The Water Man is a slight film that gets bogged down under the weight of its heavy themes and nondescript myth-making. Let’s just be blunt for a moment: if The Water Man weren’t the directorial debut of actor David Oyelowo, it’s doubtful we would…
Hope is an emotionally brutal, bruising film about the tricky territory that comes between love and loss. Hope is the kind of film that, on paper at least, sounds like made-for-TV melodrama, its material ripe for big emotions and rampant sentimentality; and in the…
Wojnarowicz is a powerful docu-bio that looks to celebrate the life and radical ethos of its eponymous trailblazer. At a time when queer art is more mainstream than ever, it’s a good exercise to look back and reflect on its radical roots. While it’s obviously…
In 2017, former NSA contractor Reality Winner was arrested by the FBI and charged under the Espionage Act for leaking documents pertaining to Russia’s attempts to hack into American voting machines during the 2016 election. The resulting court battle, waged during President Donald Trump’s…
Modern American politics are, needless to say, a raging dumpster fire; bad news for the country, but great news for documentarians who have been busily churning out films on the dire state of affairs. These films of course range from rudimentary, PSA-style docs that…
The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a tonal misfire that fails to ever find the fascinating, complex story at its core. Lee Daniels has an almost unparalleled knack for turning serious subject matter into cartoon, an approach that works when it flirts with…
Despite Rahim’s best efforts, The Mauritanian fails to bring anything new to the familiar thematic and historical territory it recycles. Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian is one of those ripped-from-the-headlines dramas that feels somehow both too soon and too late: the story it details is too…
In 2008, three Dutchmen were accused of deliberately infecting scores of men with HIV during a series of sex parties in a crime that came to be known as the “Groningen case,” after the city in the Netherlands in which it took place. Evidence…
Land works best as a swooning mood piece, but lacks in thematic complexity and is too familiar by half. In Land — one of the two high profile films at Sundance 2021 directed by popular actresses making their debuts behind the camera, the other being…
Based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen, Passing is an auspicious directorial debut for actress Rebecca Hall that follows a pair of mixed-race Black women whose light skin allows them to pass for white. Once high school pals, Irene…
