Inkoo Kang

Grainily shot but radiating life, The Amazing Catfish is an enormously affecting portrait of a family in crisis that dares to hope.

If you like postmodern gimmickry and modern dance, and are OK with sitting through nearly 10 minutes of staged talking-head interviews, glum stoner talk about abortion, nausea-inducing filmmaking, characters whose motivations don’t make sense, horror, exploitative child death, and a quasi-coercive lesbian make-out—but just don’t care to be reminded “Drugs! Are! Bad!”: Leave 89 minutes in. Or don’t come at all, because Climax really isn’t about anything more than that.

Mo’s story feels rare, relevant and real. But we’re stuck on the outside looking in.

"Art Addict” may be encyclopedic, but it’s all-too-rarely insightful.

False gravity weighs down 2 Jacks, a father-son drama less interested in exploring familial relations than in tut-tutting the millennials.

By exposing on the top-down class-warfare origins of the annual event, the prequel elaborates on the series’ earnest political commentary — and exposes its limits as well.

Jones’ riveting Western is bleak and very nearly misanthropic, but it's also passionate, earthy, unpredictable, sensitive, and gloriously distinct.

Tian-Hao Hua's documentary distinguishes itself not with false suspense but tremendous poignancy and humor, much of which come from the riders' varied histories and motivations for revving up their bikes.

The great achievement in writer-director Jono Oliver's poignant, superb debut, Home, lies in the balance between the film's empathy for those like Jack who seek independence and its compassion for others who may need care indefinitely.

If Bound by Flesh sorely lacks the perspective of the physically atypical community, it's at least a fascinating look at the transformations in the entertainment industry in the last century.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women celebrates the bravery and creativity of Diana Prince’s mastermind and his muses, but with a tepidness toward the complications of their lives. The result is a gauzy, sexy ode to unconventionality that feels distinctly and disappointingly conventional.

More diverting is the increasingly desperate forensics the FBI resorts to in order to build a case against Jewell, though it’s not always clear which tactics are simply thorough, now outdated, or flagrantly illegal. But Richard Jewell has so little to say about its time period or how the culture has shifted that it ends up exposing the relative quaintness of its concerns.

Personal or not, this lazy fantasy doesn't offer many more pleasures than an Instagram account.

With its observational dispassion, My Friend Dahmer doesn’t quite help us understand why Jeff is so into killing, and it’s pretty much useless when it comes to clarifying how he justifies committing such atrocities to himself.

The needless cruelty of the criminal justice system feels like a world begging for more sense-making, but Just Mercy only sees its characters as heroes, victims, or obstacles, not as rational beings who might have their own reasons to knowingly commit terrible acts. Cretton’s desire to focus tightly on McMillian’s case makes sense, but he accidentally makes the white malefactors in the town more fascinating for their villainy.

Freedia is such a charismatic guide — and the explanations for gun violence so familiar — that the documentary loses steam whenever she's off-screen for too long.

What makes Neighbors exceptional, rather than merely great, is its successful attempt to reinvent the studio comedy.

S#x Acts works as a crash course in sexual ethics, but it also fails to transcend its genre trappings as a morality tale about the dangers of low self-esteem.

The mystery is solidly structured, but the answers it gradually yields are silly at best and lazy and offensive at worst.

The film is rescued from its own lumbering self-seriousness by Weber's sensitive portrayal of teen dynamics, but it's never as scary or as creepy as it needs to be.

Lady Buds is the kind of film whose raison d’être isn’t immediately obvious, but whose storytelling is engaging enough that we’re ready for wherever the journey takes us.

Chappaquiddick may or may not be what actually happened, but it gets at enough piercing truths.

They're thematically richer and more tonally cohesive than their hybrid. But because the two films are so similar to one another, they fail to deliver on the promise of their unique structure, rendering the “he said, she said” complementary design of the two films a dull, self-indulgent gimmick.

Long Shot feels like something new, too — a brogressive rom-com that mixes inconvenient boners and aerodynamic cum with extensive observations about sexism and a rare romanticization of the male helpmate.

It’s an important corrective to many contemporary and historical accounts of Hollywood, reinstating the queerness that has too often been straight-washed out of them.

As with so much of Brazilian cinema, the framing of the plot as a social allegory instead of a psychological portrait doesn't yield the most emotionally satisfying experience. But Wolf serves as an important feminist correction -- and a compelling reminder that predators can come from anywhere.

A Simple Favor reintroduces Lively as a character actress—a sexy, funny, award-worthy revelation.

There’s enough good-naturedness and cultural specificity here, alongside a slight deviation from the usual immigrant narratives, to render it a dollop of sweetness and novelty that goes down easy.