Ride or Die is overlong, fails to believably sell its central relationship, and ill-advisedly resolves with a bit male gaze exploitation. Whatever the many other faults of Ryuichi Hiroki’s latest feature Ride or Die, it certainly can’t be accused of not practicing truth in…
Tina might not be as encompassing as some viewers might like, but the result is a moving, celebratory tribute doc all the same. One of the many illuminating stories told in Tina, Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s softly conventional but intensely moving docu-portrait of rock…
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, summer of 1973. A kid yells from the fire escape outside a brownstone window to his friends on the street below. A swooping crane shot glides from him down to the street, then captures a montage of bodies and objects in constant…
Keep an Eye Out is a mere blip of a film, but for fans of Dupieux’s deadpan gonzo schtick, there are small pleasures to be found. Electronic musician turned filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, in such films as Rubber, Wrong, Wrong Cops, and Deerskin (a particular highlight…
Among the many effects of the Covid-19 pandemic is how it has radically transformed every aspect of cinema, including the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of its creation. One artistic response is to lean right into these changes, allowing them to shape the aesthetics of the work.…
Stray is a restrained, poignant study of abandoned souls, dog and human alike. Stray, the title of Elizabeth Lo’s mesmerizingly observational documentary, nominally refers to the dogs roaming the streets of Istanbul, dogs which the film follows in sweeping, impressively-executed tracking shots from dog’s-eye level,…
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, drummer of the legendary hip-hop band the Roots, besides his many other talents, is a music historian and professional DJ. Thompson deftly puts both of these skills to work in his debut feature, the alternately exhilarating and infuriating documentary Summer of…
The timely and harrowing MLK/FBI explores a particular American history that isn’t so safely in the past. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is now a near-universally revered and beloved historical icon, but as Sam Pollard’s meticulous and quietly infuriating documentary MLK/FBI shows,…
American Utopia provides a brief respite from reality and leaves the viewer hopeful for what’s to come. In the midst of the annus horribilis of 2020, with the US still being ravaged by a global pandemic, all manner of racial strife, a severe economic…
Godard’s famous axiom (by way of D.W. Griffith) about a girl and a gun being the essential elements of a movie is given a very literal demonstration in Rae Red’s grim and despairing solo directorial debut The Girl and the Gun. The narrative is…
