Teo Bugbee

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.

The film, which was written and directed by Casimir Nozkowski, sets an easy pace to match Charles’s mild ennui. The only problem is that the movie doesn’t supplement its lack of stakes with style or substance.

Though the movie’s aesthetics are tepidly pleasant, Bellott’s biggest success is freeing his film’s relationship to time. In this sense, the movie retains some of the vitality of theater, where the characters invite the audience into reverie.

The overwhelming impression is that of shrillness. It’s a tone that might be familiar to those who have experienced a broken heart, but this shallow exercise offers meager opportunity for discomfort to transform into either entertainment or contemplation.

The writer and director, Charlène Favier, had previous experience as a competitive skier, and she is attentive to the textures of mountainside sports and how abuse plays out in this setting.

The film’s writer and director, Jon Garcia, treats the physicality of their romance in a frank way, staging realistic love scenes that show the attraction between the characters. But Garcia is less adept at finding passion in between scenes of sex.

If Markie is undeniably compelling as a subject, the film doesn’t quite match her bravery and her willingness to explore uncharted territory. There are plenty of fly-on-the-wall observations, but little play or introspection besides what Markie is able to offer.

It’s a competent movie, but it doesn’t quite make it to the big leagues.

It’s the cumulative effect of seeing the world through the eyes of these children that makes this movie so deeply joyful. This is a heartening project, a philosophical excavation of a school that abounds with playful optimism.

Some of these central relationships are inappropriate, even dangerous, but the subtlety of Sanga’s filmmaking allows for big twists to come as a genuine surprise. It makes for a successful manipulation of his audience’s expectations, even if the overall effect is a movie that feels slightly detached.

This is a bizarre movie, one that parades confused ideas about care, fantasy and disability with a pride that reads as vanity. It is audacious, in the sense that making it certainly took some audacity.

The observant nature of this character drama offers Zahn in particular the opportunity to expand into new territory. He hasn’t lost the spaciness that once made him a lovable comedic sidekick, but here fatherhood endows that same charm with pathos, even tragedy.

Bliss fails to engage the senses, resulting in cinematic disappointment.

The repetition of the visions and the film’s deliberate pace gives the audience too much time to guess which betrayals haunt Babak and Neda, and this lack of emotional suspense hampers the horror.

It’s a confident debut feature, and a sophisticated acknowledgment of the powerlessness that migrants face.

It’s a buffet of only sour dishes, a rank fete of foulness.

It doesn’t take long to notice that these are earnest, even humorless, women. They are too busy contemplating their daily turmoil to play or crack a joke. As a result, their chemistry never coheres, and the movie flounders under the weight of lifeless sincerity.

The movie plays like a well-crafted game, one with stable rules and safeties, perfectly enjoyable but limited. The director and the performers circle ideas about how intimacy can be manipulated to satisfy artistic ambitions, but the experiment feels easy to leave behind.

Marco’s sourness curdles the confection and his undercooked complaints clack against the movie’s warm tone, sending its simple pleasures into a scatter.

The movie practically vibrates with its own meta tension.

It’s an intriguing interpretation of adolescent discovery, one that uses horror to suggest the dread that comes with finding a sense of self.