Despite a very frank and welcome illustration of gay sexuality rarely seen in modern media (in this manner at least), Greater Freedom continually teases us with storylines and subject matter by choosing to frame this era through a relationship that it cannot rationalize.

The overwriting of every single discussion smacks less of realistic debate than of a writer/director in the throes of a fit of didacticism who simply never trusts his audience to get his meaning without it being iterated and reiterated to the point of white noise.

There's something deeply poetic about Lincoln making his way through a changed nation to meet his demise. Such poetry is nowhere to be found in Lincoln.

Despite the frustrations of its labyrinthine rhythms, Landmarks is a worthy companion to Martel’s Zama in its prodding at the contradictions of a country whose denial is so grave it will bend its language and its laws before acknowledging truths that shed light on the horrors of its past that painfully echo in the present.

A disappointment, certainly, but not one without its pleasures.

While the film lavishes in the beautiful landscape and the vibrant, eclectic music that abounds, it never coalesces into anything greater than the sum of its parts, or become the film the subject deserves.

What is certain is that there’s at least something here everyone should find appealing, even if the film that houses these special moments isn’t quite there.

Given the unhurried pacing and general underplaying of the situation’s gravity, the film feels like visiting a museum exhibit rather than living through a flashpoint of history. Here, the past’s horrors are but pictures nestled safely behind glass.

Jenkins has a vision and something interesting to say in Private Life, but it needs some serious editing to convey it succinctly.

These recollections might be captivating on paper, but they become somewhat monotonous and uninteresting on screen.

Stolevski aims for a life-affirming treatise on the poetics of human existence but strains to be more than a pretty copy of his well-known influences.

While the experiment itself is fascinating, the approach taken by Almereyda in using distractingly peculiar storytelling techniques only succeed in distancing the audience from the film's inspiration.

It’s difficult to classify The Things You Kill properly, a film drifting into the revenge genre as much as it possesses an undeniable overtone of mystery, simultaneously knocking on the door of a slight psychological element.

It's not particularly funny or moving and it's terribly self-indulgent. Flamboyance and cartoonishness rule, there's hardly a moment of genuine emotion, and most overtures in that direction are superficial. As a picture ostensibly about love, revenge and the ugliness of slavery, Django Unchained has almost zero subtext and is a largely soulless bloodbath, in which the history of pain and retribution is coupled carelessly with a cool soundtrack and some verbose dialogue. Though it might just entertain the sh.t out of the less discerning.

As a film whose central theme emphasizes the dangers of living in the past, Wright, Pegg and Frost become fatally distracted by nostalgia, eventually paying too much homage to previous classics—especially their own—to create another film that deserves to stand alongside them.

Rather than individuals facing all-too-common yet rarely portrayed challenges, the characters here seem little more than pawns in a predictable game, whose conclusion is never in doubt.

This is an auto-auto-auto-fiction that throws out the occasional fun, cinephiliac in-joke, and teases the odd insight into creative blockage and romantic unfulfillment. But mostly, it serves to prove the old adage that a self-deprecating awareness that your movie has nothing going on in it is no substitute for having something going on in your movie.

In short, Babylon is bland and sadly, should be much better.

At best a handful of transitory pleasures, Sils Maria threads through the peaks and valleys of weighty, interesting topics, but makes no lasting impression on them.

There is some pleasure in spotting the winks and legends and shout-outs, but as with any biopic, of any figure, you can’t just bank on familiarity— you have to give the unfamiliar viewer (and, considering the platform it’s on, there will be many) reasons to care. By the end of Mank, even I wasn’t sure any of this mattered all that much.

This isn’t a movie about despair in the face of seemingly implacable problems; it’s about the heavy lifting that constant hope requires. Disappointingly, that surging energy which animates the activists profiled here, in ways both intimate and caught-on-the-fly, never coalesces into the desired blueprint for reform.

Zhangke's always had a throughline regarding economic inequality and the 21st century-style Chinese capitalism in his work, but Mountains May Depart might be the director's defining statement on the way that his nation has changed over the past few decades. If only he were a touch subtler about it.

The Plague is a movie-movie, rather than a genuinely searching or affecting film about that most awkward age when fitting in with a group can seem like the most important thing in the world.

All in, the film is an unprecedented misfire for Denis.

There’s nothing lost in the translation of Fences, but its high fidelity means there’s little, if any, inspiration to be found within.

