I’m sure Allen apologists will say that A Rainy Day in New York was built as a way of self-ridicule with Gatsby’s incredulity towards women always finding older men attractive and filmmakers preying upon ingénues, but nothing in the text suggests that it is.

Generally speaking, Red, White and Blue succeeds whenever the film deviates from the message and showcases spontaneous and unfettered life.

Plotting and pacing asides, Sylvie’s Love is a rich and graceful picture in passages.

One’s mileage may vary with Never Gonna Snow Again, depending on whether a rich and intriguing atmosphere alone can sustain your attention.

It’s about the many forms of privilege and the intersecting failures they result in. Most of all, it’s about how this United States, this oh so great country of God, can’t understand the difference between liberty and entitlement.

Because the journey is so rapid and anxiety-inducing, however, it’s easy to forget that truncated timeline in order embrace the adrenaline rush of fear and uncertainty that suddenly places a cloud over everything.

Soul likes jazz very much. That’s a rare certainty in this ambitious film, which attempts to contemplate nothing less than the root of all human experience on this planet.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow aims more to be about its small village, but in reality, it’s more about how frayed police officers, especially men, abuse their privileges. It’d be a great vehicle to skewer these topics if the pieces fit together, but they don’t.

Eventually you can’t help but unironically wonder if Sud intended to make a comedy because the mood swings and incredulity only become more and more unbelievable.

A well-modulated vision of the fight against encroaching malaise or mere trifle dressing itself up? Depends on the scene. But trifles have their place and auteurs should be allowed their fun, which On the Rocks deploys over 90 minutes kind enough not to feel like a waste of anyone’s talents or time.

While Eternal Beauty is oftentimes funny, it’s almost always dramatically profound and emotionally complex.

It becomes your basic genre thriller as a result with a straightforward race against the clock to escape before the time arrives for Christine to be sacrificed. But the script is anything but basic in that goal. On the contrary, Margolis, Morley, and Tish make it so convoluted that I wasn’t sure where relevance began and deflection ended.

Almodóvar’s work always evokes other artforms beyond the cinema. The Human Voice shows how great texts are malleable: this is his particular take, and not a definitive, canonical edition.

Maybe my criticism of American Murder is more a criticism of the genre itself and how its desire to shed light on crimes inherently exploits them regardless of intent. Popplewell’s film is an expertly researched prologue to a much-needed conversation it avoids.

The across-the-board stellar performances always invigorate every scene, but Mangrove frustrates whenever McQueen defaults to less rigorous visual strategies.

Sorkin doesn’t face these evils for more than a moment at a time. He doesn’t even try to convert the uninitiated, but his movie thinks it does. His script and direction gaze rather than observe, and by the time the score swells and the requisite title cards inform the viewer of its leads’ fates, The Trial of the Chicago 7 has brought virtually nothing to light.

There’s a lot to admire here, even it all of it doesn’t work.

Indeed, the strangest thing about Mainstream (and it is a strange, strange film) is just how out of touch it feels. Granted, if it were easy to make a viral video we would all be doing it; yet what Coppola and her team have come up with is just so lame and off the mark and nauseatingly self-satisfied.

Those who enjoy a good hoot and holler with a midnight crowd will surely revel in it while those who don’t will roll their eyes and wonder what’s happening since the reveal of Maude’s mission does become way too heavy-handed for its melodrama to rise above the hollow action trappings.

The entirety of Good Joe Bell is an awakening not for those who actively harm at-risk youth like Jadin, but those who don’t realize the implicit harm they’re supplying by centering allyship on themselves rather than those they’re supporting.

While at times a brutal watch, with the film’s insistence on showing the ravages of COVID-19 in up-close detail, 76 Days will, I suspect, become a landmark document when talking about the virus and China’s initial response.

Just like Moore’s previous films The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, a consistently mesmerizing Celtic flavor is imbued into the animation, music, and story.

The organic community portrait ebbs and flows to a beat of its own making.

The Secrets We Keep is a film in search of a more coherent message.

A collage of distant memories and the realities that threaten them, Residue is an auspicious calling card for its filmmaker.

It is utterly so-so, but it is also, undeniably, so-Ozon.

The relevance of Franco’s message is undeniable, but his handling of it is reckless and just muddles his themes in the pursuit of appearing intellectual.

Shiva Baby is a blast of energy and from its first moment to its last Seligman finds the right balance. There is genuine suspense, if not horror; the score, by Ariel Marx, could just as easily fit a summer camp slasher flick. But the greatest feeling for the audience––after discomfort––is excitement.