Even without the editing problems, it’s not clear that the narrative bones of Plainclothes were ever strong enough for the movie to work. The entire film often resembles a jumble of queer cinema archetypes executed better on many other occasions.

There’s something quite moving about watching Matlin tell her own story, on her own terms.

If Lurker eventually succumbs to certain genre tropes and a handful of story bumps, it makes up for its limitations in perspicacity and the overall strength of its filmmaking.

Ultimately Holder argues that — despite gentrification — this place is still magical, except we never see any of the magic of which she speaks. We see a fantasy land, but that’s not the same thing as the true magic the city can offer.

All the promise of this premise is squandered in Lin’s adaptation, which in style and structure hews to hackneyed convention at every turn.

We are treated to all the joys and pains of 10 transformative months, with Ewing and Grady taking us inside an experience that’s both specific and oddly universal.

A documentary whose strengths and weaknesses all too perfectly reflect the nature of the crisis at its core — a crisis that stems from a vast confluence of geopolitical issues, but expresses itself through the siloed misery of loneliness and longing.

While the understated approach Zhu brings to her debut feature is authentic, it also underplays even big, dramatic developments in Rebecca’s life. The result is a tiny thing you can hold in the palm of your hand, soft and delicate and mild.

Twohy seems to have long ago lost the thread of what Bubble & Squeak was really trying to say and the inventive ways he might say it.

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a rich visual assemblage born from an uncompromising artistic vision and collectively rendered praxis. One senses that it breaks typical forms, not to be contrarian, but to revel in its authentic self.

Gates only pokes fun at how America casts itself until she gets distracted by a cinematic fantasy of her own.

In the moment, it’s hard not to get pulled into the spectacle, stuck to the story, really connected to this crowd-pleasing (and -screaming) little ditty of a midnight treat.

With an economy of story elements and set design — where most of the movie takes place in nature’s open expanses — Bentley has crafted a plaintive and affecting film about how every moment holds value.

While Victor’s film might be rooted specifically in Agnes’ story and the bad thing at its center, in its specificity, there’s still tremendous room for wider recognition and and revelation.

Rebuilding accrues a lasting power from all of the impermanence that it collects along the way. Even the film’s most schematic moments make it feel as though Walker-Silverman is simply unearthing something that was already there.

In a world that often rewards mediocrity where true artistic greatness is hard to come by, a work like Opus had the potential to be a defining movie of our current moment, but the film’s half-hearted swipes at celebrity culture are never sharp or incisive enough to get under the skin.

Like “This Is Not a Film” before it, Zodiac Killer Project sees its director leveraging their misfortune into an impish and hyper-resourceful attack on the oppressive strictures of modern storytelling (in this case the rigid conventions of the true-crime genre rather than the mandates of a censorious regime), one that allows Shackleton to achieve a measure of freedom through the act of detailing his own cage.

While watching Andrew Ahn’s amiable dramedy, which expands on the original premise while maintaining its central themes of found family and tolerance, one rarely questions the story’s relevance. More vitally, it lacks panache.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is a flashy ode to the fairies and the radicals, the maricóns who’ve repurposed their oppression and media literacy into an outsize, fuck-if-I-care-what-you-think political identity. Yet there’s nothing revolutionary about the movie that contains them.

Split into three parts that reflect an infinite pattern of crime, punishment, and cultural recidivism, Predators fixates on our shared complicity in continuing that cycle with every click.

How does a transcript of a conversation become a movie? Sachs is searchingly in pursuit of the answer to that question, but what he has captured here is oddly wrenching and moving.

For a story that takes place in such a tactile and cohesive fantasy world, it’s frustrating that the archness of its telling keeps the viewer at a distance rather than pulling them closer to the heart of the matter.

The film often feels as impossible to definitively grasp as the coveted furniture that it follows — but whether that’s a feature or a bug lies in the eye of the beholder.

The result is a cozy crowdpleaser with real heart and some lovely songs, and one that doesn’t trade honesty for predictable beats.

2000 Meters to Andriivka” is a grueling watch that can’t possibly capture the full extent of the traumatic day-to-day of waging this war. But even capturing a slice of it is a triumph of empathetic identification.

Here’s a classic story outfitted into something perhaps more bracingly modern — even if its storytelling techniques, female body horror aside, largely are traditional.

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.

Gandbhir’s unforgettable documentary crystallizes the horrors of stand-your-ground laws by examining their effects through the lens of a single case — one that harrowingly illustrates the defects of castle doctrines (among other policy failures) by painting a microcosmic portrait of white America’s inability to parse between fear and anger.