“LEAVE ONE DAY,” a bittersweet musical film about “the one [...]

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