It’s been a weird time to be a Grimes fan. Since the release of “Art Angels” — the best album of 2015 — the artist, whose real name is Claire Boucher, shot into the stratosphere. Part of that was due to the strength of the music itself, embracing her own warped brand of pop. But for most people, it was her relationship with Elon Musk that spurred her into the popular spotlight.

From an outside perspective, it was (and still is) easy to make jokes about her, most of it centered on her overall weirdness and “online-isms.” Not every move she made in that time was a good one — namely defending Musk’s union-busting — but for an artist perpetually fighting for control over her narrative, it must have been absolute hell having every word and insignificant Tweet scrutinized. In the whirl of chaos and heat for her chosen man, it feels like everyone has overlooked or ignored her obvious talent.

“Art Angels” is a masterpiece of self-production, the result of a woman wishing to exert every last inch of control and pulling it off with confidence, to the extent of teaching herself the violin and bass. So for anyone not paying attention, the announcement of “Miss Anthropocene” surely seemed like a disaster in the making. Get this: a concept album by an airy pop-star about climate change and the apocalypse of technology!

Fans can rest easy. “Miss Anthropocene” is as good as anything Grimes has ever done. It’s an album that recalls the darkness of her earlier work — namely “Halfaxa” — and injects moments of dance music and even sludge. Her self-described ADD approach is all over it as well: one moment you’re hearing returning guest Aristophanes (under the name PAN) spitting Mandarin over Boucher’s high vocals (“Darkseid”), the next Boucher is strumming along on “Delete Forever,” recalling choice cut “California.” She even drops a moment of drum n’ bass on the “Cyberpunk 2077” track “4AM,” which was allegedly inspired by a Bollywood film. Elsewhere, tracks like “Violence” (a collaboration with i_o) and “My Name Is Dark” slink around, worming their way into your skull like classic “Visions” tracks with just a hint of menace.

Where the album falters is in the lyrics. On some level, we probably shouldn’t have expected much from the concept part. After all, this is the same artist who described “Kill V. Maim” as a song about “Al Pacino’s character from ‘The Godfather’ who’s a vampire and can change his own gender.” Boucher is still plenty skilled at coming up with “earworm-y” lines (“You wanna make me bad,” “I see everything,” etc).

It can’t help but feel, though, that the central story or character never really finds its way through the layers of reverb and studio effects. None of the songs ever feel as cutting as lines like “The things they see in me, I cannot see myself / When you get bored of me I’ll be back on the shelf” or “See you on a dark night.” Even when her past songs were drenched in reverb, Boucher still usually managed to hook onto a special phrase, a fragment of something. For an album this ambitious, it’s a bit of a letdown that she doesn’t really sink her teeth deep into a story; it’s not very coherent or cohesive, even as individual tracks have their standout moments.

Despite all that, there’s no arguing that Boucher’s dedication to self-production is hindering her. After all, she’s said she wants to be involved so she never has to worry about being shut out from her own ideas. Perhaps people expect too much from Grimes; perhaps she doesn’t even know what she wants Grimes to be. Whether she branches out to being a producer behind the scenes (as in her second collab with Janelle Monae) or fully ascends to pop star status, the truth is we’ll never be able to predict where Boucher will go — and neither will she. Those genre shifts, and wild experiments are what make her so exciting. Grimes won’t be going anywhere; we’ll just have to catch up to her.

Harvey Weinstein is never mentioned in “The Assistant.” The boss himself isn’t even seen, just heard over the phone — never named, just referred to as “him.” But the movie isn’t explicitly stating that it is not about Weinstein. After all, it’s set in New York at a film production company. It follows Jane, the namesake assistant, as she deals with him yelling at her, the parade of women coming through and checks made out to no name. It’s clear enough that it was inspired by him, but Kitty Green’s remarkable fiction debut isn’t pointing fingers at any one target. Rather, the power comes from that anonymity, the fact that it could be any studio, any office, any industry rank with abusive men.

A film like this requires a great performer at the center, and it finds one in Julia Garner. The young actress is perhaps best known for her small but memorable role on “The Americans,” as well as her Emmy winning turn on “Ozark.” We’re locked into the perspective of her character, Jane, from the very start of the film — when she gets into the car that takes her to work. She’s the “first one in, last one out,” as one character describes her; it’s notable that while there are two other (male) assistants working alongside her, she is the one that really makes the office work. It’s her that receives the angry call from the wife, followed by an angry call from him berating her and asking if she’s stupid (the sound design, which is excellent throughout, is most noticeable here, as Jane struggles to hear the caller on the other end while the chaos of the office continues around her.)

