Teo Bugbee

At times, all of the secrecy and legal caution can make it hard to understand the complex logistics of getting a legal abortion in the United States. But the risks involved are bracingly apparent, and the documentary benefits from its attempts to capture Plan C’s high-stakes operation in progress.

It’s hard to care about Mía’s efforts to survive when coincidence drives the plot, and the production looks and feels cheap.

At times, the film is hampered by the sheer amount of information there is to condense from across a 50-year career, but Hardison is never less than a fascinating subject — an artist whose medium is industrial disruption.

The young cast proves deft with the film’s clever script, by Alison Peck (based on the 2005 novel by Fiona Rosenbloom), and the director Sammi Cohen indulges the virgin-mojito passions of preteens while avoiding nostalgia, thankfully.

These features of city life feed a sense of realism, as does the film’s warmly-lit and intimately framed cinematography. But that realism here is exhausting, even if it is well-intentioned — by the film’s end, even Feña seems ready to escape from the trial of his packed plotlines.

The film’s coherence is a reflection of both the skill of the filmmaker, and the heroic efforts of Aurora herself to ensure that her view of history would not be forgotten.

Most important, Daniella, Koko, Liyah and Dominique provide a record of their own extraordinary lives, one that resonates with clarity and compassion.

The film benefits from its choice of subjects, as Wall, Gallo and Weigel are all endearing and deeply informed.

The film’s most impressive quality is its nuanced understanding of how political circumstances create different spheres of life.

The images are artfully crafted, but the narrative lacks momentum. The film flirts with themes of surveillance and immigrant anxieties, but its allegoric ambitions are continually thwarted by yet another neighborly grievance.

Both Lysette and Clarkson are naturally magnetic actors, and they don’t waste the attention they’re given on excess sentimentality.

Chile ’76 is a sly genre exercise, an example of how political repression can squeeze a domestic melodrama until it takes the shape of a spy thriller.

Fiennes brings the fire, yet the air around him remains unmoved, even by his embers.

It’s a style so minimalist, it approaches maximalism — and this combination of pulp and precision creates an arresting and unique work of film noir.

The images portray a weightless crisis, and the film’s emotional narrative feels similarly insincere, with the balance of fate seeming to sway on the placement of a well-timed prayer.

Shipka ably handles the responsibility of leading the story, but the director Matt Smukler has a harder time balancing the charming and empathetic ensemble performances with the script’s constantly judgmental tone.

This lived-in quality to the filmmaking supports equally relaxed performances from both veteran and emerging actors, making for an even-keeled and easy viewing experience.

Lonesome demonstrates a mature use of sex in cinema, a treatment that communicates narrative purpose without diminishing sex’s animalistic, physical side.

To the film’s credit, the central relationship remains realistically drawn — a teenage courtship that’s marked by misunderstandings and mood swings. The characters aren’t always sweet, but they never feel phony.

Ironically, the film mirrors the callow cinematic dynamics it critiques: It titillates, even as it scolds.

Salle’s approach leaves the physical details of Mathieu’s escape foggy. It’s not always clear how long Mathieu spends in hiding, or how he acquires the tools needed to sustain his flight.

Martone’s depiction of crime is at once expressive and economic, a world of danger boiled down to pregnant pauses and minute gestures.

The consistency limits the ability of the directors to lean into their own style, leading to a movie that feels narratively scattered and stylistically inhibited.

The film is moving for the intimacy it depicts, an archive as unlikely as the love story itself.

Lears clearly feels earnest sympathy for her subjects and passion for their cause, but the film often replicates for viewers the same atmosphere of hopelessness that makes climate activism a hard sell for voters.

The documentary reminds its audience that it’s impossible to truly know people based on their responses to medical interviews. But this approach unfortunately prevents the film from achieving either catharsis or understanding.

The film ‌is‌ gentle ‌yet indistinct, l‌‌eaving us to discern figures through a fog.

This is a comedy that takes a vicious, over-the-top look at family greed, and fortunately, the cast members are game to play their characters’ attempts at flattery in the most unflattering manner possible.

The film’s ironic tone largely defangs the transgressive films it parodies, but Kramer does broaden the scope of the queer leather canon.

These are characters who are frustrated in love, prevented by law and by their own emotional repression from asking for what they want in their relationships. The stately treatment of their plight leads to a film that buckles under the weight of purgatorial disappointment.

The light provides wordless, and conveniently apolitical, explanation for why a person might endure nearly three decades (or in cinematic terms, nearly three hours) without action.

The trouble with this cinematic Trojan horse is that the superficial blandness dominates the frame. It’s hard to feel the story’s stakes when the images are always indicating no danger ahead.

Writer and director Valerie Buhagiar makes the wise decision to orient her film toward what’s pleasurable rather than what’s logical. The Maltese countryside sparkles in the sunlight, and McElhone delights with a charming and slightly loopy performance as the irreverent spiritual leader.

