Godfrey Cheshire

A Gray State captures much of this in one real-life tale that’s as unsettling as it is precisely of-the-moment.

Boonyawatana provides a confident and distinctive vision of his own in this, his debut feature. While his spiraling from one genre to another may produce a final lack of coherence, it’s a nervy, purposeful strategy that keeps clichés at bay while engaging viewer interest throughout.

While Hood’s film says very little about American policy in this area, it does suggest that its terrible subject is likely to be with us for a long time to come.

It must be noted that Cartel Land weaves together two stories, and the Mexican one is far more compelling and revealing than the American.

The visuals here are interesting because Adela is a circus clown and we get see a lot of the colorful life around her performances.

Rasoulof’s story proceeds with the deliberate pace and simmering tension of a ‘70s political thriller.

Where “Black Lives Matter” has become a rallying cry in the U.S., Jonas Carpignano’s sharply crafted Mediterranea voices a counterpart for African immigrants in southern Italy: “Stop shooting blacks!”

The word “genius” is heard more than once, and the more the film shows us, the less even hardened skeptics will be likely to demur.

A very suspenseful, atmospheric mounting and sharp acting by its small but expert cast.

Afterimage is mounted in a classical, beautifully understated style that throughout conveys the relaxed assurance of a true master. It’s one of those films that doesn’t ask to be liked or admired, but only to be heard.

A documentary that had this reviewer wondering if it was a real or faux doc until the very end. Turns out it’s real, but the suspicion that it might be otherwise is a tribute both to the debuting filmmakers’ skills in shaping their story and that story’s innate dramatic power.

Gibney made his film without the cooperation of Jobs’ wife and their children or Apple, and thus his account doesn’t have either the authorized angle or wealth of insider-ish detail of Walter Isaacson’s capacious biography.

While Westwood is certainly a remarkable personal and cultural figure in many senses, it’s too bad she’s not more willing to discuss the genesis of punk, since it’s likely to remain the primary thing she’s known for.

The result is a film that feels less like a lecture than a provocative X-ray of current American political realities.

If there’s a note of reflexive nostalgia in the proceedings, that inevitably has to do not just with the man at the film’s center but with the era that produced him, a time when magazine and print journalism could take writers and make instant celebrities and hugely influential cultural figures out of them. That day is long gone, but Radical Wolfe makes a strong case that it’s well worth remembering.

The film has a lot going for it. Besides the gorgeous, burnished look supplied by cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, Cooper gets a range of fine performances from a topnotch cast.

A Borrowed Identity commendably avoids polemics in order to provide a textured portrait of a young man going through a set of personal transitions against the background of ongoing cultural flux that reflects a larger, collective identity crisis. Its evocation of the historical period feels carefully honed and resonant.

One thing that’s notable about Front Cover — and that sets it apart from Ang Lee’s nominally similar “The Wedding Banquet” — is that, though set in New York, its perspective and espoused values are finally more Chinese than American.

The film certainly registers the dynamics between old and young, haves and have-nots—struggles that characterize societies far beyond Brazil.

One of the film’s advantages over the book is that it brings in the testimonies of many other people — from friends and fellow ex-hustlers to Hollywood historians and insiders — all of whom support Scotty’s veracity while adding additional perspectives of their own.

Nowhere in the film is its subject, Cenk Uygur, the founder and main mouthpiece of a YouTube show titled The Young Turks (TYT), called a journalist, but he does function as such, even if his game is commenting on the news rather than doing reportorial spadework.

The movie, then, is not just a niche film but a film for a niche of a niche. Rather than being ideal for people who know a bit about French cinema and want to know more, it’s best suited to people who know a considerable amount about French cinema (and culture) of the early sound era and want to delve deeper.

Using skillful, involving storytelling and beautifully executed rotoscoped photography, director Ali Soozandeh creates a world of intersecting urban miseries and challenges.

Both Reagan lovers and Reagan haters will find enough in the film to bolster their perspectives. Even more remarkably, it’s almost entirely snark-free.

Petroni, in any case, is a skilled storyteller with a strong visual sense.

The Bad Kids is interesting enough in what it shows us to spark interest in what it leaves un-shown. In its case, the information supplied by a few well-chosen talking heads could have given it additional clarity and appeal.

Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda’s film, on the other hand, narrates a true-life crime but fails to provide an element that might’ve lifted it above tasteful art-house ordinariness—an engaging point of view.

Paris 05:59,’s charms are likely slight enough, and its raunch raunchy enough, to keep it from becoming one of those rare exceptions.