Jared Mobarak

It reaches past the usual rock clichés to recognize that the struggle these women face is more immediate than striving to perform for sold-out crowds or become signed by a label. This is about surviving a chaotic environment marked by past violence while still entrenched in present-day political revolution.

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

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.

To say The Swearing Jar is an uplifting film without a clarifier such as “bittersweet” is perhaps a tough sell, but that’s exactly what it is.

It’s a delicate scenario that treats its characters with the respect and complexity they deserve.

Iliff’s script and Hughes’ direction might not provide anything we haven’t seen before, but both allow the actors the necessary room to give us what we need to stay invested.

What begins like a feel-good tale of one woman’s quest to be the best, Stephanie Johnes’ Maya and the Wave quickly transforms into something much bigger. More than simply attempting to rejuvenate her career after three back surgeries, anxiety disorders caused by the trauma of the accident and its public backlash, and a loss of sponsorship, Maya’s journey became a fight for equality.

It’s so well-paced that the final twenty minutes hit with an urgency I wasn’t expecting.

Expect a breezy affair with good-natured laughter and low stakes. You’ll learn some things and remember others en route to watching as Poitier’s legacy is reinforced with a carefully curated mix of family and friends driven by the sole goal to immortalize their hero.

A stirring tribute to a man of many talents, Chevalier gorgeously gives a once-forgotten virtuoso violinist the cinematic treatment.

The role of Alice is very much internal and, as such, very reliant upon putting her thoughts onscreen. That we can also see those thoughts in our own minds simply through Kendrick’s thousand-yard stares, moments of lashing out, and visibly draining anxiety is a testament to her commitment to the character and the script’s nuanced complexity to allow her to say so much without saying anything.

LaBute is meticulously escalating the danger by providing Hap his wildest dreams in a way that reveals to the audience how their ability to come true is reliant upon him losing control.

The film’s simply a bit off-kilter—written with influences blatantly on its sleeves yet uninterested in subverting any assumptions that fact guarantees. I must be missing something.

The Immaculate Room isn’t breaking the mold on this type of conceit; if anything it’s purposely embracing a narrow scope of mental fracturing the scenario can ignite and counting on the actors to make it compelling.

The Legend of Molly Johnson never feels like anything but a cinematic experience.

Braun and Martin make some interesting choices and craft a gorgeous-looking film on an obviously shoestring budget, but none of that matters when my one wish was for these characters to never see each other again.

It’s empty horror barely skating by on recognizable IP.

That this claustrophobic sci-fi thriller quickly won me over with its early David Cronenberg inspirations only allowed my excitement to increase with each passing minute as I found myself unable to detach from its captivatingly dark, timely pandemic mystery.

By separating this film into two parts we really get to understand how alluring Freegard was.

Beyond its aesthetic and horror lies a poignant message about second chances.

Grashaw’s ability to keep everything moving through that thick air of uncertainty is the film’s best attribute because it does feel like we’ve gone off-track more than once after chapter one (there are three, one for each sibling).

Is the tonal marriage perfect between the over-the-top hijinks about the gross commodification of “wokeness” and melodramatic exposure of the cost those actually fighting must pay as a result? No. In many instances it seems Shephard does want us to pity Danni (Deutch’s performance almost deserves it too once she finds a conscience hiding below her vanity) despite her endgame proving the opposite.

The only way this play at “bringing a sense of joy and optimism during a time of great fear and loss” (as she states in her brief, platitude-heavy, 68-word director’s statement) could be more tone-deaf is if she waited to reveal it was set during the first few weeks of the pandemic in 2020 for a third-act rug pull.

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.

There’s some gnarly imagery that comes once, in Good Madam‘s second half, the supernatural takes over from the historical and characters find themselves falling into the trance of larger, systemic issues plaguing our world for millennia. But the beginning is just as tense and anxiety-inducing in its more normal sense of reality.

Both Krige and Eberhardt deliver subtly quiet performances within this atmospherically fragmented pursuit of vengeance, ultimately transforming into agents of change.

This is a political film. If Olga’s pursuit of her Olympic dream is often narratively truncated, what it means to be in Switzerland while loved ones remain in Kyiv, risking their lives at the protests, isn’t.

Script and production are impeccable, but I can’t say enough about the cast’s dedication to bringing both to life with an electric wit and resonant introspection.