The film is an open, honest portrait of personal conflict, contradictions, and suppressed narratives that shed some new light on the student protest movement by bringing the footage—and some of the personal baggage—out of the vault.

Wandel pulls no punches in her depiction, and both Leklou and Vanderbeque deliver performances well beyond their years.

The Sky Is Everywhere is certainly a delight to behold; one just wishes Nelson mined a bit deeper in the adaptation process, pulling back on trite verbosity and letting Decker’s fanciful, psychologically striking vision do the talking.

Once again Soderbergh has delivered a film that comes across as effortlessly constructed, which could only be achieved through immense consideration of every detail.

Any pain is endured and ultimately enjoyed (save the insane gags Knoxville pulls), allowing audiences a guilt-free good time at the movies. It may not be smart, but the feeling of joy sure as hell ain’t stupid.

It helps, too, that the music is good (Kat and Bastian sing a lot, each song being plot-specific considering they’re writing about their love and its demise), the integration of social media effective (Kat’s life is online and Charlie still uses a flip phone), and the inclusion of Lou and the kids as a way to see both Kat’s and Charlie’s hearts beautifully tears down their defenses as well as ours where accepting this “whirlwind” (it is months, not days) at face value.

What makes Here Before so much finer than its initial premise is the soul Gregg and Riseborough lend.

Through its slippery cinematic language and elusive point-of-view, Kapadia depicts a moment happening urgently in the film’s present-day strand––a wave of anti-government student protests and their resulting crackdown––and treats it like memory, which we know operates as anything but a direct mental recording device.

The geopolitical stakes are immense and Navalny is essential viewing, especially for any Western audience that may have not been following this story so closely.

Too often do we take for granted the miraculousness of the moving image. Stigter’s creative extension and exploration of Kurtz’s film reminds us. What can we glean from three minutes of film shot in 1938? Plenty.

Though Alice is bringing up a part of American history sadly under-discussed, and not present anywhere in high school history textbooks the way it should be, it struggles to find a voice, never able to capture the right rhythm to bring itself to life.

Sharp Stick is nothing short of singular. If it’s unlikely this project will gain the director any new fans, it represents another step into bold territory—even as quality dips and swerves, this is a project where it seems no notes were given, the kind of freedom that’s refreshing in today’s landscape.

Had [Ponsoldt] truly trusted his young performers and crafted the script accordingly, Summering could have been something special. Instead he’s made a film as unfocused and forgettable as a rainy late-summer afternoon. These characters deserve better.

As Bahrani goes to great depths to verify his subject’s contradictory tales and the circumstances behind his company’s termination, 2nd Chance turns into a familiar American portrait of mythmaking and cognitive dissonance.

The twin issues of climate change and Delhi’s ensuing air pollution remain largely unspoken factors in Sen’s film, which in its best moments constructs elaborate tracking shots detailing the full scale of devastation caused by extreme weather conditions.

Delivering a happy ending that feels like a cheap way out of the story, Resurrection may initially shake one to their core, but by the finale it devolves into little more than a diabolically outrageous genre outing for two great actors.

Her feature debut nods to Ousmane Sembène’s seminal Black Girl while distilling the trials her parents, immigrants from Sierra Leone, endured as Jusu grew up in Atlanta—a mix of domestic drama and frightening images to make us fellow outsiders in a suffocatingly insular world.

Perkins’ approach, however, could be read more as an exercise in media study than biopic of Diana. It adds to the canon but not the lure of the mythical “People’s Princess.”

Lucy and Desi won’t provide many surprises for those with a general understanding of Ball and Arnaz. It can look and sound like a paint-by-numbers documentary, with the trappings of any streamable film being churned out at major studios. Technically, it’s standard fare. Emotionally, it’s a beating heart—Poehler’s beating heart.

Brody is great here, his long face and animated eyes doing a lot of work. It’s a quiet performance, an arena where the actor has always excelled. Without doing much, we know Clean: who he is and who he’s trying to be.

Newton’s dynamic performance keeps you hooked.

Having two terrific stars front and center isn’t nearly enough when they’re only given permission to run wild in this small of a playground.

Emily the Criminal keeps up the pace to deliver an entertaining ride but misses the audacity to leave a genuine mark.

Master is ultimately undone by its overreaching scope.

Entering the “likely a money-laundering scheme for Spanish businessmen” part of his European travelogue era, Woody Allen turns uniquely narrow-minded and bitter with Rifkin’s Festival, which takes aim at the film culture that’s both alienated and abandoned him this past decade. Exciting though it is to see the proverbial gloves come off, the hands, sadly, don’t get very dirty.

A genre film committed and receptive to the melted minds of its characters and the equally melted minds of its audience

Speak No Evil is riveting and upsetting in equal measure. And I never, ever want to see it again.

Wearing influences heavily on its sleeve, this is a gorgeous, empathetic feature debut too reliant on what has paved the way for its existence.