Jared Mobarak

Since each one of these cousins has led such a distinct life from the others despite coming from the same place, everyone watching will be able to see a bit of themselves in one or more of them too. That’s why culturally relevant stories like Cousins are so crucial to understanding our world. They show us how alike we are no matter our religion, history, or skin color. To see their struggle is to sometimes know your role in its creation. To see their courage is to be inspired.

Nélisse and Pniowsky are a big part of the drama unfolding authentically with ample disdain and irritation respectively, but The Rest of Us truly is Graham and Balfour’s show.

Its parts recall many later works as diverse as Trainspotting and The Ring, its depiction of addiction and stasis leading us towards a legitimately brilliant ending that brings the whole thing into meta territory with its film-within-a-film coaxing us to enter the fray ourselves.

It’s Mikkelsen who steals the show playing so far against type that you wonder how it could be him.

Where O’Shea succeeds and Hollywood often fails is acknowledging the pain and sorrow so many feel can’t magically disappear. To be cognizant of your own evil is to accept its cost. Realizing you are the monster might be the worst punishment you could ever endure.

We aren’t given this glorious journey of a genius plucked from obscurity as much as we are the trials and tribulations of success. Brown’s film is all about the hardships thrust upon Ramanujan.

Eaton and co-writer Bryan Delaney have crafted their script with skillful precision.

McHale and Bishé are the ones who carry things because only they (like us) are aware of the sinister goings on beneath their over-the-top lust and the increasingly transparent surrealist nightmare entrapping them. Their dynamic is simultaneously an impossible ideal and an authentic reality to aspire towards. Mankind’s unwitting heroes.

The film zooms in to project humanity’s struggle onto Vesper. With one gust of wind (and some tragic losses), health and prosperity can be hers (and ours) again.

Rehmeier has found a way to traverse different genres while maintaining an authentic, honest mix of comedy and drama. He’s unafraid to go for the big laugh, regardless of subject matter, yet knows when to hit the emotion hard.

It’s a mesmerizing look behind a curtain torn away so Mayfair can reveal an authenticity too often masked by historical precedent and conservative acquiescence. Love is created in rebellion, but ultimately stifled by the need for survival.

Rather than have the plot manipulate his characters, Johnson lets them manipulate it. That’s an extremely rare Hollywood feat.

I have to give the filmmakers a ton of credit here because they walk themselves to a point of no return as far as where things are heading and they do not blink. They lift the curtain to briefly show us the horrors beneath the sterile walls of this prison and let them exist as inevitability rather than something that can be altered.

This film thankfully isn’t a dramatic piece gunning for awards glory, but rather a heartwarming adventure through the emotional landscape of a child unsure how to live. It is very sentimental, but that’s kind of the point.

A surefire cult classic in the making, its unhinged carnage proves a memorable delight. It may not be original, but it’s an adrenaline shot I sorely craved.

These young actors are superb in their roles, each embodying the complexities of early teen life and the adult struggles they face without the maturity to appropriately handle.

It’s a well-made directorial debut that shows a love for cinematic history and unique sensibility to build upon it rather than simply homage.

The purpose of Nelson and Curry’s film is to therefore turn the focus of what happened back onto the real perpetrators rather than the victims who have been vilified as such instead.

Buckley and Flynn keep us on our toes, their darkened malice turning to teary-eyed contrition until we’re left hopeless as far as figuring out which is more real.

It doesn’t take much to write or perform an explosive scene of unmitigated furor. It does to balance it with the empathy to know it comes from a place of fear. The acting is a huge piece to that puzzle because none of this works without believing Almut and Tobias are soulmates.

She’s normalizing disability, spearheading awareness, and fighting for self-acceptance.

So many scenes unfold with static frames to give actors our undivided attention, letting them evolve emotionally without unnecessary cuts undermining authenticity.

These fractured pieces aren’t operating with individual wants. They merely don’t have the others to mask and/or mitigate their singular desire’s pure form. This is a crucial distinction that allows Schultz to deliver on the promise of his film’s potential despite budgetary constraints and limited locations because it leaves the true intrigue to this central performance’s distillation of a single complex identity.

All mood, atmosphere, and mystery with our own confusion about the action mirrored in those onscreen.

Alice is truly independent like never before and she’s confronted with the unfair fact that she probably won’t be able to maintain it if she also hopes to keep Jules. To watch Piponnier weigh that abhorrent truth is to witness the internal struggle every woman who’s experienced this type of coerced acquiescence faces.

[Lane] proves yet again that nobody can tonally marry edification and entertainment onscreen so effortlessly. It’s masterful.

While a romance on its surface, Catherine Corsini‘s Summertime is really about freedom.

It’s a stylish debut from an artist with a keen sense of visuals, music, and feeling — a finger firmly on the pulse of now.