Burshtein has devoted most of the last 20 years teaching and making film in that world, but here makes her international feature debut with a curious comedy-drama that has its strengths, but ultimately proves somewhat disappointing.

Make no mistake: The Innocents is no young adult novel adaptation, and things get very dark very quickly.

When the final moment comes and it's revealed how the children died, it's less of a surprise than a shrug. Drama robbed of suspense is just dull.

Though he gets fine performances from many quarters...the film is scuppered by an approach that sees it build on the bones of the novel without ever quite animating its heart.

The third act often feels more like a cinematic exercise than a filmmaker who has something to say.

Tori and Lokita puts its characters through hell to elicit some tears and send an urgent message. You may consider this an empathetic film — exploitative might be the better word.

On the one hand, director Silje Evensmo Jacobsen should be commended for adhering to the verité sensibilities of the project, as “Wilderness” never comes across as curated or guided. Yet this does keep the doc from probing into the more interesting questions and considerations that sit just under the surface here, such as the fundamental “why” of all of this.

Director Anne Fontaine’s film is based on actual events and grapples with thorny questions that plague even the most zealous during times of crisis. It’s a pity, then, that this picture finds Fontaine compelled to find a resolution in a situation that seldom yields easy answers.

As a film, The Humans provides serrated frights and big challenges for its actors, but ultimately, it is too cold and never believable enough to immerse one in its purported dread.

While Mirrors No.3 does not put a foot wrong, it does not display the narrative and formal intricacy we have come to expect from the director either. After the film elegantly sets its mechanisms in motion, we are left to watch the cogs turn without a hitch, but also without much surprise.

The film is an almost overly thorough look at every single step along the way in the battle to bring Prop 8 down. And while that's admirable, and gay rights is certainly a fight that needs to be documented, the minutely detailed The Case Against 8 has the curious effect of dampening the drama through its approach.

It's an overwrought, stagey muddle that suggests that Davies, ever a-quiver on the extreme high end of the sensitivity meter anyway, has quivered right off it and plunged into the depths of bathos.

Unfortunately, Iannucci and Blackwell are so intent on making every quip funny, they lose the story.

Alfre Woodard may have graced us with the performance of her career.

By refusing to illuminate the detainees’ stories or the humanitarian crisis—not widely reported enough for Brady to take the audience’s familiarity as a given—they are trapped inside, The Island of Hungry Ghosts relegates itself to being little more than a pretty but wispy curiosity that fails its beleaguered subjects.

The film has an identity problem. It’s uncertain what it wants to be. This is too damn bad because its first mode, a parody of male self-obsession, is perfectly satisfying; the comedy makes us shift in our seats, but the shifting is pleasurable, complemented by well-timed gags and a mesmerizingly selfish performance from its leading man, Yannis Drakopoulos.

Fleck and Boden certainly have strong filmmaking smarts. They understand restraint, have terrific observational eyes, and know how to coax honest performances out of actors. So it’s perhaps a shame that Mississippi Grind is ultimately too underwhelming to stake with any confidence.

Cousins is insightful, thorough in his technical comparisons, and well-read in the library of cinema, yet never quite connects his work to a larger tapestry that extends the form.

Personal Shopper is a mess — not an uninteresting one, and better that than a staid, unadventurous bore, but a mess nonetheless.

Urchin puts forward a sensitive, promising director. And an even more promising writer.

While the musical elements often take the movie to impressive artistic heights, it’s not just the storyline that ends up hindering Better Man.

Not only is the film’s portrayal of Felicia tainted by ethnically inappropriate casting, but her character itself is often reductive—she is but the modern wife of a modern man, coming forth with a loose agreement on fidelity that inched Leonard across the finish line of a lengthy road towards marriage.

Alex Wheatle combines the relevant themes that guide the prior “Small Axe” installments: music as an escape from one’s environment, police brutality, and a character adrift from his community — yet the writing struggles to connect the major plot points for big picture interpretations of Alex’s cultural self-education.

While its ambition does show a director still aspiring for great heights, its patchy execution only partly restores the faith.

The effort deserves a nod, but the execution stumbles, falls, and, whether intentional or not, can’t be saved.

Wilde toils feverishly to create the illusion of momentum and communicates to the audience that they must be feeling such a sensation. But for all the belabored artistry of this choppily cut enterprise, little in “The Invite” actually moves. It’s potential energy, unconvincingly trying to pass itself off as kinetic.

