Laura Poitras teaches by example, providing a privileged insight into Edward Snowden’s personality and motivation while keeping the focus on government spying.
The actors create emotionally coherent characters from a collection of often contradictory or just plain improbable actions.
The indie-movie artiness of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind sometimes get in the way of its noble mission.
It intriguingly invites us to think about the forces that can drive a seemingly ordinary guy like Mohamed to do something so desperate and cruel as piracy.
Like a John le Carré novel, Homeland once again grants what feels like an insider’s perspective on espionage and the politics behind it.
It mixes the mundane with the absurd to create a sometimes fabulous tale that always feels palpably real.
The film the tough true story has spawned is as formulaically cheery, didactically “uplifting,” and fundamentally false as a Disney sports movie.
The film is only slightly dependent on the self-pity that informed Asia Argento’s The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, but it feels similarly airless.
Israel Horovitz’s film is basically a three-character play without a single character you can believe in.
The way in which it answers questions about rehabilitation and forgiveness is credible because the characters and setting feel so authentic.
It comes as no surprise that Vincent Grashaw wrote the first draft of this movie soon after graduating high school.
The film is rife with tired food metaphors and plot twists so predictable you see them coming like travelers on the poplar-lined street that leads to the restaurants.
The Supreme Price leaves you in awe of Hafsat Abiola’s grit and grateful for her tenacity.
Even at 74 minutes, the documentary comes to feel arduous in its recycling of the same points and imagery, the filmmaking as plodding as its subject is polished.
Nabil Ayouch’s film allows us see how young suicide bombers—“horses of God,” as the man in charge of their mission calls them—might deserve our pity.
The film’s segments move seamlessly from one topic to the next with the unselfconscious ease of a good dinner party.
The film gets too caught up in the semi-farcical comings and goings of the two Sophies and Ethans to explore any of the issues it raises about relationships very deeply.
Paolo Virzì’s Human Capital gives the tired trope of cutting between overlapping stories a welcome shot of adrenaline.
In Lucía Puenzo’s film, things always feel off balance even as the plot points click all too neatly into place.
Alonso Ruizpalacios’s film is full of life and related with intelligence and a sense of humor.