Adam Solomons

Scarlet amounts to a frustrating waste of animating and directorial skill for the price of an excessively ordinary story.

The Sun Rises On Us All soon becomes the disheartening but affecting story of a pair of broken people for whom salvation is simply unaffordable in a morally expensive world.

Pavements is an important documentary. It’s a reminder that the fourth (and fifth and sixth) wall can be smashed, that the rock doc can be reinvented. And that when the message is meta for meta’s sake, why not make the medium that way, too?

It’s unable to channel the essence of what made Powell and Pressburger’s films unforgettable. Sadly, it’s not really trying.

In posing substantive questions about the nature of romance and relationships, it’s smarter than virtually any American studio romantic comedy of recent years

When the Light Breaks is the rare film that might benefit from being a good deal longer. It’s certainly well made and has enough to say to have been assured of this critic’s goodwill for quite some time longer, and might have been able to explore the messy implications of its premise in an even more interesting way.

For those who know little about the subject matter, Dahomey is a bold and memorable history lesson. But with Diop’s expressive talents as they are, it’s fair to hope that she returns to the world of fiction next time.

Suspended Time never really brings its two big ideas together: the everyday challenges of the pandemic, alongside existential worries about what’s behind us and what happens after we die, feel too separate to build into something bigger.

Letting the movie do the talking often works best.

The Damned Don’t Cry is excellent, asking tough questions about society and morality without easy answers or neat conclusions. Non-actors populate the cast, performing terrifically, in one of many nods to the neorealist tradition out of which Pasolini’s film emerged.

As debuts go, The Featherweight is more than just a competent drama. It’s as nifty as its warts-and-all protagonist, with an inventive verité storytelling style inspired by John Cassavettes that also evokes the era’s filmmaking.

The performances — especially Stevens’ — are silly and sincere, and the action competent enough for “Cuckoo” to have worked as pure pulp. But this film takes itself too seriously and pokes fun at its own silliness, a fatal combination.

A sharp and well-made comedy with a better drama glued on the side.

Its three narratives never fully work together, even as they begin to interlink. Its moments of true emotional poignancy work well, but are all too rare in a film that otherwise has plenty to say.

With its use of body horror taking a backseat just when it might have worked best, Nell Eu is seemingly reluctant to make a B-movie, having written a script that could make for a fantastic one. That makes “Tiger Stripes” good, rather than great.

Although Scrapper — and Georgie — have some rough edges, Regan’s film is remarkably gentle, without being schmaltzy. Its wry observations are more effective than the big emotional swings Scrapper sometimes, but not often, chooses to take.

If 20 Days in Mariupol is about anything, it’s how much destruction can be done in such a short time.

It’s a shame that telling the Gibbons’ true story is a task too difficult for The Silent Twins, because there are real signs of promise.

In Bresson’s version, it’s the humans around the donkey who are the true center of the story. Not so in EO. This is Donkeyvision, and we’re better off for it.