Jared Mobarak

It deserves every accolade and opportunity received due to its unrelenting authenticity and complex themes.

Mazlo’s graphic design and animation background shines with a sort of elongated montage taking Alice from Beirut’s streets (guided by a woman dressed as the Lebanese flag’s cedar tree) to the diner where she meets Joseph and then through the years of them starting a family.

Atmosphere and mood are the film’s strong suit, both growing thickly heavy as time elapses and strange occurrences commence.

What makes Most Beautiful Island standout, however, is that it isn’t just about desperation.

While the film has some heartfelt exchanges of kinship and empathy, however, it is also punctuated by moments of abject despair. This is crucial to a core message that moves beyond the healing power of art towards the entitlement those who make it possess and those who serve as their subjects don’t.

It’s a beautifully intimate look at how a place can affect your identity and actions so wholly and how history is never just something you read.

It’s a devastating, relatable performance by Ferreira.

Salama and co-writer Omar Khaled ingeniously use the death of Michael Jackson as the catalyst to go back to Khaled’s adolescence.

Rustin still has its Oscar-bait moments and doesn’t necessarily take any big swings that might risk mainstream appeal, but it’s a solid drama and above-average profile, nonetheless. And if you get nothing else out of it but a cursory education on Bayard Rustin the man as well as an acting clinic from Domingo and Glynn Turman, even that should be enough.

The Divine Order packs a lot into its brisk 96-minute runtime. But it never feels forced in the process.

Gyllenhaal is onscreen pouring his heart and soul into an imperfect man who’s made more inspiring for being so.

Sutherland’s script is working on multiple levels while Tammi’s formal aesthetics reveal an artist in complete control of her vision.

McCormack and Morgan aren’t interested in sanitizing the messiness that goes into a woman accepting herself outside the men’s world she was born into. It’s why finding financing took years. It’s also why Sugar Daddy is so uniquely good too, though. They’ve put an honest, coarse, and authentic human being on-screen who’s breaking through the façade she didn’t even know she was helping to cultivate.

Richardson and Vayntrub become the perfect straight-man characters to traverse the chaos with clear heads as everything devolves around them into petty grievances and homicidal bloodlust.

The acts of violence writer-director Rob Jabbaz has his characters inflict upon each other are as depraved as can be and seemingly devoid of remorse.

A genuinely suspenseful ride thanks to all the moving parts and multi-layered motivations.

Tyrnauer captures this figure with empathy, humor, and as much fascination as we too possess watching. At the end of the day Bowers’ list of clientele is far less captivating than the fact each member loved and trusted him as an equal.

The script carries us through without much effort, its expertly paced discoveries keeping us enthralled.

Don’t expect to know how it’s all going to end; Pereda makes certain to save the blood for the finale.

Let this tale be a stepping-stone then—a beautifully rendered and energetic one at that. Let it entertain while planting the seeds of acceptance and understanding so our children can build upon that foundation and be better than the insular generations that failed before them.

This film becomes a journey of trials and tribulations with as much inspirational grace as crippling resentment.

There’s a lot of depth to this story. More than you might anticipate at the start.

Werewolf isn’t about addiction’s cruelty. McKenzie has given us a story about an addict’s salvation.

Things get heavy pretty quick once the drugs take hold and not everyone will get out alive. While Klein lets that genre conceit cut some chaff for him, however, he doesn’t lose the overarching perspective that those who do narrowly get back home aren’t out of the woods.

It’s stupid, mindless, and crude, but I laughed throughout and admittedly can’t wait to watch it again.

Poulter and Ackie are so cute together with their acerbic flirtations.

The delineation between good and evil maybe a bit too black-and-white throughout, but none of those aspects remove the potency of the lessons learned along the way.

While there are a few twists and turns to keep things fresh, a low budget forces the action to remain dialogue-heavy and more or less focused on this single necessity. Never redundant, it can get a little bit slow.