Robert Abele

This may be the first movie to apply the Chekhov’s gun rule to vultures, a portent sure to satisfy the more horror-minded ticket buyers, not to mention anyone else eager for the kind of back-to-basics survival excitement “Fall” refreshingly serves up in this dreary age of apocalyptic popcorn emptiness.

A briny Northeastern noir powered by women with secrets, Blow the Man Down is a pleasantly spiky slinging of small-town sin that should prove to be eminently companionable viewing for these sequestered, streamable times.

It leaves one with the sense that Khaled wishes to reclaim a headline-tainted religious status from the acts of violent men and bestow that mournful grace to people in an everyday struggle with sensitivity and hopelessness.

At its best, when we can live Dogman through Marcello’s eyes, the movie keeps reminding you of that opening, of people and animals, menace and kindness, and the cages we sometimes don’t realize we’ve made for ourselves.

[A] briskly informative, convincing documentary.

Daum acts as a thoughtful onscreen guide to what the picturesque hillsides and its stone remains represent.

Though Art Bastard is a zesty, engaging documentary about a veteran outsider, when it comes to his complexities, it’s not terribly cohesive.

There may be little that’s psychologically fresh about Plainclothes, but the fact that its low-key, close-framed style suggests a taut, moody gay indie you might have seen in the ’90s works in its favor. It’s also well cast.

By the end, Fightville feels authentic about this world, where success may be measured in wins, but the balance of unrelenting brutality and self-discipline needed for those wins is a trickier equation.

“Brimstone” is less successful as it edges toward an impressionistic immersion into fire and fiesta, but as you-are-there experiences go, it has energy to burn.

Overlong yet alluring.

Like one of those energetic Martin Scorsese montages where we’re privy to how a vibrant underground ecosystem works, the documentary pulls us inside a partying milieu of lights, stage gimmicks, fad dances and tough, colorful characters, a handful of whom are interviewed here alongside a few cultural commentators.

Zahler's still starkness, enhanced by a fondness for long shots and dark spaces, is refreshing in this shaky-cam era, and his ear for Old West sensibilities — from the mythically polite to the realistically xenophobic — is clinically effective.

Commendably entertaining.

If it struggles to make sense emotionally (or logistically), it benefits from the confident pace of a literate, mainstream entertainment, and the tactical showmanship of star Bryan Cranston, who’s made something of a specialty out of the average guy going through a metamorphosis.

The film's three-pronged narrative does a fair job of laying a spooky groundwork for the revelatory emotional sadism that lies behind most acts of evil; it just takes a bit of clunky exposition to get there.

The movie is itself rough around the edges, notably in some chintzy attempts at animating pulp graphics. But it's briskly pieced together from interviews and archival footage.

You can’t encapsulate the horrors of the Holocaust in 80 minutes, but what the 12 interviewed survivors accomplish in the documentary Destination Unknown is nevertheless a vivid portrait of genocide put into practice, and its everlasting effects on the living.

For good stretches, The Banker can be as dryly engineered as a loan application, but the galvanizing story it tells — like a last stand of rebel ingenuity before the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made discrimination unlawful — is a solid interest-earner.

Almost Holy captures something meaningfully urgent in the brutal day-to-day of tough love amid a world of tougher indifference.

Even with a cut-and-dried approach to characterization and the issue of man-made consciousness, The Machine percolates with an elegantly palpable sense of wonder and danger.

As snapshots go of bright kids facing the next step, Try Harder! is winning enough, but considering how much more there is to follow up on, here’s hoping it’s only part one.

Bhargava's naturalistic approach to capturing the sights and sounds of a city in full revelry on rooftops and in the streets is colorfully vivid - reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai's silky urban baths - but it threatens to keep the human drama at arm's length.

It won’t replace your favorite girl-meets-boy classics, but it yo-yos between the heart and the loins with admirable verve, and it boasts a few richly comic turns.

The abiding darkness and occasionally graphic visuals will likely reduce its appeal as talking-critter family fare — think growling nighttime campfire tale instead of sun-dappled spectacle — but it makes for a welcome swerve from the Mouse House’s fun-zone approach to these timeless stories.

