Christian Gallichio

Seeds may be indebted to the elder subjects that Shyne centralizes, but it’s also a film that dares to look forward, suggesting that — despite everything — these farms will continue.

The Aftermath may lack the novelty of the first film and often takes on more than its runtime can account for, but it also successfully adapts the genre of espionage thriller to the documentary form with riveting results.

It’s a powerful, infuriating document of a family’s resilience in the face of massive communal pressure and to the notion that these types of small, necessary shifts can add up.

Like Fences, Ma Rainey is an actor’s showcase, yielding exemplary work from Davis and tragically indicating a complex range from Boseman in a career that was just beginning to blossom. In short, it’s one of the best films of the year.

While at times a brutal watch, with the film’s insistence on showing the ravages of COVID-19 in up-close detail, 76 Days will, I suspect, become a landmark document when talking about the virus and China’s initial response.

Although Tamhane’s sedate pacing might put off those expecting a more visceral dive into the culture of Hindustani music, The Disciple is profound in its microcosmic world-building, slowly creating Sharad’s life through individually realized moments, adding up to an extraordinary portrait of a failed artist.

Peete and Yapkowitz have created a tender portrait of the underappreciated singer, humanizing her experience within the recording industry and showcasing a one-of-a-kind musician who is only just beginning to get the recognition she deserved.

Saint Frances is truly a stunning debut, both in its overt treatment of problems women face all the time, and its sheer unconventional approaches to, what on the surface looks like, a conventional narrative.

Akin’s film draws connections to suggest that maybe through these crossings, we begin to understand each other.

The Reason I Jump is a rewarding watch that attempts to give insight into the interior lives of those living with autism.

Twilight suggests the futility of trying to solve some labyrinthian plot and that, instead, one should train their lens away from the facts and onto the people affected.

Gladstone manages to sell every emotion, moving from despair to wonder as the journey continues.

From Ground Zero isn’t a hopeful film by any measure. In fact, it’s a painful and upsetting watch that nevertheless does find some semblance of optimism in the filmmakers and the work that was made. By putting these stories on camera — whether they be nonfiction or scripted — these filmmakers are nevertheless shedding light on a conflict that many would prefer not to see.

The Best is Yet to Come may take a while to get to its point, but it is nevertheless made with a sincere conviction about the ways in which journalism can give voice to the humanity underneath these restrictive laws.

While not the sweeping historical exploration of “Kingdom of Silence,” Fogel’s film vigorously interrogates the reasons and methods behind Khashoggi’s murder, creating a humane portrait of a fiercely political journalist.

I Lost My Body is aesthetically beautiful, surreal, clever, and truly profound in its offbeat dealings with trauma. But, more than anything, it succeeds in humanizing a bloody hand, elevating its absurd concept into a film that demands to be seen.

The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet is a visually realized film with perhaps too much on its mind for its limited runtime.

While the first hour or so is compelling, the problem with The Policeman’s Lineage isn’t so much the fact that it’s an amalgamation of various genres and tropes, but more that there is little coherency when the film transitions between them, creating a feeling of whiplash.

Sorelle may not offer much hope in terms of how one can fight against these systems that preach continual change, but her film is still a striking if slightly overstuffed, debut from a filmmaker to watch.

Coup 53 is a live-wire thriller that is one of the best documentaries of the year.

Argentina, 1985 doesn’t break new ground within the genre, but it’s a fascinating re-enactment of a major historical moment in Argentinian history. Anchored by a beautifully curmudgeon performance by Darín, Mitra’s film is understated, compelling, and ultimately an important rumination on the incremental way that justice is served.

By presenting all sides, Kopple’s film provides objectivity at the expense of immersion, crafting an all-sides look at a well-known period in American foreign policy.

It’s a film that not only works as a self-reflective biography and community portrait but also as a testament to the living nature of literature, where a work is able to be interpreted and reinterpreted by the generations to come.

While Kim’s encyclopedic dive may not offer much revelatory information, it nevertheless acts as an insightful and streamlined primer into Paik and his work, allowing fellow artists and critics the time and space to speak about Paik and the radical shift towards video art.

Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World is a slick documentary that presents a compelling argument about the problems presented with institutionalized journalism, yet it somewhat fails to present the full picture. Nevertheless, it’s a documentary worth seeking out, suggesting the possibility of amateur investigators with the possibility to change the course of global events.

The Longs’ debut film may be Frankensteined together from disparate genres. Still, it also is an occasionally delightful, sometimes funny, but also just often dull comedy that, ultimately, wastes a game cast on underdeveloped material.

