Every month, Film Comment highlights some new (and old) films that we feel deserve a little extra  attention.

The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019) by Nicolas Rapold

“Scorsese’s vividly illustrated, largely anecdotal 209-minute movie has a way of ably simulating the actual passage of a life, in skipping nimbly from station to station in the protagonist’s own.”

Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019) by Christina Newland

“With its narrative double bluffs and knowingly byzantine plot twists, Knives Out nimbly swerves around the pitfalls of murder mysteries past. Full of rhythmic verve and pithy humor, this is uproariously entertaining filmmaking.”

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller, 2019) by Clinton Krute

“Somewhere deep down, beneath layers of cultural detritus and a hard crust of protective cynicism, we’re all just kids at heart. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood takes this Freudian truism and turns it into a strangely beautiful and genuinely moving Winnicottian melodrama.”

Burning Cane (Phillip Youmans, 2019) by Jonathan Romney

“Burning Cane is a film that oscillates tantalizingly between an occasional obviousness or at least familiarity—the poverty/alcohol equation, the preacher’s hypocrisy—and a teasing obscurity.”

Atlantics (Mati Diop, 2019) by Dennis Lim

“Atlantics, a deserving winner of the runner-up Grand Prix at Cannes, synthesizes the intoxicating moods of Diop’s previous work into an oneiric fable of migration and transmigration—suspended between realism and fantasy, the living and the dead, here and elsewhere.”