Neither didactic nor restrained, Ascension is a mesmerizing film that uncovers the face of a nation’s stoic realism. Civilization’s pursuit of unfettered growth has often clashed with its purported foundations of equity, and the result is frequently expressed and interpreted through images of cutting absurdity, each…
Bad Luck Banging borders on the didactic, but smartly allows its archetypes to conflate and contradict, turning its sketchbook designs into a platform for equal-opportunity ire. Radu Jude’s films are an acquired taste, his unconventional brand of humor droller than Wes Anderson, more off-kilter…
Clifford the Big Red Dog is vapid, conceptually nihilistic, and utterly soulless “entertainment.” When moviegoers go to the movies, they typically do so with certain expectations: to be entertained, to feel something, to unwind from reality and escape into fantasy, to derive, in short, some…
Like so many pastiches before it, the thematically unfocused Dead & Beautiful succumbs to its own vacuous sheen. In the metropolitan center of Taipei, five young men and women convene to celebrate their wealth; nestled in a private lounge amid the stratosphere, they discuss their…
The Deep House is a claustrophobic, otherworldly bit of throwback horror that welcomingly pivots away from modern, flattened genre sensibilities. Forget indie insufferability: it seems vogue these days to premise one’s foray into horror on the shaky basis of some admirable veneration of the aesthetic.…
At the Ready engaged necessary discourse, but unfortunately leaves its most fertile sites for interrogation unexplored. In light of the surging unpopularity of its subject matter, Maisie Crow’s sophomore documentary may come across as contentious and provocative in certain respects. Under the Trump administration, part…
The Eyes of Tammy Faye indulges the very spectacle it supposedly interrogates, betraying its aims and offering only a flattened take on its titular subject. The rise of evangelism has had no small impact on the cultural and political dynamics of America today, having —…
To make an effective political film, one frequently turns to documentary as the best medium for truth; it’s hard to deny in exemplars of the genre that empirical rigor and emotional realism often prevail over shoddier, more selective depictions of subject matter. But documentary…
“It’s your show I’m cancelling, not you,” remarks one character to another in The Accusation, encapsulating, intentionally or otherwise, the thorny politics at the heart of the film. That Yvan Attal’s seventh directorial feature exists in its present form — that is, in its…
Flag Day’s aesthetic cribbing and histrionic character result in a floundering film that feels too desperate by half. The realm of biography occupies an uneasy position between narration and narrativization; its sweeping strokes complement and contradict personal undercurrents in equal measure, and it is…