Nick Schager

Mixing archival photos and TV footage with straightforward to-the-camera remembrances, Greenfield-Sanders’ deft structural approach isn’t as daring as those found in Morrison’s own work.

It's an effective primer on a voluble and charismatic mayor who embodied the spirit of the city he loved.

Finlay's handheld style is as casually intimate as her subjects, and the film stirringly posits music as a path to communal bliss.

Proves to be an ideal showcase for its lead—even if its light comedy is a bit too slight.

A tribute to scientific innovation and compassion that, no matter its obvious manipulations, adeptly pulls at the heartstrings.

Though there are times when the material could be tighter, Newnham’s latest film is a compelling celebration of the revolutionary Hite.

Short and sweet, it's an empathetic and affecting tribute to the great — and vital — artists who all too rarely receive a center-stage encore.

An illuminating history lesson about the Kentucky metropolis's artistic vision and philharmonic orchestra.

[An] insightfully open-ended inquiry into the role of humor as it relates to unspeakable tragedy.

Even when their bananas premise grows a bit stale, the directors prove at least semi-serious about their material’s rawer emotions, thereby making the film an uncanny character study about an alienated anthropomorphic primate who yearns to be himself.

Olaizola pans across peeling building facades to subtly enhance her portrait of characters crumbling under the weight of self-destructive habits and solitude - a weight that might only be lifted through the selfless compassion of others.

Riley shrewdly maintains focus on how the players co-opted the merciless tactics of their invective-hurling adversaries for their own, and the region's, self-actualization.

Those familiar with this story won’t find any novel twists here, but Krauss astutely conveys the literal and moral quagmires produced by such military situations.

Rogen’s zonked-to-insanity performance is the lifeblood of The Night Before, giving it the sort of joyous, madcap energy that comes from letting loose with one’s closest comrades, even to the point of potential oblivion.

Their sense of superiority toward the petty SUV drivers and rude midlife-crisisers who frequent the lot is matched by introspective considerations of traditional social contracts.

If [Cooper’s] third behind-the-camera venture rarely gets completely under the surface, it nonetheless hits a sufficient number of wise and witty notes.

At its deadliest, it’s a feat of breathtaking cinematic showmanship on par with recent standouts The Villainess, Carter and John Wick 4—even if its tale is as threadbare as its carnage is copious.

Writer/director Ursula Meier uses a stripped-down, naturalistic aesthetic full of well-organized compositions that pay close attention to shifts in character mood, comportment, and behavior.

A 21st-century cautionary tale about the desire for fame and the platforms which make that dream seem so easily attainable.

Cuban-American writer-director Julio Quintana’s feature debut has an understated formal loveliness that helps offset its more heavy-handed allegorical inclinations.

Employing straightforward, music-free aesthetics that express the grim realities of his story, director Funahashi captures both grief and outrage in equal measure.

"Southwest of Salem” proves a portrait of individual tragedy, and an indictment of a system willing to let prejudice cloud its judgment — and, also, to avoid admitting its own wrongdoing.

The film around her never quite comes together, but Foster is more than enough reason to embark on this off-kilter investigation.

Helen's extreme behavior is at once a reaction to, and rebellion against, her mother and father (and their separation), which, along with a captivating go-for-broke lead turn by Juri, lends the film a poignancy to help offset the juvenile shock-tactic impulses.

An engaging (if somewhat slender) portrait of the violence of adolescent maturation.

Given Men at Lunch's compelling argument that the identity of its anonymous ironworker subjects is beside the point—that mystery is a prime facet of its enduring appeal—the documentary's desire to determine who they really were comes across as unnecessary.

Ambiguity enlivens the smart, knotty Resolution, which routinely nods to its own artificiality while positing storytelling as a constantly evolving beast apt to save your life one moment and consume you the next.

If genre fans will always know what it’s up to, that’s just another way it pays faithful homage to its by-the-numbers precursors.