Josh Kupecki

Focusing her camera on the rising cogs in the machine of China’s insatiable consumer culture, Jessica Kingdon expands on her 2017 short “Commodity City” with the visually stunning feature Ascension.

The phrase “searing indictment” is an overused idiom in the critic’s toolbox, but in this instance, it couldn’t be more appropriate.

Carnahan and co-conspirators Kurt McLeod and Mark Williams are clearly having a blast orchestrating this symphony of Grand Guignol.

While some of the re-creations of clandestine meetings and shots of faceless men transporting the painting can be a bit cloak-and-dagger cheesy, that’s the only stumble in a film that tells a strange tale populated by a cast of eccentric and dangerous characters.

Is there such a thing as too much pathos? Trick question, because there is not. So, should you find yourself a bit emotionally imbalanced these days, and the aggressively optimistic charms of Ted Lasso have proven to be a placebo, come see how the other half lives and seek out The Macaluso Sisters, a beautiful bummer that is the perfect elixir of Aristotelian purgation, and a restorative for your soul.

As he did with his previous doc, 2018’s John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, Faraut finds and obsesses over the rhythm of bodies in motion, using repetition and cross-cuts of the team’s training footage and gameplay with anime sequences and textile manufacturing. These collisions, set to music from Portishead and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, are the heart of Witches, hypnotic patterns of serene velocity.

Keeping the camera on Fournet and Garland may reduce the screentime of the actual humpbacks, but Xanthopoulos is more interested in the research process, the passion and devotion the two have for their work, and capturing not just the thrills and the agony, but also more contemplative moments of of reflection and motivation.

The film, anchored by interviews with Moreno and her co-stars and contemporaries, positions Moreno as a trailblazer, a barrier-breaker, and a role model, but more interestingly, it ultimately tracks a journey of self discovery.

All Light, Everywhere’s roaming tangents always return to the heart (or the eye) of the matter, and that skill of orchestration is no mean feat.

Franco brooks no quarter in New Order, and the businesslike tone and lean economy of the film make for an incredibly unsettling experience. He also layers the film with an ambiguity that keeps the viewer off balance.

Focusing on a quartet of charming, venerable men and the dogs they love, the film offers an engaging portrait of life in the truffle hunting trade, a bucolic life spent roaming picturesque forests, maintaining the winter wood heaters, and drinking wine.

Funny, tragic, moving scenes unfold in Andersson’s meticulously crafted frames. In cafes, bedrooms, offices, street corners suffused in muted off-whites and grays, with characters (mostly nonprofessionals) participating in a sublime ballet of choreographed insecurity, doubt, and frustration, but also of tender and fragile grace.

Both Glenn Close and Mila Kunis are very talented actors, but Four Good Days gives them absolutely nothing interesting to say or do.

Watching Matt and Anna discover the parameters of their friendship, and the impact they have on each other’s lives, is quite rewarding. Both Helms and Harrison nail the fluid nature of the tonal shifts as their bond tightens, loosens, and tightens once more.

The natural world and the industrialized world are at odds once again. But it is to Da-Rin’s talent as a filmmaker that her political and ideological intent never overshadow this deceptively simple and astute tale of a sick man yearning for his home, and finally hearing the call of the wild.

More thought seems to have gone into the future foodstuff and eating utensil design than in the narrative. It’s a lazy film, one whose future will most likely live on in mediocre undergraduate term papers.

If you are unfamiliar with Dupieux’s cinema of meta shenanigans, Keep an Eye Out serves as a solid starting point. For those already indoctrinated, it’s another welcome dispatch from cinema’s premier purveyor of perplexing paradoxes.

It is difficult to see My Darling Supermarket for the whimsical anthropological oddity it so desperately strives to be.

Chaos Walking is, as with any pop confection, catchy and has a solid beat, it’s just a shame that this tune is all too familiar.

It is a brilliant high-wire act. Yoaz is utterly unpredictable at any given moment, and so too, is Synonyms.

Silk Road is not without its pleasures – Clarke especially is fun to watch as he gets increasingly cornered with his shakedown shenanigans – just don’t expect the kush; this is strictly schwag.

In the final moments of the film, when the last piece of this very lovely looking landscape puzzle is placed, I couldn’t help but feel that the film was a missed opportunity for something more intriguing, profound.

The film animates a number of Escher’s creations, smoothly explaining his methodologies.

Preparations successfully trades narrative authority for a more provisional path, and much like its main character, remains wholly enigmatic.

An unsettling feeling hums through the film, and remains well after. Less of a jolt, then; call it a sustained current.

Some Kind of Heaven effortlessly blends humor and pathos into a memorable and at times unsettling study on where life’s trajectory might land us, and that is a concept that deserves more than mild contemplation.

There is no cumulative emotional resonance to be had here, just a succession of incidents to navigate. Pinocchio’s ultimate transformation from puppet to human boy lacks much of the transcendence inherent in the parable, and thus the film never moves beyond its wooden machinations.

The Planters is a lovingly crafted film full of genuine wonder and surprise, like finding buried treasure.