Manuel Betancourt

Ultimately, though, Before We Forget feels much too tidy (didactic, even) in how it unfolds for it to land the emotional gutpunch it so wants to deliver.

Heady almost to a fault, Daniela Forever is all concept, all the time. Vigalondo’s screenplay is much too schematic and analytical for its own good.

Lavender Men is a heady and meta-theatrical excavation of Lincoln’s long-rumored gay affair that’s wildly ambitious if a tad overstuffed.

Led by an against-type performance from Ben Foster, writer-director Jason Buxton’s languidly paced psychological thriller about domesticity and masculinity may be handsomely mounted but ultimately strikes an all too hollow tone to land its kicker of a final shot.

The only way to enjoy Queens of Drama is to surrender to its excesses. Which explains why it works so perfectly as a bold lesbian melodrama best told in pop and punk numbers.

Việt and Nam is both simple and cryptic. Its spellbinding pleasures reward a patient audience who’ll be swayed (and may well swoon) over its hypnotic wonders.

A tad too heady but quite visually arresting, Emin’s dream-turn-nightmare body horror film is as much a lockdown pandemic fable as it is a philosophical treatise on individuality.

If its ambitions never quite meet its execution, Disfluency is (clunky title aside) an amiable watch with its heart (and head) in the right place that still manages to charm, perhaps because it so exalts the very concept of imperfection.

Heartrending yet never maudlin, I’m Still Here is a humanist drama that, in shining a light on insidious injustice, becomes a balm to warn and warm its audiences in equal measure.

Despite its intimate focus, Memoir of a Snail is a towering achievement. This touching animated film serves as a reminder that Elliot is a humanist who clearly sculpts his “clayographies” (as he dubs his films) from the very essence of life itself.

In the end, this is a tender tale befitting its summer trappings. It is wistful and witty, sultry and soothing.

Striking a fine balance between lurid voyeurism and grounded naturalism, Mäkelä’s film is a gripping wonder, perhaps a tad too literate, with its nods not only to Ellis but to authors like Jean Genet and Cyril Collard.

More than a biographical documentary, Eno emerges as a brilliant and endlessly inspiring creative manifesto.

There’s candor and insight here. But, much like Girlie and Clark, Daddio remains stuck despite the appearance of movement.

The documentary, taking its cue from Dion, is not merely looking backward; there’s a path ahead. What exactly that looks like is, as it turns out, being negotiated as the documentary unfolds.

It is Jacobs’ performance that makes “Backspot” such an exciting watch, even as it hits well-known beats and otherwise expected character arcs.

Solo is most intriguing when its romantic rivalry takes center stage.

Mark Waters’ Mother Of The Bride, a Thailand-set romp featuring Brooke Shields as the mother in question, is not so much a misfire as a blatant example of how a formula deployed with little to no charm ends up feeling bland—lifeless, even.

Slow reveals itself to be quite a tender portrait of love and companionship, of what our bodies yearn and want in others, and how we could do well to upend the stories we tell each other about living and loving another.

Equally brazen and ambitious, Drew’s film is committed to embracing the zany undertones that have always bubbled under the surface of a comic book tale in which secret identities, arch performances and fabulous outfits (all worn in the dead of night, no less) have always felt like lifelines for queer and trans kids worldwide.

There’s artistry here in how a boy’s world is coming to a close, an elegy for what was and a welcome invitation to see what could yet be.

It may well be plenty for a fun enough ride at the theaters, but ultimately this is an exhausting trip into this increasingly unwieldy franchise.

Overall, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire makes for a serviceable entry in this now four-decade-running franchise. No matter that, in tone and in structure, it all but replicates what’s worked in the past.

While others may find in this visually arresting outer space drama a probing meditation on grief and marriage (not to mention human alienation writ-large), I never did warm up to this Colby Day-penned character study, finding it much too caught up in its own ambitions to make its emotional beats pay off.

The film is often so hurried or so preoccupied with what’s to come that it ignores what’s happening in the moment.

In trying to do both—in trying to play it straight and yet show the very absurd mechanics of what it means to do so—Argylle lands in a kind of exhausting limbo, forever stretching its premise to its breaking point only to snap it back up again.

The Beekeeper feels stale and rather one-note.

You cheer on these boys but you’re not left with much once the credits roll and their story becomes but a wistful tale of a time gone by.