Features

Through the looking glass: Jafar Panahi’s No Bears offers a timely story about the real and imagined borders—national, social, religious—that constrict the freedoms of Iranians

Love bites: Claire Denis’s first “straightforward thriller,” Stars at Noon, is a too-oblique portrait of the exploits of Western colonialists abroad

Multi-tasking: Edward Yang’s 1994 ensemble piece, A Confucian Confusion, wryly weaves references to the ancient philosophy into a relentlessly busy big-city network narrative

Leaky ship: Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness is high on rhetorical acrobatics but lacks the humanist curiosity of his earlier films

Ambient environment: dark “plumes,” musical flourishes, and semiotic quandaries abound in Noah Baumbach’s sweetly astringent satire, White Noise

Mirror mirror: Andrew Dominik’s heavily fictionalized Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde is ultimately only image, no insight

Frame rate: a long-awaited translation of the late French critic’s writings reveals a fascination with what’s included in the frame and what’s left out, and the moral and political stakes of that choice

Light work: the Japanese filmmaker’s tireless curiosity allowed him ever new and different angles from which to tackle questions about the singularity of each cinematic moment

Form and function: Kiro Russo’s El gran movimiento weaves together bravura camerawork and a simple story about a mysteriously ill laborer to create a pulsating portrait of La Paz, Bolivia

Flickering myth: at a plein air cinema up in the Greek mountains, cine-pilgrims gather every four years for the ongoing premiere of Gregory Markopoulos's Eniaios