The other assistants just crack jokes on the sideline and jump in when she has to write the apology emails to her boss. Garner’s facial expressions convey countless hours of frustration, terror and annoyance in just a few minutes. In Green’s film, the assistants are made to bear the anger of those at the top, while the women are shoved into domestic functions like taking care of kids or cleaning up the boss’ office.

It’s while Jane is doing that cleaning that the plot (so much as there is one) kicks in, when she finds an earring near the couch. We see her cleaning god-knows-what off it, and later someone makes a joke about not sitting there. A girl comes by to pick it up, looking upset. Another girl comes by, having been hired by the boss with no prior experience, meeting with him in hotels. Because we’re so locked into Jane’s perspective, we only get what she gets — implications, small moments, overheard lines.

Whatever it is, it’s clear both to her and to us that it is inappropriate. The scene in which she tries to relay her concerns to an HR rep (played by “Succession’s” Matthew MacFayden) is the crux of the film and perhaps its most important moment. He listens to her list all these incidents and then asks if she really wants to go through with it. He reminds her that she just started, questions if she’s not a little jealous and suggests that she could have her own promising career derailed. MacFayden — so good playing the groveling incompetent — suddenly shifts to an almost menacing lack of care. We all imagine what we would do if confronted with this situation.

Jane probably did too. Green brings that scenario in, then drops in every single roadblock that keeps people from coming forward. Most importantly, Jane isn’t fully innocent, even as she tries to do the right thing; we sense some sort of annoyance, that jealousy at the attention this other girl is getting. All of this abuse Jane herself takes has to mean something. It has to be worth it, or else why would she still be here? Most cutting is the line MacFayden drops as she exits: “You’re not his type.” She’ll never get that kind of attention, so why stick her neck out for someone who’s not going to be there long?

Much of the discussion post-#MeToo has seemed to swirl around the bad men, the people at the top finally coming down. Films like “Bombshell” want to paint it as a classic good girls vs. bad guys story. “The Assistant” is a more honest one, and not just because of the seeming accuracy of its drab office environments and blending sound. By stranding us inside the head of its lead character, we’re forced to absorb every single insult thrown at her, latch on to any scrap of attention and piece together the various headshots and syringes.

Not only that, but through the other co-workers, we’re shown how an entire company is bound together to keep its bad man protected from any consequences. Above all, “The Assistant” is a document of complicity, a representation of the systemic forces that keep these men propped up. It’s a study in power dynamics, not just in Hollywood but in every office. It observes the moral conflict and then dares you to judge its heroine.

“Sonic the Hedgehog” has not been what you would call a consistent franchise. Contrary to golden standard Mario, Sega’s flagship franchise spent its first couple entries as the edgy new guy until it missed a console generation, then proceeded to flounder for at least a decade, crossing into all sorts of genres and platforms before hitting several infamous nadirs. At this point, “Sonic” is as much a meme as it is an actual game franchise. Lately, it’s been on a bit of an upswing, but 30 years of fandom has seen a spiral into cringe before reversing into irony and back again. In other words, it’s been a long, long time since the series’ peak, long after it became a joke.

Which brings us to the movie. Last year, the Internet exploded when a preview of Sega’s iconic mascot in live action was released. It was, to put it lightly, horrifying. It was so deep into the uncanny valley that Paramount pushed back the release of the movie to redo the effects, bringing it closer to the game version (and, ironically, resulting in the very crunch that Sega had been trying to avoid). For a while, it looked like “Sonic the Hedgehog” would be a disaster on the level of the notoriously rushed 2006 version, which for some reason melded a JRPG plot onto the world of Sonic.

The resulting movie is not as bad as many feared. It’s not good, but it’s not as awful as one would expect a Sonic the Hedgehog live-action movie in the year 2020 to be.

The plot of “Sonic” is not that important. It starts off in the middle of a chase scene that then segues into Ben Schwartz giving a voiceover of the “that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation” variety. We see relatively cute baby Sonic running through the environments we recognize from the games. We learn he was raised by an owl named Longclaw, which is something the movie created, but I completely believed it was something that had happened in a Sonic game.

Sonic ends up on Earth, in the small town of Green Hills, Montana, where Sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) lives with his wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter). Sonic’s knowledge of our world is weirdly inconsistent. For example, he spies on the couple watching action movies, yet doesn’t seem to know that Marsden is a cop (referring to him as “Donut Lord”). He knows all about baseball, yet doesn’t know where San Francisco is. The script can’t seem to decide if he’s a child or not.

