Visual artist Ann Oren's first foray into feature-length filmmaking is a sensual delight and a gift that keeps on giving. Oren approaches her film with sincere dedication to every single building block: Piaffe looks, sounds, and feels sensational while being a fairly modest production. A true indie film, Piaffe verges on experimentation as a young woman named Eva (Simone Bucio) takes over the job of a foley artist from her sister. Even though she's under-qualified, she tries her best t0 come up with the sounds for a horse-themed commercial to no avail. However, in the process, she notices a bump on her lower back that grows into a horse's tail. Piaffe is a tale of metamorphosis, not only of the flesh, but also of the heart, as the themes it explores are also directly related to sexuality, submission, and, of course, love as a manifestation of all those things.

Genre: Thriller

Actor: Bjørn Melhus, Josef Ostendorf, Lea Draeger, Nico Ehrenteit, Sebastian Rudolph, Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau, Simone Bucio, Tristan Bumm

Director: Ann Oren

Two months after its premiere in TIFF, Quiz Lady arrived on streaming this November. The comedy film has a sort-of buddy cop dynamic, with an anxiety-ridden, tightly-wound Awkwafina as Anne, and a chaotic Sandra Oh that lets loose with free-spirited Jenny. The film does take its time to get to the good part, and in certain scenes, it feels like it’s torn between the heartfelt and the humorous, but the leads’ acting smooths over some of the awkward writing. Quiz Lady still leads up to a fun watch, though better pacing and writing could have made this charming comedy a classic.

Genre: Comedy

Actor: Al Bayan, Alan Heitz, Ammie Masterson, Amy Tolsky, Angela Trimbur, Annie Boon Karstens, Atul Singh, Awkwafina, Betsy Holt, Camrus Johnson, Charles Green, Charlie Talbert, Choppy Guillotte, Christine Lin, Davina Reid, Derek Roberts, Eddy Lee, Holland Taylor, Jane Yubin Kim, Jason Schwartzman, Joe Chrest, Jonathan Park, Jophielle Love, Justiin A. Davis, Larry Weissman, Maria Bamford, Martin Yu, Matt Cordova, Ned Yousef, Nicole Marie Appleby, Paul Reubens, Phil LaMarr, Sandra Oh, Shirley Chen, Summer Selby, Tawny Newsome, Tony Hale, Will Ferrell

Director: Jessica Yu

Rating: R

The mythology surrounding Sylvester Stallone: the action hero is so big and successful that many people, including myself, often forget about Sylvester Stallone: the prolific writer. He failed to bag roles as a young actor in the 1970s, so he whipped out a script (in a span of three days!) that became the iconic film Rocky. Later on, after witnessing the power of elderly entertainers, Stallone rewrote a screenplay that would become the ongoing franchise The Expendables. He’s a hunk in many people’s eyes, nothing more and nothing less, but Sly successfully steers you away from that one-dimensional reputation and reintroduces you to the dramatist and artist Stallone has been all along. The film begins as an immigrant story (Stallone hails from Italy), then turns into a rags-to-riches story (he grew up in a tough New York neighborhood without formal education) before finally transforming into an honest and earnest meditation on superstardom and artistry. Going in, I was wary that this would be just another puff piece on a Hollywood has-been. And while it does have its fair share of schmaltz, I now believe it's a well-deserved and long overdue ode to Stallone’s unwavering commitment to the power of movies. 

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brian Dennehy, Bruce Willis, Burgess Meredith, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Chazz Palminteri, David Caruso, Dinah Shore, Dolph Lundgren, Estelle Getty, Frank Stallone, Frank Stallone Jr., Henry Winkler, Jack Lemmon, James Cagney, Jason Statham, Jennifer Flavin Stallone, Jet Li, John Herzfeld, John Wayne, Marlon Brando, Mickey Rourke, Milo Ventimiglia, Mr. T, Perry King, Peter O'Toole, Peter Riegert, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Crenna, Robert De Niro, Sage Stallone, Sandra Bullock, Scarlet Rose Stallone, Sharon Stone, Sistine Rose Stallone, Sophia Rose Stallone, Steve Austin, Steve Reeves, Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Teri Hatcher, Terry Crews, Woody Allen

Director: Thom Zimny

Rating: R

An all-female action comedy that doesn’t get self-serious about the way it’s subverting the genre — Wingwomen feels like a breath of fresh air. It wisely grasps that plot isn’t paramount for a movie like this, and so it joyously dunks on cerebral scenarios with its unabashedly silly story convolutions, like when its professional thieves take a brief pause from their momentous One Last Job™️ to sail to Italy and exact bloody, flamenco-delivered revenge on the gangsters who killed their beloved rabbit. Exotic Mediterranean location-hopping isn’t the only way Wingwomen milks Netflix’s finance department for all it can get, either: director-star Mélanie Laurent also packs in all manner of stunts, from spectacular base-jumping sequences to dramatic drone shootouts. 

