Daniel Schindel

This may be Iannucci’s weakest-written film, but it’s by far his best-directed one.

Leave No Trace’s acute sense of place and how people relate to it makes for great, emotion-laden naturalism.

Shirkers finds the emotional grounding and even universality in a very strange story.

[Stillman's] dry sense and cutting sensibility are suited to the meaner edge this story has in comparison with the rest of Austen’s oeuvre.

Bisbee ’17 collapses past and present into one another, and in doing so achieves a singularly strange and unsettling vision of apparently intractable American hatreds.

Krisha showcases artistry that’s quite accomplished for a debut feature. That it’s all in service of a story that doesn’t seem to know what it really wants to do or say (other than dismantle its lead) is a shame, but there’s true promise here.

Little Men could have been so much more if its perspective leaned towards the opposite direction.

Structurally, Hale County This Morning, This Evening does not do much to distinguish itself from other contemporary vérité documentaries which focus on quotidian details within a certain milieu. But even so, it still finds value in the unique incidents it captures.

The film can easily coast on sentimentality and nostalgia for emotion, and does so frequently and unabashed. Which is frustrating, since there are glimpses of a more complex human being throughout the film, one who would have made for a much better subject.

Rat Film stalks between being repellent, riveting, and darkly humorous.

The more you interrogate the premises underlying The Post’s themes, the more they disintegrate. The daunting fact is that only mass movements truly change society for the better. But that’s a messy process with a lot of depressing history built in, and not ideal for narratives catering to prim liberal sensibilities.

The sections about the school are good enough on their own that trying to fold them into a larger statement on Afghanistan as it is now dilutes the potency of those smaller stories. Still, as a fresh view of life in a country Americans may too easily dismiss as a hopeless hellhole, it’s a welcome piece of work.

Blade Runner 2049 marries its ideas to its narrative in a way that blockbusters too often fail to these days. More importantly, it puts these ideas to a poignant end, bringing its characters to tragic or bittersweet reckonings in a manner that would do any of the old sci-fi masters proud.

Pacific Rim Uprising is a mess, but when it gets to the business of robots beating up monsters (or sometimes other robots), it’s a blast.

Director Tim Wardle lays a lot on the strength of the events he’s covering, and they are indeed compelling enough on their own to hold your interest. The flipside of this is that the film has little power outside of a first viewing.

This is one of the better-directed CG films in the Disney canon. But next to all the solid noisy bits, Disney still demonstrates trouble in slowing down properly.

Against the backdrop of a coming-of-age ritual, The Wound finds its greatest insights in contrasts between tradition and modernity.

If I go on about how Gleason’s convention-bound filmmaking and drawn-out running time dampened my reaction to Steve Gleason’s journey, am I being a good critic, or just a dick?

Rather than intelligently grapple with the complexities, the filmmakers let various people have their say and then call the whole thing done.

In porn, everything besides the sex scenes are just setups for the sex scenes. Here, everything feels like it’s only there to set up lavish parties or high-class adventures.

Hooligan Sparrow struggles with the entrenchment of injustice both thematically and narratively, as it can’t quite find a way to cohere its story beyond sticking to the time Wang was with Ye. But that doesn’t diminish the courage of either filmmaker or subject.

The Edge of Seventeen isn’t John Hughes for a new generation – it’s much more honest than that.

The movie makes a game attempt to resonate as something stronger than a typical period romance, wringing its wartime setting for all the pathos it can manage. But even the horrors of the Blitz feel too gentle here.

It’s nice that Spa Night has a story with a different kind of protagonist than what we’re used to, but it tells that story with all the lackluster waffling of any other shaky indie drama.

Tickled too often gets in its own way.

Once again, Spike Lee has found an innovative theatrical production and brought it to blistering cinematic life.

10 Cloverfield Lane is a fun one-location, three-person play, and each new twist it takes only makes it more exciting.

Into the Inferno is a memento mori aimed at the whole human race, and only Herzog could make one this non-pretentious, funny, curious, and respectful at the same time.