Pearl is an empty exercise in style masquerading as a character study.
The film mostly struggles to dramatize how fundamentally unknowable its main characters are.
The African Desperate is an internet-savvy film that’s obviously been made for streaming.
No Bears spends less time finding aesthetic articulations of its themes than building out a convoluted plot to support them.
The Fabelmans is a provocative investigation of the cinematic medium from one of its great masters.
EO feels freed of plot, free of expectation, driven only by the need to honor its own internal, poetic drive.
Even when it edges toward sentimentality, Broker is redeemed by Kore-eda Hirokazu’s customarily bracing humanism.
Bros is ultimately let down by its pat perspectives on modern romance and social justice.
Weird accordingly—or is it accordion-gly?—takes everything to new heights of glorious ridiculousness.
Writer-director Ruben Östlund’s pessimism ultimately leads the film toward a self-negating dead end.
Deftly constructed and utterly heartbreaking, Aftersun announces Charlotte Wells as an eminent storyteller of prodigious powers.
Throughout, one often feels the plot machinations working against Park Chan-wook’s poetry, though in a few cases poetry wins out.
The film is honest and poignant in its kaleidoscopic refractions of the frustration inherent in a process that’s only just beginning.
For better and worse, writer-director Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Women Talking is most noteworthy for its imagery.
The film is too invested in treacly optimism for its character dynamics to feel sketched out beyond their basic narrative function.
This boldly restive biopic imagines Sissi as a deeply restless soul chafing against the social limitations of her day.
The film’s storytelling is deceptively straightforward, rooted in realistic dialogue and Hansen-Løve’s light touch as a visual stylist.