If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You – Director: Mary Bronstein
A film seldom surpasses the clichéd technicalities that come with the “shock” or “bizarre” territory to floor you with an honest-to-god knockout delivery. Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a rare, fine example of a viscerally gripping work that operates on an affective level beyond simple explanation.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is not at House of Leaves magnitude of spatial conundrum. Still, it’s enough to make one see how a woman is trapped in a spatio-temporal pressure cooker, where only infinite iterations of the same exist, except the same keeps getting more infernal with every repetition. Rose Byrne as Linda, however, invests every new hurdle with a fresh bout of anxiety and rage, building up to a devastating climax.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a hard film to “recommend”, but one executed so well it’s impossible to ignore its lingering effects. A story of a mother struggling to care for her ill daughter alone while working and maintaining the household, it is presented as a deadpan black comedy with elements of Lynchian psychological drama, but the result is sheer horror. Mothers especially beware: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You will rip your insides to shreds.
See also “Berlinale Part 2: Sci-fi Satire, Storytelling Greatness and Muted Grief”, by Ana Yorke.
It Was Just an Accident – Director: Jafar Panahi (MUBI)
“Sonder” is a word for the realization that every passerby is living a life as deep as your own– a life that you’ll never know the details of. This is the feeling that permeates Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or-winning It Was Just an Accident (ek tasadef sadeh), an abduction thriller with a heart of gold that traces the lives of former political prisoners and the looming specter of revenge.
That Jafar Panahi’s production of It Was Just An Accident was carried out covertly under the nose of the Iranian government, which has previously jailed him, consistently manifests itself. Nearly all of the violence and chaos in the film is confined to small, private spaces, or the camera is snuck in at places just beyond public view.
The city of Tehran incessantly bustles in the background of every scene, and the banality of everyday life is played skillfully as comic relief and quiet reflection. The city in motion, as the characters make their fateful decision, forces them to reflect: What kind of world would be left for them if they became killers?
The big choice unfolds like a play, each character’s morals and needs painted in vivid strokes. Around the central drama, babies are born, couples are engaged, gas tanks are filled, and children run and play. There’s a palpable sense of life’s value that makes this story about brutality so human. Indeed, Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or-winning revenge thriller, It Was Just an Accident, slices into memory and the desire for revenge with a double-edged knife. – Nick Malone
See also “‘It Was Just an Accident’ Hides Life’s Extremes in Plain Sight“, by Nick Malone.
KÖLN 75 – Director: Ido Fluk (Zeitgeist)
Biopics of famous musicians are among the film business’s surefire ways to cashbox gold and critical acclaim. From The Doors, Elvis, and The Buddy Holly Story to The Coal Miner’s Daughter and the just-released Bruce Springsteen film, Deliver Me from Nowhere, it’s the stars and their well-worn legends that are center stage.
However, with KÖLN 75, director Ido Fluk has flipped the script. His film tells the story of a music-obsessed German teenager, Vera Brandes, who overcame a boatload of obstacles to produce the most legendary concert by pianist Keith Jarrett. This monumental performance yielded a masterpiece album that remains the all-time best-selling jazz album by a soloist.
After witnessing a solo performance by Jarrett, she becomes fixated on producing a concert with the virtuoso American as a part of her jazz series. She will need to raise $50,000 to rent the Cologne Opera House and ensure that the finicky Jarrett has his instrument of choice for the gig—a Bösendorfer Grand Imperial, a 97-key, ten-foot-long music-making monster.
Mala Emde’s performance as Brandes is a pure joy. She perfectly captures Brandes’ passion for music – the youthful enthusiasm with which she tackles the many obstacles and the hurt that comes with her father’s constant disdain for what she works so hard to become. There’s also a great scene of Vera and her hipster friends huffing her dentist dad’s nitrous oxide as they spin albums by Krautrock faves Can, Floh de Cologne, and NEU! It’s Emde’s multifaceted and emotional performance that gives this flight to the tuneful saga of feminist power.
After two strokes in 2018, Keith Jarrett became partially paralyzed and lost the ability to perform. However, thanks to Manfred Eicher and ECM, there are well over 80 albums of his to enjoy, including his most legendary profiled so masterfully in Ido Fluk’s latest and most heartfelt film. – Sal Cataldi
See also “A Legendary Keith Jarrett Performance Highlights ‘KÖLN 75’“, by Sal Cataldi
Kontinental ‘25 – Director: Radu Jude (Sovereign Films)
Radu Jude, the most prominent Romanian filmmaker and a vicious critic of all things neoliberal, has witnessed his country dragged through the hell of “transition” imposed on Eastern (and most of Southern) Europe over decades; he’s seen things unholy wreak havoc on the bodies and spirits of his countrymen, mostly to devastating effect.
