Aaron Cutler

The artists prove a motif rather than a resting point, with the film circling around them, then breaking away for further visions.

The familiar plot shifts through Shiori's expected reactions, yet Cold Bloom proves fresh and evocative in depicting her changing world.

Ida unfolds partly as chamber play and partly as road movie, following the two women on a search for their dead beloveds' anonymous graves.

We see Phil's sons honoring him while going their own ways in a years-long effort to find the right pitch.

Even at its most on-the-nose, Big Joy serves the greater good of introducing viewers to its subject, whose voice rings clear throughout.

A guided tour of a struggle.

The men's faces often vanish as they go underground, threatened with permanent disappearance: the risk of dynamite bursting early, or of rope breaking and leaving them trapped. The filmmakers find those faces again in private interviews above ground, each miner sitting away from the others to discuss how he feels about the job.

A war film consumed with waiting.

Racing handheld camerawork and a pulsing rock score energize Roque's bargaining and bribing for the sake of changing an institution's antiquated customs.

The slippages and contradictions between who people are, imagine themselves to be, and present themselves as being inform the structure of Machine, a kind of loose container into which people step and out of which they extract more ideal selves.

The filmmaker once responsible for virtuoso, tragicomic social critiques like The Cyclist (1987) and Marriage of the Blessed (1989) now delicately works to see how beautiful the world can look when people embrace each other's differences.

The Shine of Day shows strangers rockily building a family together.

The film's energy is frequently low, befitting that of its main character, a stalled, self-loathing, San Diego–based indie musician named Brook (Dominic Bogart), breathing contempt for anyone asking him personal questions.