Hunter Lanier

Instead of stitching together interviews and footage into a chronological plot, Wharton goes with the proverbial flow.

Nearly all of the footage in the film is incredible, both in terms of content and restoration. The performances are like nothing else in Dylan’s career or anybody’s career.

The Lighthouse becomes something that few movies can claim to be: memorable. Detractors might shrug it off as self-indulgent, artsy slop, but it’s too damn fun and aesthetics-minded for that accusation to hold much weight.

Taking on the melancholy, rain-tapping-a-window tone of Leonard’s music, Broomfield doesn’t try to draw a line through the story artificially but embraces the natural disorder of real life.

If being dull is the cardinal sin of the movies, as Capra supposedly said, then Sorrentino is a saint. There’s not a dull moment in Loro, whether it’s the hypersexual, reality-bending party scenes or the quiet backroom conversations where the truth comes at the characters so unexpectedly, they don’t have time to prepare their usual defenses. All of it is visceral pleasure at an eye-bleeding volume.

i’m thinking of ending things is a lawless movie, made up of one memorable scene after another, none of which are restrained by any storytelling edicts—anything goes, and it goes.

As far as romantic laments of starving artists go, Blaze is one of the better ones.

While it could have easily been a dark comedy, and almost is, instead, it’s perfectly sincere.

As you follow Ned into adulthood and bear witness to his many exploits—bare-knuckle brawling, throwing together a gang of brutes who wear pretty dresses, walking into a gunfight with a homemade suit of bulletproof armor, and more—you figure out quickly that the movie’s biggest strength is its desire to disgust and disorient.

There is no emotional manipulation, and there are no ideological hand-outs. You almost feel like you’re watching the events unfold through a keyhole, which gives every hushed exchange and passive-aggressive examination a voyeuristic thrill.

Toying with the audience’s own expectations and predispositions, Schimberg has made a movie that can be confidently called original.

There’s much to like about Hope, but it’s the honesty I liked best.

The intentions of DTF are a little bit of everywhere. It’s sort of about the hollow experience of dating apps, sort of about the lonely life of airline pilots, and sort of about addiction. However, I think its most flattering angle is that it’s about someone slowly realizing his friend is sick—in every meaning of that word—and potentially unsavable.

The movie feels like a Sunday drive with your own thoughts, where you get some good thinking done, even if you don’t come to any lasting conclusions.

Even with its amateurish presentation and off-kilter action, Dolemite is far more fun than a good many of the high-stakes, high-budget films that the big studios roll out every month or so. Personality goes a long way.

It’s jolly, childlike in a good way, and unusual where it counts. It’s a pop-up book that should be prominently displayed and never read.

It’s an old-fashioned escapade with a helplessly likable hero—a criminal who can’t help but be better at the former than the latter, despite his best efforts.

Every once in a while, the story of an individual slips through the cracks. Memoir of War is one of those stories and, as such, provides an unseen perspective to a plotline that we all know well.

If you’re hoping Fatman is an explosive, hog wild bullet storm of Christmas camp, dial back your expectations. There’s always next year. If you’re good, that is.

Giving a boxing movie a philosophical back-alley brain transplant is just maniacal enough to work, especially when you consider the psychological discipline and physicality required to perform at a high level in any sport. In this way, In Full Bloom functions as a visually exciting tone poem and as a soulful reflection on battle.

The Europeans expects you to meet it halfway. When you do, you’re rewarded with a story that’s rich with complicated emotions, despite its self-confident exterior. It’s like its characters in that way, and also in the way, it thinks highly of itself and presents itself accordingly. Modesty never did a movie good.

None of the characters feel real, necessarily, but they’re all immensely watchable in their own right.

For the most part, Gwen achieves what it sets out to do. It surrounds you in scenic hopelessness and lets you stew in it until you’re done, or Gwen’s done. By the end of this movie, somebody’s definitely done.

Gaia uses its atmosphere to great effect.

Drunk Bus, directed by Brandon Laganke and John Carlucci, is a deja-vu inducing coming-of-age story with enough character and good cheer to make you forgive how unadventurous it is.

With characters that we watch but never know and some imitative storytelling, Galveston can’t help but feel like a compilation of cover songs, which, while listenable, are stilted and perfunctory.

Aaron Paul brings his trademark street-corner angst to the party, and it plays just fine. As child actors go, Murphy is pretty good. McNairy and Winstead do a fine job of realizing that silent, domestic agony that neither party wants to bring out into the open, fearing it won’t go back in.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot isn’t the loony chuckle-fest that many might want and it’s not as affecting a character piece as Krzykowski might want, but it’s a crackpot showcase for a performer who deserves one or two, crackpot or otherwise.

It’s the investigative portion of the movie that is most engaging.

Aside from the poorly considered inclusion of staged drama, Framing John DeLorean competently breezes through the rise and fall of the legendary car mogul.

Had these themes of accepting the consequences of actions, living up to one’s word, the moral weakness of youth been better capitalized on, or had a little fun been had, The Green Knight would have done a better job at earning itself a place in the storybooks.

The mundane is only as mundane as you make it, and the supernatural can be painfully mundane.

Despite the many things it does right, atmosphere and casting, mostly, it doesn’t give you any reason to remember it.

It has a television movie quality to it as if it’s a dramatization of a newspaper article, rather than something cinematic.

There are occasional moments of inspiration, stylistically and thematically, where the movie hints at its true potential. But most of the time, the movie is tripping over its desire to be noticed.

Vice, written and directed by Adam McKay, plays straight to the cable-news generation of political enthusiasts. It’s depthless, has the attention span of a gopher, and is more concerned with appearances than getting to the root of anything.

The ham-fisted approach undercuts the valuable information that makes up Fail State.

There’s nothing offensively awful about Ms. White Light, but it lacks a unique perspective.

Lying and Stealing comes across as the object a thief would replace an art piece to prevent anyone from realizing it’s missing at first glance.

Screenplays like A Dark Place only get made because they’re familiar. They present intrigue and drama in a way that doesn’t challenge the audience but reinforces their belief of what a movie like this should be. This conformist methodology might make the movie palatable—and marketable—but it doesn’t make it any good.

Every now and then, a line or a subtle moment in someone’s performance has some truth in it, but little is sustained in Bullitt County.

Putting it in the kindest possible terms, the movie could be passed off as an exercise in style. Because of this, it does manage to be watchable.

Caught between worlds, Disturbing the Peace isn’t as fun as it begs to be or as eloquent as it’s trying to be.

None of the set pieces are inventive, and the dialogue is either overly serious or hacky ha-has. In addition to the bland everyman at the center of the story, all the supporting characters are soulless mouthpieces.

It’s Cangialosi’s writing and direction that result in a watered-down, emotionally manipulative experience.