For a film to get its own page on the main 2015 links page, it must receive at least 5 link submissions from our members with few exceptions. Here is a list of all films that haven’t quite reached that threshold yet. When it does, it will be moved to the main page and removed from this page.
88
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It’s tangled, but you never get the sense the knots are worth working out, a suspicion confirmed in the final reveal.
1915
1971
#Horror
(T)error
10 Cent Pistol
10,000 KM
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: While 10,000 Km is by no means an enjoyable experience, the amazing naturalism of Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer’s performances transform Marques-Marcet’s film into an intriguing experience.
10,000 Saints
The 11th Hour
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: The 12 Rounds franchise never used its central idea to the fullest potential, but removing it completely wasn’t the answer, either.
24 Days
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Told from Ruth’s POV, the movie is nonetheless a tense police procedural as we keep company with the Halimi family undergoing confusion, fear, rage, hope and ultimately grief.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
- Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
5 Flights Up
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A demonstration by a long-married couple of what it means to truly be in sync with each other.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: There is little suspense in where “5 Flights Up” is headed, but Keaton and Freeman’s movie marriage is a good investment.
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: It’s hard to think of a more agreeable couple to spend a little sentimental movie time with than the wonderful Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton.
52 Tuesdays
6 Years
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: Distances itself from other flawed relationship narratives with excellent acting and a subversion of gender roles.
7 Chinese Brothers
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Byington could have made a Youtube video of Schwartzman just talking to his dog and the results would have been much the same. Good thing they’re such amusing company.
- Kimberly Gadette @ Doddle
- Excerpt: The boy may not get the girl. Wait, is this a plot spoiler? Um, no, because there needs to be a plot before one can actually spoil it.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
90 Minutes in Heaven
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: So deeply terrible that it will make you question the existence of God. The dialogue is the least natural I’ve ever seen in a film not made by Ed Wood.
- Frank SwietekO @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: May strike a welcome chord with the evangelical groups at whom it’s obviously aimed. But for others the ploddingly preachy picture will seem more like a stint in purgatory, if not someplace even more uncomfortable.
About Ray
Absolutely Anything
Accidental Love
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: If David O. Russell was able to disown this brain-dead disaster, it will be much easier for the audience to boycott enduring a single minute of it. Other than that, it’s a beautiful motion picture.
Addicted to Fresno
After the Ball
After Words
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Part travelogue, part existential journey, part ugly duckling fable, and part Harlequin romance, this tale of two people by Uruguayan-born director Juan Feldman is the kind of guilty pleasure that satisfies even as you scoff.
Air
Alex of Venice
Alien Outpost
All the Wilderness
All Things Must Pass
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: All Things Must Pass is therefore as much about the rise and fall of the music industry moving from vinyl to digital as it is Russ Solomon’s legacy. The latter is unblemished in the aftermath as he stayed true to himself and employees until financial troubles and wide eyes took their toll.
All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records
Altered Minds
- Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
- Excerpt: Judd Hirsch anchors this engaging psychological thriller.
Americons
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Oktay Kozak @ The Playlist
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Americons is like The Wolf of Wall Street without the skill, depth, nuance, humor, or poignancy.
Amira & Sam
- Andy Crump @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: The film flirts with fantasy, but that fantasy is laid atop a foundation of realism and experience. Figment or no, it works.
- Mark Dujsik @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: Amira & Sam is an earnest and considerate examination of two people falling in love, but the movie lacks certainty when handling these characters separately.
- Don Lewis @ Hammer to Nail
Amira and Sam
Amnesiac
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
Amour Fou
- Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Amour Fou is as droll a film as one can imagine. The actors all underplay their scenes, a parody of the polite society to which their characters belong. But Hausner tends to trap her characters at the bottom of frames, inside window panes, and below heavy, sashed curtains.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: What makes this little film such a gem? In good part it’s the dry-as-bones wit with which Hausner spins her tale of self-indulgent romanticism.
