Michael Snydel

Bi’s Kaili Blues is a bit too formless to hold together, even despite its immense merits and deep thematic resonance. Still: in one film, he’s already demonstrated himself to be an extraordinary visual stylist who’s not afraid to color outside the formalist lines.

Osmond knows how to present the citizens in a no-nonsense fashion that balances their day-to-day struggles and the parallel triumphs of their beloved horse.

Viktoria occasionally bites off more than it can handle, but even as it threatens to become unwieldy, it always feels essential.

The Next Cut is a love letter to Chicago, and a plea for a better city, but it’s a sermon when it should have been a conversation.

First Monday in May gathers together some of the most influential and radical contemporary figures in fashion, offers a comprehensive view into the creation of a groundbreaking fashion exhibition, and profiles one of the most exclusive figures in the world. And yet, somehow it all feels incredibly familiar.

There’s no doubt Hockney deserves appreciation for his artistic influence, but this documentary is less a reflection of his singular presence than the result of haphazardly mashing together a fascinating life.

Bispuri’s feature debut makes a powerful statement about the suffocation that can come with gender norms, and about the double-edged sword of gender performance.

There’s a potentially good story to be mined here, probably most likely with the mother, but every time it starts to find fertile emotional ground, it can’t help but become distracted and search for another surface.

Even if the film doesn’t quite rise to the zeniths of Farhadi’s considerable career, it’s another brutally insightful and relatable story about marriage, relationships, and the lives people sacrifice in order to save face.

Above all of the tiresome, poorly constructed mythology, nonexistent stakes, and presentation of subtext as text, Allegiant’s greatest sin is its total contempt for its viewers.

Linklater finds a joyful freedom in these men who refuse to discriminate. They’re happy to play dress-up daily, moving from discotheques to honky tonk bars to hardcore shows without worrying that they’re compromising some form of authenticity.

Giannoli’s ease with sugary, poisonous dialogue and the cumulating orbit of characters can’t quite mask the crowded plotting.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a galling, casually offensive, and deeply unsatisfying film.

While the film becomes a constant test to outdo itself, the raw ambition isn’t nearly enough to make up for the content of the actual film: an ungainly, ugly, nearly interminable monstrosity.

Triple 9 isn’t trying to be something of grand social value. It wants to be pulp, and maybe it’s unfair to criticize it for issues of racism and sexism, but its clockwork, convoluted plot isn’t clever, and it’s certainly not very memorable.

While the story doesn’t always hold together, it remains moving.

Only Yesterday is unabashedly modest, but in its twin dialogues between the past and the present, and the undying lure of the country and the city, it’s a singularly specific story whose message echoes decades later.

Even at its most transparently manipulative, Risen doesn’t feel punishing. It’s universally good-natured without feeling too conniving.

Race is the rare biopic that needs more of its own main character.

The movie is more about how outsiders – whether consciously or unconsciously – exert control. The repercussions of colonialism hover over the text even as these characters have “noble” intentions.

As a study of grief, it’s moving, featuring authentic performances and a keen understanding of the receding hibernation that comes with losing a cornerstone person in one’s life. As a romance, it’s slow-going but believable. And as a look at the unfair mythos attributed to the dead, it’s nuanced and incisive. But in attempting to balance these complementary parts, Tumbledown is buried by its own ambitions.

There’s a very good love story here, but it needed to be about one relationship, not the nature of romance itself.

Just as the brothers themselves love to present dialectics about the duality of triviality and seriousness, so, too, does Hail, Caesar! constantly skate back and forth between feeling slight and monumental.

Strikingly shot and politically rich, Aferim! feels important, but too often it also feels like a fiery lecture inflected with moments of poetic grace.

The masterful ten-minute gallery set piece, for instance, is first positioned as a scene of meditation as she absentmindedly gazes around the room, looking back and forth between the paintings in the room and the people around her until Pino Donaggio’s serenely swirling score ebbs and flows with her own rising passions.