Jordan Hoffman

A hundred well-placed plot breadcrumbs lead us to our perfect ending, but apart from scriptwriting craft Rees gets in some bravura scenes of high tension.

If there’s a message in Visages, Villages (both to us, and from Varda to her young friend) is that one does not need to be a tortured and nasty person to make great art. She is living and still-working proof.

Ciro Guerra’s gorgeous picture just has that ripped-from-your-dreams sensibility, where surprising turns float alongside a story you feel like you’ve known your whole life. Embrace of the Serpent is the type of film we’re always searching for, yet seems so obvious once we’ve found it.

The movie snaps together like a jigsaw puzzle, a series of concluding beats that seem inevitable and perfect, and designed to please all parties, so long as you don’t dwell on the logic too much.

While formally quite different from his more universally-respected early work, Chi-Raq has the exuberance and wit you’ll find in Do The Right Thing and Crooklyn. It’s the best film he’s made in a very long time.

Flux Gourmet is very much a “not for everyone” type of movie, but even people unwilling or unable to connect with it must recognize that it isn’t simply weird for weirdnesses sake. Beyond the obvious theme of the artist’s eternal struggle with those who offer patronage only to start shortening the leash, there’s a frank look at just how strange it is for people to come together to make art in the first place.

The lack of awareness of this event is another tragic example of black history being ignored. Only this time the record survived, and now we all get to share in it.

Lore is a rare, wonderful film that works not just as surface entertainment, but has deeper historical meaning, as well as an even grander, more universal statement.

I want more people to see The Tale because it’s such an innovative, honest and important film. It is a landmark, and Laura Dern is absolutely extraordinary. But I know for certain I’ll never watch it again.

This is a gift to cinephiles everywhere from deep in the cellar and we’re all lucky to get a sip.

It’s worth mentioning again that, somehow, this movie, with all its full-frontal historical horror, is still loaded with laughs.

Ex Libris rolls out like a collection of short films.... It’s like watching Wiseman skip along through the stacks of all accumulated human knowledge.

Call Me By Your Name is a masterful work because of the specificity of its details.

The Kindergarten Teacher is probably the only movie about poetry with an ending as tense as any thriller.

While minimal on plot, the film digs in its nails on the day-to-day struggles of poor people in America.

Kasper Collin’s I Called Him Morgan isn’t just the greatest jazz documentary since Let’s Get Lost, it’s a documentary-as-jazz.

American Utopia is an outstanding collaboration between two essential artists; I can’t believe there’s anyone alive who won’t be moved by this document. Byrne’s career is a testament to never resting on one’s laurels, to always searching for creative expansion—but more than anything, American Utopia proves how electrifying he still is as a performer. Same as it ever was.

The scenes of artistic, scientific and communal triumph were significant. The isolated, solipsistic anger of each character, lost in their own identity loop, seemed like a perfect analogy for the conflicts in eastern Europe in the mid-1990s.

This is a gripping and sad drama that puts a tremendous amount of faith in its performers and audience, and for all the emotion and tenderness in the rest of this year’s Sundance crop, this is the first film that left me a complete broken-down mess by the end.

Directors and activists Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis’s outstanding and incendiary documentary about Ferguson does a tremendous end run around mainstream news outlets and the agenda-driven narratives that emerge, particularly on television.

Not since Grey Gardens has a film invited us into such a strange, barely-functioning home and allowed us to gawk without reservation. This is a nosy movie, but it is altogether fascinating.

It is a striking work of storytelling. By assembling the scattered images and historical clips suggested by Baldwin’s writing, I Am Not Your Negro is a cinematic séance, and one of the best movies about the civil rights era ever made.

A damn near perfect film.

A fantastic, sleek and fun satire.

The emotions the Shinoharas’ story inspire are all over the road. It is at times triumphant and warm, then sad and even enraging.

It’s a character piece, and one of the best and most understated movies I’ve ever seen about the grieving process.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an exhibit A example of how to use style to enhance substance, not overwhelm it.

Chandor delivers pure cinema. Thrilling and adventuresome, this is a career highlight from the uniquely sympathetic Robert Redford.