Carson Lund

Fiona Tan’s comprehensive project discriminates against no particular era or pedigree of imagery.

Its greatest asset, and another trait it shares with Mann and Fincher's work, is a careful attention toward the particulars of its milieu in a way that doesn't call attention to those period touches.

That Kind of Summer never quite resolves into any one stance on its subjects, an equanimity that’s to its credit.

What comes through clearly by the end of the film is the act of one artist's eccentric generosity breathing new awareness into the life of another.

Familiar as its art/life paralleling may be, it's all fueled by a filmmaker with an intimate relationship to his subject matter.

What’s so fascinating about the world of On Cinema is the way each creative outgrowth expands and deepens the lore, and Mister America’s universe-specific innovations renders the film indispensable in context.

Ethan Hawke's concentration on Seymour Bernstein isn't a betrayal of his own ego massaging, but rather an attempt to have a genuine soul-bearing conversation.

Catalan prankster Albert Serra's film ultimately emerges as a compact, improbably riveting viewing experience.

If it’s an ungainly variety, it doesn’t suggest directorial sloppiness, but the warmth of oral tradition as it dances around a cluster of themes (belonging, redemption, reconciliation) with the vigor of a yarn spun, porter in hand, alongside an open fire.

As in Nathan Silver's previous work, what could have been a rote retread of Pasolini's Teorema blossoms into a study of factional identity and power dynamics.

A film that so clearly takes delight in the unfolding of a story and the unpacking of an enigmatic character is refreshing in an arthouse landscape where such narrative qualities are often relegated to secondary concerns.

In its balance of a wispy narrative and long, quiet episodes of textual close reading, the film feels incomplete in a productive way.

The film’s collisions between the grave and the comic are crucial to its vision of a society cracking under the weight of its own inconsistencies.

It's a shame that the José Luis Guerín film's verbal qualities far outpace its formal attributes.

For a life beyond mere DVD supplementary material, the film could use a dose of rigor to balance out its steady stream of congratulatory pit stops.

It's true that the disorientation produced in the collision of Igorrr's frenetic style-mashing and Dumont's unadorned long-take aesthetic ensures that the film feels remarkably distinct from prior cinematic adaptations of Joan of Arc's life, but it's also hard not to wonder how this particular story might have played without the farfetched musical conceit grafted atop it.

Dragnet Girl features an array of seemingly debased molls and violent loners who blow off steam with punching bags in between petty wrongdoings, but it never outright vilifies any of them.

Stephen Cone's Princess Cyd is distinguished by a dramatic complexity that would seem to run counter to its remarkably even-tempered tone.

Out 1 is largely a film of conversation, as its prolonged rehearsal vignettes regularly give way to even lengthier scenes of verbal self-analysis.

The film’s reminder of the fragility of agrarian traditions in the face of a merciless profit motive is delivered with tact and subtlety.

A buoyant tribute, even if the pedigree of the project implies something more paradigm-shifting.

In My Room often exhibits an interest only in the accruing of incidents, giving it a this-happens-then-this-happens quality that defiantly eschews psychological shading.

The film’s unifying theme is the egocentrism and inevitable violence of masculinity.

When the appeal of the film's whimsy wears off, the fogginess of its historical perspectives comes to the fore.

Milestone’s direction is only sporadically inspired.

The film isn't really fooling anyone into feeling doom-laden suspense (Paris, after all, is still standing), but the principal performers sell the momentousness of the drama.

Ramin Bahrani's talent for orchestrating sequences of tightly wound tension is in full bloom here, as is his complementary knack for quieter grace notes.

If not exactly an endearing experience on the whole, Irma la Douce is a fine example of Billy Wilder’s mid-career eccentricity and cosmopolitan curiosity.