Alex Saveliev

While maybe not top-tier Jarmusch, the film certainly marks his most mature effort to date.

A modern-day Apocalypse Now, a visual and aural trip that’s as abstract and surreal as it is stark and realistic, Sirat urges us to embrace each other, as the world swells and throbs around us.

It strives as hard for authenticity as its protagonist does to remain relevant; the strain shows.

Featuring fascinating archival footage, timeless music, and a plethora of compelling subjects, Viva Verdi may have a rather narrow target audience. But boy, will it please them.

The stark contrast between the way-too-confident-for-his-age Jake and the introverted, insecure Ben underscores how identity at that age calcifies in opposition: one boy armoring himself with swagger, the other shrinking under its weight.

You’ll never look at life—through a camera lens, that is—the same way again.

Dispenses with all the flourishes and focuses purely on the story and the characters, the gentle humor and the heartrending moments. It all leads up to a wonderful final scene, a knockout punch that cements MacLachlan as one of cinema’s indie greats.

Woo and Benson don’t underestimate their young audience’s intelligence, subtly layering in complexity, which comes off as a mini-miracle.

Nuremberg is a competently made, overlong, corny, entertaining, poignant epic made by the filmmaker responsible for writing classics like Zodiac and duds like Independence Day: Resurgence — a jumble of the man’s best and worst tendencies. Scattershot? Yes. Way too long? Sure. Predictable? Yes. Cheesy? Yes. Did I secretly kinda love it? No comment, your honor.

Boasting impressive production values — especially given its budget limitations — it harks back to a more innocent era: a cozy, stylish, and mildly thrilling feature from a promising filmmaker.

It’s Plemons, who’s always stellar, that proves to be the real revelation.

There’s something missing in this concoction: self-aware humor, a courage of its convictions, a driving force that propels the plot forward . . . Perhaps it was all just too steep a hill to climb.

Audiences have grown so accustomed to nonstop thrills that the film does feel like a relic of sorts; they don’t make ’em like this anymore.

The personal and the political intertwine, until lines blur and dissipate. Anderson punches your gut while warming your heart, and he leaves enough room for you to draw your own conclusions. What remains inarguable is that One Battle After Another represents the pinnacle of the man’s astounding career.

This is pure cinematic meditation, requiring a surrender to its languid tempo and hallucinatory vibes.

Less discerning kids may enjoy Robin and the Hoods… when they’re not deep into their PlayStations and Switches.

Kudos to Max for conjuring genuinely unsettling, Boschian images with a limited budget.

Those seeking visceral thrills may be somewhat underwhelmed by Descendent, but the filmmaker firmly establishes himself as a descendant of the Benson/Moorhead cinematic lineage.

Stripped away off all privileges, a shell of a human remains, a carcass, and that glimmer of hope that keeps one going is the driving nucleus of the lyrical and timely To a Land Unknown.

A mostly-smooth, sometimes-uneasy blend of pitch-black drama and absurdist comedy, Sunlight may follow the age-old “road-trip movie” structure, but it fully commits to an offbeat, non-sequitur style/logic that will either compel or repel audiences.

The film effortlessly examines hefty themes like freedom, toxic masculinity, privilege, familial bonds (and the need to escape them).

An indictment of a regime but also a look at the strength that perseveres despite the most dire circumstances, this film, and its lead star, deserve all the upcoming love at the award circuit… if there’s any justice left in Hollywood, that is.

Barron was the only light in my life,” a character yells at one point. “What am I now – just another dog in your army?” Barron’s Cove could have been a light in the current cinematic landscape, but instead, it’s just another dog in an army of duplicates.

Basir doesn’t shy away from glaring into the gaping maw of despair. But he skillfully counterbalances it with an energy that propels the film forward; how refreshing: this filmmaker has something to say.

Salvable fully embraces its bleakness, its title almost mocking; there’s no salvation here. If it had a bit more originality or verve, it could potentially have pulled it off.

Shabbily structured, with barely any tension, characterization, scares, or thematic depth, Consecration, due to its utter lack of inspiration, loses the audience’s concentration within minutes, and may even lead to constipation (okay, maybe not the last part, but you get my drift).

The film amounts to a truthful portrait of family supporting each other in a time of crisis and a painfully real depiction of the hell that was the pandemic.

The entirety of Give Me Pity! is more of an artistic treatise, a museum piece, a series of single-woman monologues, than a coherent, you know, film, and that’s clearly the intention. One can do a lot worse than take a look inside Kramer’s head, and this one makes her other explorations of humanity, Please Baby Please and Ladyworld, seem positively conventional. Quite the feat.