Leslie Felperin

Hosoda has a lovely, light touch and leavens the proceedings with dry, well-observed humor.

A fraction less gut-bustingly goofy than its predecessors.

The Nest lingers long after the final credits. It may not have the same surprising newness that juiced the debut of Martha Marcy, but it casts an ineffable spell nevertheless.

This stands as one of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s better but not quite best features in a pretty consistent career, not as scurrilously seedy as him at his worst, or as merciless, but not as ambitious or startlingly insightful as his best.

One senses that Billingham is not always at ease with the narrative demands of filmmaking. But his startling eye for the common made strange is very visible here, and hard not to hope that he’ll make further forays into filmmaking after this very auspicious debut with a work that feels so close and true to his earlier material.

This extraordinary documentary by director Sebastien Lifshitz, who has made many films about the LGBTQ+ experience (Wild Side, Bambi, Open Bodies), achieves a remarkable degree of intimacy with its young subject and her family.

An overview of African-American gospel sounds whose dazzling talent-display should exhilarate viewers regardless of religious leanings.

Any way you slice it, and even if you're not entirely in agreement with the various subjects' positions on Medicare for all or the Green New Deal, this film is a winner by a landslide.

Although beautifully rendered throughout, with delicate, elegantly drawn watercolor-like illustrations, the picture may seem too plain and simple for the oversophisticated tastes of kids in Europe and North America, while Arrietty herself reps a slightly insipid heroine.

Out of all the film’s many achievements, perhaps the most impressive is the ability to keep the tone balanced just on this biting point between tragedy and comedy in scene after scene.

Luxuriating in a wealth of archival material that encompasses radio and TV interviews, privately recorded conversations from reel-to-reel tapes (Armstrong could swear like a sailor), and good old-fashioned newspaper clippings (remember them?), this documentary about the great Louis Armstrong is a real keeper.

In the end, the material feels a bit attenuated, like a short that’s been stretched to feature length, even if the characters are enjoyable, sympathetic enough company for the pic’s 84-minute running time.

Although the treacly soundtrack overpunches on the sentiment at times, this is undeniably moving stuff – especially scenes where some of the doctors see footage of patients they helped save, still very much alive and thriving today.

Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners (Domakinstvo za pocetnici) is a fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family.

The film is exceedingly funny, even in translation, right up to the point where the tone shifts dramatically. Deeply endearing on every level, from its anti-authoritarian politics to its body positivity to general joie de vivre, this is a crowdpleaser through and through (unless the crowd happens to be made up of moral policemen and dogmatic clerics).

With its really smart deep dives into cultural criticism, this is a seasonal stocking overflowing with spooky fun.

In the end, it all feels a bit like a fashion film or some other branded exercise in style — except that the brand is Ortega’s peculiar and unique vision.

Pure dead gallus (that's Scots for 'wonderful').

In the end, it plays a little too often like an academic pastiche of horror tropes even though its emotional core rings with resonance.

With a Brechtian approach that compels the viewer to question both their own ethical assumptions and tacit complicity in a worldwide consumerist culture that exploits people all over the planet, 7 Prisoners is deeply uncomfortable but utterly compelling viewing.

There’s nothing sentimental about this documentary, which looks at people with the clear, unflinching gaze of a portraitist.

This is undoubtedly a work of historic significance, made by a master in his field – but beware that it often feels like a film-making notebook, full of doodles and ideas but not especially cohesive as a story.

Remarkably, it never comes across as fawning or hagiographic. Instead, Crosby and his interviewers collaborate to create something that feels honest and insightful.

Aquarela takes a deep dive into watery realms around the world, offering up an experience that can truly be described as immersive.

It’s tremendously reassuring to find out that Spinney is just the sort of kind-hearted sweetheart you’d expect, a man who’s spent a lifetime making children happy. And it’s a kick to see archive footage and interviews with some of the old, non-puppeteer cast members.