The people of Jia’s film are mysterious, their reactions and motivations, outside of that first segment in which we get the best-drawn and therefore most anomalous character, are all but unknowable.

The initial inspiration was clearly there, but the execution simply falls short.

Perversely episodic, strangely empty, and unfolding in a series of beautifully composed but static wide shots (giving us the unusual experience of literally yearning for a close-up), the film is a test of patience.

There is a fine line between meeting an audience halfway and witholding enough without falling into self-indulgence, but Kiarostami can't make that balance here. Enigmatic and dull to a maddening degree, Like Someone In Love finds Kiarostami spinning his wheels.

Underneath the dark humor and holistic mise en scène, there remains the nagging suspicion that what is onscreen is — in spite of the film’s best intentions — another patriarchal interpretation of Lady Macbeth.

Heineman’s thesis that because leaving has gone so poorly, staying would’ve necessarily been better is incorrect at best, and disingenuous at worst. He wants to think structurally, aware that America can and does flatten other nations beneath our clumsy footfalls. He just can’t — or won’t — see the whole structure out of apparent fear that it’ll be too unflattering for all involved, including him, the army’s useful launderer of their image-sanitizing talking points.

Despite this disappointing effort, Diao continues to impress with the clever use of his camera. Now, one just wishes he could find the substance to pull all this style together in a winning fashion.

Yes, it’s the DCEU’s best film, but as we know, that’s not saying a lot. But, hey, that terrific second act that we should cling to even if it’s a distant memory by the time love defeats aggression. “Wonder Woman” might be molded by the mighty Gods, but as shaped by mere mortals her mettle and beliefs and can be only so wonderfully divine.

Stronger feels genuine and certainly has the right intentions, but never converts to something truly enlivening.

While it's great to look at, Reality is an empty shell. A feature length examination on the artifice of reality programming, Garrone's film itself is superficial and lacking the same depth of artistry and ideas he finds absent on TV.

Mud is as unmoving as it is because it doesn’t aspire to be anything other than a competent anti-fairy tale in which the paint-by-number morals are enforced by equally obvious main protagonists.

Depriving “Nothing Compares” of any mention of O’Connor’s more recent life irreparably wounds the film. Had Ferguson bothered to cast aside her rose-tinted gaze, the documentary might have, akin to O’Connor’s rebellious spirit, broken the mold of what’s expected from cinematic works of biographical nonfiction.

Unless you have truly transcendent performances or unforgettable cinematic moments, it’s difficult for this genre of sports story to really throw a unique punch.

In embracing the disorienting quality present in Frank’s work, 'Don’t Blink' is but an abstract portrait, muddled by a jarring messiness.

[Kurzel's] depiction of the action scenes is as close to a filmmaking tour de force as you can get. Even for those who know the fate of The Order and its members, Kurzel and editor Nick Fenton will keep you riveted. Until, alarmingly, they don’t.

It’s not a terrible time at the movies, but after Coogan & Pope’s previous collaboration on “Philomena” proved to be such a genuinely satisfying example of this kind of drama, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something of a missed opportunity here, a film truly deserving of the excellent performances at its centre.

Fever Dream never delivers on its promises and eventually collapses due to its cluttered narrative organization, unintentionally sluggish pacing, and an unbridled assortment of themes

Aside from the striking scenes occurring on the battlefronts, everything else in this picture is subpar. “A Private War” works off a disjointed script and tells a dull story, populated with forgettable characters. Pike throws herself into Marie, and the intensity of her commitment is palpable, but the flashy performance feels soulless.

The Wolfpack is a film about access, and though we are admitted into the world of the eponymous Wolfpack, not understanding how we got there robs the film of compelling commentary.

Focused on fetishizing rather than intimately depicting, director Chad Hartigan has produced a warm-hearted yarn that treats its two African-American leading men like props in his white-washed game of chess.

Cousins’ new doc will undoubtedly be essential viewing for a sea of cinephiles, but it might not easily capture the attention of audiences less familiar with Welles’ legacy.

When they can translate something into a tangible sensation, like the camera effects of focus that take viewers into Piper’s distorted field of vision, the film operates within a comfortable range for the directors. Where they struggle to locate resonance is in the emotional realm.

Lord knows the superhero genre could use some fun poked at it and we were psyched to see the film, but while there’s some fun to be had, it can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.

