Michael Frank

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.