While the uncertain nature of the sport lends a suffocating tension to the whole, the complexity of [Morgan's] character’s day-to-day struggle as a man who knows nothing else does too.

Things get heavy pretty quick once the drugs take hold and not everyone will get out alive. While Klein lets that genre conceit cut some chaff for him, however, he doesn’t lose the overarching perspective that those who do narrowly get back home aren’t out of the woods.

Fans may find it less than comprehensive in the later years of their history following Hello Nasty, but there perhaps is only so much one can do in this forum and the film largely succeeds at encapsulating their camaraderie and spirit.

With all its sex and brutality, and the allegations surrounding its megalomaniacal creator, Khrzhanovsky’s project might not be for this world. However, it remains that rare thing: an artwork with the capacity to tap into our fears and even our hatred; to live in the imagination and to astonish. A shock of the new.

The film doesn’t nail every beat . . . but what it gets right is unassailable.

Despite the underlying emotional complexity shared via triggered vignettes of memory, the film too often chooses to live in the present and thus within the love triangle it so desperately wants to subvert.

Rather than get bogged down in action and conflict, Luchetti allows her characters the room to grow alongside each other with their own internal wars supplying more than enough intrigue until Manfredi finally knocks on the correct door.

What makes The Quarry compelling is the fact that we know from the start that Whigham isn’t a monster. His performance is too full of heartbreak and remorse for that to be true. This man is caught within a loop he knows he can stop if he only finds the courage to do so. It’s not easy.

It’s like we’re watching a self-serious episode of whatever random police procedural CBS airs each week with an impossibly odd perpetrator rather than the opposite. That’s why the start can feel boringly redundant despite what Chip’s ass is doing throughout. It’s also why flipping the switch so depravity can reign late still entertains.

There is a romantic or perhaps even maternal care given to each and every frame. The realization that there is nothing accidental about the finished product–that every cut is intentional–is shocking for such a free-flowing film.

These people are so greedily narcissistic that the best fun lies in what they’re willing to do to each other and how they react upon realizing that truth.

Hardiman takes special care to ensure her narrative is steeped in real world plausibility.

We Summon the Darkness reveals itself to be a fun ride when all is said and done because nobody on-screen knows what he/she is doing.

To the Stars is quaint in its aims, but this compact focus brings an enveloping level of intimacy.

It means something to see activists in Wisconsin band together and dig for the truth even if the damage has already done its job. Dashed hope is still hope after all. Every example—failed or not—reminds us that we can fight again.

Things do get extra silly by the end, but the blackly comedic tone is consistent enough to allow for such a wild turn of events to feel at home nonetheless.

I have to give the filmmakers a ton of credit here because they walk themselves to a point of no return as far as where things are heading and they do not blink. They lift the curtain to briefly show us the horrors beneath the sterile walls of this prison and let them exist as inevitability rather than something that can be altered.

Poésy, Kerekes, and Röhrig steal many scenes with their emotional investment to their respective roles. Schweighöfer is easy to hate . . . and Eisenberg is effective yet again as a “genius” whose pragmatism borderlines on Asperger’s if not full-on misanthropy. If the story itself doesn’t grab your attention, their performances within should.

We learn everything there is to know about an entire country through the Heise family’s words. Some passages prove better than others, but none are inconsequential to the whole.

It’s the kind of escapist action film and politically-tinged revenge tale that could actually spark a discussion rather than the reaction one has after walking out of The Hunt: stunned silence at how filmmakers could so severely botch a satire in a moment when there is plenty of material to mine from. If nothing else, at least it is mercifully short.

It’s First Cow’s buddy relationship that instills the film with a reserved, yet palpable emotional core.

Inspired by his grandmother’s institutionalization for OCD and propelled by his own experiences having identified as both genders during his lifetime, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ fictional feature debut Swallow provides its lead an escape through pica.

While things do ultimately get heavy-handed at times (Grace comparing Edward’s act to murder is one thing, him comparing it to the utilitarian sacrifice of war is another), it never gets boring.

Onward is a spring treat that might not lead to sequels or boffo merchandise sales, but will certainly please families and the Pixar faithful. Debating whether the film is “classic Pixar” is silly. Put those concerns aside and you’ll be rewarded with the first great family film of 2020.

The Way Back shares those convictions and themes, but its greatest asset is its honesty.

Not since A Short Film About Killing has a filmmaker produced such a thrilling case against capital punishment, an enraging, enthralling, enduring testament to the oppressed.