Mangrove too often gets lost in its dusty courtroom formula, but it at least boasts a human center that contrasts with the film’s trial spectacle. Steve…
Leap of Faith is a fascinating fireside-style docu-chat that affords William Friedkin the space to freeform story-tell. It’s a particular challenge (if not entirely futile endeavor)…
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…
Vanguard worships at the feet of CGI and grievously wrongs the past and present of action cinema in the process. Stanley Tong was at best a…
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…
Jiu Jitsu capitalizes on some playful camerawork and Nicolas Cage’s idiosyncratic presence to transcend its DTV trappings. Only in the realm of DTV could something so…
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…
Freaky is a playful and genuinely funny ’90s slasher revamp that boasts both surprising commentary and appropriately gnarly kill thrills. There’s a lot to like about…
Woody Allen’s long-delayed latest isn’t among the director’s most psychologically incisive works, but its minor-key efforts reflect a curious transposition of the director’s old-fashioned absorptions…
Ammonite struggles to summon the visceral potency or emotional depth needed to tell its story. Three years on from Francis Lee’s terrific gay drama, God’s Own…
Jingle Jangle is a deeply nonsensical and absolute blast of a Hallmark movie riff that quite simply needs to be watched. In its quest to conquer…
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…
As with any Herzog effort, there are pleasures to be found in Fireball, but the end result still offers decisively diminishing returns for the prolific director.…
Fatman remains a bleak bit of dark holiday fun even as it fails to seize on its more potent genre possibilities. Somebody deserves proper credit…
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…
Mank is a listless, conventional story of embattled genius, safely told from behind a scrim of sentimentality. In her notorious New Yorker article “Raising Kane,” which…
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…
Kindred doesn’t achieve much more than powering through a laundry list of tired indie horror film clichés. A studio releasing its seasonal horror offering one week…
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:…