While the filmmaker has a better grasp on conveying well-staged melodrama than many of his contemporaries half his age (Fabio Massimo Capogrosso’s score and Francesco Di Giacomo‘s cinematography assist), the heart of the story somehow still gets lost. Even a final scene that should capture the tragedy of this tale falls surprisingly flat.

It may not always work as a drama but The Skeleton Twins proves to be a fine showcase for Wiig and Hader, showing they are both capable of dramatic material.

It’s only when you realize that this is indeed an aimless feature film where any symbolism or real-life commentary isn’t going to make much of a mark. That and the fact that this fearless director sees this oddly flat, though congenial, project as a comedy quickly all fall into a narrative hopelessly lost in a sea of tedium.

They Cloned Tyrone is far from bad, but does require patience and the ability to shed those feelings of “I’ve seen this before” that pop up from time to time. Fortunately, the cast is here to help usher one along and maintain some sort of momentum before the film starts propelling forward on its own.

Wild never really earns its hard-fought struggle for redemption and personal reinvention.

The creative vision necessary to properly chronicle the impact of two musical icons never presents itself and thoroughly undermines the film’s resonance, deforming the movie into a prosaic, excessively sentimental catalog of events.

A good movie exists in On the Count of Three. But a film with such challenging subject matter needed a more experienced director capable of shading the dark comedy and the heartfelt spirit with an assured visual hand.

The arresting visual competency of Scarlet, which includes the clever use of archival footage previously seen in Marcello’s Venice darling “Martin Eden” and the beautifully composed textures of its cinematography, can’t salvage its muddled pace.

Thankfully, the film has Jamie Foxx on the bench in a truly funny and passionate turn as legendary lawyer Willie E. Gary.

It’s thrilling to have any semblance of Studio Ghibli back in our theaters and Mary and the Witch’s Flower will momentarily satisfy that hunger, but will leave you wanting more.

While it’s great to see an example of a filmmaker refusing to rest on his laurels or stay inside the nearly defined box of his cultural reputation, a film must be a film – not just a concept. Un Couple never quite manages to transcend its origins as a precious pandemic project.

Over the course of three and a half hours, Bang both refutes and affirms the criticisms over working conditions for these workers, many of whom are migrants, traveling hundreds of miles (or more) to make money for their families back home.

The film finds a little verve; Edgerton is put through the imagined ringer in a handful of unnerving dream sequences, and a motif featuring the mountainous crime scene is interesting (until it isn’t). But for all of the interesting twists and turns, as the story comes to its smoky conclusion, one can’t imagine who in the audience will make it to the payoff.

With her underdeveloped, dismissive, screenplay and myopic direction, Rondòn is as delicate with her theme as Michael Bay is with his American flag shots or Tim Burton with his kitschy quirkiness. That hers is a serious context makes it that much more disappointing.

Even with some perfectly fine comedic gags, Power Ballad can never overcome the emptiness of its characters and the equally flat, overlit visuals that make the entire thing look more like a bad TV episode than an actual film.

Not so surprisingly, it’s a movie made by theatre geeks, for theatre geeks, though feasibly to a severe fault. In other words: if you know the songs and faces on screen, you’re bound to enjoy it infinitely more than a casual movie-goer will.

Beast takes a storytelling gamble, presenting itself as a psychological whodunit, before pivoting toward a more genre oriented plot. The risk doesn’t quite pay off, undercutting its thematic potential for thrills that aren’t quite that effective.

By pointing their camera at the Red Mosque, Trivedi and Naqvi add surprisingly little to the conversation.

Never lacking in earnestness or vigor, she nonetheless teeters over the lines separating introspection from navel-gazing and the raw from the simply underdone.

If nothing else, Reybaud’s debut flaunts his knack for casting, particularly with the lead performance by Pascal Cervo.

Scott and Poo have seized on one substantive idea in their portraiture of a singular personality reduced to a caricature of himself by posterity and duly reveal the sensitive artiste who always aspired to more than “Top Gun.” If only they did so with less straightforwardness and more authorial license.

Huge fans of the performer will likely shed tears at few parts throughout, but there’s nothing especially unique or particularly thought-provoking about first-time director Tylor Norwood‘s filmmaking approach to make his documentary stand out.

Domont’s script just turns into a series of victories, defeats, increasingly distracting narrative leaps, and ultimately silly turns of tone that seem designed to provoke whoops and sneers and cheers.

The film is a mostly workmanlike biopic that unfortunately can never match the energy of the subject it’s trying to capture.