King Car is more jester than royalty, a soft-bellied and derivative exercise in empty shock. New Brazilian feature Carro Rei (King Car) is aggressively weird, the…
On paper, Garrone’s moody temperament suggests a potentially fascinating Pinocchio adaptation, but all he really musters here is a dour, half-baked rehash and not much else. As…
Farewell Amor resembles, in shape, less accomplished recent indie efforts, but it eschews much of their patness in creating something altogether more complex and affecting. From…
Wild Mountain Thyme is a hurried, generic The Quiet Man-Hallmark fairy tale mashup, with all the mess and none of the fun that description suggests. From the…
ON-GAKU: Our Sound is something of a strange contradiction, managing both stupidity and profundity in equal measure. Kenji Iwaisawa was able to accomplish something few in…
76 Days’ rhythms are occasionally uneven, but it remains a fascinating glimpse at one of the defining crises of our times. There’s a harrowing sense…
Black Bear is a challenging diptych study of life and art, and the blurred, impenetrable intersection of the two. In the debate between mimesis and anti-mimesis,…
Sound of Metal is not the sonic game-changer that its marketing once suggested, but it works marginally better as a restrained, if formulaic drama. Sound of Metal…
The Giant is a textbook YMMV film: an audacious, elliptical fever dream that boasts a deeply affected style executed with a surprisingly sure hand. A dread…
Clearly indebted to the stylings of Guy Maddin, The Twentieth Century unfortunately feels merely mannered rather than touched by any genuine madness. In the Canada…
The Climb is perhaps overly familiar but boasts a chemistry-rich lead duo and a winning commitment to its comedy-by-repetition mode. The Climb opens on the image of…
Collective is a compelling portrait of bureaucratic inertia and stasis and a rich study in the difficulties of actual progress. On October 30, 2015, a fire…
Wolfwalkers doesn’t do much to upset its fable template but thrives on the strength of its complex and gorgeous animation. The final film in Tomm Moore…
Divine Love is a frustrating, contemptuous affair that ultimately builds little depth into its religio-dystopic premise. Gabriel Mascaro’s Divine Love comes at a timely moment for…
Jungleland is a deeply familiar film that injects little energy or originality into its template narrative. Max Winkler’s Jungleland follows bare-knuckle boxer Lion (Jack O’Connell) and…
Proxima is a markedly incurious film, happy to diminish all complexity of its female protagonist. Alice Winocour’s Proxima is a film constructed around a single premise:…
Fire Will Come retains a kind of documentary-based fascination even as it becomes clear capturing the titular blaze was the only real objective here. Oliver Laxe‘s…
Shithouse marks a promising debut from writer-director Cooper Raiff, effectively capturing the awkwardness and insecurity of the collegiate experience. One’s reaction to the coming-of-age dramedy…
The Wolf of Snow Hollow is yet further, winning proof of Jim Cummings’ singular artistic voice. Much like his debut feature, 2018’s Thunder Road, director-writer-actor Jim…
Swanberg’s latest represents a savvy and mature return to his early-career mode of filmmaking. Fifteen years after his first feature, Joe Swanberg is back where…