This works well just as simple drama, directed and performed immaculately, and as a glorious promise of films to come from Lin.

Gasoline Rainbow pays homage to all the road movies that ever were but is still its own quirky thing, uniquely of its time.

Director Lorenzo Vigas, who collaborated on the script with Paula Markovitch and Laura Santullo, adeptly manoeuvres things so that the film slides effortlessly from mystery to criminal story to quasi-Greek tragedy, changing registers with subtle alterations of tone. The landscape – vast, desiccated, menacing – is practically a character in its own right, full of inscrutable secrets like Hatzín’s own deadpan face.

A judicious mix of new-minted interviews, home video footage and charming animation by Shanahan makes for a delightful, well-tempered package.

Merlant obviously knows she’s taking risks with a free-form, genre-bending structure, and that’s cool. It’s just a shame that the end product is so loosey-goosey it’s less a bold sui generis experiment than a hot mess.

Borenstein and Talankin keep the focus mainly on the kids and the slow creep of authoritarianism, rather than the adults, but Pasha’s voiceover and occasional address to camera hint at qualities the filmmakers seem hesitant to discuss.

Cookie Queens serves up an eminently accessible and easily meme-able serving of American-girl cuteness, featuring a diverse cast of well-chosen young women.

While the landscapes, especially in the parched Sahara section of the story, are dazzling, Carnera’s camera always keeps the focus on the humans, sometimes specks seen from great distances moving through the sand and sometimes studied in close-ups that fill the widescreen canvas.

It should be noted that sometimes this feels like just weirdness for weirdness’ sake. Nevertheless, Strickland builds his own worlds with such a distinctive style — down to the fonts, the bilious shades of green and the textures of the silks — that the viewer can’t help feeling pulled into his crazy maelstrom of quirk.

Even for those who know about the Auschwitz Protocols – a report to which the pair contributed that has a weighty legacy in Holocaust history – the film is still intensely impactful. Inevitably, it is profoundly upsetting and disturbing.

Perhaps the most remarkable moment comes at the end when the elderly Aurora reflects that she doesn’t want revenge, she just wants those connected to the genocide to be made accountable for it: “sat in the chair” of justice.

I feel tempted to say there’s a leaner, stronger film inside this that could have been coaxed out, but in the light of the film’s message about accepting people as they are, maybe we shouldn’t be shaming this film either. It is what it is, and that’s perfectly imperfect.

This is a workmanlike iteration somewhat ploddingly true to its genre, from the style of lighting used for the interviews, to the sweeping, keening strings-led soundtrack, to the almost shocking moments of humour and honesty.

Not only is it as derivative as chatbot-written free verse, it’s also not even pleasant to look at. Walk like an Egyptian very quickly away from the multiplex.

There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space for itself somewhere in the region of Eric Rohmer wistful romances, Richard Linklater ensemble stories, and Sixth Generation semi-underground Chinese filmmakers like Jia Zhangke.

This hallucinatory, deeply confusing but skillfully executed and mesmeric work flows back and forth across time periods, parts of the city of Yekaterinburg and its characters’ memories, often literally within the space of a single shot.

As action, it's niftily executed, the suspense neatly built, and the shocks expectedly surprising.

A sweet but slight love story about world-weary hipster bloodsuckers.

Packed with rambling digressions, sudden shifts of tone, and playful fake-outs as it shuttles between layers of “reality” and performance, but constructed with precision and assurance, it leaves you with both a sugar high and slight sense of nausea.

Adams displays terrific range and an incandescent screen presence as she effortlessly incarnates Shante over a 10-year period, from puberty to young motherhood.

Truly, this covers the whole spectrum of experience, all of it eloquently explained by the subjects, an assortment of women who tell their truths about clients who can’t be honest with themselves, their complicated relationships with friends, family and cis women, the legacy of slave culture, and their favourite portable electric shavers.

