Jared Mobarak

Bennett is wonderful as always. Her ability to show strength through vulnerability is unparalleled.

By letting the horrors to come unfold in all their uncensored brutality, Dear Jassi forces those who would rather dismiss such situations as not being their problem to experience the violence being done in God’s name firsthand.

It’s a very funny romp with a fantastic comedic performance by Pednekar.

The film is playing with familiar tropes along a formulaic path, but it’s simply too endearing to dismiss outright.

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.

Despite there being zero surprises from start to finish as it fulfills its mass-marketed, for-profit formula, Next Goal Wins never talks down to us. It ensures its characters learn from their mistakes and that any mean-spiritedness is exposed as being about the giver rather than the receiver.

The whole gets somewhat tiring, considering few (if any) scripts could sustain the level of insanity met when it’s at its best. Anything not dialed to eleven becomes noticeably dull by comparison.

It definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but those who get on its frequency should have a whale of a time.

Glowicki does a great job grounding things in the confused malaise of a woman suddenly devoid of ambition beyond finding that cat.

Cage is having the time of his life playing the role––flippant, unhinged, oozing the confidence of a man with nothing to lose.

When the entire cast embraces the self-deprecating nature needed to lean into the stereotypes while also calling them out, it’s impossible not to climb onboard via comedy alone. If the twists and turns are hardly shocking, that bluntness is the point.

While Employee of the Month might start slow as it sets this stylistically heightened (yet completely believable) premise, it doesn’t take long for chaos to reign supreme.

Sable becomes a nexus point of preservation and destruction. Lucas captures it all as data while Mills unleashes the artistry of those numbers courtesy of sight and sound. Beauty lives in death. Suffering is born from life. Everything is connected.

While Star and An fantasize and joke about wishing they could become trophy wives of old, their roads are not paved in gold. Having each other sitting shotgun, however, does make the trip a whole lot brighter.

We’re witnessing a nuanced reorganization of priorities within both Dong-Hyun and So-Young at different speeds.

Emma and Josh are experiencing this weird journey together just like they did the enriching if celibate one before it. And we want them to come out the other side stronger even as they spiral out of control.

Schaefer and Lawler pack their rounded vignette of full-frame 16mm film with contradictions, thematic mirrors, and unexplainable phenomena that confounds in its beauty just as easily as it enlightens through its complexity.

Abbott and Qualley unload everything from physical to emotional to psychological abuse, both roles desperate to solidify their respective superiority and restore the status quo. Rediscover balance by admitting their desires. Who knows? They might just fulfill them too.

For every person who finds the tone a welcome inclusion that helps make this two-and-a-half-hour mystery feel a whole lot breezier than you expect, there’s bound to be another who cannot separate what appears to be surface distraction from a highly convoluted tapestry of convenient twists and turns. Most will surely fall in the middle––like me.

Therapy Dogs is undeniably authentic, regardless of whether some sequences are staged: as each fiction unfolds we understand the emotions and futility that birthed them.

That’s the fun of it all: complete unpredictability.

While it’s not as overtly comedic as Stevens’ Jakob’s Wife, A Wounded Fawn is funny in its own way.

Blood Relatives delivers familial drama and genre hijinks.

Cervera’s feature debut is an accordingly powerful depiction of motherhood’s oft-overlooked cost.

Green and Fonacier are both fantastic within this evolving dynamic, their inevitable end a mutually brutal sacrifice meant to close a broken loop rather than continue some damaging cycle. Their characters are so complex that their best moments are those subtle shimmers revealing true natures beneath old façades.

There’s a tug-of-war between plot and characters that always seems won by the former to the latter’s detriment. If not unforgivable, it is frustrating. Thankfully, the style has a way of distracting from those shortcomings.

It’s nothing short of heroic and heartbreaking and important—both because of how laws in her name are still being planned to go before the US legislature and because audiences need to remember that victims of domestic abuse deserve to be given as much benefit of the doubt as their abusers. Being an addict shouldn’t disqualify you from receiving life-saving protection.

The (un)reality of what’s happening beneath the surface is hardly unique or secretive, but the way Veach writes its revelations and McKee films its visual labyrinth spanning past, present, and purgatory ensure the drama unfolding is never without intrigue.