Jacob Oller

The documentary’s damning look at stand-your-ground laws and the ineffectiveness of police even when they’re doing everything “right” (because the body-cam footage that makes up this film wouldn’t exist if they thought they were doing something “wrong”) is awful and thorough, avoiding cliché through a devotion to fisheye footage. Its upsetting, explicit-bordering-on-exploitative access drives its points into the pit of your stomach.

This blend of genres, aesthetics, realities, and virtual realities doesn’t all add up—or adds up a bit too neatly, as the script makes Conor’s hazy backstory unmistakably clear—but OBEX is still endearingly contained, passionately executed, and impressively unique.

Hallow Road really thrives when at its most simple. Sticking with Pike and Rhys in a simple windshield shot, cutting only to other tight, static angles from inside the car, allows the pair to carry the film.

As Chalfant preens, jokes, and carries on throughout her character’s evolving mental landscape, she threads recognition and persistence into a performance defined by confusion. This approach contributes to the idea that our lives are not a single fading picture, but formed from a long series of imperfect snapshots—like how single frames, quickly played in succession, form the illusory whole of a film.

With plenty of moving testimonials and charming talking heads, Heightened Scrutiny draws damning lines between the “just asking questions” opinion pieces published in respected mainstream media publications like The Atlantic and the New York Times and the legal arguments made in our judicial system.

It’s a pointedly strange experience, sometimes annoyingly so and sometimes unexpectedly crushing, but all enjoyably kooky depending on your tolerance for this kind of thing.

Monkey Man is the kind of action movie I want to see more of, and it gives Patel the chance to turn himself into the kind of action star he wants to see.

A compelling piece of straightforward true-crime that makes the most of its throwback form.

As wacky as it all sounds (and there are certainly punchlines to appreciate), Escobar’s creation can be shockingly moving.

If you’re down for a light comedy with a very specific audience, pitched somewhere between Wet Hot American Summer and John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch, AdirondACTS welcomes you (and your prepared monologue—you did prepare a monologue, right?) with open arms.

The sports doc finds plenty of beauty and excitement befitting its genre in its uphill battle, even if it sometimes tries to wrestle above its weight class.

Ahmed’s intimate performance and Tariq’s intense framing lend Mogul Mowgli a raw power that’s heady, heavy and a little heavy-handed.

As Potrykus’ unromantic Midwestern losers mature, so too does his filmmaking. But Vulcanizadora still feels like a natural progression of his slime-slacker milieu: At the movie’s heart, there’s still a ridiculous and upsetting idea, thrust upon desperate members of the lower-middle class, seen through to its tragicomic conclusion.

Like its absentminded hero, the film can sometimes get sidetracked right when things are getting good, wandering down schmaltzy or twee narrative paths. But when it lets Thelma (and Squibb) do her thing, the comedy is perfectly cute and a stellar showcase for what an actor’s late career can offer.

Step may stumble over its own hurried pace (cramming months of school into montage after montage), but such a method is almost forgivable once you realize that the film is speeding towards an effective finale that will have you cheering no matter what.

Kapadia’s skill lies in her ability to interweave moments of hope into the anxiety. Her leads offer tenderness and pull back into self-protectiveness in equal measure.

Messy as it is, the filmmaking so energetically delivers its acidic pessimism that it’s rarely unpleasant.

More quaintly focused than the exuberant previous film, though with no shortage of eccentric characters or longwinded side stories, Wake Up Dead Man agreeably seeks answers both existential and earthly.

It’s 81 damning minutes of tight filmmaking, great storytelling, and riveting investigation.

Blichfeldt’s film offers a R-rated counterpoint better than most “faithful” fairy tale adaptations.

Of course things get out of control—it’s not like the dark underbellies of music-world organizations haven’t always exceeded our worst expectations. The strength of Lurker, though, is when it’s operating as a slick, slimy social-engineering thriller that anyone could relate to.

A blistering adventure filled with dread and wonder, there’s a macabre classicism to the film—a sense that, even if life as we know it falls apart, some essential elements persevere.

The Scout is as pretty-gloomy as an off day in New York, as winning as a good work anecdote, as defeating as another day on the job, and as listless as a generation starting to feel the shadow of their looming midlife crisis.

Lightyear is a beautiful starship with precious genre cargo, functional and direct in its simple mission to carry on.

In The Piano Lesson, the ghosts are as tangible as they’ve ever been, and the film barely containing them is as weathered and tense as any family in need of a séance.

A making-of film fueled, like the Let’s Plays and livestreams it’s in conversation with, by the chaos of a plan gone wrong, Grand Theft Hamlet is equal parts charming and cheesy—both due to its experimental setting.

This exciting formal approach, with its diverse selection of striking nature photography and archival sources, moves swiftly and effectively. Its more traditional talking heads, which the film relies on more as its focus shifts to the present and future, still bring power to the doc—letting people tell their own stories is never a bad thing—but can move more haltingly, dictated by the speakers’ thoughts.

A counterpoint documentary to its festival companion Love Machina, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s Eternal You observes the burgeoning industry around techno-spiritualism with wry skepticism.