Jordan Hoffman

When something is this engaging (and funny, did I mention funny?) it ceases to merely be about ideas and becomes, even in this borderline sci-fi context, a thoughtful movie about people.

All three actors are tremendous, and director Dan Trachtenberg, making his feature debut, must be commended for keeping things tightly focused.

Even though The Wave is fiction, there comes a point where it ceases to be nail-biting fun and just an exercise in voyeuristic cruelty.

It’s somewhat heavy material for a film aimed at children, but perhaps very necessary in an age where a beer-stained uncle might have ruined Thanksgiving wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap.

Ficara and Requa have an irreverent streak, one that even might strike some as a little flippant against the gravity of the war.

The restrained performances and luscious location photography are enough to make this a film worth exploring, though it might not be a bad idea to down a few caffeine-rich drinks before settling in to watch.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny isn’t so much a continuation as a Xerox copy with cheap toner.

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.

Mixing droll animation, stock footage and a restrained number of talking head interviews, the director Penny Lane’s biography has all the whimsy of a tall tale, until a late change in tone surprises with genuine emotion. Nuts! is really a kick.

In addition to its ability to take this odd premise and run with it, Nina Forever scores by being tremendously erotic. Granted, what’s sexy varies from taste to taste, but the exuberance in passion exhibited by young Abigail Hardingham is refreshing in a landscape of independent films that too frequently play nudity for a cheap laugh or just to tick a box off a potential distributor’s list of requirements.

It’s coarse and it’s stupid, but it is, thanks mostly the two good performances and some stylish use of music and editing, a little bit moving.

Southside With You uses our affection for the Obamas to add urgency in the otherwise simple script.

Did you like The Commitments? Did you like We Are the Best!!? Well, Sing Street isn’t as good as either of those two, but it’s still pretty terrific.

The ending doesn’t quite land the gut punch it’s hoping for, but this is more about fun than about exposing deep, nefarious truths. At least, I think it is.

It’s one hell of a yarn, which makes The Lovers and the Despot’s strangely soporific style something of a disappointment.

Greene makes it clear early on that his interests lie less with a news report than with what Werner Herzog dubbed “ecstatic truth”. The dial swerves between “catching something” to “clearly rehearsed” and back again, and all to the betterment of the final project.

Equity takes us inside modern Wall Street in a unique and gripping manner.

The world needs people like Foley, and this film argues that cameras are every bit as important as firearms in the current struggle. This movie, despite its somewhat simplistic form, acts as a fine tribute to the man, his work and the bravery of others who are called to his field.

The noble intention to make us dwell on our culture, and perhaps shame its more voyeuristic members, quickly devolves into a cavalcade of tedium.

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

Abhorrent politics aside, it’s also a terrible movie. The dialogue is atrocious, the performances rote. One could make the case that its incoherence is a grand meta-narrative statement about the fluidity of combat, but I don’t think that’s the case.

This laid-back amusement should not be misinterpreted as competent storytelling. Though some of the jokes land, that’s entirely due to the performances; there’s not one example of clever writing in the entire picture.

The movie gets completely lost, unsure if it wants to be a serious exploration of repressed memories or a work of giddy, spooky trash.

The Road Chip isn't exactly what I'd call a good film and has almost nothing going on in the visual department, but for those saddled with kids for an afternoon, you could do a lot worse.

First with the telephone, then early cinema, the magic of wireless radio and, finally, television, Dreams Rewired bombards the senses with a thorough and clever montage of found footage from the 1890s to the pre-war era.

The Brand New Testament is a peppy, original and (importantly) very sweet story.

What I like about Among the Believers, a portrait of radical Islam in Pakistan, is how the first two-thirds of the movie strives to remain as balanced as possible.

Director Ron Howard does a solid job of getting the smell of salt off the page and into the picture. The first half works quite well simply as a procedural, but when the action comes we run into trouble. The well-earned seriousness is washed away as we’re broadsided by B-movie tropes.