Violet is a distinctly 21st-century woman-celebrating flick, perhaps a bit saddled by its too trite messaging, but still something of a feminist force of nature.…
The Two Sights can get a bit bogged down in esoteric gobbledygook, but Bonnetta’s image-making and aural noodling make for a mostly compelling ethnographic work. Filmed…
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,…
Suzanna Andler seems to spawn from a place of loving tribute, but it does little to contribute new insight or appreciation. During her lifetime, Marguerite Duras…
The Rescue is a moving work a immersion and stitch-work, crafting an empathetic documentary from its headline-grabbing story. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have a…
I’m Your Man has a clarity and vibrancy in its direction that isn’t achieved in its high-concept thematic concerns. Questions of humanity and love are pondered…
Multi-disciplinary artist Amalia Ulman finds exciting new means of express in her debut film effort El Planeta. This year, New Directors/New Films opens with Amalia…
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…
After the resounding triumph of On Body and Soul, a film whose stoic tenderness and tactile intimacy proved an outlier among recent Golden Bear winners, Ildikó Enyedi returns…
Blue Bayou’s reach for authenticity is entirely undermined by its empty, saccharine sheen of melodrama. In its broad strokes, writer-director Justin Chon’s Blue Bayou seeks…
Little Girl misunderstands where its focus should be and strips away most of its ambiguity, leaving little to really contend with. In the opening scene…
The Alpinist suffers a bit thanks due to a lack of access and more substantive commentary, but the frequent breathtaking feats captured are memorable enough…
Azor is a fascinatingly oblique quasi-thriller that grows in unsettling power across its runtime. Andreas Fontana’s Azor is a fascinatingly oblique quasi-thriller, carefully organizing a deceptively…
Dating abd New York offers sporadic pleasures, but can’t shake loose its obvious cribbing of familiar cinematic influences. Dating and New York, Jonah Feingold’s feature…
Language Lessons never quite becomes more than an acting exercise, but it’s still offers up intriguing questions about the disparity between online and offline personae. Among…
Memory House is little more than a mélange of affectations and overt symbolism, opaque for its own sake and succumbing to the worst arthouse pretenses. In…
Who You Think I Am attempts to speak to our current Internet age, but mines only shallowly with its picked-over storytelling mode. Juliette Binoche, for nearly…
Anne at 13,000 Ft. keeps its familiar portrait of an unraveling psyche fresh through its viscerality and opaque characterization. Anne at 13,000 Ft. only occasionally utilizes…
Faya Dayi is the best kind of documentary, one that eschews prefab forms and instead finds mesmerizing beauty in the quotidian. Programmed as part of Sundance’s…
Mogul Mowgli doesn’t quite know how to weight its issues or manage its scant runtime, but Ahmed keeps things raw and poignant. Rather strangely, Bassam Tariq’s…