Due to its relatively simple base pleasures, there’s a sense this madcap comedy will be dismissed for choosing nimbleness over pathos, but it is Coen and Cooke’s clear love for both B-movie tropes and the wonderfully game ensemble they’ve assembled that makes Drive-Away Dolls go down so easy. Even if one doesn’t fully connect with the attempts at humor, to see the film’s MacGuffin revealed––and precisely how it pertains to a certain supporting character––is ultimately worth the price of admission alone.

It takes a good stretch of precious screentime for Part Two to play as its own entity and not the serial continuation of a two-year-old film based on a 60-year-old property; it also takes a good stretch of precious screentime for Part Two to play as anything other than a thoroughgoing, checklist-meeting obligation bolstered by obvious craft.

What I find damning about the film––its refusal to sit with or explore the consequences of the country’s gradual transition to democracy––may be worthy of praise by national audiences, but makes it harder to truly embrace from an outsider’s perspective.

It’s not so much a matter of the piece being one-sided; that would at least imply a more vehement perspective. It’s the lack of deconstructive efforts here that ultimately turn the piece into less than the sum of its parts.

Riddle of Fire has some of the tell-tale hallmarks of a debut feature: it’s much too long, its performances are a bit awkward, the tone inconsistent. Yet it marks a tremendous showcase for Razooli, his varied talent across many fields.

That the plot points are familiar and conventional is less the issue than a nagging unevenness along the way.

So much of Concrete Valley adopts a quiet, almost off-putting awkwardness that you’ll either embrace or not.

Ruizpalacios’ film has style to burn but little interest in subtlety, and even the most high-grade hammers can lose their sheen after 139 minutes of hammering.

Assayas, who has dotted his ever-surprising career with brisk, self-aware, sophisticate-centered comedies, has rarely played things quite so close to home.

With notable patience, Mielants (who directed Murphy in six episodes of Peaky Blinders) allows the darkness to gradually seep in.

Onlookers lacks specificity in its execution, making for a plodding experience across a short runtime.

While any passage itself could make a compelling short, it’s largely held together by the curiosity of its maker and the tangents of interest to him as a family man of a certain age when friends, family, and those close to us start slowly fading away at a quicker pace.

Formulaic as it may come across, this is a sleek genre exercise, a horror crafted not to peddle some profound meaning, but to frighten and delight.

Where the sprawling, knotty, and thoroughly captivating Soundtrack to a Coup d’État sheds new light is in its form, exploring a global conspiracy playing out often right in view.

It’s lacking in the genuine requirements for this kind of picture––any real suspense, terror, or ickiness.

20 Days in Mariupol is both essential and far from perfect. It can’t be fully, objectively judged when much of the footage within is as urgent as this; it needs to be seen, if only for the vague hope it can help hold the perpetrators’ feet to the fire.

It takes a very specific kind of brain trust to craft something as uniquely baffling as Argylle.

Ito is undeniably brave, but this autobiographical doc could stand to be a bit less shiny.

An expertly crafted but extremely reverential, biographical documentary that uses extracts from the artist’s diary as narration to suggest we’re listening to the story from the artist herself.

What’s most admirable about Veni Vidi Vici is that Hoesl and Niemann avoid being too obvious about satirical moments.

It’s nice to see a first-time director unafraid to let his viewers have their own experiences and come to their own conclusions. Here’s one: the bravest thing about Little Death isn’t its risks––it’s the filmmakers’ choice to forgo nihilism for hope.

Seeking Mavis Beacon quickly becomes less about what this software and its spokeswoman represent, more about what Jones and Ross are thinking or doing at any given time––even if it distracts from the film’s mission.

The filmmakers leave the gaucho community the same way they arrived, a tracking shot that turns the camera into a train that stopped briefly in a place we otherwise wouldn’t know existed, each viewer taking a custom souvenir. For some a lesson in courage and tenacity or curiosity about how this culture came to be; for others, it may be simply the snapshot from a trip they won’t regret taking.

Although the script could certainly use pruning, Suncoast balances intellect and emotion to deliver clever, memorable lines and a climax that will leave you weeping.

Its scrappiness is what brings the charm à la the early work of Madeleine Olnek. Random attempts at depth detract from the final product rather than add to it.

Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s new documentary attempts to elucidate the thought process behind these daredevil theatrics. Yet it ends up doing more to glorify and celebrate their life-threatening, thrill-seeking actions than interrogate the complexity of why they have devoted their existence to an insane diversion that has seen many of their friends fall to their deaths.

Despite some devoted performances and interesting formal choices, its endgame is rather rote. That the film is quieter and more deliberate in getting there doesn’t make it any less cliche.

It’s a film about the chaos of creation, about the violence that occurs in the creation of new worlds, deftly playing with genres to endlessly fascinating means.