Black Bear is a challenging diptych study of life and art, and the blurred, impenetrable intersection of the two. In the debate between mimesis and…
With Lovers Rock, McQueen mostly turns down his directorial affectations and let’s the film’s beauty and joy act as guide. Steve McQueen has always been…
Between the World in Me capitalizes on the power and poetry of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ words but contributes considerably less as a visual document. Published in…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Once Upon a River is frequently pretty to look at, but Rose fails to build much depth into the film’s fable-like narrative. Once Upon a…
The Forty-Year-Old Version deploys a charming lead but never manages to coalesce its many and varied influences. Within the relative glut of 21st-century hip hop…
Kajillionaire is both July’s most restrained and most maudlin work to date There’s no denying that Miranda July’s particular idiosyncrasy shares DNA with a number…
Enola Holmes is a cartoon. Or perhaps the problem is that it should have been. The film follows the title character (played by Stranger…
Inconvenient Indian succeeds where so many other documentaries fail — namely, in justifying its existence as a visual text. At first, Michelle Latimer’s documentary…
Residue is a singular, important achievement, a work of shattering beauty and necessary discourse. Director Merawi Gerima was born into an impressive cinematic lineage. His…
Iannucci’s latest isn’t quite a natural fit for the director, but he still mostly succeeds by injecting his trademark levity into the spirited core…
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a masterful and surprising adaptation from Charlie Kaufman, a work of towering humanism braced by an exquisitely disorienting…
The elevator pitch for Patrick immediately calls to mind Lukas Valenta Rinner’s A Decent Woman — both films are outré comedies set in the…
Ciro Guerra opts for transcription over translation, and in doing so, loses the allegorical power of Coetzee’s novel. Ciro Guerra’s Waiting for the Barbarians…