Susannah Gruder

The Tuba Thieves is about embracing uncertainty and misunderstanding — something d/Deaf/hard-of-hearing people do every day. In fact, the film’s entire genesis was intended as a large-scale “game of telephone,” deliberately seeking out disorder and unexpected end products.

With its everyday setting and social interactions mixed with an obtrusive, innovative soundtrack (composed by the band Aunt Sister, along with Colin Self and Ben Babbit) and hyperactive visual style, The African Desperate straddles the line between shock and banality.

Those who stay invested will be rewarded with an honest and holistic vision — one that, in following each thread separately, speaks to the rupture that tragedy can bring, and our endless quest to put the pieces back together again.

[A] transfixing and troubling archival documentary.

While this new release confirms that DC will stop at nothing to keep its superhero franchise going — stretching their source material so thin that they’re not even making movies about superheroes, but their pets — the studio was at least wise enough to tap Stern for the task, who breathes a bit of (adorable) life into the tired good vs. evil tropes we’ve become accustomed to in the overstuffed superhero space.

Aftershock is a powerful project inspired by loss, one that aims to move us closer to a world where all women, and especially Black women, are listened to and given the birthing experiences they deserve, so that we can one day begin to see an end to the abysmal statistics on maternal mortality in the United States.

Anonymous Club is undoubtedly a film that Barnett fans will adore — but if you’re not familiar with her music, or perhaps not that into it, you may emerge a fan by the end. Or at least a fan of Cohen, who, through his sensitive lens, reminds us that the music of the best singer-songwriters is inspired by their own feelings — of joy, or sorrow, love or solitude — and can transcend the boundaries between the crowd and the person singing it.

It’s a film that relies too heavily upon its scenic location and not enough on building any real sense of story, let alone suspense, and only adds to the growing feeling that, when a work calls itself “Hitchcockian,” it’s more of a red flag for something half-baked than an enticing homage to the master himself.

While a nihilistic vision of the future — of climate disaster, war, disease, or some combination of the three — is certainly relatable, Gold ends up being rather empty itself, void of any real message aside from the lyrics to the Nick Cave song that play as the credits roll: “People Ain’t No Good.”

Asking for It puts men and women in their own fringe camps, erasing the real and complex struggle for women to achieve equal rights, have their stories heard, and to see their rapists and abusers prosecuted fairly.

While Wandel does well to leave some things to the imagination, like what happens beyond the schoolyard, she not-so-subtly nails the point home in the end, showing how all it takes is one person to stop bullying at its source. Still, her film is an arresting, eye-opening look at how violence begins at an early age, and how we can learn to be bystanders, or have the strength to speak out.

Instead of leaning into the ambiguous tensions and uncanny experiences, Watcher fails to live up to its inspirations, ending up a heavy-handed, predictable trip through genre tropes with a rather lifeless cast at its core. Watcher spells out every plot point to a tee, when we wish it would slowly, playfully tug at the threads of our anxieties.

Speak No Evil is the most cunningly depraved horror film in years, offering a piercing commentary on the ways we accommodate others to the point of self-subjugation.

Told through the lens of three girls as they grow up in a rural town in the Guerrero mountains, Huezo’s film is a murky, mesmerizing look at what it feels like to come of age in a place where young women have a target on their backs, and where the adults are as powerless as the children.

Campbell’s staggering performance becomes the film’s center of gravity, her captivating sense of chaos and complexity giving the audience emotional motion sickness as her moods shift between extremes.