Movies turn a lens on failing society
The gifted Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”) makes grimly powerful, impeccably acted realist thrillers about a society that, in thrall to rigid tradition and run-of-the-mill corruption, is slowly failing its own.
“Beyond the Hills,” released in 2013 in U.S. theaters, is a tense, slow-burning tragedy set in a remote Moldovan monastery, where a reunion takes place between two orphaned young women: one devoted to her life of faith, the other desperate to get her out of it.
Mungiu followed that picture with the even more accomplished “Graduation,” in which a father’s love for his daughter spurs him to act against his conscience; it won the National Society of Film Critics’ award for best foreign-language film of 2017.
Both movies will be available May 22 from Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and DVD. Movie recommendations from critics Justin Chang, Kenneth Turan and other reviewers.
Let the Sunshine In
Juliette Binoche gives a marvelous performance as a middle-aged divorcée looking for love in all the wrong places, but Claire Denis' exquisite and soulful romantic comedy defies every expectation of that premise. (Justin Chang) NR
A Quiet Place
John Krasinski’s thrillingly intelligent post-apocalyptic horror movie, in which he stars with Emily Blunt as a couple trying to protect their family from monsters that hunt by sound, is walking-on-eggshells cinema of a very high order. (Justin Chang) PG-13
Revenge
French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat tears into the rape revenge genre with a startling ferocity in her debut feature, a violent and hallucinatory acid trip for the senses that asserts a feminist perspective in this historically exploitative and misogynistic arena. (Katie Walsh) R
The Rider
Brady Jandreau, a Lakota cowboy from South Dakota, enacts a version of his own harrowing story of loss and recovery in writerdirector Chloé Zhao's stunningly lyrical western, a seamless and deeply moving blend of narrative and documentary film techniques. (Justin Chang) R
RBG
One of the great services that this clear-eyed and admiring documentary on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg provides is to emphasize not just her work on the court but how extraordinarily influential she was before she even got there. (Kenneth Turan) NR
Zama
The Argentine writerdirector Lucrecia Martel makes a welcome return to feature filmmaking with this feverishly brilliant tale of European colonialism and its discontents, starring a superb Daniel Giménez Cacho as a Spanish magistrate in late 18th century Paraguay. (Justin Chang) NR