This directing debut for experienced producer Marc Turtletaub (Little Miss Sunshine, Loving) ticks along pleasantly, driven by an efficient if slightly bland script by Oren Moverman and Polly Mann.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore does offer an engaging, exuberant portrait of the relentlessly likeable Matlin.

The lonely, uncanny and sometimes unthinkingly violent world of childhood is explored with chilling candor and exceptional skill in writer-director Eskil Vogt’s arthouse horror feature The Innocents.

All In offers compelling visual history and civics lessons that will still serve an educational purpose long after the next presidential inauguration.

There’s nothing radical or groundbreaking about either that message or the film-making on show here, but Ricciardi and Janice’s honesty and indeed that of all those around him, prove to be very moving in the long run, underscoring that there’s as many ways to face death as there are to live life.

This may be the Dardennes’ most emotionally engaging film in a while — a tragedy told with utter clarity, centered on protagonists entirely deserving of our sympathy, empathy, all the ‘pathies you’ve got.

Sleeping With Other People is a brittle, bawdy, frequently funny romcom that might be too smart for its own good.

In the Fog explores the moralities of wartime with restraint and exacting execution.

Sie elicits mostly spontaneous, credible performances from the younger cast, who deliver their wisecracks and banter with aplomb and only occasionally edge into annoying child-actor pertness.

It’s a good, solid little picture, but it’s not that great, and certainly not noticeably more accomplished or compelling than many of the other music-themed docs that come out each week with less fanfare.

Intimate in every sense, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande represents an affirming, immensely likable British comedy-drama.

An undeniably powerful record of the Palestinian village of Bil'in's course of civil disobedience from 2005 to the present...the pic is also shamelessly sentimental and manipulative in its construction.

The script’s nuanced treatment of the complex relationships and a feel for the many-faceted, multicultural city in which it’s set – a unique urban blend of hedonism and tradition, bound together by hummus and history – redeem any shortcomings.

Although not as strikingly original as Bujalski’s earlier work, there’s something endearing about the characters, the film’s laconic, stoner rhythms and quirky plotting. In the end, it has something wise and kind to say about loneliness and the cult of personal improvement.

Ultimately, Loznitsa builds up a portrait of a bitter clockwork world where the faces of the doomed are above all part of a landscape.

The endgame is disappointingly predictable, but writer-director-cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier has a lovely touch with faces, light and telling details.

Small, imperfectly formed but quite entertaining all the same.

Creature is exceptional in its depiction of the Byzantine bureaucracy that encases gulags, and how the towns adjacent to Russian prisons tend to be seedy snake pits of crime and venality.

The use of sign language, deafness and silence itself adds several heady new ingredients to the base material, alchemically creating something rich, strange and very original.

A Tempest so kitschy, yet curiously drab and banal.

By the end it’s nearly impossible not to shed a tear after the touching finesse and shape of this story.

This debut feature from writer-director Brian Duffield (best known for his screenplays for Underwater, The Babysitter and Jane Got a Gun) has plenty of gallows humour to leaven the gore and tragedy, and plenty of subtexts swimming under the surface like glittering, metaphorical koi.

There's no subtextual allusion really to contempo France or civil wars elsewhere in the world today, just the feeling that this is an interesting story in its own right, fascinating precisely because it's so at odds with modern sensibilities.

Miraculously, it manages to unpack this perplexing issue with precision and intelligence but without any moral panic-mongering, condescension or dumbing down the complexity of the science stuff.

Not a word is spoken throughout, which harkens back to an older era of cinematic storytelling. At the same time, the extreme frame-to-frame fluidity of the computer-assisted animation style, composed entirely of fields of subtly modulated colour, no outlines and minimal modelling, looks completely 21st century.

Even if the antics shown here aren’t really your thing, it is still a hoot seeing Gwar members get interviewed by a game Joan Rivers: you can tell that beneath all the latex most of them are sweet, normal folk who remained loyal (mostly) to one another and shared a vision for the group.