There’s also Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik (doing Jim Carrey-like things), called to the scene after Sonic experiences an existential crisis that leads to the electric grid going down. In a series of shenanigans, Sonic and Marsden end up on the road, the latter branded a terrorist by the government. He does not seem bothered at all by this and neither does the movie. Eventually Sonic learns to not be less lonely. Then, he fights Eggman. Somewhere along the way, he floss dances.

Perhaps the biggest problem with “Sonic The Hedgehog” is its ambivalence. The script hints at a great well of millennial weirdness but never acknowledges it outside of a line or two. At times, it appears self-aware of the series’ history (the “sanic” meme makes an appearance), but it never really embraces it. The truth is, this movie is just not the weirdest thing Sega has done as a company. It was nowhere near as quirky as the Trance Vibrator for Rez nor as off-putting as Sonic kissing a human princess. Ben Schwartz is no Billy West or even Yuri Lowenthal no matter how much he tries. One wonders what Takashi Miike would do with this; he already has “Ace Attorney” and “Yakuza” under his belt.

Instead, we get a generic movie for kids that goes through the expected motions. Your enjoyment will depend on how much you like the ’90s-era Jim Carrey schtick and then how much you can tolerate bargain bin kids movie shenanigans. At least there are no toilet jokes.

Trying to sum up the end of “BoJack Horseman” feels like a fool’s errand.

At this point, you’ve probably heard all the obligatory sentiments: “heartwrenching,” “brutal,” “hilarious” or “the best show on TV.” It’s not hyperbolic to say an era has ended. Until these last few episodes dropped at the end of Jan., it was the only show from Netflix’s first forays into streaming that was still going.

Against all odds and improbable circumstances, a show that started off as an Adult Swim-esque “adult animated comedy” blossomed into a harsh yet beautiful examination of a broken man (sorry, horse) and the people around him.

Even more unbelievable is that it never lost its comedic sensibilities as it delved into deeper and more intense territory. Now that its split final season has aired in full, I can confidently say Raphael Bob-Waksberg stuck the landing in typical remarkable fashion.

The first half of the season (eight episodes that aired in 2019) picked up as BoJack (Will Arnett) finally checks into rehab. As the opening montage shows, he seems to be doing better. He’s painting, joining groups and going to therapy (horse therapy, an important distinction). Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) adjusts to the single-parent life with the help of Todd (Aaron Paul), while Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Thompkins) struggles to admit his own relationship issues.

Diane (Alison Brie) has moved to Chicago, entering a relationship with her co-worker Guy (Lakeith Stanfield). So far, so ordinary. In these episodes, BoJack seems to finally start getting better. Everyone, in fact, has an arc of coming to peace with their life in some way or another. To quote an earlier season, they’re “getting their s–t together.”

By the halfway point, BoJack even reaches what could be described as peace; if the show ended there, it would be a fine enough ending. Of course, nothing is ever simple.

The sixth episode brings that fragile peace crashing down to earth as the show walks back through all the most horrible moments, via the extremely “BoJack” characters of Paige Sinclair (Paget Brewster) and Max (Max Greenfield) a reporter and her squabbling companion who’ve stepped right out of a classic screwball comedy. Both Brewster and Greenfield have a lot of fun with their lines, and you sense the writers had fun crafting these moments.

If there’s been a throughline of the series, it’s the idea that improving yourself doesn’t mean you can forget the people you’ve hurt. The key to “BoJack’s” success has always been the fact that the creators (and Bojack himself) realize how loathsome he is. At times, they’ve interrogated the audience response to the character, and in the last season almost dared us to still sympathize with him. Everyone around him has begun cutting themselves off in one way or another, and throughout the season we see each gaining closure of some sort over their arc.

It’s not always the smoothest — there’s a definite sense that Waksberg and the writers had at least a full season’s worth of plot in them that they suddenly had to shove into 16 episodes.

Plotlines that usually would’ve gotten their own episodes to breathe have a b-side spliced onto them, sometimes inelegantly. Although the seams are a tad more visible this time around, the team manages to hold on tightly to its control of tone.

Truly there is no way a deep, upsetting dive into a plotline involving a character going off her antidepressants could co-exist in a moment that features the line “Oh poop! Our scoop’s flown the coop!” And yet this is a show that also relishes in jokes, whether their presented in the background, the dialogue or run throughout the episode. It feels effortless, which is no mean feat and, as always, the animators lovingly fill the background with color, worldbuilding and funny signs. They even get a couple of episodes to really experiment and break things up, especially in the final two episodes.