The People’s Joker is deeply weird and often feels like the first draft of someone’s first attempt at using genre as a type of autofiction. But it’s also heartfelt, fascinating, and a really compelling introduction to an original cinematic voice.

With its short runtime and heady mix of styles, scenes, and ruminations, it’s still a fascinating refraction of one of the most interesting filmmakers working today.

While a bit too opaque near the end, and perhaps not the horror show that one might expect, it’s nevertheless an impressive debut.

It’s a quiet film in every sense of the word. One that relies on the expressions of its actors over the words that they are saying, but it’s also one of the more compelling debuts in some time and a film that’s well worth seeking out.

Transition works as both a personal accounting of Bryon’s journey and a fascinating exploration of how gender is treated within conservative societies. That the film can account for both, drawing out the parallels, schisms, and nuances that exist within a society that strongly believes in a gender binary, is something of a minor miracle.

It doesn’t always work as a coherent whole, but The Amusement Park is still a fascinating experiment from a director at the height of his creative skills.

Brighton 4th might be slower and lack the dramatic stakes of other films that dive into this type of criminal activity, it’s still a compelling and somewhat tangential portrait of the Eastern European community that exists in Brighton and features a great performance by Tediashvili, in his first film role.

It’s a weird movie, to be sure, but never an off-putting one. It’s also one that sometimes feels like a chimera itself, pushing various genres and ideas together without fully synthesizing them. But it’s consistently beautiful, watchable, and a truly memorable debut for Oren.

Akoka and Gueret split the difference, inviting the audience to consider the meta-ness of everything going on while really just making a compelling social-realist comedy about what happens when a film crew descends on a working-class town. That the filmmakers end up making the same film as Gabriel seems to be the point.

"Look at Me” provides a fascinating overview of Onfroy’s meteoric rise in the music industry, while also broadly touching on the various legal issues, including appalling allegations of abuse, that dogged his career.

Not only does Ostroy contextualize her life outside of filmmaking, but he also centralizes Shelly’s steady and progressive growth from actress-for-hire to independent filmmaking force, noting how creative autonomy allowed her to develop her own projects but also slowed down the development time in-between movies as she scraped together financing.

Often echoing a thriller — Logan Nelson’s nervy score doing a lot of the heavy lifting — Nothing Lasts Forever is both concise and wide-ranging.

Morris is at the stage of his career where everything he makes is both polished and interesting. But, in recent years, he’s oscillated between sweeping institutional exposés and zoomed-in portraits of characters. If anything, Separated again demonstrates that he’s at his best with the latter, as the documentary’s interests stretch far beyond its grasp.

“Until the Wheels Fall Off” may not, no pun intended, reinvent the wheel of sports documentaries. But it’s a compelling dive into skateboarding culture from 1980 onwards and helps to illustrate just how important Hawk was to legitimize the sport.

While not a complete portrait of Lightfoot, “If You Could Read My Mind” provides enough key insight into the musician to entertain those who are already fans and convert the others who perhaps haven’t heard of him.

If “Planet B” is less than a sum of its parts, ending before the Webb is launched, and lacking overall closure, it’s still a wonderfully observational portrait of exploration.

Nash’at may have started the filmmaking process looking for something resembling humanity in the Taliban fighters, but what he found instead was a shocking level of resolve that we, and the US military, underestimated.

Adopting a fly-on-the-wall approach that prioritizes Muñoz’s subjectivity — sometimes to a fault — Mija is nevertheless a personal and sincere portrait of Muñoz’s struggles, and her ability to adapt in the face of changing social and professional upheavals.

Red Moon Tide is obviously the work of a director willing to push the boundaries of visual narrative, but he doesn’t see that work fully through.

While 7 Days occasionally goes too broad in juxtaposing Ravi and Rita, sometimes pitting them as ideological binaries instead of fully realized characters capable of vacillating in ideas, the film more often than not allows them to develop and shift as they get to know each other.

The film, then, is a useful primer for historicizing and contextualizing the relationship between methods of social control and the rise of policing, both as an unchecked institution and a term associated with the history of the United States. One just wishes the film would slow down every once in a while.

For those willing to spend ninety-plus minutes with Herzog as he riffs on the wonders of space, “Fireball” is a heartfelt tribute to scientific exploration.

Somber, depressing, and ultimately a must-watch, “Four Hours” moves through that fateful day with precise clarity – toggling between the lawmakers and those within the mob as the situation grew increasingly dire.

