Michael Frank

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A moving, devastating piece of filmmaking.

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

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.