Dan Mecca

As the survivors of these schools grow older and pass on, this film should remind future generations on whose hands the blood rests. More must be done, but it’s a start.

Bittersweet, touching and always funny, The Farewell is lived-in from top to toe.

Too often do we take for granted the miraculousness of the moving image. Stigter’s creative extension and exploration of Kurtz’s film reminds us. What can we glean from three minutes of film shot in 1938? Plenty.

Train Dreams is a quiet, resilient work that will most likely age gracefully.

It’s worth a warning for those that watch––some images in 2000 Meters to Andriivka you will not soon forget.

Mostly funny and sometimes heart-wrenching, Showwalter, Nanjiani, and Gordon collaborate comfortably, finding laughs in the more dire moments.

There is life and death in every single frame of City of Ghosts, not to be easily forgotten.

That Culkin has both the charm and bite to carry it is superb, and there’s a bravery to the open-endedness Eisenberg permits. It’s clearly a personal endeavor and clear point of growth as a filmmaker.

Despite the creativity on display, the character choices and fatal decisions feel cliched.

The cancer-diagnosis plot device is certainly well-worn and can often be viciously maudlin, but Haley does well in utilizing it as a means to work on something a bit more nuanced.

Choe shows a deft hand in her brevity and economy of action. So little happens yet it matters so much.

Tonally, Moving On plays a bit unorganized. While the results are mixed, these performers make the journey worthwhile.

The film serves as a lovely reminder of why art is important, how watching something can make you feel, make you understand, make you consider.

American Doctor is hard to watch and it should be. It’s hard to live in a world like this, where things like this happen. Where we let things like this continue to happen.

This documentary lays the facts at our feet and gives us a glimpse of the brave people trying to keep books in libraries and keep young minds open.

Even seven years after his passing, that formidable presence and iconic voice envelop every frame.

Predators is a clear-eyed analysis of the cultural phenomenon, an earnest attempt at understanding why we enjoy watching these kinds of people get caught (apart from the obvious), and a reckoning with the morality of the whole enterprise.

Crowe is searching for something as a filmmaker. His first two features may not work as constructed, but it’s clear the themes and emotions within are important to him. There is ambition at the edges, here’s hoping the third time is the charm.

The prison drama is a well-worn sub-genre, ripe with predictive beats and expected narrative turns. Those behind this picture are determined to subvert those expectations, and the attempt–though not fully realized–is much appreciated.

It feels like there could be a second film just as compelling thanks to Lady Bird’s essential observations.

The majority of the film is driven by Riefenstahl’s own voice from various recordings. She often comes across as charming and intelligent. That is, of course, what makes her decades of denials and lies all the more disturbing.

This film is often slight but always welcoming. The two leads have a pleasant chemistry that elevates each exchange and build out a meaningful–and meaningfully deep–relationship that’s easy to engage with and root fo

Folktales captures a crucial moment in the lives of these young adults amidst a very particular setting with stark, unblinking honesty.

The subject matter is immediate and engaging. But the structure of this film is languid to the point of aggravation.

Kranz succeeds in finding understanding in the unthinkable.

A brutally cynical, largely unfunny film fueled by muddled social commentary.

This is a short, punchy bit of work. It’s hard to parse the fiction from the non-fiction, which is certainly the point. The people surviving through this war are keeping the cultural candle lit for future generations of Ukrainians. Both legend and fact must live on. Amidst the forlorn images and scorched earth, there is some sort of hope.

Formally, Living is unimpeachable. . . . That said, Living begins and ends with Nighy.