In and Of Itself isn’t without its small hypocrisies, but ultimately surprises by delivering spectacle through its big heart and humanism. From 2016 to 2018,…
Fernanda Valadez’s debut, while sometimes frustratingly broad, tells a well-known tale through unusual eyes, giving the classic immigration tale a welcome twist. Within a…
Rather than recalling Bahrani’s past strengths, The White Tiger only serves to draw out the director’s worst instincts. Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has long focused…
Our Friend upends some familiar conventions of the terminal illness narrative, but also boasts plenty of missed opportunities. One of the things that can only…
Some of the most elegant and graceful tracking shots ever seen open Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor. They may be drone or helicopter-assisted; the camera, gravity-defying, soars…
Notturno is at times oddly diffuse, but the harrowing brutality it captures bears undeniable power. The echoes of war reverberate throughout Notturno, a film of…
Atlantis is an unsettling, poignant study of the casual violence that both informs the past and estimates the future. With Atlantis, director Valentyn Vasyanovych (also…
The Salt of Tears is a pensive film that finds the aged director again reckoning with notions of parenthood, permanence, and familial legacy. Over the…
Downfalls High barely qualifies as a film and attempts little but manages to ride MGK’s guiding charisma to some playful places. If you were one…
When Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep came out in 1996, the brash, freewheeling experimentalism of the French New Wave was already long in the rearview.…
Some Kind of Heaven finds legitimate pathos within the oddball trappings of a would-be utopian retirement community. From the cold and gloomy vantage of New…
The Ultimate Playlist of Noise abandons an interesting conceit for a far more staid one but still manages to be charming enough in spurts. Sound…
The Dig is a gorgeous effort but entirely sidelines the fascinating psychological and emotional terrain implicit to its narrative. Every niche interest deserves its own…
Outside the Wire boasts enough requisite action fodder to keep things moving, but in failing to meaningfully develop any of its ideas, become little more…
Locked Down wants to be the film of this pandemic moment but is instead tiresomely repetitive, tonally chaotic, and already outdated. A January 6th puff…
The Marksman is a sturdy and uncomplicated but mostly satisfying entry into the Neeson oeuvre of stoic, righteous masculinity. Another exercise in stoicism and dignified…
Hunted isn’t a bad film, but the genre aficionados who are likely to seek it out won’t find much genre styling to sustain them. Vincent…
Imagine my surprise when a cursory online search revealed that virtually no critic of note has written a modern reassessment of the 1986 serial-killer-road-movie…