Michael Frank

González-Nasser captures something essential about Sofia’s life: the exhaustion. The film, more comedy than drama, breaks both the viewer and Sofia down in equal parts, pushing either to continue this never-ending day, showing the pressure of a job that many others tell her is “so cool.”

The writer-director never rushes this story, but still wastes no time in the film––each scene contains weight and value. Each moment builds on the memories of Shula and of the women in this family, fractured together, constantly reminded of monstrosities, somehow still taking steps forward.

The Friend reminds us of the immeasurable role that dogs, and pets, play in our lives.

If you watched Reading Rainbow as a kid, the doc will leave you in puddles. If you didn’t, it will still likely leave you with tears in your eyes—happy tears.

LaRoy is the work of a director with unmistakable joy for this genre, approaching the material with a welcome earnestness.

Bryon deserves the focus, yet the film never paints any broader strokes. Transition works because of that one person, but it cannot climb any further under these limitations.

The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, like other SNL features that have come before it, runs long, losing the initial charm of its leads and the interplay that make Please Don’t Destroy’s skits funny instead of exhausting. The comedy troupe might have a great comedy in them; this isn’t it.

The urgency in Beyond Utopia cannot ever be understated. The consequences of the risks taken by these people––both the defectors and Pastor Kim––cannot be undervalued. Each risks everything in this journey.

It’s moving in its minuteness, in the difficulty of daily living for two men trying to survive an intensive, low-income job. Still, it returns to the issue of friendship and how, as people age, they begin to grow apart.

It becomes a mess of concepts, issues, and messages, an amalgamation of errors in tone and story.

Statham is continually up to the challenge, kicking, punching, and fighting people and sharks alike. He’s on a run of mid-tier movies unlike anyone else in Hollywood, and once he gets going, jet-skiing around an island taking on three megs, the film finally transforms into pure entertainment.

This is a studio offering that coasts on likability and enjoyment––luckily, there’s enough of that fun to go around.

Gorgeous to watch, with enough sly comedy to maintain levity, Fremont is notable in its decision to be small and intimate. It finds romance in everyday interactions, and in the easy pleasure of opening up a cookie and reading one’s fortune.

This feature debut represents a big swing for the Chilean director, a thoughtful, deliberate drama bursting with ecological and personal imagery. A patient narrative rewarding the patient viewer, Cow‘s an abstract portrait of a family and environment in crisis.

Park’s debut comedy leans on its cast and a smart screenplay to offer up a social commentary both bitter enough to make a point and agreeable enough to make people laugh, even leave with a smile on their faces. While it’s a tricky line to balance, Park (barely) pulls it off.

Chen’s film doesn’t contain the care needed for this story, wasting the talent of Erivo in a role that underserves her already-known abilities. The script holds much of that fault for attempting to capture the totality of West African politics and the entirety of the refugee experience into a single distant, empty character. It’s ill-advised and unconsidered, forgetting to add a semblance of thoughtfulness.

Though the film might be reminiscent of other walk-about-town rom-coms that came before, Rye Lane carries a sense of freshness.

Jamojaya has the bones to be a good film, possibly even a great one. Its director’s insistence on style turns that potential into mediocrity, ending with a film that’s passable at best. It leaves audiences with indifference––nothing more.

More than just misunderstood, his characters are underwritten and underserved. Thus the expected emotion never arrives. The gut punch never comes, even as music swells. All of this fear fizzles; message, story, and figures become transient. It starts with so much promise, only to end as a letdown–like waiting for the end of the world only for the storm to pass.

Fairyland is McNairy’s film. He ripped my heart out. He’ll likely do the same to the majority of viewers, leaving wet eyes and sniffling nose. Fairyland is McNairy’s to care for, to love, to let go. In return, he gives his greatest performance.

Brewster and Stephenson struggle to penetrate the armor of this famous poet, focusing instead on her career, her health, and the way that others look at her. Most often they do so with deep admiration, a longing to be fixed by Giovanni.