Kontinental ‘25 is one of his more straightforward, yet typically scathing, borderline absurdist portraits of a borderline absurdist world. Set in Cluj over mere days, it tells the story of a city in general decline through the eyes of a stranded homeless man who commits suicide and a guilt-ridden bailiff struggling to come to terms with her soul-crushing job.
Envisaged as a meditation on life within the confines of a crumbling society and rising inequality, sneaks in plenty of absurd, tongue-in-cheek humor into its dreary backdrop. Knowing Jude’s insistence on the lingering effects of anomie, one already knows nothing much will actually change. Only new levels of anxiety and discord can and will be unlocked in a world where classism, racism, nationalism, and the eradication of solidarity are encouraged. Slow but powerfully intimate, Kontinental ‘25 has lots to say about the current state of affairs in much of the modern world, most of all how individualism threatens to erase us all – physically and emotionally. – Ana Yorke
See also “Berlinale Part 3: The Best Films You Usually Don’t See Coming”, by Ana Yorke.
The Long Walk – Director: Francis Lawrence (Lionsgate)
While all the books Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman had a dark, verging on misanthropic spirit, 1979’s The Long Walk was by far the bleakest; largely because of the warmth shown between its characters before they are snuffed out. Francis Lawrence’s gutsy, faithful, and uncompromising adaptation takes its dystopic conceit seriously by not explaining too much.
In a crumbling, authoritarian America that looks like what might have happened had the malaise of the 1970s never lifted, 50 teenagers (one from each state) compete in a grisly marathon that ends when only one is still alive. Armored personnel carriers rumble slowly beside the boys as they walk, executing those who fall behind.
While the grim scenario feels very of a piece with the Hunger Games franchise, where Lawrence has been doing credible work for some years (and which was arguably inspired by books like this and King’s The Running Man), it stands apart for the intimacy of its storytelling. Rather than managing lore or having it both ways with the competition (isn’t this terrible; who’s going to win?), The Long Walk is largely about the close bonds that form between the boys as they slog forward.
Lawrence’s direction is unsparing in its violence, but it is gutting rather than exploitative. The pent-up emotionality of the screenplay by JT Mollner (of 2023’s Strange Darling), as delivered by an exceptional ensemble (especially Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson as two fast friends whose bond in the face of crushing force seems almost revolutionary), makes The Long Walk‘s conclusion almost too much to bear. – Chris Barsanti
Mickey 17 – Director: Bong Joon-Ho
Blessed be the nuance and the enormity of heart that comes from Bong Joon-ho’s rightful rage toward the debauched, parasitic, colonizing, and murderous “elites”. As a sociologist from a family of scholars, Bong, like his philosopher compatriot Park Chan-wook, nurtures a profound distrust of our abominable global capitalist establishment while maintaining a deeply humanistic empathy, if not hope, for his protagonists.
Ludicrous both by design and execution and propelled by wonderfully fearless performances unafraid to stretch the human condition to the maximum, Mickey 17 is both genuinely funny and terrifying. Its striking visuals and skilled direction fully honor the $118 million budget, but it’s Pattinson’s unhinged, quirky performance (made complete with Mickey sounding like Steve Buscemi in Fargo) of a simple man trying to obtain a morsel of joy in a horrendous life that hits the film’s philosophical nails on their head.
By substituting the unremarkable, silly dude for the typically cerebral, deity-complex sci-fi hero, Bong fosters relatability in otherwise utterly alien living circumstances, positioning Mickey 17 as a considerably more political feature than it would have been if the Niflheim colonizers were prestige scientists alone. A uniquely inspiring watch for cinephiles of varied preferences, Mickey 17 will likely enter the science fiction canon as an accomplished allegory of the horrors of colonialism and exploitation from those in power. – Ana Yorke
See also “Berlinale Part 2: Sci-fi Satire, Storytelling Greatness and Muted Grief”, by Ana Yorke.
My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow – Director: Julia Loktev (Argot Pictures)
There’s a phrase that captures a generalized Russian identity and its practically congenital suffering (and consequent gallows humor): “We thought we had hit rock bottom, and then someone knocked from below.” Originating in Soviet-era Poland, that little proverb could serve as a two-act logline for Julia Loktev‘s epic documentary, My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow.
Loktev drops viewers directly into Russia, as if they had just disembarked from the plane with the director herself. What she captures on her iPhone over the next several months results in an oddly casual masterpiece, inhabited by people you’ll want to keep spending time with.
Most of the film’s subjects are young women journalists who have been labeled “foreign agents”. We meet the funny hosts of the podcast, Hello, You Are a Foreign Agent, Sonya Groysman and Olga Churakova; a pair of investigative reporters, Irina Dolinina and Alesya Marokhovskaya; prominent newscaster Elena Kostyuchenko; and the charismatic Ksenia Mironova, a journalist whose fiancé, Ivan Safronov, is in prison for “treason”.