It might not break new ground, but Babes is nevertheless something quite rare these days: both emotionally complex and hysterical. Adlon has perfected this form of comedic earnestness in her TV work; it’s a welcome move into feature filmmaking.

When the film is focused on showcasing Holiday, it’s a truly captivating documentary.

A portrait of an eccentric town that almost feels like a social experiment, just as much as it’s a murder mystery, Last Stop Larrimah is a shaggy, fascinating tale that marries Duplass Brothers-style absurdity (they act as producers here) with the ever-popular true-crime genre to pretty enthralling results.

Gods Of Mexico is a film less interested in breaking down its conceptual framework — or even pushing forward a fully realized thesis — than it is about creating a structured cinematic experience.

There’s simply too many stories to contain about the Chelsea, but “Dreaming Walls” does well to show how the ghosts of the residents past can, hopefully, inform the hotel’s future.

You Can Call Me Bill isn’t a travesty; hearing Shatner discuss his life is always fascinating. But instead, the film’s a missed opportunity to unpack one of the more enigmatic figures in our public consciousness.

While the story beats may not be surprising, Poser still acts as an impressive debut for not only the directors but also Mix and Kitten, who create a simmering tension between them.

As a showcase of her creative process, as well as a dive into the repetition of touring, it’s a loving tribute to the artist and an invitation to listen to more of her music.

While occasionally dipping into adulation, especially when Fine gently probes Wilson to speak about some aspect of his life, the film is an excellent primer for deeper dives into Wilson’s life and a lighthearted hang with a musical legend.

Sealey’s film may not add up to a fully realized and coherent film, she has nevertheless made an engrossing feature that recontextualizes Bundy not as the alluring psychopath, but as a profoundly desperate figure, who craves attention.

Even if Story Ave occasionally dips into a well-worn narrative, it nevertheless features two powerful performances and acts as a showcase for its first-time director.

Even with the notable gaps in Dalla’s story and slight storytelling, For Lucio works as a professional, if not precisely personal, introduction to the renowned musician, showcasing how his songs reflected a country that was grappling with class struggles and an identity crisis during the 1970s.

While the ending––a weird collage that attempts to recontextualize the story that came before it––will probably be the main talking point, it’s also the least-interesting component of Erkman’s feature. Instead, it’s the bifurcated structure that lends itself to a compelling, albeit frustrating narrative.

In digging up what seems to be his own personal history, Honoré doesn’t trust the audience fully to fill in those silences.

A scattered, occasionally galvanizing, call to arms, To The End paints in broad strokes. Yet, when it lands, which it often does when focused on the sheer doggedness of its protagonists, Lears’ film replicates the simultaneous enthusiasm and indignation that propels these activists to continue working.

Not all choices that Williams and Jones make pay off—including a late-act decision to explicitly spell out the reasons Cadi is seeking revenge—but The Feast is a compelling addition to the burgeoning genre of eco-horror, one of the more gruesome, nasty films in recent memory.

This Land often feels like a simplified (but not unwelcome) plea for sentimentality— its observational approach essentially diffuses any political reading. It’s odd to watch a film so invested in the rhythms of politics that is also strangely apolitical.

While Trocker attempts to connect the form to the content of the film, he gets lost in his formalist conceits, never creating fully realized characters to hold the weight of his structural choices.

If anything, the murder is tertiary to the gossipy takes and fanciful camera work — this film is built around vibes, right down to its pulsating score by the electronic musician Koreless and its dancehall end credits.

When the film firmly goes off the rails in the second act, [Cronenberg] still showcases an ability to play up tension as the four children hunt each other in the expansive mansion. In isolation, the bifurcation works but, taken together, it suggests an underbaked concept that was never fully realized and, alternatively, a slasher that never makes its characters feel human.

Featuring pointedly jagged performances from James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan, the only characters in film besides their son Arthur (Samuel Logan), who moves around the film, and frame’s, periphery, Together is an occasionally slight, but nevertheless riveting showcase for the actors and Kelly’s decidedly unsentimental script.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is a violent, enjoyable action film that doesn’t aspire to preach. Instead, the film foregrounds Angelina Jolie reclaiming her title as a preeminent action star, moving at such an energetic speed that by the time you start to think about the sheer insanity of the plot, the credits are already rolling.

Unfortunately, as its title implies, Meat the Future is more glorified advertisement than deep-dive into the clean-meat movement.

It’s never anything less than an insightful watch, which doesn’t exactly make it memorable.

Body Parts has too many ideas running through it to cohere around an effective thesis statement, framing the entire narrative as one of linear progress toward inclusion. It unravels in too many different directions, cramming in first-person testimony, historical overview, and social context into a too-short runtime.