It wouldn’t be “BoJack” without the signature penultimate episodes, where everything seems to shine (and upset) the most. The one here is perhaps the most upsetting of all for reasons I won’t spoil for you. Let it be said that I wouldn’t be surprised if they saw “Neon Genesis Evangelion” because episode 15 reminds me of that show’s internal finale in the best of ways. By the end of the show, things look much darker for him. But then, it’s always been like that.

More than anything, “BoJack Horseman” has stayed true to itself over the course of its run, forever conscious of its lead character’s  actions and the ripple effect he has on people. It feels difficult to sum up. What I can say is that I’m so glad Netflix let this show go on as long as it did. Raphael Bob-Waksberg and other creators made something special, and though the finale didn’t quite clear the impossibly high bar, it stuck the landing. I’m going to miss it.

“Right now, you’re just a cliche,” Jude Law as an unnamed MI6 Secret Intelligence Service operative tells Blake Lively’s hurt Stephanie Patrick, about halfway through their training montage. He’s not wrong. In fact, both of them are cliches: the gruff, secretive master hiding a wounded past, the shattered young woman enlisting him to help her get revenge.

“The Rhythm Section” isn’t self-aware enough to pass that line off as a joke, but despite a lack of character, “The Handmaid’s Tale” director Reed  Morano manages to inject some life and style into the proceedings. It’s not all that memorable, but it’s enjoyable all the same.

Introduced holding a gun up to a mysterious man’s head, the movie flashes back six months to London, where we meet Stephanie. Lively does her best Carey Mulligan impression as an Englishwoman who’s descended into a life of prostitution and drugs in the wake of a plane crash that killed her family. She’s jolted out of it when a reporter tells her that the crash wasn’t an accident but instead a bomb planted by an Islamic terror cell.

The man responsible has been walking free around London courtesy of MI6, who knows it was him yet isn’t doing anything. Naturally, she wants revenge. Since the movie wants to stay somewhat anchored to reality, she isn’t very good at actually doing the murder thing. Hence the introduction of Jude Law’s mysterious B (whose name we learn in the credits is Iain Boyd, unless I completely missed them saying it), found somewhere in Scotland. He’s a hardass who puts her through the works to be an intelligence level operative.

Of course, he’s got a painful past of his own. Overall, it’s not really that important to the movie. In the process, they link up with Sterling K. Brown, who plays an information broker, as Stephanie fully transforms into a super spy avenging her family and the others killed in the attack.

The main problem with the movie comes from Mark Burnell’s script (an adaptation of his novel). We are only shown snippets of Stephanie’s life before the crash with her family, who come off as pure memories. None of them actually feel like people. Sure we get a clip of them playing cards in the opening credits, but we’re never really given a reason to care about them beyond the fact that Stephanie loved them.

This extends to Stephanie herself: Lively does a fine enough job here — interjecting some one-liners and being believably freaked at how deep she’s gotten — but you never really buy the character as shown. Some of it comes down to the hair (her short cut really makes her look like Mulligan in a way that’s kind of distracting) and the accent (passable), but most of it is that the character remains flat throughout the whole movie.

All of the characters really just match up to archetypes, and some time is given over to the terrorists being against reform. In the end, it’s just hard to really feel invested in any of the events because the script never gets you to care about anyone beyond obviously saying “this is why they’re doing something.” Even the Islamic Extremism angle feels more tired rather than anything actively racist, though the Muslim characters certainly aren’t done any favors here.

If the movie’s script doesn’t rise above fine, Morano’s direction gives it a nice bit of energy. Her use of washed-out colors and tight framing that marks her “Handmaid’s” work shows up a lot, giving the misty English countryside a nice look. She overuses a fish-eye look to no discernible purpose, but not enough to ruin the movie. The violin heavy score from Steve Mazzaro feels urgent but never overbearing. As it goes on, the movie even has some rather thrilling action sequences.

Overall, “The Rhythm Section” demonstrates an above-average spy flick. It’s competent and gets the job done, but it’s kind of hard to really care about anything that happens in it or to any of the characters involved, despite some feinting toward the cost of a revenge spree. Even then it’s really just going through the motions without any real thought into it. Sometimes, all you need is just a few good scenes and luckily, “The Rhythm Section” delivers. Just don’t expect to be thinking much about it when you come out.

Let no one say that Trey Edward Shults lacks ambition. That much was apparent after he burst onto the scene with “Krisha” — a microbudget production featuring his own family members that turns a gathering into an anxiety tinged thriller full of atonal noise and flowing camera tricks.

