The filmmakers do not dive into the protagonists’ lives or elucidate if any form of progress was made after the wins. Maing and Story show that the outcome is the beginning of a generational fight for companies to properly value the labor that keeps them running.

Smith expertly weaves the words of Mothersbaugh and Casale with film clips, old commercials, and, eventually, actual footage of the band’s earliest days to clarify what de-evolution, Devo-style, was all about.

The film’s free-flowing, sometimes experimental structure proves evocative.

That Porcelain War emerges as a taut, effective war documentary that also features compelling animated sequences within the beautiful artwork of its lead subjects makes it a stand-out piece of filmmaking. Its existence proves its own point: even in war, there must be life. Art sustains us and helps us survive.

A Different Man is a loaded story––filled with plenty of passed detours and dark alleys––and it can start to feel a bit punishing by the end, where Schimberg struggles finding a natural resolution. But maybe that’s the point. This movie feels itchy because these are messy, undefined, unresolved topics.

Despite its straightforward, perhaps manipulative heart-tugging nature, this film is impossible not to like because of the goodwill of its subject and foundation he created.

Mbakam’s minimalist aesthetics demolish the binary between nonfiction and fiction to reflect Pierrette’s flawed, humane intentions across the nurturers from many settings.

The characters here are half-baked, archetypes meant to fit into this semi-supernatural mystery box without the cathartic release that defeating various hate-groups should have.

In capturing the trans experience with language that only cinema can convey, Schoenbrun has crafted one of the most original, evocative, adventurous films of this decade.

It’s fair to say there’s too much going on at once. The movie can feel like it’s a bit on steroids, too. But it’s so self-assured, so confident with the characters it’s tethered to, the genre lines it blurs, and the love story that waffles with each dead body rolled up into a carpet or dragged down a stairwell.

The rigorous perspective solely on these mythical creatures is a daring decision––a more compelling experiment than the overdramatized recent entries into the Planet of the Apes franchise––but the end result is more commendable than dramatically captivating.

My Old Ass yearns to go down easy and succeeds at such, but one wishes it dug a bit deeper into its Pollyannaish script and aesthetic.

Ibelin thoroughly traces Mats’ existence with talking-head interviews, family home footage, original animations of Warcraft characters, a narrator reading his posts, his handwritten video game dialogue, and a mix of animation movements and character descriptions. These techniques allow Ree to symphonically center the subject without relegating family and peers to representatives

Though there may be too much here, plenty of it’s compelling and important. The Outrun is undoubtedly a hard sit, but Ronan serves as a superb vessel through choppy waters.

Good One is an acutely felt portrait of impending womanhood and a remarkable debut for India Donaldson.

That Culkin has both the charm and bite to carry it is superb, and there’s a bravery to the open-endedness Eisenberg permits. It’s clearly a personal endeavor and clear point of growth as a filmmaker.

It feels like a short that’s been stretched to breaking point.

McBain and Moss capture all this with an unobtrusive eye. They have a real grasp of how to capture and frame candid interactions, how to pace this kind of near-reality television drama. It doesn’t hit its ambitious stride, though, until the end.

Led by André Holland in an impressively anguished performance, the ensemble elevates a script that has its heart in the right place but feels lacking in layers of complexity that we see from the art on display.

Dewey is the highlight of the picture, offering both humor and pathos throughout while playing off Barrera nicely.

A screwball comedy that never forgets a dramatic weight, Silver’s latest feature is a hilarious, touching, and acerbic tale of picking one’s self back up and not being afraid to pursue what is truly desired.

A loveable, low-stakes joyride.

Weaving in skillfully employed, grounded visual effects, it’s rather shocking just how much the ghost, sight unseen, feels like another character in the movie.

Carion is unabashed in his love for both the cabbie and his fare. That affection makes it easy for us to love them too.

This is, at its core, the story of a resurrection, spiritual and sensorial; at its most transcendental, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell makes Thien’s awakening your own.

Just let the rage unleash in whatever convenient way is necessary to get the blood flowing faster. What’s good enough for John Wick should be good enough for Kill, so wake the boogeyman up and let him loose. Because we’re all here for the brutality anyway. There’s no point pretending otherwise.

Schaad really ensures that we’re seeing beyond the surface. We’re experiencing the characters, their respective journeys, and their somber realizations that some incongruities can’t be fixed with a Band-Aid.

There’s something electrifying about a filmmaker willing to treat the medium as a permeable universe, to bring it into conversation with different art forms, and to test its limits with this much inventiveness. Jude, too, moves across his material with unremitting freedom, and the voyage is a testament to cinema’s shapeshifting power––what it can do, what it can be.