Kruger is entirely commanding.

Pintilie has a way of nudging the strangeness of her fiction/documentary hybridization so that your engagement isn’t predicated on narrative catharsis, but simply a desire for the continued frankness of it all.

The Starling Girl doesn’t always hold our attention, mainly due to an occasionally shaggy pace that forgets we’re often ahead of the plot. There are also two endings: one built on a choice of Jem’s that’s incredibly stirring and naturally tense, but then a subsequent scene with music and dance that reads more like something scripted to be a meaningful bookend.

Even with a thinly drawn lead, Blizzard of Souls maintains an undeniably raw power as a small country’s coming-of-age story, told through a bright-eyed wannabe hero and forged in a maelstrom of death and disillusionment.

As messy (and even physical) as the family’s exchanges can get, Benguigui always has the sisters’ inherent solidarity in mind. But it’s still a jarring mix of tones to contend with, and the many narrative strands — which include a trip to Algeria — aren’t all satisfactorily resolved.

The shared love of the movie's featured racers for their long-rebellious sport makes for a unifying energy, but their individual experiences — and different attitudes toward the future — provide an underlying complexity.

The takeaway of Reversing Roe is that Stern and Sundberg are issuing a warning, one backed by a grim timeline, forcefully presented, that makes it all too clear what’s at stake if a landmark ruling on women’s rights is overturned.

Despite an awkwardly jokey title, Now, Forager has charm, intelligence and a cool passion for its principled characters - an appealing off-menu slice for hungry indie admirers.

What Susanne Bartsch: On Top makes clear is that the art of being seen, as facilitated by Bartsch, can carry unexpectedly poignant depth.

Though not without its mini-heartbreaks and melancholic turns, North Sea Texas explores emergent sexuality and first love with a refreshing optimism.

At War has plenty of cinematic energy for a movie devoted primarily to people shouting at, but mostly past, each other.

Thirteen Lives may be a vivid rescue procedural first and foremost, but it’s also a testament to the guardian spirit possible in any of us.

A stirring ode to cultural bridge-building.

Of course, our desire to know more may be the aim in his making art out of civilization’s rubble — that he can get us to pay attention through the sheer majesty of how he pays attention, hopefully making for true engagement, not mere spectating. Still, sometimes you just want more than what you’re given. That’s human too.

There's goodwill to go around in Dabis' modestly engaging yarn, from its appealing performances to the times it zeroes in on the ways culture, tradition and individuality cause headaches and heartaches as much as comfort.

John Wick’s world is elegant and vicious, full of slaughter and courtesies and, if “Chapter 2” can’t quite replicate the original’s sense of discovery, its ending still made me wish “Chapter 3” could start right away.

In its swirl of ingenuity, purity, and achievement, Paper & Glue can’t help but feel self-serving for its traveling, ever-creative dynamo, even when the tale JR has to tell is unquestionably riveting and inspiring.

The film isn’t the most cohesive look at startling global transformation. It’s strongest, however, as a dizzying, dimensional tour of scale and time, forcing us to wonder how a sense of earth-centric balance can be restored.

As a dark techno-farce with a violent wit and some daring empathy (coming as it does in a time of suspicious excitement about our modeled, molded future), Companion is a sleekly designed, well-powered date-night package.

For a movie designed to honor the unexpected depths of a cultural hallmark, Ramen Heads does achieve, to borrow the ultimate standard of ramen quality, enough satisfying slurpability.

That blend of tones is not always smoothly handled, but there’s enough heart in its express train of ambition, flaws and fallout to allow its leading lady wide berth for a wonderfully committed, soulful, even sexual turn admirably devoid of caricature.

Angkor Awakens won’t wow you with artfulness, but as an analytical narrative of tragedy, testimony and a way ahead, it has an undeniable power.

Jack Bryan’s thorough, chilling rabbit-hole inquiry into our president’s connections to Russia — Active Measures — is as good a place as any to fuel one’s fear/outrage.

