My Prince Edward is presided over by star Stephy Tang and director Norris Wong, both of whom reject schematism in favor of more subtle, surprising…
Dear Santa succeeds in encouraging an emotional response, but does in the most manipulative of fashions. Documentary filmmaker Dana Nachman strikes again. Her latest effort,…
Kill It and Leave This Town is an impressive technical achievement and often stunning, but its central nihilism is oppressing and is bloated at feature…
Songbird is a well-directed but otherwise bland, opportunistic bit of pablum. The press materials for the new COVID thriller Songbird spill a lot of ink…
Smiley Face Killers is a fascinating failure; not a good film, but frequently a compelling one. Brett Easton Ellis has never written a sympathetic character in his…
Don’t Click is an outdated, ineptly made film in the running for Worst of the Year honors. In 1997, Michael Haneke unleashed Funny Games onto…
Love, Weddings & Other Disasters is sub-Garry Marshall drek built upon half-assed jokes and underdeveloped storylines. Dennis Dugan has gifted the world some of Adam…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service…
Survival Skills doesn’t entirely work, but it’s a bolder film than it initially appears and at least may engender necessary social discourse. “That uniform doesn’t…
Minari sets up opportunities for deep engagement, but it mostly forgoes those in favor a flattened series of simplistic, bittersweet vignettes as narrative. Bill Forsyth’s…
The Prom doesn’t offer much in the way of insight or novelty, but its glitz-and-glitter styling is a welcome confection at the end of 2020.…
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.…
Alex Wheatle is the slightest of the Small Axe films in many ways, but it’s also perhaps the most instructive as to the project’s overarching concerns. Having…
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…
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…
Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine thankfully manages to avoid status quo filmmaking but still feels somehow unfinished. There seems to be…
The Mole Agent’s overly complicated setup and unnecessary dramatic flair detract from what could have made the film great — the real people. The…
Identifying Features Within a cinematic tradition that associates the violence of Mexico’s crime-infested northern border with the high-stakes machismo of drug cartels and CIA…