Animals
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Next Projection
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Drama this easy stands to benefit greatly from dominating performances, and Dastmalchian (who wrote the script) and Shaw make an honest effort; one suspects they’ve gone outright Method in inhabiting their characters’ lanky, jittery physicalities. But the barrage of banalities that floods Dastmalchian’s screenplay too frequently finds its way out of the actors’ mouths without having made the leap from something written to something lived.
Any Body Can Dance 2
Appetites
Arabian Nights: Volume 1 – The Restless One
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This sprawling, messy epic trips the light fantastic across the screen and right off of it, forming a kind of dream history.
Arabian Nights: Volume 2 – The Desolate One
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This sprawling, messy epic trips the light fantastic across the screen and right off of it, forming a kind of dream history.
Arabian Nights: Volume 3 – The Enchanted One
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This sprawling, messy epic trips the light fantastic across the screen and right off of it, forming a kind of dream history.
The Armor of Light
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A conscience stirring documentary about two Christians and their crusade for gun control.
Ashby
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: Not as funny as it wants to be nor dramatic enough when it needs to be.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A small, familiar but reasonably engaging coming-of-age dramedy…with a smidgen of action-movie violence.
Assassination
- Rob Wallis @ The Metropolist
- Excerpt: At once an old-fashioned action-adventure of the sort Harrison Ford once felt so at home in, an elegiac historical drama with shades of Sergio Leone, and a guts-and-glory shoot ‘em up that recalls Inglourious Basterds, Choi Dong-hoon’s Assassination offers up plenty of bang for its buck.
Attack on Titan. Part 2
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Attack on Titan: End of the World
- James Marsh @ South China Morning Post
- Excerpt: In an increasingly prevalent trend among Japanese blockbusters, Attack on Titan: End of the World arrives just weeks after its predecessor. Like Gantz, Parasyte and others before it, it also eschews much of the promise that came with the high concept set-up of part one, replaced by reams of tedious exposition and backstory.
Ayanda and the Mechanic
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: A vibrant, energetic, colorful story of a young woman who restores furniture in her late father’s garage, only to find herself taking over the business to keep it in the family. It’s an uncommonly rich picture, constantly spinning off in unexpected directions: hopscotching gingerly between coming of age story, romance (Ayanda and one of the mechanics have a hinted-at past, an uncertain future, and plenty of heat right now), character study (Fulu Moguvhani is heart-wrenching in the title role), and the complications of familial dynamics.
Back to the Jurassic
Backtrack
Bajirao Mastani
Bajrangi Bhaijaan
Ballet 422
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A documentary providing ample evidence of ballet as art form that puts on display the breathtaking beauty of bodies in motion.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …offers many insights into what goes on behind the scenes, but it presents an environment with minimal conflict and a ballet seen in sketches.
- John Gilpatrick @ JohnLikesMovies.com
- Excerpt: In the faces it depicts and the way its camera moves, this stellar documentary says everything it wants to say without actually saying anything at all.
Bangistan
The Barber
- Robert Cashill @ Robert Cashill
- Excerpt: Scott Glenn uplifts it a hair.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
- Oktay Kozak @ The Playlist
Barely Lethal
Batkid Begins
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Nachman has structured her film to illustrate how coming together for a cause can be at least as, if not more beneficial for the adults who helped make a small boy’s dream come true than for the kid himself.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Sweet, heartwarming and uplifting…
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: As a record of the event it’s amiable enough, but also a bit ragged and more than a little self-satisfied.
The Beautiful Risk
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Take a risk on something else.
Beauty and the Beast
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: La fábula del amor sin barreras regresa a los cines en una nueva versión soporífera y desfasada. El perrete digital y la delicada muchachita se rondan sin interés ninguno, a la espera de que la historia se repita. Pues vale.
- Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
The Beauty Inside
Before We Go
Beloved Sisters
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Now, if you’re rolling your eyes at the thought of another dry and stuffy late-year prestige picture, banish the thought and prepare to be humbled. Beloved Sisters is a lively, raw and, in many ways, thoroughly modern imagining of the Lengefeld sisters as early prototypes for a model of feminine autonomy that would still be challenging today.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
- James Marsh @ South China Morning Post
- Excerpt: Winner of the German Film Award for best documentary feature, Arne Birkenstock’s account of master forger Wolfgang Beltracchi tells a story almost impossible to believe in this era of rigorous carbon dating and hi-tech scrutiny. And yet, somehow Beltracchi and his wife Helene, over a period of decades, sold hundreds of forgeries of paintings from the likes of Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk and Fernand Leger, banking millions of dollars in the process.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: What constitutes ‘real art’?
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: Focused on art forgery, this flabbergasting story expands into a full scale expose of the modern confidence game and why, after all these years, it still works.
Bessie
Beyond the Mask
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Wannabe Christian swashbuckler throws a lot of stuff up on the screen in the hopes that something will stick as exciting and romantic. None of it does.
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: It wants to be a faith-based film, a historical drama, and an action/adventure movie at the same time. Those three things are blended together awkwardly, leading to shifts in tone that can be jarring.
Big Significant Things
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Big Significant Things, whose anodyne tastefulness effectively lumps it into a big vat of likeminded Sundance-or-SXSW-endorsed offerings, apparently knows it’s a trivial document of privileged white-people problems, but that self-awareness oddly enough doesn’t stop it from being that exact thing.
Big Sky
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
Big Stone Gap
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: A heartfelt and earnest homespun comedy about the family ties that bind us all together.
Big Voice
Bikes vs Cars
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Reports from cities around the world about the need for bikes and the problems faced by bikers.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
Blackbird
Blind
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Joachim Trier’s (“Oslo, August 31st”) cowriter Eskil Vogt makes his directorial debut with a story that calls back to the structure of “Reprise” as if crossed with Jeremy Podeswa’s “The Five Senses.”
- Don Lewis @ Film Threat
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: For most of us blessed with functional eyesight, that visual sense is a major factor tethering us to our concept of reality. The sudden loss of sight, Norwegian filmmaker Eskil Vogt suggests, can leave a person unmoored.
- José M. Robado @ CineCrítico [Spanish]
Blood Cells
Bloodsucking Bastards
Bombay Velvet
Bound to Vengeance
The Boy and the Beast
- James Marsh @ South China Morning Post
- Excerpt: In the years since Hayao Mayazaki announced his retirement as the de facto king of Japanese animation, many have pointed to Mamoru Hasoda to take up the mantle. With films like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars and Wolf Children, Hasoda has developed a winning blend of escapism, charm and thoughtful narrative insight to back up his claim.
The Boy from Geita
Boy Meets Girl
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smarter, warmer, more honest depiction of human sexuality than this roundrobin of emotion and attraction. I love this movie.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
- Chase Whale @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: A Brave Heart is a tender and soulful movie about being confident in your own skin. Prepare to be moved and exhilarated.
Bravetown
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A weird combination of saccharine drama with ‘Footloose,’ deadly earnest but utterly nincredible, the good intentions overwheklmed by silly theatrics.
Break Point
Broken Horses
Brothers
Burying the Ex
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Burying the Ex is too likable like a zombified puppy to be discounted as a complete misfire, but as it comes from a genre expert such as Joe Dante, it sure is weak sauce.
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- João Pinto @ http://www.portal-cinema.com [Portuguese]
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: For Dante’s reputation, it would be best that the movie should itself be buried without an identifying headstone.
Buzzard
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: Compelling in its uncomfortableness, this indie dark comedy just works.
Capital C
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: This thin but inspirational documentary about creators turning dreams into reality by raising funds via online platforms like Kickstarter has a simple message: If you conceive it, and it is awesome, the crowdfunding will come.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Entertaining and informative.
