Daniel Schindel

Crucially, the emotional scenes are some of the ones in which the film lets off the throttle for a bit.

As an exploration of identity as it is felt, projected, and interpreted, this is masterful.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower is safe, containing no assertion of Ponoc as an artistic force beyond its overall technical accomplishment.

Hidden Figures is a nice movie. At its head is a trio of good performances from Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae. But it is in essence a feature-length version of an inspiring social media image macro, or perhaps a Google Doodle. “Did you know that black women were important at NASA?” It has little else to offer.

While Zexer might not yet have a directorial voice, her story sense is sharp.

Raising Bertie is a moving chronicle, and a potent treatise on institutional failings that knows to demonstrate said problems instead of merely preaching them.

The film insists upon its own relevance, but has none.

The love these characters have for their lifestyle is obvious, as is their reasons for rejecting mainstream society for it, but the joy they receive from it is not conveyed to the viewer. Without that, Kiki is a decent survey of its chosen topic, but rarely anything more.

The documentary’s vision of history as tied to spaces is more difficult to dismiss than its apparent weaknesses would suggest.

Make no mistake: Pott and Coleman’s stories are unquestionably worth sharing. But presenting them in a routine march of interviews spiced up solely with occasional animated reenactments does not do those stories justice.

Over two shapeless hours, it walks through sequences that announce their emotional gravitas while only sporadically earning it.

Despite the intriguing subject matter, this documentary can’t stay in the air.

The film is more of a clip show, awkwardly cutting together elements once presented in a drastically different manner. In doing so, it obfuscates the power of a manifesto, allegedly what it means to pay tribute to.

Vivid and mordant, Thirst Street imperfectly defines its lead, but makes her journey distinct.

Conceived out of Lowe’s own experiences with pregnancy and shot while she was herself seven months along, the movie is a distinct blend of black humor, viciousness, body horror, and pathos.

Where many historical films are concerned with the movers and shakers of well-known events, Men Go to Battle is all about the micro view. It tells a story that happens to be set against a volatile backdrop, but is more about what it was like to live day-to-day in such a time.

It’s always frustrating when a documentary is so intent on one story that it plainly misses a more interesting one that’s, just… right there.

Don’t Breathe makes for a very fun little thriller, though it also veers into being exceptionally stupid or eye-rollingly gross (although admittedly, it is sometimes more than one of these things simultaneously)

Florence Foster Jenkins is nice, but only in the way that any undeservedly wealthy person considers themselves “nice” when they give a pittance to charity while sheltering as much as possible from the IRS and spending extravagantly on themselves.

Half of the best gags in The Nice Guys are of the physical variety. Some of the action scenes escalate into full-on live-action Looney Tunes madness.

The Oslo Accords represent one of the most frustrating missed opportunities in recent world politics, though The Oslo Diaries is more frustrating for how it both simplifies the political complexities of the situation and dilutes the drama of the story.

Of Fathers and Sons is a vital addition to the cultural picture of the Syrian conflict.

The Cleaners ably raises questions around the issue without following through on tying them together, often seeming like it’s simply bouncing around to cover all the relevant topics until it’s time to wrap up. That’s a letdown, but it gives us some noteworthy moments along its way.

Beirut has zero character as a setting, reduced to a generic backdrop of rubble and sand. It’s not a real place with a distinct culture in a time and political situation which any writer worth their salt could cull mountains of rich material from – it’s Scarymuslimabad, capital of Clicheistan.

Roth interacts well with Michael Cristofer and Robin Bartlett, who play David’s two primary patients in the story. But outside of their performances and Franco’s ever-tasteful approach to the subject matter, Chronic is frustrated either by convention or its own coldness.

With this raw animal rush, you can understand the appeal of the sport, and how one might deign to spend part of a fortune on vicariously experiencing it. But it also demonstrates the ultimate hollowness of extreme consumption.

The rebooted Star Trek film series finally hits a fun median between big-budget bombast and classic Trek bigheartedness with Star Trek Beyond.

This is electric material for a story, but Fogel just gets shocked instead of channeling it into something great.