Paint may ultimately be just modestly amusing, but at least it understands that a palette of well-blended tones has a better chance of earning our laughs than the one-color-fits-all kind.

In much the way "Crystal Fairy" blossomed when we were snapped out of our chuckling repulsion, Nasty Baby rights itself intriguingly when Silva pushes his characters into unknown territory and lifestyle is imposed upon by life.

It’s valuable when any vérité documentary with such a vantage point is able to show us how many societal ills — from addiction to gun violence to poverty to gentrification to incarceration — can touch one family, keeping them in a near-constantly reeling state.

The performances... are solid, and the conceit is alluringly mind-bending without ever seeming off-puttingly brainy.

Hive is occasionally bumpy, but it’s the rough terrain of a raw narrative — the out-of-place music cue or awkward dream snippet doesn’t disrupt the social realist momentum, which is at its best when focused on the grit of how moving forward is also moving on.

A skillfully rendered narrative that should satisfy fans and pique the interest of the uninitiated.

There's the unfettered access to Harmon's brilliant comic mind, of course, yet also a warts-and-all portraiture of a difficult personality, by turns boyish, self-involved, abusive and exhilaratingly self-analytical.

Though its vibe is often too meandering, A Kid Like Jake shows that even the most accepting of environments aren’t immune to the vulnerabilities and worries coursing through any well-intended parent’s soul.

Heineman’s trust in what his camera reveals — in the forlorn faces of U.S. soldiers, in the slump of Sadat’s demeanor, in the distraught eyes of a mother caught in that Kabul airport scrum of the desperate — tells its own necessary story of war wreckage.

A well-cast, modestly affecting drama of the kind studios regularly programmed in the before-IP times, it boasts a generous heart gently dusted with life’s complications as it beats a familiar rhythm of easygoing redemption.

Even if its trajectory hews to a well-worn format, Keepers of the Game is as strong an argument that can be made for the rich emotional rewards of schoolgirls hitting the field to show everyone and themselves what they can achieve.

The result is a “Spider-Man” that feels a little more punchy, laugh-filled, and exciting than one might expect from a property that’s already been given plenty of chances to succeed.

As metaphors for America go, it might just put a hopeful smile on your face after another stomach-churning political news day.

Although no less fawning and indulgent about its self-centered subject, played by Jean-Marc Barr (who also narrates, run-on style), the muted emptiness of the ill-fated sojourn wills its way toward something like existential meaningfulness.

It’s a globe-trotting look at the worldwide response to COVID-19, with an emphasis on the unprecedented effort to get a safe, effective vaccine quickly into billions of people.

For the most part this is an engaging refresher course in what fighting the power looks like.

The brutally efficient shooting style Reeves employs to film master choreographer Yuen Woo Ping's breathtaking fights...is refreshingly grounded and old-school kinetic.

Both impish and melancholy, with Timlin and Fessenden handily shifting the molecules in the air each time they share a scene, Like Me has an eccentric bravura to it.

The movie is an arty lark of ambiguous entertainment value, pulsing with melancholy. It's rarely less than interesting visually or tonally, thanks in large part to Korine's prurient sense of humor and the rich location textures and Crayola sweep provided by gifted cinematographer Benoit Debie ("Enter the Void").

If it’s been a while since you’ve felt the cold blast and hard crunch of midnight-movie meanness, Zahler’s shaping up to be your guy — the one selling illicit thrills out of the trunk of a well-restored, vinyl-topped LTD — and with “Brawl,” he sets himself further apart from his more schlock-minded contemporaries in cult cinem

The movie could use a little more energy — this is Paul Mazursky territory, after all, not Andrei Tarkovsky — but in its sick-but-sweet attempt to reclaim grief from the trappings of tradition, To Dust is its own well-measured godsend.

The small industry of documentaries about Syria shouldn't deter you from the affecting pull of This Is Home: A Refugee Story, Alexandra Shiva's heartwarming if conventional portrait of four refugee Syrian families navigating new lives in Baltimore.

Enemy may be built more on questions than answers, but in the probing it generates a satisfyingly arch hum of weirdness.