Vikram Murthi

By shaping Roxanne Roxanne as a character profile, Larnell accentuates his actors’ performances and crafts a nuanced community portrait, two strengths exhibited in his delightful first feature, "Cronies."

As much as the film repeatedly pays tribute to their relationship— its unaffected honesty, their political influence, the beautiful and often alienating art they created — it can’t compete with the view of their cozy apartment. “All I want is the truth,” Lennon once sang; he knew that it’s much simpler than you could ever imagine.

West of the Jordan River works best when Gitai involves himself in the interviews. Gitai is a compelling screen presence—empathetic and patient, but also skeptical and necessarily forceful.

Sr. serves a few too many thematic masters, trying to be multiple different films at once without ever committing to any of them, but anyone who has any emotional investment in Robert Downey Sr.’s rebellious body of work will at least appreciate how he tries his best to make one last movie in his own image.

Individual scenes absorb, and the film lives and dies by its performances, but the macro problem seems to be that The Sisters Brothers can’t quite transcend its imitation atmosphere. Audiard and his cinematographer Benoît Debie nail the Western aesthetic, but neither can grasp the feeling. This wouldn’t be an issue if Audiard had postmodern aspirations, but The Sisters Brothers wants to be in conversation with the genre while still retaining a sincere, unwinking approach.

Filmlovers! melds fiction and non-fiction, the personal and the political, popular and art cinema, into a lyrical tribute to spectatorship, embracing all the theories and emotions that come with it.

One irony of Malcolm & Marie is that its vindictive bellyaching about judging a film on its own terms is much more interesting than the actual relationship at the center of the film. The performances remain trapped in a self-conscious mode, merely mimicking the cadence and tempo of a romance-fracturing fight.

As much as Questlove probes his many interviewees with questions about the expectations and responsibility that comes with “Black genius,” his film doesn’t live up to the ambitious framework he puts forth.

Gallner and Weaving’s erotic chemistry, which begins at a simmer but quickly reaches a boil, helps smooth out the lumpier patches in Carolina Caroline that comprise the film’s middle section.

Although Spettacolo is thoughtful and charming throughout, it’s mildly disappointing that the film doesn’t further engage with the self-reflexivity of the annual event itself.

While Much Ado About Dying strives to be a tribute to caretakers and Chambers’ dearly departed uncle, its baggy structure, dictated by David’s declining health, renders the film frustratingly inert.

Aside from the Mexico City setting, it doesn’t really accomplish anything unique either. A Cop Movie feels in the end like, well, a cop movie, only with an eye for society instead of the unit. That’s not enough to separate it from the pack.

After 29 narrative features, Soderbergh has developed a proficient sense of staging that feels simultaneously relaxed and invigorating. Much of the ineffable fun of watching No Sudden Move comes from being in the hands of someone who knows how to achieve what they want without trying unduly hard to impress.

American Symphony greatly suffers from a lack of focus.

It’s just a shame that the edge-of-your-seat suspense negates The Kindergarten Teacher’s preceding psychological power.

What saves Late Fame at almost every turn is Jones’ direction, which infuses even simple dialogue scenes with breezy maturity and palpable longing.

At least superficially, Hello, Love, Again offers something for everyone: stirring romance, politically-tinged drama, and shots of Calgary that resemble a regional tourist board’s wet dream. In execution, however, the film exhibits something of a split personality by awkwardly moving between cutesy soap operatic romance and an unsparing, oft-devastating portrait of the myriad hurdles facing foreign workers.

Colette too frequently coasts on its timeliness, preferring catharsis to nuance.

Sylvie’s Love lacks the ineffable spark that keeps it from fully transcending its period dress-up. There’s a pervasive self-consciousness on display that veers from delightful to forced depending on the goals of each scene. Sometimes the cast and the production design embrace the artifice strongly enough to make it look and sound organic. Other times, it just appears… artificial.

If you’re already a fan of Kilmer’s work, there’s clear value in watching him pal around as a young man on the brink of stardom or rehearse as Jim Morrison for The Doors. But for everyone else, Val can sometimes feel like an uncomplicated victory lap.

The film prefers to operate purely as a trip down nostalgia lane.

The Biggest Little Farm has many valuable points to make about the connection between how our food is grown and eco-friendly living, but style betrays substance so often here that the message gets lost in the shuffle. Unless that message is simply We Bought A Farm!

The footage astounds, but the competing contextualizations breathe new life into the experiment, especially when Lindeen allows the surviving members free reign to confront past emotions.

Tyrel is essentially Microaggressions: The Movie.

Ahmed can’t sand over all of the flaws through sheer charisma. But with him at center, the movie is always watchable, even in its imperfections.

It’s a portrait of obsession that doesn’t caricaturize nor ridicule, an empathetic account of desire and its inherent limitations, as well as an opaque psychological study that falls in line with life’s myriad mysteries.

The vast majority of the people watching The Brink have their minds made up about Bannon and will not be swayed by his flamboyant rhetoric. At the same time, it’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly Klayman accomplishes with her film beyond a mere political horror show one can safely view from behind proverbial Plexiglas.

Despite their best efforts, Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville can’t rescue Ordinary Love, a bland drama about a late-middle-aged couple grappling with a cancer diagnosis.