Capturing a portion of that contrast, due to the closeness and interest of its subjects, The Mission moves beyond an optimistic portrait and into murkier territory, making for a more valuable document. If only Anderson went even further and muddied up the glassy waters.

Zlotowski’s fifth feature excels thanks to a compelling lead performance from Efira, giving insight into one woman’s relationship to motherhood. Her wants, her love, and her losses are all on display, built up only to be let down. Baked in a stern reality, the drama never loses that central, necessary thread.

Englert’s first feature isn’t low on creativity, but visibly lacks cohesion. It’s difficult to connect to, disparate in its own storytelling, mood, and tone. It’s an audacious script and directorial vision, falling short.

There’s not necessarily anything new in Parmet’s script, despite her care towards this character of Jem. The film lacks surprise, and in this case, is missing a level of engagement.

For Forster and his leading man, the drama is a step down from previous work, an emotionally telegraphed, near-manipulative adaptation of a better book already adapted in Sweden to far greater results.

If obviously silly, it represents an obsession with cutting-edge tech, the shininess of something new, and making our lives easier, lazier, and less connected. Although this commentary is blatant, the film—with all its insanity—remains highly enjoyable: real good, real fun, real simple cinema.

The film plays as one extended memory—sometimes more bitter, sometimes more sweet, always a combination of both.

The built narrative struggles against the facts of its plot, unable to find rhythm in a fictionalized version of events. But none of it matters—Brown remains a remarkable figure, a complicated character to study, and impossible not to root for.

Johansen is a force despite this film’s flaws, undeniable in both charms and quirks. His talent remains emphatic, and his stage presence is enough for the camera to sit back and appreciate him. Being enigmatic yet accessible, Scorsese and Tedeschi must capture his substantial coolness. They succeed in spades.

Sr. is sweet and tender, never playing as a dolled-up version of this relationship; it instead depicts a trueness in this bond, a warmth that has existed all of their lives. The sounds that echo after the film ends are the Downeys laughing together––about dumb stuff, about film references, about the past, about their present, about anything and everything.

It gives time, credence, and a stage to Mamie, a woman immortalized through her motherhood and 50 years of advocacy overlooked that has become overlooked. It’s a timely, essential piece of filmmaking.

For a Lynch diehard, Lynch/Oz will be catnip. For any average moviegoer, it digs into the well of American cinema history with enough fascination that it’s worth a watch.

Pitt’s charm can’t save Bullet Train from its inappreciable destiny, even if the film represents a decade-long shift in the genre: a misunderstanding from directors that audiences are more excited by jokes rather than action and depth.

A moving, devastating piece of filmmaking.

Cho, Isaac, and a cameo from Jemaine Clement become bright spots in a film trying too hard to buck trends of other road-trip journeys while ultimately falling into similar traps. Life lessons and karaoke songs go to waste with the talent of a cast too good for this story.

Brian and Charles didn’t need to be a feature. It could have continued to peacefully and joyfully exist as a short, and its material stretches the story thin as a sheet in this extended form. But the charm and fun of its story outweighs a scrawny narrative.

Sharp Stick is nothing short of singular. If it’s unlikely this project will gain the director any new fans, it represents another step into bold territory—even as quality dips and swerves, this is a project where it seems no notes were given, the kind of freedom that’s refreshing in today’s landscape.

Lucy and Desi won’t provide many surprises for those with a general understanding of Ball and Arnaz. It can look and sound like a paint-by-numbers documentary, with the trappings of any streamable film being churned out at major studios. Technically, it’s standard fare. Emotionally, it’s a beating heart—Poehler’s beating heart.

A genre film committed and receptive to the melted minds of its characters and the equally melted minds of its audience

Clint Bentley’s Jockey sources its strength from its casting. Led by a career-best Clifton Collins Jr. and supported by more-than-solid performances from Molly Parker and Moisés Arias, the film leans on these three actors to tell a tried-and-true story.

