Implicit in Hassen Ferhani's Roundabout in My Head is the notion that there should be a certain level of trust between filmmaker and his subjects.
For all its congratulatory spirit, the film has the persistent feeling of an elegy bidding adieu to a bygone time.
Atom Egoyan is only interested in using the Holocaust as fodder for carrot-dangling plot contrivances.
Despair and ecstasy erupt from the fabric of the film with a blistering, almost physical intensity.
James Crump’s documentary doesn’t dip into hagiography, nor does it strike an overly redemptive tone.
Writer-director Daniel Peddle’s anthropological concerns never really wed themselves to a sturdy narrative bedrock.
Fundamentally, Jenni Olson’s The Royal Road is a paean to the Bay Area landscape.
Un Ange Passe works on a model of long, uninterrupted takes on the faces of its characters, subdued and wistful.
The lighting and deciduous trees are a canvas for bracing drama, but the film undoes itself by imparting revelatory history lessons.
Even Piero della Francesca would be proud of some of Grimault’s compositions.