Paradise: Hope has humor and warmth, and shows more genuine affection and kindness toward its characters than Seidl usually allows.

[A] televisual but still touching documentary tribute.

The worst that could be said of helmer David Gelb's feature debut is that it's perhaps a little over-garnished with backstory about Ono's relationship with his two sons, and is slightly repetitive. That said, this intrinsically compelling hymn to craftsmanship and taste in every sense should cleanse palates.

Spirited, highly amusing and endearingly shambolic.

It’s a relief to report that the final film is actually quite charming, thoughtful and as cuddly as a plush toy, albeit one with a few modern gizmos thrown in.

There’s something admirably honest about the meta-method Amalric and co-writer Philippe Di Folco have chosen.

Often moving but also disquieting and even intermittently funny, this drama unfurls a spiritual parable that is uniquely Polish but accessible to all.

Although the focus is on one particular nightclub and its owner, the film acts as an accessible slice of jazz history that might usefully entice viewers to learn more.

Of course, the music is the main attraction and that’s served well, with long chunks of performance footage that aren’t sliced and diced as much as they would be in a contemporary rock doc.

A shocking but ultimately galvanizing work of reportage that meets the same high standard of their previous collaboration, The Invisible War.

It’s such a seamless, harmoniously composed work, effortlessly edited and elegantly shot, that it’s almost too easy to just drift along with it, like floating down a river on a canoe, letting its currents take control. This isn’t a grabby, attention seeker of a film, but a quiet, watchful sort of movie that whispers its secrets sotto voce.

The most affecting moments in the film are in more intimate settings.

Berg’s account of the child abuse cases that led to the imprisonment of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), doesn’t reveal much that hasn’t already been in the news or written up in books, but it does provide a comprehensive, disturbing and utterly fascinating historical overview.

Equity is a smart thriller set in the corporate world that disguises its modest budget with an intelligent script and good set of hooks.

There’s no missing the polemical points being made or doubting the film is meant to inspire further action, but even hardened whale-eating oil oligarchs are likely to be charmed by the idealism and smarts of these audacious activists.

Shinkai never skimps on the human level. Suzume, who at first seems like just another standard-issue anime ingenue, grows and becomes more interesting throughout.

Some viewers may feel a little uneasy watching her being almost "catfished" by the deception, even if it turns out to be a delightful surprise, and a real emotional money shot when it finally lands.

Amiable if predictable.

Clearly, these films are the work of people who love animals. More importantly though, going beyond the pat eco-conscious message that every kids’ film has to have, HTTYD2 touches on how complex the emotional bond between a person and an animal can be.

There is a fair number of gags and wisecracks that will go over the head of many viewers not steeped in the local lore, argot and history. But the film’s infectious energy, use of in-camera effects, animation and all manner of jiggery pokery is as mesmerizing and giddy as it was when Danny Boyle used many of the same tricks for Trainspotting.

A friend who watched this with me said that it’s the kind of film she’d like to see again when she’s dying. That pretty much nails its meditative, melancholy tone and suits the kind of work Goldsworthy does, which is all about the ephemeral and the enduring; time and the tactile qualities of the instant.

Striking an elegantly sustained balance between intimacy and historical scope, director James Kent's WWI-set epic Testament of Youth encompasses nearly all of the virtues of classical British period drama and nearly none of the vices.

As a teaching and consciousness-raising tool, it will be an indispensable resource.

I can think of few documentaries that are more honest, self-scrutinising and revelatory about ageing, familial love and its limits, and the whole tragicomic process of dying.

Prayer dwells with almost swooning rapture on the bodies of young men as they mete out brutal violence on one another, and features a cast composed mostly of unknowns, impressively coached in order to deliver arresting turns onscreen.

Corsage . . . although a late entry to the disaffected royalty subcategory, is arguably one of the most interesting so far, much closer to the ludic, imaginative queen of the genre, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006).