sense of emptiness in me. During its two hours’ running time

Jessica Hausner takes concepts such as workaholism or dieting and makes them into extremes. In her 2019 film “Little Joe” a scientist became so engrossed in cultivating her indoor plants that she would choose them over her children. “Club zero” takes place in a high-school in a non-descript city. Ms. Novak (Mia Wasikowska), a nutrition teacher just joined the school, she comes with her own branded weight-loss tea, it has her face on the package.

In 2015 two of Olfa Hamrouni’s four daughters left home to join the Islamic State in Libya. Tunisia was becoming known as the leading exporter of jihadists then. “They were eaten by the wolf,” the mother ominously says in the beginning in an attempt to rationalize their absence, her remaining two daughters by her side. Part-confessional, part-memorial “Four daughters,” ("Les Filles D'Olfa" in the original French) which is documentary

English filmmaker Jonathan Glazer (“Sexy Beast”; “Under the Skin”) was in Cannes this year for the first time with “The Zone of Interest,” a stunning new film about the Auschwitz concentration camp, more specifically about the camp’s top commander, a German officer named Rudolf Höss, who lives in the house with his wife and their children and a recent newborn, their staff and a black dog. A river flows nearby, the house

In “Black Flies” the full-frontal reality of two nighttime paramedics grabs you at the throat and doesn’t let go. The new Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire film is an infernal ride of double-shifts and bullying and death into the belly of the beast, the film pops, hits hard, the image is jumpy, the screams are loud, it’s a pressure-cooker, I came out of there traumatized and a little shaken. This is not the New York City I know. Had an inkling.

In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Monster,” competing for Palme D’Or, a small boy and his mother, the father dead and buried, the boy’s in school and the mother works in a dry-cleaners. At the start of the film a building in their neighborhood catches fire and they watch from the balcony, mother and son looking more like two friends. She’s carefree, unaffected by the pressures of raising a son but vigilant nevertheless. They place a small cake with candles in front