Marshall Shaffer

Amidst all the noise and nonsense, Hoppers makes a winning case for the enduring value of dignity and respect for all creation.

With scalpel-like precision, the film exposes the agonies of fathers, sons, and brothers.

It’s engaging to watch without requiring viewers to completely turn off their brains. Van Sant makes “Dead Man’s Wire” move like a well-oiled machine, even if he can only get so much mileage from an old vehicle. Simple, familiar pleasures are still pleasures.

While occasionally frustrating to watch the film spin its wheels into repetitive or monotonous territory, the magnetic pull of simply watching Blanchett hold court on-screen is undeniable.

The Testament of Ann Lee often proves difficult to pin down, providing enthrallment in fits and starts rather than inducing a consistent state of rapture. It’s a bit slippery in the way that chasing the divine presence in art or life can be: present and tangible, then eluding one’s grasp like smoke.

Leave it to a documentarian to find subjects who profess a similar faith in the power of ecstatic rather than merely objective truth.

In a young girl’s face is all of Left-Handed Girl, as Nina Ye, like Shih-Ching Tsou behind the camera, translates the immensity of this sprawling saga into immediate, intimate detail.

The rabble-rousing enthusiasm of the enterprise carries it throughout, allowing the raucous vibes to paper over some thin characterization. The script, which is often content to remain skin-deep, just does not pack the same muscle as the directorial verve.

Queer feels unsettled and inconsistent—but never anything less than fascinating to watch unfold.

Kusijanović storms out of the gate with a confident coming-of-age tale full of relationships as rocky as the craggy Croatian coast in which the story unfolds.

The film plays right into Tim Robinson’s sweet spot of surrealistic and satirical comedy.

It’s still a hilarious adventure, but Ulman loses some of her magic within a more diffuse narrative framework.

As star-crossed lovers resolve to battle their demons rather than surrender, this at times intensely creepy horror tale reveals itself to also be a potent and poignant teen romance.

Its zippy stylings never feel derivative or overly familiar. Watching this adaptation is like getting caught up inside a storybook drama designed for adults, maintaining a mythic quality while harnessing the complexities of reality.

Comfort with loveable loserdom is the glue – or maybe the scotch tape – that holds together a rickety contraption careening constantly toward calamity.

Last Night in Soho, with all its warts and wonders, shows you can teach an old dog some new tricks. Wright shows he still hasn't hit his ceiling as a filmmaker, but's heartening to see him stretch and reach rather than just keeping his artistic ambitions planted on the floor.

Boston Strangler steps right up to the line of the hokiest girlboss tropes and narrowly avoids crossing into a cringeworthy injection of contemporary feminism into a historical narrative. Rather than blaring its priorities throughout, Ruskin’s film gradually reveals the biases suppressing the idea that women’s stories matter. It’s just enough of a twist on an otherwise imitative, iterative story to hold interest.

While this send-up might not pass the scrutiny for a rewatch or cult classic, it’s at least good for one fun and unexpected go-round.

Thierry Frémaux’s tribute is at its best when it spotlights just how much can still be rediscovered in the Lumière brothers’ formidable filmography, over 130 years after they filmed workers leaving the factory.

The film is less a portrait of one martyred man than a mosaic of a resistant community.

It’s not a film about saying the right thing so much as it’s about people mutually arriving at the right place—no matter the untidiness involved in getting there.

April’s frames seek to embody a dizzying span of human experience, even if Dea Kulumbegashvili occasionally strains to corral it.

For chafing against existing systems designed by and for men, the storytelling structure of the film befits the female experience in American politics.

M3GAN locates the horror and hilarity lurking barely beneath the surface of our screen-addled society.

The raw emotion underlying The Phoenician Scheme peeks out at unexpected times.

Condon’s conducting of the whole affair is technically competent … dazzling, even, in sections. But all that flashiness is not blinding enough to conceal the gap between the tune it sings and the routine it dances. That is to say: Kiss of the Spider Woman may be about movie magic, but the film itself isn’t always magic.

An empowering narrative of one woman who refuses to see age as a ceiling, the film serves as a potent warning for viewers about the marginalization of the elderly.

The film captures the what of Kneecap but also the why, which makes all the difference.