Jordan Hoffman

Bluebird is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement, especially for a first-time filmmaker.

The Past is just about as good as a relationship drama is ever going to get. The plot is teased out with deliberate grace, the performances are sublime and the revelations, even the most melodramatic, feel right and true. It’s big canvas stuff painted by a new master.

Bonello's decision to show rather than tell keeps the audience on its toes.

This is a fast and lean film, an absolute workout for its outstanding cast and a devilish roller coaster ride for audiences. It’s funny, disturbing, cringeworthy, nerve-wracking and, for some, will feel a little too realistic.

The kid performances are impressive and the subtext of a region still shaking off the effects of a long-ended war gives seed to some much needed discussion.

It’s all about the performances. McConaughey and Leto don’t just give voice to the disenfranchised of the 1980s, but all people suddenly faced with impossible challenges.

There are countless clever dialogue parries as well as some quite outstanding rants. It definitely takes the movie outside of the world of pure realism, but the theatricality is well worth it.

Some Velvet Morning is a horror film with no blood, with words the only weapon for 98% of the picture.

Forbes’ film is a fine tribute to him, and a fascinating glimpse at a different, but not distant, past.

It's got the thrills, it's got the creepy-crawlies, and it's got just enough plot to make you care about the characters. Alien: Romulus is a hell of a night out at the movies.

It’s the film’s mercurial nature, its hazy dreamlike logic, that makes it so extraordinary.

The imagery runs backward and forward, gets freeze-framed, goes through different filters, and is blown up, reduced, diced, and re-assembled like playing cards. But director Bianca Stigter fully commits to this formalist dare—and it pays off tremendously.

The entire picture exudes the wide-eyed (some might say immature) wonderment found around slobbering beasts and magic spells. No, you absolutely do not need to know a thing about D&D to like this. But if you have a familiarity with the Forgotten Realms, the 1980s D&D cartoon show, or if you’re just a Led Zeppelin fan, there’s something here for you. Otherwise, there’s too much going on to ever feel left out.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a treasure as always, basically plays it straight and is terrific.

Even on the couch, with the ability to hit pause, it reaches heights (ha!) of quintessential B-movie greatness, causing exactly the kind of discomfort that elicits verbal rebukes.

I'd place it more alongside the enjoyable The Visit or Split, and, indeed, there are some story commonalities with both. It is, however, masterfully shot, with great use of wide angles, cropped frames, and a sense of foreboding inside and around the concert venue.

It does a marvelous job at giving us an impressionistic taste of horrific circumstances without using them to beat us into submission.

If there’s a message at all in Moonage Daydream, it is secondary to the experiential nature of the movie. That’s hardly a knock. One goes to a concert to be thrilled, not necessarily to gather life lessons. Leave that sort of thing for the other, lesser documentaries.

This picture isn’t as showy or obvious as one of his (many) masterpieces, but it is quite good and deserves your time and respect.

Movies like Resurrection are terrific because they blur the line between how you’d act in reality and what’s appropriate for a film.

As with the others in the series, this is not an upbeat picture, but it is effective and unsettling without being too gory.

From a distance The Spectacular Now is mere soap opera, but it is one of those films that grow more fascinating upon inspection.

Formulaic, dare-I-say-sappy movies, when done right, can be really good, and Nonnas is one such example.

There’s little about it that is realistic, but it has points to make about the real world.

This movie is foremost an ethnographic exercise, and whether it is a rallying cry or poverty porn is for the viewer to decide.

This isn’t a particularly chancy film, unless the decision to go old school is considered such. It is still, however, quite good.

We can debate if Burn Your Maps merely fetishises a different culture or holds it in true reverence, but I’d like to give it the benefit of the doubt. If nothing else, the performances are terrific all around.

The landscape is a definitive presence throughout the film, which has almost no music and very little dialogue. The film is short (approximately 80 minutes) and maintains a good sense of dread throughout.