While compelling in individual scenes, especially as the boys navigate their increased anger at the world, Beautiful Beings ultimately whiplashes between too many ideas and subplots to create a coherent thematic through line.

Mosquito State may fall short in synthesizing its odd fusion of body-horror and cautionary Wall Street tale, but it’s nevertheless a memorably gross film that shows Rymsza should make work more often.

Return to Space is a bit too neatly packaged and overly idealistic about what SpaceX might mean for space travel. By turning their focus up to the stars, the filmmakers, unfortunately, ignore the myriad issues that private space travel creates on earth.

Somewhere within these two hours is a lean-90-minute action film that is only interested in violence and gore. Project Wolf Hunting may occasionally get bogged down in its own mythology-building, but once the kills start piling up, it’s easy to get lost in the mayhem.

In the end, The Mauritanian is an efficient procedural that condemns the Bush-era treatment of detainees more effectively than any other recent narrative film. It’s an affecting, but nevertheless tragic, watch.

Alice and the Mayor isn’t bad, per se; it’s just routine. Not radical enough to be the political call to action that it so desperately wants to be, and not fully developed enough to the character study that it eventually reverts back to, it’s a strange hybrid of a film, with the two disparate sections never really working in conjunction.

Taurus may not reach the existential heights of “Last Days,” but it’s a step in the right direction for Sutton and a continued reminder that Baker needs more roles that reflect his skill set.

In the end, Hillbilly Elegy is shameless Oscar bait only redeemed by Close and Bennett’s restrained work.

While always visually interesting, the plot fails to live up to the sheer detail of costume and set design. Waddington proves herself to be a stylish director. If only next time she can find a better script.

There’s little egregiously terrible about The Lost Husband, but a lot of the film is less than memorable. The relaxed, casual vibe is often at odds with the amount of sorrow that has seemingly crippled these characters. Yet, it’s the type of film that you already know the ending before the first scene is over.

Only time will tell if The Beanie Bubble represents the final dying gasp or merely the end of first-wave product-driven narratives. But, like Beanie Babies themselves, one hopes that this bubble will burst sooner rather than later.

When the film drifts into the larger discourse of Abercrombie’s fall, it favors simplistic answers — namely the democratization of social media — over a more critical interrogation of why Abercrombie fell, and how they are still trying to claw their way back to relevancy.

The Secrets We Keep is a film in search of a more coherent message.

The Goldfinger isn’t per se bad. It’s consistently watchable, Lau and Leung are capable actors, and the narrative––even if standardized––is interesting. But this is perfunctory in a way Infernal Affairs never was.

Marionette is a bit less than the sum of its individual parts. Still, for the first half of its runtime, the film is sufficiently compelling.

While Trauki’s film may not go down in the pantheon of killer creature features, like the similarly themed “47 Meters Down: Uncaged,” it’s a lean and effective B movie.

Paint is a truly strange film that is never the full-on comedy that one might expect, but it also never commits to the despair that seems to be lingering right under the surface. Despite a truly unhinged final twist that almost makes the entire film worth it, “Paint” is more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny.

We never get a full sense of what these people went through after finding out that Cline was their biological father, mainly because Jourdan doesn’t seem particularly interested in unpacking these issues, or giving enough narrative space to explore the psychological toll.

The Russos are obviously ambitious in their treatment, cramming what amounts to half-a-dozen features into this nearly 2.5-hour film. Overt stylization does not stifle a compassionate performance by Holland and breakthrough from Bravo, but Cherry is seemingly at war with itself, never able to synthesize form and content in a meaningful way.

The exploration of a survivor and their child navigating post-Soviet Poland is, on the surface, compelling, but Treasure doesn’t seem capable of threading the needle between a micro portrait of generational trauma and macro, collective trauma that is omnipresent throughout Poland in this era.

Despite featuring an intriguing set-up and good cast, The Night Clerk offers nothing new to the genre, predictably hitting the same beats, without variation.

The Ice Road is a serviceable, if incredibly convoluted, addition to a recent run of bland action movies that ask the actor to do the bare minimum— scowling as things explode around him.

While it has interesting things to say about cycles of abuse and the overlap between the church and abusive parents, those ideas are lost in a haze of non-linear storytelling. Even with such problems, this is compelling in individual scenes; if only they added up to anything.

Marlowe isn’t the catastrophe that others may make it out to be, but it’s instead just inert, forgettable immediately after the credits roll. Jordan feels like he’s going through the motions, uninterested in bringing any personality to the genre.