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…
The Reason I Jump stumbles a bit when it attempts to overexplain but is an otherwise illuminating and beautiful portrait of an underrepresented population. Based…
Born to Be tackles important subject matter but too often treats the individuals at its heart as subjects rather than partners in the documentary’s creation.…
It took legendary Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty 19 years after his barnstorming 1973 debut film, Touki Bouki, to deliver his sophomore film. Hyenas,…
Martin Eden is a subtle and complex character study of one man’s ideological tempest. Martin Eden — a character first created by Jack London, in…
The Projectionist is a lovely elegy for the glory days of film exhibition, one that 2020 has brought into surprising focus. Since getting clean a…
Modern-day Cuba, as documented in Hubert Sauper’s latest foray into political ethnography, is a third-world island marked distinctly by the stamp of first-world capitalism.…
Atom Egoyan’s latest is a self-serious dud that finds the director trying and failing to recall his once impressive weighty themes. There’s a certain…
The director’s latest work is built on quiet moments of spiritual and professional reflection, a Fellini-esque inward gaze at the artist and his art.…
Balagov’s debut proves a heady look at individualism, but one ultimately less substantive than it initially suggests. Tribal frictions unfurl, both combative and internalized,…
Bacurau’s initial promise of a raucous genre celebration ultimately devolves into a shallow approximation of those pleasures. There’s an undeniable sensuousness to the surfaces…
Sorry We Missed You finds Ken Loach taking on the gig economy and the Sisyphean struggle it inflicts. For over fifty years now, Ken Loach has specialized…
Young Ahmed is an misguided effort in the Dardennes’ usually rock solid filmography. Jean Pierre & Luc Dardenne have created a corpus of films strong enough…
Beanpole is a rending vision of aftermath, conjuring moments of real beauty from misery. War films have been with us as long as film has…
Beniamino Barrese’s The Disappearance of My Mother is a documentary portrait of Benedetta Barzini, the first Italian supermodel to appear on the cover of…
Synonyms is a film driven by an idea, one that rattles around in its protagonist’s head and belabors him at every step. The question is…
Chained for Life opens with a quote from Pauline Kael: “Actors and actresses are usually more beautiful than ordinary people. And why not?” Director Aaron Schimberg’s…
After his eccentric, taskmaster father (Udo Kier) dies, Andy (Tye Sheridan) — a burly, brooding mass of tortured American masculinity — joins a renowned…