Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

Much of Kate Plays Christine is more of a form exercise than it is a documentary portrait, which works to both the film’s benefit and detriment.

It’s not the savage darkness of Okja that lingers most after it ends, or even the political allusions. It’s the story of Mija and Okja, trying to make sense of a frightening world where good people and animals alike die each day, and the only thing that can usually prevent this from happening is more money.

It’s a warmly empathetic documentary, the kind that simply observes instead of attempting to sound one kind of rallying cry or another.

As many note throughout the doc, the best moments that film as a medium has to offer are found in the smallest details. And when you find something truly great, as with this scene, you can just keep looking and looking until you spiral into the same void on which the grisly sequence ends.

The Invitation is supremely well-crafted.

The film maintains a hum of stoic, nerve-trembling anxiety that carries through to its finale.

The more affecting moments in Sully come when the film puts aside its posturing and really examines what it is to be heroic in a cynical age.

The romantic comedy beats are familiar enough, but the ways in which the film attacks them gives it a subversive shade that nicely compliments an otherwise straightforward fish-out-of-water story.

Queen & Slim is a traditional road movie with decidedly untraditional inclinations, a romance framed against stark realities. But it’s equally a political act, a film whose very existence demands questions about the ways stories like it are typically told, from whose perspective, and perhaps most valuably of all, for what audience.

It’s a film with no easy answers, and rightly, Hood doesn’t strain to offer them. If the film’s attempts at barbed satire don’t land as well as its graver moments, it’s nevertheless an effective look at the new kind of war.

Filmworker makes a compelling argument that the Kubrick who lives in cinematic legend may not have become the man he’s remembered for being without Vitali around.

Wind River is also a potent example of how form isn’t always enough when the story is as frequently unnerving for unintentional reasons as it is for the horrors it aims to present.

Raiders!, as a documentary, is much like Zala and Strompolos’ film in that it’s rough around the edges at points, but so utterly sincere that it’s hard to deny after a while.

If Julieta weren’t such a crushing bore, it might have been a lusty little delight.

Captain Fantastic loses its intriguing premise in a muddle of ideas about the redemptive power of family and the right of all people to live as they please.

As a fish-out-of-water comedy, it’s effectively funny more often than it isn’t, and as an ode to the unlikely communities that arise around black metal, it’s entirely sincere in its intentions.

This is a story with a message, and perhaps an overlong one, but the triumphant staging of the film’s action sequences often tends to erase any lingering doubts of its purpose before long.

Unlike in some of the filmmaker’s past work, however, Youth foregrounds the performance over the spectacle; Keitel turns in some of his finest work in years as the aging, fiery Mick, and Caine delivers a performance composed of untold multitudes.

Eight Days a Week will be of most value to die-hard and casual fans of the band alike, but it’s also a reasonably effective primer on them for anyone who might not yet be initiated.

Geostorm finds itself in the curious position of simultaneously taking itself too seriously and not enough so. It’s a disaster movie far too ridiculous to generate any real gravitas, but it’s also just glum enough to suck any fun out of watching the beaches of Rio de Janeiro freeze over in an instant.

There’s a thoughtful, kid-friendly parable about the hazards of internet fame somewhere in Ralph Breaks the Internet, but its aim is so scattershot that it only emerges in fits and starts.

Malcolm D. Lee’s stab at a Bridesmaids-esque journey of debauchery is funny, sometimes uproariously so, but its greatest strength isn’t in the filthiest stuff. It’s in the rapport between four women who’ve worked hard to remain friends, even as the natural progression of time continuously pulls them further and further away from one another.

The Bronze is so satisfied with its own winking crassness that it lets epithets constitute everything it has to say. Between that and the film’s scene-by-scene tonal shifts, what could’ve been an off-kilter curiosity curdles into a dull roar of disappointment.

Though Colossal does occasionally waver, most often due to its recurring tendency to hastily discard characters before their stories feel complete, it’s also a genuinely touching film that works phenomenally well for the most part, bolstered by the lingering sense of regret that hangs over the film’s funniest and most wrenching sequences alike.

The Little Hours is reasonably entertaining, but it hints just enough at something deeper that it may well leave you wanting.

Boy Erased finds its best stuff when it matches the unabashed earnestness of Jared, and of Hedges’ performance. The film isn’t so much preaching to the converted as begging the ones who aren’t yet to finally come over and stand on the right side of history.

What They Had is an indie drama of a familiar cut, delivered so well that you’ll forgive its smaller inconsistencies.

Last Days in the Desert explores Jesus in his most mortal phase, and McGregor’s exhausted performance is essential to its success.