Anthony Kaufman

The fantastical elements soon fade away and the film becomes grounded in the tender realities of growing up, finding oneself and questions about love, sexuality, home, family, and the future.

All in all, Nine Days is a stellar feature debut, with strong filmmaking, from its assured compositions to its superb dimly lit frames, where shafts of outside light or wall lamps illuminate slivers of the sets. And Winston Duke, who appears in just about every scene in the film, offers a complex portrait of a wounded man.

A compelling political campaign chronicle and an incisive allegory of American democracy, Boys State is also much more fun that you’d expect.

Minari is never downbeat, despite the challenges the characters face. Chung’s love for his characters—and the Arkansas farmland where he grew up—always shines through.

The Dissident holds few new revelations but presents its case with enough infuriating evidence and storytelling power to make it worthwhile.

The film is a unique, albeit rarefied example of hybrid cinema that reveals emotional truths through staged reality.

Estes handily pumps up the tension, and keeps the story moving along at a brisk pace. There may be nothing particularly memorable about the filmmaking on display, but Relive is focused mostly on its actors.

Both intimate and epic, American Factory offers a remarkably candid, fly-on-the-wall account ... It’s a deceptively lighthearted look at one of the most significant cultural and economic conflicts of our times.

I Am Mother mostly satisfies as another example of smart and slick indie sci-fi.

It’s intelligent and clever scripting, and except for a few moments where the dialogue is overly expository, as if Burns doesn’t trust his audience, The Report pulls back the curtain on America’s political machinations and one of its most appalling policy decisions and attempted cover-ups with startling clarity.

The Farewell is so fixated on its principle problem that it doesn’t allow its story or its characters to veer from it, or find further complexities in it. There’s only so many scenes a story can take of family members trying to keep the truth from grandma before it become less compelling.

This meticulously conceived documentary is both a definitive account of the voyage as well as a creative, cinematic you-are-there unfolding of the events that transpired.

Silva is a shrewd storyteller, uninterested in genre conventions or shock value; rather, he’s using that tension to tease out the anxieties of ordinary life and interactions.

Everyone loves a conspiracy—which is one of the reasons that A Gray State, a tantalising and fascinating real-life story, makes for compelling viewing. But it’s also supremely timely.

The Settlers is captivating viewing for the most part. But it’s also muddled in its combination of historical and contemporary storytelling.

A poetic, though admittedly esoteric piece of cinema.

Golden Exits is an idiosyncratic film about little moments of human pain and loneliness. There’s jealousy, sadness, unfulfilled loves and lives, all of it relayed in quiet conversations and glances, rather than big dramatic scenes.

Some issues, Trophy powerfully conveys, are bigger and broader than they initially appear.

Mudbound is full of strong performances, singular moments, and a heavy heart, but it’s an over-ambitious affair that struggles to find the right balance between its many characters.

Deutch, who appeared in Beautiful Creatures as well as Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, delivers a sympathetic lead performance, carrying the film with equal doses of sweetness and grace, strength and vulnerability.

Though audiences may have heard this one before, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power preaches effectively to its choir, with a decade of fresh data and increasing cataclysms...to persuasively make its case.

It’s a classic underdog story, effective for its engaging chronicle of outsiders trying to change the system.

Agnus Dei’s filmmakers ultimately embrace the sin of over-simplification. And audiences, grabbing for their tissues, will likely forgive them of it.

There is not an ounce of flourish to the filmmaking, but that’s always been the director’s aesthetic. His embellishments come in subtler forms, with witty dialogue and memorable characters—traits that Love and Friendship offers in abundance.

Goat is a potent reminder that even traditional gender roles can be rife with angst, anxiety and devastating social pressures.

Refreshingly, there is no clichéd love story or illicit thriller that emerges; Marston is pursuing ideas that are far more personal and philosophical, about the masquerade of identity and what it means to that identity when you make a significant change in your life.

Reichardt has crafted another deeply felt and beautifully ambiguous meditation on contemporary life in the far corners of the American heartland.