It’s this ambition that’s on display in “Waves,” his latest film that returns to the family drama and anxiety dotted his last two films. In this case, however, it’s more like two films in one: the first dealing with school athlete Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr, from his last film “It Comes At Night”) and his drive to perfection that ends in tragedy, while the second follows his sister Emily (Taylor Russell) as she deals with the fallout.

The first half is the more dramatic of the two. Tyler is pushed hard by his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), who demands nothing less than absolute perfection in all aspects of his life, from training to homework. In other words, he’s a hardass. Otherwise, Tyler’s life seems great, seeing as he has the perfect girlfriend in Alexis (Alexa Demie), and a great path forward.

Pressure builds though, both from his father and from external circumstances. Shults tightens the aspect ratio as this segment goes on, pushing us into a state of anxiety culminating in a horrific incident at a party. Shults’ direction is no less impeccable here, from the opening shot that pans around a car as Tyler and Alexis sing along to Animal Collective’s “Floridada” (an interesting choice but not entirely unrealistic), along with some great editing set to Kanye West’s “I Am A God.”

We pick up with Emily in the aftermath, in what should be a breakout performance for Russell. She ends up in a tentative romance with Lucas Hedges’ Luke, another wrestler on the team who’s dealing with his own problems. From there it blossoms into a romance, and the film begins digging into ideas of love and forgiveness hinted at in the beginning, culminating in an ending sequence that packs a punch.

Perhaps the most noted element of “Waves” has been its soundtrack, and indeed it is a good one, featuring artists like Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean and not one but two Animal Collective songs — it all must’ve cost a pretty penny. Some may find this to be a bit pandering, especially since it’s also combined with a score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and the editing is frequently timed to the songs. Even so, Shults uses music remarkably well, for example using Tame Impala’s “Be Above It” and bringing back that repeated refrain in a moment of panic.

As one would expect, the performances from the family are all extraordinary, and one could easily see them getting four acting nominations at the Oscars. Brown pivots from his hardass nature in the first half to heartbreak in the second, reminding us just how talented he is, while Renee Ellis Goldsberry channels warmth and grief in equal force.

While the central family is black (and it should be noted that the majority of creatives behind this project are white), the fact that the story doesn’t explicitly deal with race actually works in its favor, given how disastrous it could turn out. Shults also mirrors some shots from the first half in the second in a way that lends itself to the idea of Emily learning to open up the different paths a family member could take. It’s showy, yes, but never in a way that feels out of control.

The story admittedly walks a bit of a tightrope with its bifurcated nature, the two elements seeming to clash as it transitions into the furtive romance of the latter half. For some, the twisty nature of the plot may be a turnoff, and the fact that it doesn’t quite resolve the ends of the first story is perhaps a weakness. By the end though, as a montage set to Radiohead’s “True Love Waits” rolls on, the emotional force of Shults’ approach becomes too powerful to ignore.

As with all ambitious projects, “Waves” is flawed. This is a film in which you buy into what it wants to say and how it says it or you turn off entirely. For those willing to surrender themselves to it, you’ll be rewarded with some of the finest performances of the year and some thought-provoking material on forgiveness.

It’s the end of October, and that means the close of yet another edition of the Philadelphia Film Festival. The 28th iteration brought many highly anticipated festival favorites to Philadelphia for the first time, along with some more under the radar hits from the world and indie flicks from up-and-coming directors. Compared to the past few years, it felt like a down year for a bit as I saw some of my personal favorites the first weekend; eventually, things started looking up, and I even found some unheralded gems.

For the first time, I managed to go down on each of the 11 days, cultivating a fairly hefty list. I only missed a few intriguing titles (“Deerskin”, “Dogs Don’t Wear Pants”, “The Irishman” and “Fourteen”), but many of these should be coming to theaters soon; at least one will be headed to Netflix in a couple of months. A quick caveat: because my review has already been published, I’m not listing Bong Joon-Ho’s “Parasite” here, which was easily No. 1 for a while and is surely ranking high on my list. That freed up one spot for what was quite a tough list. Below are my personal favorites from the fest. Some of these will be out by next year, some will be streaming shortly and one or two may be tough to find. All are worth a look, and a few are candidates for the best of the year.

“Tremors”

I almost skipped this  viewing until I checked a couple of reviews, and I’m glad I did.  Jayro Bustamante’s second feature after 2015’s “Ixcanul” knocked me flat on my butt from the first scene. A bruising, devastating portrait of an evangelical Guatemalan father forced out of the closet in middle age, it pulls no punches as it draws out a particularly harsh dilemma. Not since “A Separation” has a film given us such a deep understanding of the logic of its characters while our emotions plead with them to make a different choice. In my mind, there’s not a single better film released this year, and I’m hard-pressed to think of anything stealing its place.

