Robert Daniels

I could see passing references to “Eighth Grade,” “Skate Kitchen,” "Mid90s,” “Minari,” and “Minding the Gap”—better films that seemed to capture their intended spirit with greater urgency and originality. But upon a recent second watch, I have found that “Didi,” [Wang's] feature directorial debut, is far stronger and far more affecting than I initially gave it credit for.

As a film, The Humans provides serrated frights and big challenges for its actors, but ultimately, it is too cold and never believable enough to immerse one in its purported dread.

The film bewitches you with its seemingly spontaneous humor, a cadre of original soulful folk tunes, and its adoration of the breathtaking surroundings.

While [Lawless] only scratches the surface of Moth's traumatic past, "Never Look Away" still stands as a formidable anti-war project.

Both Dickey and Studi shoulder the lesser material through a charming naturalism that papers over the script’s artificiality.

It’s so refreshing to see an unhurried, patient documentary, one that trusts its audience to follow along rather than relying on cheap gimmicks to manipulate emotions.

With a jukebox parade that will invite viewers to inevitably sing-along to classic earworms, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is the Bee Gees documentary you’ve been waiting for. It’s a fitting tribute to their unending love for each other.

Unfortunately, Iannucci and Blackwell are so intent on making every quip funny, they lose the story.

Though Till can not rewrite all of history’s wrong, you never doubt the genuineness of Chukwu’s intentions. This isn’t a salacious film. This isn’t taking advantage of Emmett Till’s memory for cheap prestige. Rather Till is an urgent and reverent, albeit flawed, pursuit of justice.

Nope is an idea more than a story. It’s a collection of individually captivating scenes, as opposed to an intriguing whole. It’s a handsome picture, but Peele is far too impressed with its handsomeness to work on populating it with fully felt characters.

Edralin’s Islands is a patient debut that reminds us that while our parents are important, our own happiness cannot be understated or ignored. In this sense, through its final seconds, “Islands” is a life-affirming achievement.

As a living record of the history of the Negro Leagues — it’s role in shaping America, in the prospects of upward mobility, in providing a playing field for Black folks to express themselves — Pollard’s The League is a rich, engrossing, and necessary tribute to a critical early wave in the Civil Rights movement.

Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie is a purposely self-absorbed meta-narrative about a navel-gazing director at odds with his muse—an enticing premise on paper—that too often obscures its heart in lieu of tedious diatribes.

If The Covenant were only an interrogation of the hollowness of American exceptionalism, as its first hour suggests, it’d be among the most honest portrayals of the country’s role in the region. But Ritchie eventually awakens from his stupor, pushing this combat-action flick to gonzo territory.

While this documentary doesn’t rise to the level of his masterwork “Exterminate All the Brutes,” the pain and anger, resolve, and courage that Peck captures in Silver Dollar Road make it a complex, intense document of the persistence of Black existence in a world hell-bent on erasure.

God’s Country is a film that wants to disarm you at every turn, and it often succeeds with a transfixing, acute spirit of retribution against society’s toxic racial and gender power dynamics.

Melodically vital and bracingly frank, Questlove’s uptempo Sundance documentary “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)” is a sonic kick to the soul.

The harder the film tries, the more one feels pulled along rather than effortlessly transported.

Alex Wheatle combines the relevant themes that guide the prior “Small Axe” installments: music as an escape from one’s environment, police brutality, and a character adrift from his community — yet the writing struggles to connect the major plot points for big picture interpretations of Alex’s cultural self-education.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band isn’t looking to put a new spin on a familiar artist. It wants to rotate, spinning round and round from A-side to B-side to back again until the sense of mortality at the heart of this tour becomes as unshakeable as the music itself.

28 Years Later is a deeply earnest film, a picture whose sincerity is initially off putting until it’s endearing.

Filmed in a rich black and white, director Zeshawn Ali’s documentary and feature debut Two Gods is an intimate, lyrical exhumation of the cycles that haunt Black youth and the challenge of putting to rest old habits.

While many will draw parallels between scenes involving civil unrest to the events of 2020, the philosophical differences between Hayden and Abbie — cultural versus electoral revolution, respectively — ring closely to the debates raging within progressive politics today, and actually prove more interesting.

An unassuming character study set to poetic rhythms makes for an empathetic study of Black life, full of resolve.

A bundle of taut nerves stretched to their vomit-inducing breaking point, Talk to Me, the directorial feature debut from Australian Youtube brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, is the type of horror film whose effectiveness arises from its barebones simplicity.

McQueen doesn’t aim to achieve an arresting horror or to explain one person's grief. This urban interrogation is a frank interplay between survival and oblivion, selflessness and selfishness, continuity and demolition.

Barker takes his initially enthralling documentary and dilutes the story with this new feature, creating melodramatic lightness without an affectingly heavy touch due to the tepid tone and wheezing tempo. In short, it snoozes.

The film’s simple premise is supported by smart plotting, nimble editing and evocative sound, and lands with frightening force. An engagingly frigid performance by Scott furthers the film’s keen ability to conjure overwhelming anxiety from its many punchy jump scares, combining to make Hokum an exceptionally chilling horror film.