No Bears (Jafar Panahi, 2022). Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi directs himself playing Jafar Panahi, a director living in exile because his national government has condemned him. He is using digital technology and spotty internet service to remotely direct a new movie about a Iranian couple (Bakhtiar Panjeei and Mina Kavani play the couple as well as the actors portraying them) seeking to escape the oppression they face in Iran. No Bears is amazing filmmaking that uses meta-fictional layering to interrogate societal dissonance and the validity of art itself. It feels like the movie is balanced between reality and fiction, which only serves to make both states feel like vague agreements that can crumble away at any moment. There’s a restless power at play here, and Panahi channels it into a mesmerizing, emotionally moving feature.

The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025). Kelly Reichardt’s trademark understatement and psychological astuteness work marvelously in this lowkey crime drama. Josh O’Connor plays JB Mooney, a hangdog family man who dislikes the trade work with which he’s fitfully made his living. He decides to orchestrate a museum heist of a handful of abstract paintings, seemingly with only the loosest idea of how he’s going to turn the pilfered artwork into money. The Mastermind is less concerned with the particulars of criminal schemes than the fallout of bad decisions and the numbing limbo that results from a plan not coming together. As his scheme inevitably implodes, JB falls into a weirdly anxious lassitude, drifting from one prospective enabler to another. O’Connor plays all this shuffling misery with pinpoint care. Reichardt’s writing and direction are simultaneously lowkey and pointed, empathizing with her main character even as she shows how his retreat from any form of responsibility — to his craft, his family, or even the social protests thumping around him in the film’s early nineteen-seventies setting — is the crux of his sad failure.

The Endless Summer (Bruce Brown, 1966). This film about genial surf bums chasing waves across the globe is more time capsule than rigorously impressive documentary. Director Bruce Brown’s travelogue is so eager-to-please that it’s easy to forgive the bits that haven’t aged all that well. The blips of leering attention to bikini-clad surfers have a boyish innocence, and even the offhand jingoism in evidence as the film winds around the coast of Africa comes across a gentle ignorance rather than real prejudice. The surfing photography is strikingly good for the era in which The Endless Summer was made. Brown alternates between gee-whiz enthusiasm for what he’s seeing through his lens and an almost instructional approach, devotedly naming the various skilled surfers he films and explaining exactly how they approach the cresting, crashing waters. Brown’s appreciation for the entire culture is infectious.