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”

This critical darling from Cannes at first seems too withdrawn and icy as it sketches out the relationship between a noblewoman forced into marriage and the painter who’s been hired to make her portrait in secret. Celine Sciamma pulls a neat trick of structuring the film on the same course as its lesbian lovers; you don’t realize how much you’ve fallen for it until you crash headfirst into its arms. The final shot is a tour de force from Adele Haenel, and it’s likely to become many people’s favorite movie.

“Knives Out”

“Looper” and “Breaking Bad” director Rian Johnson uses his blank check from “Star Wars” to make this rollickingly fun whodunnit. Featuring a loaded cast, among them Daniel Craig ushering in his comedic era, it’s timely without feeling groan-worthy and twists the plot inside and out without cheating. Judging from my audience reaction, it should do great business when it releases around Thanksgiving.

“Waves”

Trey Edward Shults returns to the experimental style he used in “Krisha” for his latest about the trials and tribulations of a family of four in Florida. It’s two films in one: the first a tragedy about one terrible incident and the second a warm love story blossoming into a tale of forgiveness. A killer soundtrack and unique editing seals the whole deal, and Shults confirms his talent for emotional storytelling with an affecting ending. It deserves four acting nominations at the very least.

“Blow the Man Down”

A crime thriller with a unique local flair — in a seaside town in Maine, two young women who have just said goodbye to their mother soon have to deal with another body when the youngest kills a man in self-defense. The movie takes a cue from “Fargo,” switching between some very funny accent inflected scenes and the nervous tension involved with covering up a crime. It’s Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole’s directorial debuts and introduces them as a pair to look out for, especially with a unique chorus of sailors belting sea shanties that transitions the acts. Add in Margot Martindale as a crime boss, and you’ve got all you need.

“The Vast of Night”

One of my favorite parts of the festival is looking out for lo-fi indie genre fare that tends to fly under the radar, and Andrew Patterson’s debut won’t disappoint. Framing itself with an opening showing the introduction of a Twilight Zone-esque television series (something it returns back to here and there), this ’50s set suspense movie follows a couple of teens who encounter a mysterious sound coming through the radio. It’s a lot of fun, and it even pulls off some nifty camera tricks in between some wonderful sound and set design. You’ll probably guess what kind of place it’s going, but there’s a real joy in letting it take you along the journey.

“Varda by Agnes”

The final film from the legendary director who presaged the French New Wave is a neat retrospective and analysis of her previous movies, taken from talks she did in the past year. It’s much more engrossing than that sounds and enhanced by some quirky vignettes she adds in between. Even if you haven’t seen a single film by her, it’s worth watching just for the context and process notes she brings to it, and it shows a director looking back satisfied at their life.

“And Then We Danced” 

A lively gay coming-of-age story set in Georgia and inspired in part by the turbulence surrounding the gay rights movement in that country, it follows a dancer auditioning to be part of the country’s tough national dance team and his infatuation with a rival. It’s magnificent watching them just move across the screen, and it resists becoming dour with some wonderful needle drops (including Robyn’s “Honey”). It is Sweden’s entry for Best International Film.

“Jallikattu”

Quite possibly the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life on a purely visceral level, this weird, strange film from India follows a village slowly disintegrating after a buffalo breaks loose, and the men band together to try and kill it. From the beginning, it establishes a strong audio-visual style, synching cuts to the tick of a clock. For a movie that clocks in at 94 minutes, it might be doing too much, and by the end the sheer aural assault becomes overwhelming. Though it’s worth seeing for the gonzo energy it brings, the feeling where you wouldn’t be surprised if they let an actual buffalo loose and just filmed it.

“A White, White Day”

Iceland’s entry for Best International Film tells the story of a grandfather, renovating a house in the aftermath of his wife’s death, who becomes obsessed with the idea that she had an affair. Director Hlynur Palmason suffuses the frame with fog, making eclectic choices like the extended timelapse of the house or the opening, which follows a car before it careens off the road. In between, he provides a contrast with the warmth of the lead’s interactions with his granddaughter and his cold, toxic rage at the idea of his wife straying in a magnificent performance. The film slowly builds up tension until it explodes into ambiguity, gradually removing our sympathy bit by bit without wholly eradicating it. Overall, it’s disquieting, calling into question the idea of revenge and what the protagonist even desires, something he may not even know anymore.