On the day My Undesirable Friends was released in theaters, 15 August 2025, Vladimir Putin, his plane greeted with a red carpet rollout, shook hands with Donald Trump and his team in Alaska to “discuss” the Russo-Ukrainian War. Talk about undesirable friends. – Matt Mahler
See also: “My Undesirable Friends’ Brilliant, Casual Bravery” by Matt Mahler.
No Other Choice – Director: Park Chan-Wook (Neon)
Prominent Korean filmmakers have long been synonymous with artistic success (and excess), so it surprised no one to see that No Other Choice, Park Chan-Wook’s latest, is yet another masterpiece of the banality of violence and the relentless darkness that trails our every move under neoliberalism. One of the rare films to hold a perfect critics’ score throughout the year, it is a darkly hilarious, deeply uncomfortable saga of one man’s journey to save his family’s financial and social status.
Starring local superstar Lee Byung-hun(most recently of The Squid Game fame) and Son Ye-jin, No Other Choice invites us into the life of Man-su (Lee), an award-winning blue-collar manager of a local paper company, Solar Paper. Having been with Solar Paper a quarter of a century, he enjoys a comfortable middle class status with his wife Mi-ri (Son), their two kids and dogs. Everything about their lives seems calm and comfortable.
Sure enough, in the typically devastating tradition of contemporary Korean history, Americans barge in to liberate the markets and enslave the populace in the process. Solar Paper is sold to “western” Yuppies, and heaps of employees get the sack, including Man-su, who finds it near-impossible to recover from the shock. As he clumsily attempts to confront one of the new owners and appeal to his sense of morality (haha), the dude brushes him off with a curt: “Look, I have no other choice”.
Middle-aged, moderately qualified, and facing both a considerable mortgage and a newly precarious job market, Man-su descends into achievement hell by deciding he will eliminate competition for a potential new role at any cost. The rest is best left unspoiled, but if you have seen any of Park’s films, you know blood, sweat, and tears will flood the screen.
Ultimately, what sets the Korean artistic giants apart in the game of cultural production is their fundamental and curiously rare understanding that contemporary capitalism isn’t a neutral economic framework, but a bloodthirsty structure in which “success” of the few is predicated on the literal torment or death of the many. In that respect, No Other Choice is yet another accomplished film that paints a grim, but bizarrely true picture of the many consequences of our acceptance of defeat before the beasts of shareholder value. – Ana Yorke
Nouvelle Vague – Director: Richard Linklater (Netflix)
Growing up in Austin in the 1970s and ’80s meant residing in a proto-hipster slack-topia, and for me, Richard Linklater’s big-screen debut, Slacker (1990), captures that zeitgeist well. That film’s free-flowing nature mesmerizingly mimics what it was like to live in the Texas capital during that time, to the point that I almost confused it for a documentary.
Decades after he made Slacker, and dozens of films later, the highly versatile Houston-born director is finally paying explicit homage to the French New Wave cinema movement that inspired his foray into film and heavily influenced his own captivating style, with a clever rendering of the making of the landmark film, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960).
Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague is entirely in French, with mostly French actors, save Zoey Deutch, who plays American Jean Seberg in the classic role of Patricia, flirtatious foil to Jean-Paul Belmondo’s charismatic ne’er-do-well, Michel. Deutch is an incandescent presence, just like Seberg herself, and Aubry Dullin, who plays Jean-Paul Belmondo/Michel, embodies a roguish spirit. Really, though, it’s Deutch-as-Seberg-as-Patricia, flaunting that iconic coiffure and replicating Seberg’s charmingly awkward mid-western cadences in French, who steals Nouvelle Vague, just as Seberg stole Breathless.
Like many of the best films, Nouvelle Vague works on multiple levels. On the surface, it’s a simple story about a visionary filmmaker who is epically frustrating to work with. It doesn’t require cognizance of Breathless, Godard, or even the French New Wave to appreciate its irreverent humor and sly verisimilitude.
On another, deeper level, it can be appreciated as a (faux) behind-the-scenes glimpse into the most influential film of the modern age. Nouvelle Vague‘s black-and-white milieu strikingly incarnates late ’50s France, replete with smartly attired actors and crew, each with their ever-present dangling cigarettes. It boasts a carefree feel, much like Godard’s groundbreaking film.
On this deeper level, it’s like an exercise in undercover filmmaking, Linklater indulging his time-travel fantasies and daring to bring them to life. More than anything, however, Nouvelle Vague is an homage to artistic spontaneity and purity – slacker ideals if there ever were any. – Alison Ross