Catch the Fair One doesn’t quite pull off its untidy ending, but it’s still an impressive bit of viscerally and emotionally pummeling cinema. Integrating the…
There’s plenty to admire in The Novice, but a surfeit of ambition and an overreliance on certain aggressive formal qualities bogs down its execution.…
Benedetta is as bawdy as any Verhoeven on paper, but the director’s uncharacteristically meek directorial approach renders the film far tamer than it should…
Unstuck in Time offers intimate portraiture of its subject without ever resorting to apologia or hagiography. In 1982, a young Robert B. Weide wrote to…
The Beta Test is a bold advancement for Jim Cummings as a filmmaker, supplementing his films’ familiar character with greater formal skill and precise critique.…
Bergman Island is an intentionally ephemeral, frictionless bit of meta-fiction, conceptually justifiable but all the more frustrating for it. Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island is, quite…
The Nowhere Inn smartly softens its meta conceit with some winking humor, but doesn’t interrogate any of its ideas or rise above mere brand management.…
Dating abd New York offers sporadic pleasures, but can’t shake loose its obvious cribbing of familiar cinematic influences. Dating and New York, Jonah Feingold’s…
Some pacing issues occasionally upset We Need to Do Something’s otherwise effective tone, but it remains a solid, low-ceiling genre exercise. We Need to…
John and the Hole mistakes ambiguity for depth at every opportunity, forgoing actual psychological probing in favor of shallow posturing. Tapped by Cannes for its…
Enemies of the State fails to probe deeply, content with its story’s sensational surface at the expense of more meaningful study. Produced by genius documentarian…
Werewolves Within doesn’t deliver many scares, but it hits an amusing, breezy target that too few horror-comedies manage. Finn (Sam Richardson) is the new…
Holler stumbles a bit on the way to its ending, but its strength of direction, character, and milieu make for an often thrilling bit of…
In the cinema of the filmmaker Christian Petzold, it’s not hard to notice a motif of water that stands out across his work and…
The Dry perhaps ends too tidily, but it remains a welcomingly straightforward and visceral thriller that plays fair with its audience. Robert Connolly’s The Dry begins…
Monday is a derivative, dull, and altogether flat effort that captures none of the carefree spirit it partially peddles. With an overly familiar and…
Moffie is a visually striking film but one which suffers for failing to fully commit to the ugliness inherent to its narrative. Moffie is…
My Salinger Year is a gently romantic, old-fashioned love letter to literature and those irrevocably shaped by it. Philippe Falardeau’s My Salinger Year is the…