It's pleasant enough, but lacks the vitality to be more than mildly funny as comedy as well as the insight to build emotional heft as drama.

Strawberry Mansion is a movie about the preservation of imagination. There is definitely an undercurrent of anti-corporate messaging that is always relevant in this modern media landscape. But these themes are not presented with a heavy hand. The point that the film is trying to make can be taken as lightly or as seriously as one likes. What Audley and Birney seem to want most is for audiences to allow themselves to be overtaken by their deliberately childlike approach to storytelling.

Misha's actual story is fascinating in its own way, but within the relative levity of Hobkinson's framework, her truth and trauma get lost in a detective yarn. The film lacks the heft to adequately explain the nuance of Misha's truth

While the two young thesps acquit themselves nicely, much around them conspires to prevent their debut from being a memorable one.

Though the movie is never unengaging, ultimately, it doesn't quite deliver.

If 107 minutes is maybe insufficient for something as important and layered as Sesame Street, that likely won't keep viewers from being satisfied.

While The Sparks Brothers may be a bit too exhaustive for those merely seeking an introduction to the band, longtime fans will be thrilled by the deluxe treatment.

Sisto has an arresting visual style, a firm command of tone and an impressive ability to steer his fine cast onto the same rigorous wavelength, all of which makes him a talent to watch.

As with both of his previous works, the filmmaker delivers an undeniably ambitious mind-bender that bites off more than it can narratively chew.

It alternates between too simplistic and incomprehensible, spending much of its time in between those poles in the "I understand, but I don't care" zone.

Whether this is a one-time passion project or the beginnings of an ongoing move from acting into directing in her career focus, Hall has crafted a work that's thoughtful, provocative and emotionally resonant.

Led by sensational performances from Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as William O'Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated his inner circle, this is a scalding account of oppression and revolution, coercion and betrayal, rendered more shocking by the undiminished currency of its themes.

It's not wholly satisfying as a dramatic work, which is probably a sign of its honest identification with its two troubled protagonists.

It's a harrowing watch, but a cathartic one, with each of the four superb principal actors delivering scenes of wrenching release.

Without a drop of self-congratulatory "enlightenment," Land occupies a wild terrain of ineffable tenderness.

As two long-timers eyeing potential breakthroughs in middle age, Clifton Collins Jr. and Molly Parker deliver beautifully tempered turns, with fine support from Moises Arias in the role of an up-and-comer with a mournful gaze.

Dispiritingly generic in both appearance and tone.

It's more breezy than bittersweet, more about acceptance and forgiveness than a movie made in 2020 has any right to be.

Even when accessing the situation remotely via camera operators and citizen journalists on the ground, Wang deftly balances factoids with first-hand experiences to show the emotional cost, both for people unable to say goodbye to their loved ones and front-line health care workers and funeral home staff, absorbing the trauma of unrelenting losses.

Though it leaves some avenues underexplored and gives a bit too much attention to the sci-fi landmark name-checked in its title, the film makes for engrossing, sometimes unsettling viewing.

The cluttered plot keeps surging forward while providing too few illuminating insights, instead loading up on mystical mumbo jumbo and flashes of gore.

It's a powerful and poetic memoir of personal struggle and self-discovery that expands the definition of documentary.

Summer of Soul is as thoughtful as it is rousing, a welcome shot of adrenaline to kick off not just a film festival but a new year.

If you're going to make a film that sticks to the playbook, or playbooks, this is how to do it: CODA is a radiant, deeply satisfying heartwarmer that more than embraces formula; it locates the pleasure and pureness in it, reminding us of the comforting, even cathartic, gratifications of a feel-good story well told.

Steeped in the gory look, grimy feel and transgressive spirit of the so-called "video nasties" from the 1980s, British meta-minded horror movie Censor offers an admirable pastiche, spiked with black humor.

The expert cinematic stylization on display proves ample reason to forgive The Night for any narrative shortcomings.

With his nod to the sparse mise-en-scene of his mentor Hou Hsiao-hsien (who produced his first short film Huashin Incident) and the philosophical reflections embodied in the films of Edward Yang — there's also a certain, faint echo of A Brighter Summer Day in the narrative here — Z has proved that the spirit of the New Taiwan Cinema remains very much alive.

It is, at least in its closing hour, a moving dramatization of maternal feelings.