Lawrence Garcia

Self-reflexiveness is no guarantee of value in a documentary, and Futura works perfectly well as cinematic reportage. Still, the film does at times feel slack and arbitrary—a bit like a census that no one could argue is unimportant but which nonetheless has the feel of a box-ticking exercise.

Ultimately, Jockey’s most compelling elements lie in the margins. Its major dramatic moments fall flat next to peripheral, off-hand details.

Hamaguchi’s deliberate disruptions of narrative flow are not crude storytelling gestures so much as attempts to create epiphanic moments out of time, where the rift between imagination and reality ceases to exist—at least until the wheel of fortune turns round once more.

Her Socialist Smile develops, in other words, a kind of ethics of the image. Gianvito is not, of course, suggesting that we should somehow give up our senses—only that, whatever the technology or medium we engage with, it is our responsibility to keep our minds from becoming what Keller called “automatic machines.”

An unassuming but richly suggestive portrait of a lonely vacationer.

In the end, Summer Of 85 is about the idea of romance more than it is an actual romance, and on that level it succeeds almost too well, leaving one wishing for something more substantial.

More conceptual than intuitive, Tragic Jungle offers the problem without the passion: a journey into the heart of darkness without the thrill of the unknown.

All Light, Everywhere is about both making and questioning connections, but by the end, its methods feel not so much productively protean as frustratingly noncommittal.

If nothing else, New Order demonstrates that the line that separates festival-lauded arthouse films from crass exploitation fare can be very thin indeed.

At its worst, Hermanus’ forceful direction can land with this sort of thudding literality. But befitting its harrowing subject of young men hammered into rigid conformity, Moffie leaves a lasting mark all the same.

There are longueurs where Mosese’s approach shows its limits, as the film’s rhythms go from stately to stultifying. More often, though, Mosese manages to fuse his film’s stylistic tensions with Mantoa’s struggles of expression, her efforts to carry on in both word and deed.

Ultimately, what registers most strongly in The Salt Of Tears is Luc’s relationship with his father, a through line that acts as a kind of counterpoint to his romantic entanglements.

Beginning as an offbeat, fish-out-of-water travelogue, To The Ends Of The Earth gradually incorporates elements of an adventure movie, self-reflexive film shoot, and even musical melodrama. By the end, it’s no less than one of the most moving films Kurosawa has ever made.

Yellow Rose may not be a success on the whole, but it does suggest that Paragas, like her protagonist, is still finding her way.

For the most part, though, Liberté is a drearily alienating experience; Serra’s depictions are characterized mainly by studied grotesquerie and tedious monotony.

Just as it reduces Garrett’s character to a few tenacious traits, the film, in presenting his inspiring story, loses perspective on the broader picture.

Even in shortened form, I Wish I Knew can at times feel overly discursive. But its implications, particularly regarding the Cultural Revolution, are difficult to miss.

Much of this is relentlessly bleak and hopeless—true to reality, perhaps, but also repetitious and dramatically inert.

Mortimer builds Daniel Isn’t Real to a conclusion that, in concept, should be both tragic and terrifying. Here, it just feels perfunctory.

For Diop as much as for her lead character, Atlantics resounds with the promise of great things to come.

While researching the project, Greenfield herself thought she might find a “redemption story.” But the film eventually proves to be a far more troubling examination of the Marcoses’ continued political hold in the Philippines.

As intelligently crafted as the film is, Glavonić’s directorial strategies do end up limiting the film’s observational power.

As wide-ranging in scope as it is horrifying in its particulars, the film does the necessary work of illuminating, for a large audience, a dark chapter of Chinese history.

Despite its loaded premise, Tel Aviv On Fire rarely sparks more than mild amusement.

Ultimately, At War isn’t able to offer much more than gradual escalation of intensity. Even before the war is over, it’s hard not to withdraw.

What’s crucial is that although Ray & Liz certainly moves like a memory play, the director has chosen to recreate events that he himself could not have experienced.

The documentary’s scope is so vast, and its subject so dense, that it ends up skimping on details that a lengthy written article would likely lay out more clearly.

This is a film that, through its deceptively mellow means, manages to plumb the depths of what it truly means to love amid the uncertainties of self, others, and everything else besides.