With a sprightly wit and an all-star cast to bring it to life, the movie manages to be a loving parody of theater gossips, postwar London and Christie’s murder mysteries all at once.

If this erotic drama doesn’t break new cinematic ground, it also doesn’t cede its conviction in portraying relationships as a matter of serious consideration.

There is a flatness that feels apparent in every shot — and not just because the movie is filmed in bright, low contrast lighting. The film’s experienced cast punches their lines in search of jokes that never materialize, leaving the comedy to nosedive.

It’s an earnest film, one that glows with pride at Aboriginal resilience. But the impression it leaves is didactic, a saints and demons fable that meanders to foregone conclusions.

This is a candid look at one person’s experience with coming out, a humane document that shows the bravery and resilience of queer people who seek relief from the categories that are imposed on them.

Luck offers fresh ideas; its only misfortune is to present its gifts in recycled wrapping.

Its armchair psychology makes for queasy viewing, a conflation of diagnosis and damnation.

Its simplicity and lack of cinematic fancy strikes a tone of surprising relief.

The story’s heroine, its dialogue and even its themes of regret and loneliness seem to be swallowed up by the need to maintain an appearance of contemporary cheek.

It’s the kind of film that is more interested in the appeal of a good Italian accent than it is in finding novel, or even particularly beautiful, ways to shoot and see Rome. The conscious callowness is agreeable, but it lacks freshness, like a midnight pasta reheated in the microwave.

The softness lacks detail, the butterfly metaphors lack originality, but the movie is pleasant, a balmy introduction to adult feelings of desire and belonging.

This is a canny, compact portrait of teenage insensitivity, all the more riveting for its biting dialogue and funny performances.

The film’s referential pleasures feel insubstantial, diminished by the direct comparison to more meaningful works of the period.

What the movie showcases best from its subjects, then, is the humor and ease of women who have survived a lifetime of setbacks and strife. Fanny has already proven itself — what’s left is for us to enjoy its growing catalog.

It’s a zippy, entertaining approach that offers a surprising degree of insight into the psychology that produced the GameStop phenomenon. Investors played with serious money, but their mind-set was a farcical dive into hyperspace — a week of gambling in a cyber-Vegas that, for some, was worth the hangover.

The cinematography is often grainy, and occasionally Banua-Simon’s choice of interview subjects feels unfocused or repetitive. But there is tremendous educational and moral value in his overview of the history of Kauai.

The ensemble builds believable chemistry as intimate family members, and when their characters deliver their arguments for life or death, the stakes feel appropriately high.

Each line and image feels predetermined, as if Rebane and his characters had already decided this love story was a losing battle. There is loss, but little sense of risk.

The contest intentionally lacks meaningful rewards, an obvious metaphor for life’s arbitrary stakes. But as cinema, the lack of purpose becomes a test of patience.

Dudamel is a joyfully appealing figure, and the film benefits from following such an amiable subject. But the documentary lacks the rigor it would take to turn this warm portrait into a proper cinematic symphony.

It’s a relaxed film, one that allows the audience to sit back and, if not smell the roses, then at least appreciate them.

Like many of the young inventors she documents, Jacobs has created a project that doesn’t fall apart at first touch. But her film doesn’t meet the mark for excellence, either.

The reward for waiting for the fog to lift is a movie that presents a unique take on science fiction, one that looks for the ghosts that linger on in a world that has been shaped by technology.

The contrast between Caleb and Estha remains the movie’s greatest asset. Their relationship grants room for the audience to witness and appreciate their differences, not just culturally, but as fully drawn individuals.

Without tactical, philosophical or emotional grounding, the battle scenes don’t land with any cinematic force.

Every frame is flush with warm, saturated color, and the vibrant quality of the images conveys joyous generosity. The most poignant appeal of this movie is the feeling it creates of being welcomed into a family that radiates all things bright and good.

The effect is a movie that resembles nothing so much as the centerpiece of the Malus menu — a hot dog made with elevated ingredients.

The metaphors are so obvious that the film becomes trapped in its own cage of archetypes and clichés, and unlike the tiger, there is no champion to open the gates to a more original cinematic world.

The repetition of verbal and visual storytelling points to the limited scope of this film. A Cops and Robbers Story explores Pegues’s split loyalties, but the talking head interviews tend to isolate characters whose very intimacy is the subject of the film.

Warner’s story is inspirational but intricate, and this wan film struggles to balance simple storytelling with the complexities of the sport.

Fuhrman’s performance matches the filmmaking for its intensity. The movie achieves a surreal allure — at times, it’s hard to pay attention to the dialogue because the images and the sound design are already communicating so much.

The supporting cast compensates with piquancy in the side dishes, but the main course is a flavorless misfire.

The film succeeds in presenting an on-the-ground view of what it felt like to be inside a hospital in the spring of 2020. It was harrowing, death was everywhere and there was no end in sight.

The cumulative effect of so much enlightened sitting around is that the movie doesn’t move. There is a lack of action, both visually and emotionally.

