With The Killing of Two Lovers, Robert Machoian constructs a difficult balance between simple-yet-impressive visual techniques and more frenzied audio compositions to drive an underwhelming narrative.…
The Perfect Candidate keeps the stakes low and can be cloying at times, but its story is necessary. Haifaa Al-Mansour, whose 2012 feature debut Wadjda…
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…
Much like the man at its center, State Funeral is an inscrutable, complex work. Josef Stalin died on March 5th, 1953, at his Kuntsevo dacha,…
Berlin Alexanderplatz fails to build to any climax that would justify its length, instead spinning out into infinity and confusing circuity for world-building. If Alfred…
Sharrock’s middlebrow approach and sitcom-ready style undermines much of Limbo’s potential power. About a decade ago, Serge Daney’s then recently-translated essay “The Tracking Shot in…
Four Good Days occasionally flirts with authenticity and pathos, but is mostly content to crank up the melodrama and hammy acting to deadening effect. The…
The County foregoes nuance of character and narrative in favor of a feel-good construction. I don’t know much about the history of the co-op farming…
Eat Wheaties! isn’t necessarily a pleasant watch, but it’s committed to its abrasive vision and will likely work well for those already in its lane.…
Here Are the Young Men fixates on its most histrionic narrative beats and hypermasculine conflicts at the expense of its greater strengths. Set in 2003…
Together Together is a chemistry-rich, mature, and restrained effort of non-rom comedy. It’s never a promising sign when a film’s opening credits mimic a certain…
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…
Hopinka’s feature debut is a poetic and evocative film, one that seeks to quantify and articulate the symbiosis of humanity and earth. A prolific maker…
Monday is a derivative, dull, and altogether flat effort that captures none of the carefree spirit it partially peddles. With an overly familiar and intentionally simple…
Gunda is an empty, exploitative aesthetic exercise that that has no ideas to speak of. If nothing else — and it truly offers little else —…
Moffie is a visually striking film but one which suffers for failing to fully commit to the ugliness inherent to its narrative. Moffie is the…
Slalom is a raw and unpretentious study of trauma and the ways in which young women can wrest back control of their own course. The…
Funny Face works as genre deconstruction and cinema of a certain geography, but its attempts at explicit commentary are less successful. Tim Sutton is a…
Nina Wu’s early patience and promise unfortunately gives way to a more sensationalized, ill-conceived study of trauma. Hailed as Taiwan’s answer to the #MeToo movement…
This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is a remarkable debut, a tonally complex and visually sumptuous marvel. Existing in a kind of liminal…