Free Time doesn’t perform the duties of a nostalgic travelogue. It lets itself find a journey by avoiding a destination, a wanderer without purpose who finds humanity because it’s impossible not to.

If anything, Fireball works best as a personification of its own themes. The textbook feeds the truncated, the truncated the tactile. Its own interests and understandings don’t always seem to exist on the same plane, but perhaps that’s okay. They’re still shining. They’ll sort themselves out eventually.

Dirty God isn’t some contrived pity project tugging on heartstrings. Polak is legitimately engaging with the aftermath of a real-life nightmare.

The director’s charms and gamely energy make foreknowledge something of a moot point here. The passion has clearly remained, most keenly pronounced in the moments when the octogenarian reveals his own influences.

In the end, Hillbilly Elegy is shameless Oscar bait only redeemed by Close and Bennett’s restrained work.

It’s dissonant, often hypnotic filmmaking. It’s also rote for stretches, with Petzold’s narrative approach surprisingly straightforward enough to make it just decent overall.

Finding Yingying doesn’t plumb the differences between U.S. and Chinese relations as much as the story alludes to, but the sheer emotion of it all largely redeems it.

For a look at the life of John Belushi, it’s a fittingly brisk one. For a dive into his career, it’s one that, despite a general lack of originality, mines a few solid points.

The exposition-mountain screenplay leaves little to feel just as a devotion to the written word leaves scant room for anything to look at. I’m slightly unsure what anybody involved was hoping to get from the experience, much less what’s the takeaway sans basic admiration for baseline craft.

While the narrative may seem to some frustratingly sparse, The Killing of Two Lovers represents a leap forward for Machoian who somewhat scales up, creating a hauntingly personal portrait of a couple at a crossroads struggling in more ways that one to get by.

Is the big draw still watching Vaughn act like a teenage girl? You bet. But Freaky‘s success lies in its ability to create around that central performance and not simply rely upon its absurdity.

This is the Devil’s story. The Dark and the Wicked is Satan entertaining himself with the dread of those he could kill in an instant if he wanted. But he doesn’t. He wants them to endure an agony they never thought possible and for us to question the veracity of what we see.

Ultimately, it is hard to ignore a hard-edged genre piece showcasing three great performers.

Collective sports a procedural-like pace that keeps the information legible and the action linear.

Msangi pulls off something most filmmakers don’t: She adapts her own short film to a feature without stretching it out.

While the film never quite elevates itself to a harmonious balance of camp and art house, The Empty Man doesn’t lack ambition.

Coming Home Again is all the more affecting for its bald artlessness. The film’s sentimentality is totally naked, almost embarrassing, and very moving.

Hit or miss as it may be, Borat 2 at least doesn’t fall short on sheer audacious vulgarity.

Eaton and co-writer Bryan Delaney have crafted their script with skillful precision.

With a grand score by Alan Silvestri that kicks up at every possible turn and extravagantly over-the-top Hathaway performance, this update on The Witches is a family-friendly Halloween treat that still boasts Zemeckis’ brand of the bizarre and a clear-eyed vision that seems all the more rare in today’s Hollywood.

Regardless of missteps with the ending, the majority of Herself is soulful and empathetic enough to do justice to its subject, doing the important job of reminding audiences everywhere how important community truly is for survivors.

Wheatley’s Rebecca is still a strong film when judged on its own. It looks gorgeous, has solid performances, and excels at amplifying the predatory central dynamic between “I” and Danvers in a singular way that earns a place besides Hitchcock’s.

If McEveety really wanted to give the topic its due via investigative reporting, the runtime would need to be much, much longer. His choosing to ignore that route for pulpy entertainment shouldn’t, however, have you thinking he did the topic a disservice.

Pollard’s documentary is powerful because it shows that, no, extra-marital affairs did not discredit the Civil Rights Movement, but Hoover’s actions cast a long shadow over the FBI––no matter how righteous their causes today appear (in their own eyes, anyway).

Ammonite will make you feel as if you’re right there in Lyme with Mary, sharing her loneliness and delighting in the small moments of joy she allows herself, all the while breathing in the crisp sea air.

Love and Monsters proves itself a pretty well-rounded adventure for both its target audience and those older looking for a bit of escape that’s still firmly rooted in reality. Joel is an unlikely hero whose success shows humanity isn’t dead yet.

What’s most unsettling and provocative about White Riot is how current it feels. Because of this, perhaps White Riot’s greatest achievement is that it takes something that can cause sneers and eye-rolling—committed cultural and political action—and make it feel both necessary and triumphant.

It’s a good role for Brody by simultaneously feeding on the typecast nature of him being neurotic Seth Cohen from The O.C. and rejecting it by toning down the sarcasm and replacing it with fatigue.