Marc Savlov

An arresting feature debut from director Mariama Diallo, Master gingerly walks the tightrope between outright supernatural horror and a criticism of the enduring power of monied white privilege.

It’s the sublime and understated performance by Krisha Fairchild (Krisha, Waves) as the aging pot farmer Devi Adler that elevates Freeland past its potential as a tone poem cliche into a far more arresting portrait of the old versus the new and beyond.

Small Engine Repair is a real American horror story, skillfully shot, perfectly cast and acted, and carrying a sorrowful message that resonates with brutal truth.

The cramped environs and the paranoiac thrum that runs throughout the film like a main circuit cable straight to hell are almost outmatched by a third-act explosion of horrifyingly excellent practical gore effects.

The East is an unrelenting condemnation of the Netherlands’ misguided attempt to return its colonial outreach to a time long gone while hitting most (if not all) of the “doomed war” niche genre movie tropes without ever actually teetering into cliche. That’s an ever-tricky move that Taihuttu aces.

Ultimately, Truman & Tennessee is a fascinating but melancholy mash note to the enduring friendship of two genius misfits who, despite constant self doubt barely masked by a raconteur’s seeming insouciance, rocked the literary (and cinematic, despite their mutual distaste for filmic adaptations) world at, in hindsight, just the right time.

Everything about Gaia works in tandem to create a steadily escalating mood of Blastomycotic body-horror distress (including Pierre-Henri Wicomb’s anxiety-inducing score). Fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and its Annihilation adaptation, and lovers of the defiantly feminine and vengeful natural world will find plenty to chew on in Gaia.

Character-driven movies this brutally honest about life below the poverty line are few and far between, but the ensemble cast and Riegel’s skills not only behind the camera but also – judging from her lean and mean script – behind the keyboard help Holler rise above expectations and overcome cliche.

It clings to your psyche, a parasitic creepy-crawl of anxiety that will test the viewer’s own ability to get a good night’s sleep long after the closing credits fade to black.

Los Hermanos's fly-on-the-wall focus on the brothers twisty, unpredictable predicament feels scattershot at times.

Duty Free is for the most part free of gooey sentiment and clingy regrets. Regis (who eventually funded the on-and-off-again production of the film via Kickstarter) captures a remarkable portrait of a woman on the verge of … anything other than a nervous breakdown, mater triumphantes.

It’s a slight film, really a seriocomic tone poem about the absurdities and obstacles we can create for ourselves even when our intentions are for the best, but it brims with ordinary everyday good cheer and feels like just the right movie at just the right time.

McKim’s documentary is as jangly and urgent as its subject and his art, and it packs a melancholy wallop, using the artist’s own running commentary via cassette tape (there were two hundred hours of it) and layering it over snatches of Wojnarowicz’s Super 8 films, countless photographs, and recollections from those who were both there at the start of Wojnarowicz’s career and at the end of his life.

Through it all Philps keeps her camera low the better to represent the children’s as-yet-unformed POV, both literally and emotionally

It ends up being a smashingly good and goofball history of the non-world of Canadian history and flim-flammery, deeply committed to its own colonial crazy.

Possessor is queasy-smart near-masterpiece of psychotronic slippage. Like its protagonist’s risky psychogenic recollections, it’ll stick with you whether you’d like it to or not.

Collins, who also wrote this woeful, dolefully humorous take on mankind’s endless struggle to overcome the banal but no-less soul-sucking minor mishaps of modern life, ends things on a surprisingly encouraging, optimistic note.

The portrait he (Hossain) paints, while visually arresting thanks to cinematographer Sabine Lancelin’s eye for Dhaka’s colorfully saturated and gritty milieu, is a grim one.

Fiennes assumes the character and recites shocking revelations that Amirami’s obsessive research has disclosed. It sounds like a cheap trick, but the actor pulls it off flawlessly.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is as real as it gets, a snapshot stolen from the very year everything turned to sh-t. It’s a masterpiece.

Ultimately Hill of Freedom is surprisingly satisfying in its sheer — albeit abjectly disjointed – fish-out-of-water ordinariness.

Meghie’s film is a paean to the push and pull between enchanting possibilities and chimerical probabilities. You don’t need to bring a handkerchief into the theater for fear of ocular leakage, but The Photograph’s modestly hopeful denouement is, truly, picture perfect.

Given the minimal – albeit excellent – cast and the film’s maximal rollercoaster of shifty mood swings and its increasingly paranoiac atmosphere of disorienting dread, it’s no wonder Come to Daddy lingers in the mind long after the final, emotionally revelatory denouement.

Television is reality, and reality is less than television. And that is, by the end of the 72-minute-long VHYes’ gleefully immersive, intermittently profound “found footage,” a lesson Ralph osmotically absorbs through the VHS viewfinder of his life.

Diehl’s performance is a model of restraint; he more often imparts information by a look, a glance, the slump of his shoulders, than he does with a spoken word.

Morrone is superb in the part, exuding a sort of saintly solitude while caught up in the midst of turmoil from within and without. Even at its most dire, Mickey and the Bear is tinged with an almost holy hope for all involved, a rare and remarkable feat to pull off so well for a first-time director indeed.

As if the dazzling performances and audaciously intertwined storylines weren’t enough, Waves is a visual stunner, too, thanks to director of photography Drew Daniels, whose restless, reckless camerawork paints a family tragedy in dizzying, near-psychedelic hues, mirroring the increasingly frenetic storyline.

The Good Liar is a pleasantly playful thriller hiding a seriously shady history close to its benighted heart.