With Fourteen, Dan Sallit continues to prove his skill as a masterfully rhythmic writer and purveyor of low-key humanism. Audiences aren’t exactly suffering from a dearth…
Samurai Marathon, NYAFF’s opening night film, is a rather odd bird. It’s a Japanese jidaigeki period-piece from British director Bernard Rose (Candyman, Immortal Beloved) and…
Karim Moussaoui’s Until the Birds Return boasts a multi-narrative, ensemble structure, weaving between the lives of three modestly connected sets of characters. The film’s focus is on the subjects’…
In attempting to tackle topical material, Run This Town proves itself more part of the problem than the solution. Writer-director Ricky Tollman’s Run This Town purports…
Sorry We Missed You finds Ken Loach taking on the gig economy and the Sisyphean struggle it inflicts. For over fifty years now, Ken Loach has specialized in…
Extra Ordinary is a genuinely exciting debut that delivers a charming, standout comedic lead turn from Maeve Higgins. Writing-directing duo Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman and…
Heimat Is a Space in Time is a film of palpable gravity but one that may always be more meaningful to Heise than to audiences. Heimat…
Director Carlo Mirabella-Davis recalls such singular voices as Antonio Campos and Michael Haneke with the visually rich, metaphorical horror film Swallow. Like a lot of…
The sixth feature film from Pema Tseden is a dream-inflected, almost Rashomon-like take on a road movie that uses the barren hills of the Kekexili…
A White, White Day is an uneven story of overcoming trauma that fails to muster the requisite pathos for its thematic material. Iceland’s Oscar entry this…
An utterly predictable narrative exercise, And Then We Danced salvages some intrigue in the celebration and presentation of its titular art. A familiar tale rears its head…
While Saint Frances manages to mine some rich thematic material, its standard lo-fi indie aesthetic fails to elevate. For his feature film debut, director Alex Thompson teams…
Tseden’s latest is a clever indictment of the ways that both religion and government seek to deny women their due agency. Tibetan director Pema Tseden’s artistic…
Patricio Guzmán’s latest documentary offers similar but waning insight to his two previous, more successful efforts. The Cordillera of Dreams is the third and final film…
After Midnight is an exercise in indie intentionality, seeking to upend genre convention but mustering only smug banality. Labels are always reductive and usually insulting. They…
Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest is a rhythmic, matter-of-fact portrait of economic compromise. Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Earth, from the outset, frames its massive landscapes as sites of continual…
VHYes is a wannabe absurdist curiosity but is instead an interminable viewing experience. Jack Henry Robbins’ VHYes is the kitschy, post-ironic, pseudo-found footage 80’s pastiche the world didn’t…
The shallow characterizations at the core of Les Misérables dampen the effect of its incendiary anger. Ladj Ly’s debut feature may be called Les Misérables,…
An experimental documentary of modest means and sweeping scale, Chinese Portrait offers a scintillating snapshot of a rapidly changing nation. Director Wang Xiaoshuai assembled the…
Seberg is just the latest film to signal its interest in issues of racial injustice, and progressive commentary, only to counterproductively build itself around the travails…