A family of four lives in a scroungy basement in an unnamed South Korean city. They’re shown huddling in the bathroom to steal the Wi-Fi signal from a local coffee shop, seeking out a living by folding pizza boxes. Perhaps the most memorable moment comes when they hear a fumigator spraying the neighborhood, and the father stops his son from closing the windows: “Let them, it’s free pest removal.” They continue eating dinner while coughing from the fumes. It’s a quintessentially Bong Joon-Ho movie, and it’s one of many fantastic touches in “Parasite,” his latest film and one of the year’s best.

For the Kim family, things begin looking up when eldest son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) gets a tip from a friend about a job teaching English. The fact that he doesn’t have a college degree is irrelevant, and some quick forgery later, he arrives at the swank modernist house of the Parks: naive but elegant mother Yeon-kyo (Jo Yeo-jeong), undefined businessman Dong-ik (Lee Sung-kyun), teenage daughter and pupil Da-hye (Jung Ji-so) and troubled youngest child Da-song (Jung Hyun-jun), pointedly obsessed with Native American aesthetics. It is this last child where Ki-woo puts his plan into action: one small suggestion later and his sister Ki-jung (Park So-dam) is Da-song’s art teacher/therapist (when asked about her skill by her family, she replies “I just googled art-therapy, then ad-libbed the rest”). Soon Ki-woo’s mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) is employed as the housekeeper and his father Ki-taek (frequent Bong collaborator Song Kang-ho) is the driver. One thinks they know where this is going. It’s just when you think you’ve figured things out that Bong pulls the rug out from underneath you, and the plot begins its series of twists and turns.

The greatest pleasures of “Parasite” are in these surprises, so in the interest of preserving things, I won’t divulge any more. What I will say is that “Parasite” is a rollicking piece of entertainment blended with a potent metaphor about class struggles and rage. No surprise, given that Bong also directed the excellent blockbuster “Snowpiercer,” which puts its metaphor on a very literal runaway train. He’s at the height of his very considerable powers, expertly working his signature blend of black comedy with tonal shifts that would be jarring if anyone else was behind it. The best example of this is a powerhouse sequence in the middle, rapidly switching between farce and suspense on a dime and succeeding at both. It’s this tight control of tone that makes everything in the script work.

At the center of it all is the theme of class. Bong resists making it an easy us versus them metaphor (something already done in Snowpiercer). The Parks’ crime isn’t so much cruelty as it is obliviousness. They’re so privileged that they simply don’t about things that the Kims constantly worry about. The Kims, meanwhile, are the ones we identify the most with, but they’re scamming their way through a family that really hasn’t done anything but live their lives. It’s not a call to action so much as an observation of the way things are; the lower classes will always fight each other for a chance at the uppers while the upper classes barely even notice the lowers exist unless they need something. These metaphors are baked into the script and the nice house that serves as the center.

Ever since it won the Palme d’Or in a unanimous decision, “Parasite” has been the most anticipated film for many. It lives up the hype, being equal parts horrifying and gut-bustingly funny, often at the same time. The greatest joy is just wondering where the story is going to go next as it builds to a devastating finale on par with Bong’s “Mother” for dread. More than anything, “Parasite” is a pleasure to watch, a thing of careful construction perfectly executed.

It is a law of critics that every review of a Takashi Miike film must mention his prolificacy. He’s made over 100 theatrical productions; at his height he was churning out five to six of them a year, but as of late has slowed down to a still-impressive two. While he’s infamous here in the States for gory shockers like “Audition” and “Ichi The Killer,” Miike has worked in practically every genre — his record includes musicals like “The Happiness of the Katakuris,” video game adaptations like “Ace Attorney,” kids’ movies like “Zebraman” and samurai films like “13 Assassins.” His latest work, “First Love,” returns to what might be termed “his wheelhouse,” the yakuza crime thriller — one that just happens to also feature a romantic comedy combined with boxing drama.

The main thread (so much as there is one) follows Leo Katsuragi (Masakata Kubota,) a young boxer who learns that he has an inoperable brain tumor. As he walks the streets at night, he clocks a man running after Yuri (Sakurako Konishi), an addict who works as a call girl under the name Monica, and chases after him. Unfortunately, the man Leo hits is Otomo (Nao Omori), a corrupt cop working with the boyish yakuza Kase (Shota Sometani). He has hatched a plan to steal a shipment of meth from Yuri’s pimp, blaming the ensuing fallout on the Chinese triads. You can probably guess things don’t go well, and soon Leo and Yuri are on the run from all these elements, plus Juri (singer and television personality Becky), the pimp’s girlfriend, goes on the warpath to avenge him.