This is the first fictional film directed by the documentarian Tracey Deer, and she brings a good eye for which characters might make a compelling story.

What this admirably hands-off film shows is how the feelings of anxiety that have surrounded school shootings have been monetized and translated into demand for consumer products. It is a nightmarish vision — the military industrial complex deployed in the halls where children ought to roam.

The film allows its societies to speak through gestures, whether it is the passing of personal possessions after a death or the brush of bodies behind a bar, and its portrait of both Jewishness and queerness is richer for it.

The greatest asset of the film is its ability to simulate the intimacy of disclosure, and Blair’s comfort with the camera — her actress-y will to entertain — makes her a uniquely endearing subject.

It’s a test of patience to watch these glass figurines discuss their romantic entanglements, the doll house on the Riviera that they will maybe rent, the bourgeois marriages they will maybe leave. Even the camera seems bored, as if it might wander off.

The movie lacks the gut punch of live theater, the thrill or discomfort of watching people show their feelings in real time. But as cinema, it demonstrates the effectiveness of simplicity. A well-written script and an exemplary cast can still produce a movie worth watching.

For a film about misandrist revolutionaries, Mayday lacks the courage of its convictions — it sets up boogeymen as targets only to shoot them point blank, in broad daylight.

This is a dry comedy that elicits amused recognition rather than belly laughs, and Ulman, as a first-time feature director, makes canny decisions to set a wry tone.

There is a beautiful act of translation that this documentary observes, as Balanchine’s former students — now wizened teachers themselves — attempt to render his movements into speech.

For the most part, LaBruce tries to maintain fidelity to the idea that camp is best performed straight. If keeping up the pretense of unwinking entertainment causes the pace to drag at times, at least this movie never fails to follow through on its scandalous promise.

The movie presents an eye-catching fantasy of a candy-colored Japanese underworld. But the exoticism feels as cheap as a whiff of a green tea and musk cologne called Tokyo wafting over a department store counter. Even Winstead, stoic in her fashionably boyish haircut, looks bored.

Despite the modern technology, the setting and the sound draws attention to what is retro about this young star’s style, the influences from bossa nova, jazz, and traditional choral music that pop up in her chart-topping records.

For this action film, the director Brian Andrew Mendoza favors a utilitarian style. His color palette leans toward grays, blues and browns. His fight scenes are not flashy, or even particularly memorable, but they are clear, effectively conveying the necessary information about whose fist has connected with whose face.

Like a diploma, it’s easy to imagine how the rewards of this carefully observed documentary could accrue with a little time.

It is a warm and generous portrait, but the film lacks its central organizer’s propulsive shrewdness.

The film is invested in accurately depicting the details of its character’s lives, but its collection of studied impressions doesn’t coalesce into a coherent final portrait.

The movie treats illness as a series of contrivances, an engine that keeps the plot pistoning forward, and the result of this approach is a film that feels lifeless, or worse, reductive.

The film plays as a series of perfectly enjoyable sketches strung together, an excuse for veteran actors to chew on playful dialogue.

This is a respectful tribute that is a shade too morally and cinematically safe in its execution.

If the team was derided by their prejudiced (and defeated) foes in the moment of their success, this documentary elegantly restores the glow of legend, saving the champions the trouble of having to explain their heroism in words.

The most successful sequences are the ones that find new ways of illustrating the meaning of a poem besides lingering on the face of the performer uttering purposefully syncopated and painstakingly intonated lines.

The filmmakers Giselle Bailey and Nneka Onuorah capture arguments as other activists wrestle with the contradictions of James’s motivations. But crucially, they don’t shy away from James.

The value of this demystifying film is its tactical breakdown of a form of violence that has become increasingly common in the United States. Here, both prevention and survival are a result of communal strategy.

Both films are conventional in cinematic style, and they constitute the kind of feel-good entertainment that is easy to recommend. But what is timely and interesting — even thorny — about these films is their focus on the economic opportunities generated by athletic achievement

Both films are conventional in cinematic style, and they constitute the kind of feel-good entertainment that is easy to recommend. But what is timely and interesting — even thorny — about these films is their focus on the economic opportunities generated by athletic achievement

Rockwell intentionally reminds his audience of the rich history of American independent cinema, where filmmakers across decades have built dreamscapes out of the textures of everyday interactions.

With its deep ensemble, the movie doesn’t want for colorful characters, and Davis keeps his cast loose, unvarnished and unleashed. But the movie lacks focus when it moves between its larger-than-life plotlines.

The soft-focus cinematography is beautiful but drippy, and this general tendency toward mushy melodramatics presents an unflattering contrast to the sharp-lined vivacity that Jansson brought to the page.

The film’s subjects are overwhelmingly earnest, but the movie suffers for its substitution of enterprise over entertainment.

The movie doesn’t make a joke of Sunny and Lupe’s concerns about pregnancy, dating and parental expectations, and in turn, it’s a delight to laugh through their goofier exploits.

In absence of a bold visual style, the performers are tasked with providing the movie with its energy.