Gregory Nussen

It is, ultimately, a film completely uninterested in subtlety. That's both to its credit and to its detriment.

That the film is so admirably sex-positive, especially as it is from the too-often silenced perspective of female pleasure, makes it all the more refreshing.

The Incomer is a sweet and charming adult fairy tale whose primary characteristic, a twee and cheeky sense of humor, is both its appeal and its achilles' heel.

The Bluff is a rollicking throwback to the swashbuckling action of old. It is brutal and inventive enough to wash over its derivative narrative.

Left-Handed Girl is ultimately quite optimistic while never succumbing to the saccharine.

Miroirs No. 3 is a bucolic, poetic film of simple beauty with light, magical touches about the ability of a stranger’s love.

Ghost Elephants is an almost diaristic documentary, eschewing normal pathways for a more esoteric exploration of survival, science, intuition and mortality.

It's an underdog story — sorry, under-goat story — for a new generation that is ready for a new, more inclusive kind of game.

In some ways, the film's hollowness allows it to circle back upon itself and become a pure expression of adrenaline.

The film is so well put together, constructed with such warmth, that it does paper over its own indulgence.

Ultimately, the film is successful in having its cake and eating it too. It is both a tense political thriller and a crackling satire of drunken power. The comedy of the first two-thirds becomes the horror in the last, as these people’s willful ignorance of danger becomes terrifying in its potential repercussions.

Palestine 36 is beautifully shot and researched, and peppered with historical touches.

It is the type of film that asks for a deeper engagement than it is willing to offer, but Hadžihalilović may just be pulling us into her conception of image-making as a process of self-actualization. If that is the case, the film does well to break from Andersen's tragic tale for something a bit more existential.

With bi-erasure and transphobia both ballooning, I Wish You All The Best comes with a strong message of hope: that you, too, can be an awkward, flailing teen. That awkwardness is not exclusive to those who fit a traditional mold, and that we all deserve a chance to mess up.

Gulner, who has five other writing credits but directs here for the first time, is a sturdy filmmaker with a solid feel for pace and tone. With The Beldham, she has crafted a clever piece of writing whose ending recontextualizes the whole film in a magnetic flash.

We are never not an integral part of this couple's evolving understanding of mortality, art, and partnership.

The Napa Boys is best enjoyed like a California wine road trip: you can be vaguely aware of the territory, but it's more fun to just ride along its peaks and valleys. When the film hits, it really hits.

Power Ballad continues Carney's long run of success with yet another charmer. Of course, it's easy to charm when you have Paul Rudd as your center.

Wheatley is such a strong technician that the film easily rises above its, well, normalcy, to become something much more distinct.

Though it is sometimes a bewildering mess, the film totally works in spite of its more ludicrous intentions, a standing piece of proof that the more specific a piece of work is, the more universal it somehow becomes.

Despite this being a film billed as "samurai versus cannibals," it is actually at its best before the fighting begins.

Daniel Chong's film isn't perfect, but it reaches such a strange fever pitch of hilarity and political prescience that it demands respect.

The Amateur is a relaxed and pleasurable throwback to the spy pulp of the 1970s and ’80s, yet told with a (mostly) honest appraisal of the C.I.A.’s ethical failings.

Juror #2 casts a morally inquiring side-eye at the American legal system, questioning whether it’s reasonable to convict anyone on the basis of something so fallible as memory.

In its depiction of actors flourishing through artistic struggle, Sing Sing ultimately argues that the most effective liberation happens through the freeing of the body as well as the soul.

The film is comic yet vicious and cynically bleak in its portraiture of Japan’s silent plague.

The film is devoid of serious conflict, yet it hits with unexpected feeling.

It presents all the complex and seemingly contradictory emotions of a forced life on the road.