There certainly is a lot going on in the storyline, and the beginning moments are slightly scattered as each one of them is set up. Masaru Nakamura’s screenplay does a remarkable job of keeping everything together, helped by the memorable characters and Miike’s direction. Prolific as he is, Miike never slacks when it comes to the camera; he keeps things moving at a clip, keeping the tone suspenseful but able to turn on a dime into absolute hilarity. His sick sense of humor runs from the very beginning, when we cut from Leo punching an opponent straight to a severed head rolling into an alley.

The plot as a whole is rather farcical, Kase in particular has a rough time that wouldn’t be out of place in “Fargo.” Perhaps the most memorable character is Juri; she’s frightening yet oddly exciting presence. She comes in with a bang, kicking down a door into Yuri and calling her a “noisy whore” (a scene that’s much funnier than it sounds). Every time she walks on screen, there’s a palpable tension in regard to she’s going to do next, but you always get the feeling that she’s grieving. Her method just happens to include a lot of kicking, and maybe a sword or two. That such a wild character fits naturally into the rest of the picture tells you just how crazy this gets.

For a man infamous for gore fests like Miike, you might be surprised at how tame this film is. Of course, it’s still a movie featuring decapitations, multiple people getting shot and explosions; the climax in a hardware store is a fantastic scene of suspense and chaos, punctuated with a jaw-dropping gag. “First Love” is just plain fun to watch, and on top of that it’s a surprisingly heartfelt romance. Where else can you get a terrifying hallucination of a character’s father who suddenly starts dancing in his underwear on the subway? Nowhere in America, that’s for sure.

The first thing we see is a group of young teenagers playing some form of soccer while blindfolded. They’re in the mountains, a crumbling brutalist structure in the background. In this moment, they’re just kids, having fun, celebrating. Soon we will learn that they are a militia — the “Monos” of the title, a part of some mysterious unnamed organization.

They have code names like Bigfoot, Wolf, Lady, Boom Boom, and their primary mission is to keep watch over an American woman named Doctora, their prisoner, as well as a milk cow named Shakira. Director Alejandro Landres’ extraordinary “Monos” tells a nightmarish vision of armed conflict in an unnamed Latin American country, told through the lens of a group of child soldiers who slowly disintegrate. It’s essentially “Lord of the Flies” filtered through a surreal and hallucinatory lens and absolutely unshakeable.

While largely an ensemble piece, the film focuses in on a few specific characters: the beginning shows the sanctioned relationship between Wolf (Julian Giraldo) and Lady (Karen Quintero) and introduces us to Bigfoot (former “Hannah Montana” star Moises Arias),  Rambo (Sofia Buenaventura), who recently turned 15 and the disconcertingly young Smurf (Deiby Rueda).

Other than occasional visits and training from The Messenger (Wilson Salazar), the only adult on the compound is Doctora (Julianne Nicholson), who projects a motherly aura but is almost always in a cell. In another movie, Doctora would probably be the hero. Here, she’s largely offscreen for the most part (we don’t even learn her name until much later), and her history is limited by what the characters know.

The group will later move from the mountains to the jungle, where things begin to get worse as Bigfoot slowly takes more power, and the inescapable fate of violence draws ever closer. The cast as a whole — largely unknowns — makes each character deeply feel and highlight the fact that these are all very young children who shouldn’t be here. Special notes must be given to Arias and Nicholson, who are in some of the most intense scenes of the film and nail them.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the film is the constant tension between the group and who the “protagonist” of the film is. Nominally, it would be the Monos, but we’re never told who or why they’re fighting. One naturally wants to root for Doctora, but it’s complicated by some of the sheer horrifying acts she does to survive.

Landres never turns the story into a tract, and he doesn’t need to. By simply highlighting the age of the children and the desperation of the characters, he gets at the fundamental wrongness of the situation far better than any social action film could. He has a great handle on tone throughout, and his direction gives the proceedings a druggy tone and a muted color palette filled with smoke allowing the events transpiring to have maximum impact.

Powering the whole thing is an unsettling (as always), brutal score from Mica Levi, who may be best known for her work in “Under the Skin.” Her work doesn’t quite tip the film into horror, but it puts the audience on edge, enhancing the dreamlike tone of the whole experience.

“Monos” won’t be an easy film to forget. Its greatest strength is the understated power of the images of violence and war, resisting moralizing in favor of throwing you headfirst into the experience. A grim view of adolescence that’s thought-provoking and suspenseful in equal nature, it announces a new talent in Alejandro Landres and marks a career height for Moises Arias. It’s a fever-dream unlike anything you’ve seen before.