Bilge Ebiri

So, it’s a ghost story, and a time travel story, and a folk tale, and something of a kitchen sink drama, but it’s also none of these things, really, and that’s where Jenkin’s formal gambits come in. His filmmaking has a lovely, homespun directness.

Disclosure Day can be messy, but much of its beauty lies in that messiness. It’s an astoundingly personal film, and we can sense Spielberg trying to feel his way through the conflicting aspects of his vision.

For the most part, the film is a model of narrative economy and clear character development, all grounded and enhanced by Scott’s delicate performance.

Built around silences and the steady accumulation of human and natural detail, the story feels at times as if it’s being told by the tree itself: omniscient, unflinching, yet shot through with an almost alien tenderness. Its perspective is not so much Olympian as it is pointillist.

The Stranger, it turns out, is a story for our times, which makes this lovely new version doubly welcome.

The surprises are mostly in the details. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is bursting with ideas that feel like clever marginalia on an otherwise familiar setup.

What distinguishes Two Prosecutors is not its overall narrative trajectory (which reads more like a bitter cosmic joke than anything else) but rather how Loznitsa subtly colors in Kornyev’s journey through the halls of power.

Shot in black and white and filled with images of collapse, Below the Clouds is nevertheless a strangely hopeful work.

Hoppers is a fun, modest little movie with enough zip and charm to keep kids engaged, and as such, one doesn’t want to criticize it too much. But the memory of what Pixar once was, the behemoth that redefined animation for multiple generations, may still make us wonder where all that energy and originality and artistry went.

The film Segan has made is very much its own thing. It’s a twilight fable of a city that’s changing, whose spirit remains distinct and grand and full of mystery, much like the remarkable actor at its center.

While The Ballad of Judas Priest may not always feel complete, by centering the music, it excites our curiosity long after the credits roll.

Not an image is wasted. Not a single line of dialogue feels unnecessary, or a subplot tangential.

Zi is fascinating, at times even rapturous.

It’ll probably drive some people crazy, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Through heightened control of imagery and mood, attention to composition and texture and sound, Manuel turns this simple, languid setting into something far more sinister without ever betraying the beauty of what’s onscreen.

Knife deserves credit for more than just its compelling depiction of a horrific recent event. It artfully interweaves multiple threads from Rushdie’s life and career. The film works as a biography as well as an important history lesson.

McKinley establishes just the right amount of physical and emotional stakes, and a cast led by Ethan Hawke infuses the drama with believable camaraderie, conflict, and tension. It’s the kind of atmospheric, exciting period drama we don’t really get much anymore.

For a movie so filled with death, The Oldest Person in the World is surprisingly, almost confrontationally life-affirming. That sounds cheap, but Green comes by the sentiment honestly.

[A] truly monumental work of art ... The footage has been edited with fluidity and grace.

Azzam and MacInnes give us a modern-day epic that traverses borders — truly, they’ve captured some incredible footage — but they outdo themselves by following that up with an absorbing, complex tale about the challenges of assimilation.

The peculiar charm of Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story ... lies in the way it’s driven by genuine curiosity about its subject. ... Watching Paralyzed by Hope, we start to understand why other comedians, including Apatow himself, would be so fascinated and electrified by Bamford’s work.

Like most art world satires (a generally cursed subgenre), The Gallerist doesn’t ultimately have all that much to say about the art world that hasn’t been said a million times before. But it’s also a blast, thanks to its energetically mannered performances and director Cathy Yan’s snappy pacing and flair for visual humor.

We talk of fictional movies with documentary touches, but Union County sometimes feels like a documentary with some fictional touches.

Josephine might not tell a particularly original story, but it tells it in a way that makes us see the world anew.

This could all easily get tiresome quite quickly, but the director has a light touch thanks to his poppy, direct style — colorful close-ups, broad line deliveries, simple cuts.

The beauty of DaCosta’s film is that these particular ideas are worked in subtly, even though The Bone Temple itself is not what one might call subtle. In fact, it’s downright looney tunes.

Despite Chalamet’s blazing brilliance, we don’t particularly root for Marty, or feel for him, or even hate him; he feels like a plot device in his own story. And yet there’s something there. Maybe the fact that this tale of constant forward motion has little room for humanity or reflection or reason says something about Marty and his times — which of course are ultimately our own.

Fire and Ash is in some ways the messiest of the three Avatar movies, but it’s also the richest, the one in which we most lose ourselves, the one that makes us wonder about these characters and constantly peer into those rapturous backgrounds, trying to see forever.