For all its breezy style, though, there is real heart here, and not the kind that feels crafted by an algorithm. It’s true that a late twist unwisely uses the movie’s embrace of implausibility for emotional ends, but otherwise, the relationship between its professional thieves — ostensibly platonic but very much coded otherwise (a la Bend It Like Beckham) — has surprisingly sincere warmth. Thanks to the cast’s natural chemistry and characters that feel human despite the ridiculous plot, Wingwomen is much more moving than you might believe possible for a Netflix action-comedy.

Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama

Actor: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Annick Roux, Aurélien Gabrielli, Camille Verschuere, Felix Moati, Foued Nabba, Isabelle Adjani, Jean-François Perrone, Jean-Philippe Ricci, Leona D'Huy, Manon Bresch, Mélanie Laurent, Meriem Serbah, Myriam Azencot, Philippe Katerine

Director: Mélanie Laurent

Rating: R

Through this action-packed, absolutely crazy ride of a movie, writer-director Atlee and Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan team up in Jawan to question the country’s corruption in multiple fields, including, but not limited to the agricultural sector, the healthcare industry, and the electoral system. They do so through an amped-up, explosion-filled spectacle led by a high-tech Robin Hood and his merry women inmates, who use terrorism in order to pay out loans for poor farmers and other promises that politicians give to their voters. It’s also intertwined with a romance plot that sees the vigilante and the single-parent counterterrorist chief in an unknowing enemies-to-lovers, mistaken identity marriage. It’s a strange film that tries to tackle as many political messages as possible, but it’s also downright entertaining with every plot twist it takes.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Actor: Aaliyah Qureishi, Ashlesha Thakur, Atlee, Bharat Raj, Boxer Dheena, Deepika Padukone, Eijaz Khan, Girija Oak, Jaffer Sadiq, Kenny Basumatary, Leesha Eclairs, Lehar Khan, Mukesh Chhabra, Naresh Gosain, Nayanthara, Omkar Das Manikpuri, Priyamani, Ravindra Vijay, Ridhi Dogra, Sanjay Dutt, Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, Sanya Malhotra, Shah Rukh Khan, Sirisha Hanumanth, Smita Tambe, Sunil Grover, Vijay Sethupathi, Viraj Ghelani, Yogi Babu

Director: Atlee

Rating: NR

There's a powerful drama in here somewhere, where the toll of wrongful imprisonment tests the resolve of an Armenian repatriate, as he clings to traces of hope that he can see just beyond his prison cell window. Unfortunately, Amerikatsi constantly overstates itself through corny jokes and music choices, and it overestimates how compelling its mostly single-location narrative can be. This is a film that, for all its good intentions, relies far too heavily on fish-out-of-water quaintness and Rear Window-esque storytelling from a distance—downplaying the emotional and psychological toll of imprisonment and the violence inflicted upon other Armenians during this time. Amerikatsi doesn't really tell us much about the situation in the country at the time; it only ever tries too hard to make us feel something.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Hovik Keuchkerian, Jean-Pierre Nshanian, Michael A. Goorjian, Michael Goorjian, Mikhail Trukhin, Narine Grigoryan, Nelly Uvarova

Director: Michael A. Goorjian, Michael Goorjian

After winning Oscars for their documentary work, filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin make their narrative feature debut with Nyad. The move to narrative fiction isn’t a monumental jump for the director duo, whose cinematic documentaries (among them Free Solo and The Rescue) play like nerve-shredding action thrillers and intense human dramas. Nor does Nyad’s subject — another extreme feat of human daring and endurance — make this feel a million miles away from their most famous works.

The most obvious departures from the directors’ documentary strengths — Nyad’s flashbacks and hallucination scenes, for example — do sometimes highlight their newness to narrative filmmaking, however. These scenes feel shallow and therefore disconnected from the movie’s otherwise deeper treatment of its subject, just as the performances dip into outsized cliches at times. Mostly, though, Nyad manages to float above the trap of trying too hard to be an inspirational sports drama thanks to its confrontation of Diana’s prickly personality. This flips the film’s perspective onto that of Diana’s team (including her coach and former girlfriend, played by Jodie Foster), who ultimately suffer the consequences of her stubbornness. That refusal to submit to hagiographic impulses gives the film a documentary-like edge of truth, making the rousing moments here feel genuinely earned.

Genre: Drama, History

Actor: Anna Harriette Pittman, Anne Marie Kempf, Annette Bening, Belle Darling, Carolyn McCormick, Diana Nyad, Elizabeth Chahin, Ellen DeGeneres, Eric T. Miller, Erica Cho, Ethan Jones Romero, Garland Scott, Grace Subervi, Harraka Eliana, Iván Oleaga, Jeena Yi, Jodie Foster, John Bartlett, John F. Kennedy, Johnny Solo, Karly Rothenberg, Kate McKinnon, Katherine Klosterman, Lilo Grunwald, Luke Cosgrove, Marcus Young, Melissa R. Stubbs, Nadia Lorencz, Orpha Salimata, Pearl Darling, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Gordon, Sophia Hernandez, Stephen Schnetzer, Tisola Logan, Toussaint Merionne

Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin

Rating: PG-13