Carlos Aguilar

Its imaginative fantasies and enchanting acting won’t solve our ageless woes of the heart, but will certainly trigger a smile for their relatable absurdity.

Overwrought but nonetheless thoughtfully creepy, The Lake Vampire emerges as a new and formidable calling card for genre cinema in Venezuela and for Zitelmann as a creator.

Ideal as follow-up to a meditation session, McKenna’s feature turns less gratifying as the sharp light of reality trickles into its philosophical cracks.

Awfully bewildering till the end, a final bombshell catapults the persistently nonsensical plot onto a level of implausibility that defies basic logic and ethics.

Corny to its core but with enough charisma to avert total insufferableness, it’s a bubbly counteraction of a movie boasting a progressive conclusion.

The codirectors, unconcerned with visual ornamentation, disseminate facts clearly in an undertaking that’s scholarly adept yet disappoints artistically.

A poorly produced experiment by writer-director Dae Hoon Kim, also the act’s lead singer on- and offscreen, the film’s mere existence baffles.

Mann, an emerging Latino filmmaker, exhibits signs of vocation for the craft that could lead to a more fruitful product some day. For now, what he serves is a tortuous trick with a confusingly dark punch line for an ending.

Delgado Aparicio’s reflective direction with a patient eye for lived-in behavior and kinetic symbolism bears artistically ripe fruit in an affectingly measured, near-perfect tour de force that demands serious attention.

Heavy-handed messaging that mimics a morally didactic PSA drowns the proficiently shot movie in long tirades more noticeable for their vociferousness than for actually delving into any revealing specifics.

It’s a modest coming-of-age period piece that incidentally diverges into over-the-top dreamscapes.

But in spite of its form not being as compelling as its subjects, Rebel Hearts is still an inspired and inspirational recounting of a historical moment and the women at the center of it.

Seen then as radical, her views are in fact rather reasonable and still applicable. That said, the dense paragraphs in silent title cards prove strenuous. Since her inferences are immensely relevant, one can only wish that the format were more accessible.

White as Snow doesn’t go far enough into strangeness, but neither is this an adaptation aiming for realism. Only Huppert is on that skewed mindset, while everyone else plays it straight.

In 499, a truly brilliant accomplishment of unconventional storytelling, form and theme coalesce to open a portal where textbook history becomes an active entity and clashes with the present for a forward-thinking exploration.

Disconcerting in its justified bluntness, Myers’ brisk film is more monologue than movie, but undeniably essential in jolting everyone out of the collective complacency induced by the false perception of progress for all in this country.

On all fronts, “Bob Spit” is a welcome rarity in a medium suited but seldom used for the subversive in feature form with this world-class quality of technique and design.

Honoring its title, Courage finds its most goosebump-inducing imagery in the solemn moments of a hurt yet emboldened populace standing united: a stolen glimpse of a man crying, a breathtaking minute of silence for a fallen comrade, or the momentarily hopeful gesture of an officer adorning his shield with a flower as a sign of support.

For all the grief that the leads undergo in Chung’s most recent work, the result yields a life-affirming reminder to look across the room and see the other.

Song for Cesar manifests as the scrappy but meaningful results of people coming together to document a chapter of America’s recent past still not as visible as it should be.

Throughout, we share in Farah’s frustration, as Ahmed’s behavior suffocates the film, exponentially raising the necessity for a narrative catharsis. And in that regard, the director’s intent is effective, given that she waits until the very end to provide this release.

Although some of its components spark with cleverness, it lacks overall narrative sophistication as a work of storytelling art, even if considering the vintage-cinema tone it seeks to replicate.

There’s not a single frame in Stever’s film that takes the obvious compositional choice, placing the viewer in a perennial sense of disorientation that matches the film’s perturbing themes.

The impact of the narrative hinges on Perelman Striks’ fierce performance that conveys the character’s desperation to fulfill the promise of his talent and the frustrating inner battle to suppress his truth.

Armed with a perceptive ensemble cast, Del Paso formulates an intellectually rich critique on a thorny subject for a country still reluctant to face its entrenched moral vices.

As with plenty of memorable comedies, what makes “Dad & Step-Dad” a special treat is that beneath its well-mannered raunchiness and stoic silliness there’s an undercurrent of something truthful about the human condition.

Pimpinero grazes the chance of becoming a great film but repeatedly lets it slip from its grasp, settling for being just slightly above average.