Bingo Hell is at least a horror film unlike last year’s Amazon/Blumhouse offerings, but is too full of questionable craftsmanship and hollow messaging to recommend. The…
Titane admirably reconciles opposites and piles on texture and sensation, but ultimately reveals itself far too content to trade only in cliché. What is the role…
Old Henry is about as dusty and unoriginal as westerns come. Writer-director Potsy Ponciroli’s Old Henry dares to go where nearly every Western in the history…
How does one condense over five decades of history into the limited duration of two hours? By making a hacky, talking-head documentary, obviously. But before…
The Tragedy of Macbeth The Coens excel in films that flaunt a superficial mastery of genre, form, and cinematic grammar, all to arrive at intentionally…
Coming Home in the Dark isn’t breaking new ground and its ending is a bit too tidy, but it’s a film that feels genuinely dangerous for…
Dear Evan Hansen is a manipulative, unintentionally awkward musical plagued by a black hole of a lead character. Dear Evan Hansen makes a pretty strong…
The Guilty should be primed for easy thrills, but Fuqua’s bland direction and the Scriptwriter 101 screenplay sap the film of any tension. Antoine Fuqua has…
Relative to other prestigious annual film festivals, NYFF typically operates — like due to its situation within the calendar year — as more of a…
Lorenzo Vigas’s The Box opens with a monotonous thump: the rhythmic sound of a shoe beating against the stained stall of a moving lavatory introduces…
We’re now quite a few years removed from Ari Folman’s critically hyped festival and awards season run for his animated documentary Waltz With Bashir —…
After Blue (Dirty Paradise) Bertrand Mandico’s new lo-fi whatsit After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is wildly ambitious, extremely beautiful, and maddeningly dull. In the film’s unspecified…
Walter Hill famously bristled at his film Southern Comfort being referred to as a Vietnam allegory; such denial has had him labeled as inexplicably stubborn,…
None of Mayday’s ideas are bold, and it presents its revolutionary possibilities as nothing more than mere daydream. At the beginning of Karen Cinnore’s Mayday, Ana,…
Dear Chantal After something of a breakout with last year’s delightful meta feature Fauna, Nicolás Pereda returns with Dear Chantal, a short created as part…
Birds of Paradise benefits from gorgeous compositions and dreamy direction, but it never quite reaches the heights its artful pirouetting suggests. On paper, Sarah Adina Smith’s…
Vika Kirchenbauer effectively established herself on the international experimental scene with her short Untitled Sequence of Gaps, from last year, an intriguing rumination on varieties of light…
Love Wolf boasts a bold formal idea that’s wielded to unfortunately perfunctory ends. Jonathan Ogilvie’s Lone Wolf, a political thriller told almost entirely through mock surveillance…
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…
Zhang Yimou’s One Second was originally scheduled to premiere at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival, but was pulled at the last, ahem, second for what…