Alex Saveliev

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.

While not as insightful as his previous work, Halston doesn’t blemish Tcheng’s resume either, providing a perfectly enjoyable – if inconsequential – portrait of a larger-than-life public figure. Fashionistas will surely gulp this up, while the rest of us may ultimately dismiss it as yet another glamorized, facile look into a glamorized, facile industry.

The Creator marks the first time, it seems, that the filmmaker stepped out from the shadows of franchises and dipped back into what made him stand out in the first place. He's proven to have a flair for mesmerizing visuals, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, and plenty of pathos.

Rather unexpectedly, the result is gripping and immersive, bolstered by a committed cast and some remarkable visuals.

Freaks subtly subverts the superhero formula under the guise of a hallucinatory, cautionary tale of paranoia, delusion and extreme parenthood.

A Haunting in Venice marks the best, most succinct, and humorous adaptation of an Agatha Christie story by Kenneth Branagh yet.

Fans of Roth will gobble, gobble this up.

Dermer maintains a bittersweet tone, a gentle mix of levity and pathos. He studies the complexities of friendships, dealing with loss, looking at life as if for the first time, living each day as if it were your last, letting go, and trusting people more. He poses some intriguing questions.

Mehta skillfully navigates both the tender sequences and the more devastating ones. Aided by Howard Shore's rousing musical score, she portrays a beautiful country ripped apart by social violence. Her film serves as an ode to those who either died or were forced into exile for having the courage to express their true identities.

Perhaps most compellingly, it’s a reminder to open our eyes, to notice the bigger world around us for what it is, to see who we really are. Toussi never preaches, gently luring you into an utterly tranquil state, wherein you may just find yourself booking a ticket to Colombia.

At 90 minutes or so, with the needless pseudo-artistic embellishments and tautology tossed out, Armand would have been an intense and cerebral little psychological nail-biter.

I’ve Got Issues brings to mind the zaniness of Quentin Dupieux, with a dash of Todd Solondz’s existentialism and the off-kilter freestyle nature of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s stuff. If you find one of the bits redundant, its brevity ensures another one is coming right up.

Loving Highsmith is about loving Highsmith and all that implies. As such, it gets the job done perfectly.

The filmmaker, doing a lot with an extremely limited cast and location, has a concrete vision and sticks with it, and whether you get it or not is up to you. A character in the film, when confronted, states: “Big question. Too long to answer.” That pretty much summarizes this cinematic endeavor.

Go with the somewhat far-fetched concept, get past the overt sentimentality, and you’ll find a true crowd-pleaser.

Bolstered by Mark Bradshaw and Marcus Whale’s electronic drone soundtrack and Bonnie Elliott’s atmospheric cinematography, Run Rabbit Run could’ve used some more forward momentum. It lacks outright scares and novelty but makes up for it in some psychological depth. Reid’s film may not reach the profundity it strives for, but how many horror titles even strive for anything these days?

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.

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

Despite all the flaws, Sputnik has one chief thing going for it: it holds your attention, from the first (and arguably best) twenty minutes, to the last (and arguably worst) twenty.

With Babylon, Chazelle laments and condemns; he documents and romanticizes. There’s truth beneath the embellishments. The filmmaker gives this project his all. Luckily, it all works. Bravo.

The White Crow demonstrates that, if perhaps not having yet mastered all of the nuances of directing an artful biopic, Fiennes possesses a keen eye for detail – and the man just can’t help but exude sophistication.

With A Taste of Hunger, it is clear that Boe loves food. The film celebrates the culinary arts, as the cinematography lovingly displays exquisite dishes that please the eye as much as the taste buds. He studies how light and sound may affect taste. His approach to gastronomy is as meticulous as the dishes his protagonist prepares.

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.

As effortless as Clooney and Pitt’s screen charisma is, one can’t help but wish for a more polished scenario to complement it.

A bit too somber and detached for its own good, Human Factors nevertheless marks another strong entry from a filmmaker who – after several shorts, a documentary, and one other feature – is just getting started.

For all its claims to be rebellious, Good Boys is surprisingly tame by today’s standards.

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.

Jared Leto's performance as Maurizio’s cousin, Paolo Gucci, is so over-the-top that it bursts right through the top and swallows up the film whole. Unrecognizable under layers of make-up, speaking in high-pitched, heavily-accented intonations, he’s a live-wire but also a caricature that borders on nasty stereotyping. He out-gagas Gaga (who’s at least partially of Italian ancestry), which is no small feat.