Unflinching in her questioning of the abandonment and how it affected each individual party, the film moves throughout Jin’s life with persistence and without rush. The result is an affecting, brutal look at the real-life trauma of the One-Child Policy for one economically struggling family in a rural area of China.

A simple, yet beautiful film due to this sense of place, Luzzu highlights a story that’s rooted in tradition and particularity. At times, rushed in its quest to find a central conflict, the film finds Camilleri crafting a coarse story, one void of laughs, jokes, or levity.

More movies could use the genuine kindness and comfort Mills provides with his stories. He’s become an auteur concerned solely with humanness. He gets his audience to shed earnest tears, both happy and sad. There’s something special about that, about Mills, and about C’mon C’mon.

[Kempff] crafts a film that grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go, one that’s equally absorbing in look and performance, despite a diminished importance mere hours after it ends.

Futura lives in the past and the present, not the future––attempting to say much more about what has made these people this way, not what they will do about it. For all of the talk about the future, this documentary has nothing insightful to say about it.

Neptune Frost has a quality of few films: pure, authentic creativity. It can be overwhelming, mudding up the actual narrative of a movie that coasts around genres, topics, and emotions. It confuses more than it explains. But none of that matters. It always has something important to say and a powerful way to say it.

Vasarhelyi and Chin made another exciting, action-packed documentary. I just wonder if it was necessary.

Levinson captures a difficulty that’s unknown for anyone other than those who lived through the atrocities of concentration camps. He allows cruelty to hiss off the screen but adds little more than the pain.

At a minimum, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain stirs up appreciation for these tiny feline creatures that have gone from the streets to staining the carpets. Out of unusual direction and honest portrayals emerges something much greater.

It will provide a fun discussion on what went wrong, rather than what went right, and that conversation will give more joy, story, and clarity than the film itself.

Showalter made a bright, fun, pleasing film, colorful in both character, tone, and picture. I just wish it had a bit more criticism, a little more outrage, in its bones.

Wladyka’s film is always gripping, always searching, and always testing the boundaries of its protagonist and its audience.

Liu and Altman put forth a film that causes you to be upset with these systematic cycles of violence and oppression while also giving you a desire to create positive change yourself or, at the bare minimum, support those making a difference.

Sweet Thing could only be more personal if Rockwell himself was in it, but it remains a drama filled with wonder, containing magic that can only pop up when you’re in your teens.

Mark, Mary & Some Other People finds comfort and empathy in the story of two people still attempting to figure it out.

Italian Studies disorients the viewer for an experience that has moments of singularity, though it can’t hide from its disjointed nature. But it’s different, and that has definitive value.

If one can get past the exaggerated nature of The Beta Test, there’s much to glean from its mixture of laughs and critiques. Come for the mystery, stay for the study of society by two white guys playing absolute assholes. Even if that study reaches farther than it can grasp.

Because of the personal subject matter, Jessie Barr’s feature directing debut contains a multitude of sensitivity and care. A tenderness washes over the entire film, and even as Sophie makes unassured decisions, you want to support her.

Spare an hour. Give time to cinematographers who usually give their talents to stories other than their own. This film will remind you of the purgatory we live in, but more than that, it’ll remind you of our shared experiences and worldwide connection.

Coda, even with all of its imperfections, drives home a truckload of emotions in its final act, filled with more silence than noise.

French Exit easily could have been an unnecessary cliché. Instead, Jacobs’ film provides a polished portrait filled with originality, melancholy, and comedy.

It hinges on a shade of obsession and a hint of delusion, but if anything, it shows how much the mind can swirl when life doesn’t go as expected, as it rarely does.

There are flashes of enjoyment and clarity, mostly within the home shared by Linda and Paxton, with Hathaway and Ejiofor showing their chemistry and their willingness to commit to the project.