Roxana Hadadi

Without a more clearly defined cultural basis for its characters’ actions, Girls Of The Sun is a story about sisterhood that doesn’t provide its women the detail they deserve.

Set in rural Iceland, The County unfurls as if Ken Loach found himself near the Arctic Circle, looked around at the myriad villages and struggling farms, and thought, “Hm, I wonder if there is a labor struggle to found here!” There is.

The Meaning of Hitler never quite reconciles its central concern of whether continuing to talk about Hitler is an inherently compromised pursuit, and that uneasiness feels like an unintentional capitulation for an otherwise well-intentioned project.

Something in the Dirt deftly bounces between the oddness of its central story, the silliness of its documentary framing, and the resentments that eventually develop between its main characters, all buried inside what is essentially a hangout movie.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline wants to pick a fight, and it does so with an appealing lack of artifice, its heart on its sleeve and its agenda in its punching fists.

The film’s final moments suggest a benign American domesticity that its preceding scenes purposefully interrogate. But before that jarring ending, Farewell Amor is clever and unpredictable, using familiar tropes about assimilation to arrange demonstrations of honesty, regret, and love for its characters.

Gibney’s challenging interview style, the uncompromising tone of his questions, and the way he undercuts Mitchell’s self-aggrandizing martyrdom (and conveniently murky timeline regarding the deployment of EITs in the field) are satisfying distillations of what so many people who recognize Mitchell as a war criminal who got away would probably like to say.

There is so much more to know about these people that Gianfranco Rosi’s film fails to communicate because of its prioritization of beautiful visuals over narrative contextualization, and while Notturno shares many moments of profound fragility and deep beauty, it also paints an incomplete portrait.

In walking the line between asking empathy for these girls and also using them as a sort of cautionary tale, Cusp fails to offer more than a somewhat surface-level understanding of toxic masculinity.

Bob’s Burgers patently rejects cynicism, and The Bob’s Burgers Movie is no different. It’s a pleasantly unchallenging expansion of the family-friendship-loyalty worldview that Bouchard and the Belchers have made their own.

Villeneuve has spent his career merging intellectual and philosophical queries with striking otherworldly images, but that duality is frustratingly imbalanced in his vision for Dune. The visuals are mesmerizing, but the world-building is flat.

At its best, though, American Woman brings to mind "Erin Brockovich" or "20th Century Women" or "Gloria Bell": films about how the constraints of gender, class, and age push down upon a woman in myriad ways. And Miller finally gets the chance to demonstrate what she can do as a proper protagonist, breaking away from the stereotypes she’s too often played.

The relationship McInerny and Tucker build is so convincing in its mixture of exploitation and yearning that Palm Trees and Power Lines capably secures what Lea desires most too: your attention.

Snappily edited, with a visual style reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s modular design, The Fight tells viewers of a certain political perspective what they want to hear (that Trump is bad).

Chloe Domont’s film divides the entire world into binary moments of understanding and misunderstanding — without the shades of gray that would make Fair Play and its characters more tangible and its central tension less didactic.

This is an immersive portrait, buoyed by a central performance that’s hypnotizing in its sparse naturalism. What Basholli has made is a thoughtful, humanistic exploration of the fortitude needed to summon hope in a time and place resigned to hopelessness.

A tidal wave of compassion and empathy that crests into rage and sorrow—all of it provoked by the plight of Iran’s child laborers.

You’ll remember Anaita Wali Zada’s eyes. As Donya, an Afghan refugee in the wry and wistful Fremont, the first-time actor is a steadily building wave, a maelstrom of intention and purpose.

The brightly rendered details and Mulligan’s full-throated performance accessorize a film that ultimately might not be as groundbreaking as Fennell thinks it is regarding gender roles and heterosexual dynamics. But there’s an undeniable satisfaction to her brutish approach.

Although Sisters on Track has some gaps in its narrative that seem as if certain chunks of the girls’ lives were compressed or skipped over, it's most impactful when offering a thoughtful analysis of the rapidity with which children grow, adapt, and change.

Nearly every scene in Sophie Jones is either meditative or combative in some way, and Barr nails the flickering, shifting, visceral emotions of adolescence.

Laden with demoralizing tragedies, Haroula Rose’s film is only fleetingly affecting, preferring to put its characters through the wringer rather than provide them with much interiority or consistency. Without that depth, neither the external nor internal journeys of Once Upon a River captivate as much as they should.

What elevates the film above trauma-porn gore and pushes it into transcendence, though, is how its philosophical script and unshakeable performances navigate the question of whether survival is a transgression against God.

A simultaneously deeply personal and sometimes-opaque cinematic experience that often feels like walking through memories—messy, malleable—in search of an intrinsic inner truth.

Billie Holiday’s skills as a talented singer, vibrant performer, and intuitive improviser never come first. All the qualities that made her singular play second fiddle to her many relationships with awful men.

As the film reveals its intentions around Ahmed’s character, too many scenes rely on superficial dialogue and contrived situations to push the plot along.

Dabbach’s performance and the film’s commitment to that search-and-destroy ideology from the viewpoint of Iraqis themselves create some undeniably satisfying moments.

Nebbou and Peyr’s script crackles most with its observations about aging, sex and second chances, and Who You Think I Am spins a tale of love, attention, manipulation and obsession that is recognizably uncomfortable and summarily captivating.