Captive
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Kristy Puchko @ Spinoff Online, Pajiba
- Excerpt: Captive is a bad movie. But I guess it’s something that it’s a bad movie in a way I didn’t expect. It’s not preachy. It’s just fucking dull.
Carol
Chagall-Malevich
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
- Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Chagall-Malevich is dense with subplots, supporting characters, and extra-diegetic contexts, but it’s missing a through line with which to connect them meaningfully. The film is dramatically excessive, sometimes even laughably overreaching.
The Challenger
Cheatin’
Chloe & Theo
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Closer to God
Closer to the Moon
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: A provocative, darkly comedic, absurdist drama – based on a true story.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: A Romanian cast would have given the movie more depth and credibility, but these stars, ably supported by some fine character actors, keep it dancing, against a melancholy undercurrent.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Coming Home
Cooties
- M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: Cooties falls short of brilliance, but this is one of those rare occasions where a film that looks like it was fun to make by the cast and crew is a whacked-out good time to watch, too.
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Kristy Puchko @ Spinoff Online, Pajiba
- Excerpt: The biggest problem of “Cooties” is that, much like its Ritalin-popping tweens, it’s unfocused.
Counting
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: After a brief detour into narrative with ‘Museum Hours,’ underground filmmaker Jem Cohen returns to sonorous form with this 15-part collection of watchful, gloomy, abstractly personal and political episodic shorts.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
Court
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: A defense of the performing arts blossoms into a larger plea for democracy.
Criminal Activities
The Crossing
Crumbs
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: The starkness of Crumbs makes for attention-grabbing afrofuturism.
The Curse of Downers Grove
Cymbeline
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
Dark Summer
Dark Was the Night
- Marina Antunes @ Quiet Earth
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Steve Biodrowski @ Hollywood Gothique
- Excerpt: A Mystery for the Ages: Why is DARK WAS THE NIGHT not getting the amount of praise heaped on indie horror darlings such as THE BABADOOK and IT FOLLOWS?
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Dawg Fight
Dawn Patrol
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: By-the-numbers revenge drama starring Scott Eastwood as a laid-back surfer pushed too far by his family has one twist up its sleeve but waits too long to play it.
- Kristen Lopez @ Cinema Sentries
Death Valley
Deathgasm
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Deathgasm’ is the demonic heavy metal horror flick you’ve been waiting your whole life for, or at least I have.
- Frank SwietekO @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A brew that aims for a campy, midnight-movie vibe it never quite achieves.
Deli Man
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Deli Man’ is a documentary that demonstrates the distinctiveness of the delicatessen, as well as the devotion of those who eat at and run them.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: A delectable, artery-clogging delight…
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: A Hearty meal.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Pretty darned tasty.
Democrats
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A hard-hitting documentary on the complexities of creating a workable democracy in Africa.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A hard-hitting documentary on the complexities of creating a workable democracy in Africa.
Desert Dancer
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Desert Dancer is the dramatization of a life story that rarely doesn’t feel like a dramatization.
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: If you read a daily newspaper, you already know more than Desert Dancer
Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!
The Devil’s Violinist
Dial a Prayer
Difret
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Stephen Saito @ The Moveable Fest
- Excerpt: It wouldn’t be surprising to discover that [Angelina] Jolie’s association with this Ethiopian drama was partially out of a desire to encourage more female roles such as the kind she typically plays herself – strong, smart and unafraid to kick some ass.
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Digging Up the Marrow
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: Digging Up the Marrow is a surprisingly gore-free but not tension-free funhouse trip for genre loyalists and those who go aaahh! at the sight of a real monster.
Dil Dhadakne Do
Dilwale
Dior and I
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This exceptional [cross cutting] structure allows the past to continue informing the present, reaching a climax after lights out in the ateliers, Tcheng projecting old Dior imagery over the white toiles that are the blueprints of Simons’ first collection.
- Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
Dirty Weekend
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Two co-workers stranded in Albuquerque explore some personal taboos in this dashed-off comedy of manners from Neil LaBute.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Prentension
- Excerpt: This is a case where narrative confinements work against the film, with a one-joke premise stretched too thin without something else (a standout performance, character, a clever narrative turn or more of a pushing of the envelope) to save it.
(Dis)Honesty
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Yael Melamede uses an Ariely lecture on lying as the connective tissue in this sometimes fascinating, sometimes sluggish look at the moral relativity we all live with.
Do I Sound Gay?
- Andy Crump @ Birth.Movies.Death.
- Excerpt: …Thorpe’s efforts here are brisk, buoyant, and bright enough in equal measure that you feel like he could singlehandedly influence the direction of discourse on the topic of gay rights with a single seventy-odd minute documentary.
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Did you know Captain Hook, Jafar from Aladdin, and Scar from The Lion King are all gay? I had no idea.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
Do You Believe?
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Crash, but Jesus-y. Scoffers and doubters will get their smackdown, but even believers should be skeptical at how this ridiculous roundrobin plays out.
Don Verdean
Doomsdays
- Andy Crump @ Birth.Movies.Death.
- Excerpt: Maybe the pre-apocalypse needn’t be so bad after all.
Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer’s Curse
Dreamcatcher
- Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: The preponderant feeling the documentary Dreamcatcher elicits is despair. Myers-Powell is a dynamic, determined individual who has survived and thrived despite the dead weight of her background, but the repetition of the same stories by girl after girl, woman after woman, made me feel pretty hopeless about reducing human trafficking, never mind eliminating it.
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: It is an urgent and thoroughly moving film that bears witness and gives hope. Find it and see it.
Dreams Rewired
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: Bound by the sprung rhythms of Swinton’s intonations, they end up with a brief history of communication, technology, fantasy, and propaganda, by tracing the vehicles of those ideas: the film strip, the phonograph, the radio, the telegraph, the telephone, the television, and, ultimately, the computer. It’s a marvel of montage, charming and bizarre and frequently funny, thanks in no small part to the good humor of our narrator.
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: Science fiction becomes reality in this funny and disturbing collection of filmed techno-history
Drishyam
The Drownsman
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ Next Projection
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: There’s a lot of hysterical laughter in the clips and stories on display here, and in the reminiscences of the players. But ultimately, if you were around at all for that Camelot of comedy, this documentary will leave you feeling more reminded than enlightened.
Drunktown’s Finest
- Mark Dujsik @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: The performances here are generally unrefined, with most of the actors–including Wilson and Moore–barely going beyond rote line readings.
Dukhtar
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A gripping story from a place where women are less than second-class citizens that insists that they are, in fact, people who deserve to live as they please.
Durak
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: An expose’ that rises above finger pointing to create a masterpiece of tension and suspense.
Eastern Boys
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Repugnant drama about the tender relationship between a man who pays for sex and the boy he hires. At least Pretty Woman pretended to be a fairy tale.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
Echoes of War
Ejecta
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Greg Klymkiw @ Electric Sheep
- Excerpt: There are no happy-faced hairless alien midgets making Kodály Hand Signs whilst smiling at a beaming François Truffaut. No siree Spielberg, the mo-fos in this picture induce drawer filling of the heaviest order.
Everly
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: If Pam Grier had starred in a 1970’s version of Oldboy directed by Jack Hill, it probably would’ve looked something like Everly
- Hugo Gomes @ http://cinematograficamentefalando.blogs.sapo.pt/everest-2015-1662663 [Portuguese]
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
Every Secret Thing
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Documentarian Amy Berg’s narrative debut is a cool-to-the-touch abduction mystery deeply soaked in adolescent resentments but lacking her usual punch.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Flimsy, foreboding, female-centric crime thriller…
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A slow burn mystery in which the secrets aren’t so much about the crimes it explores but truths of women’s emotional lives that are too often ignored.
Every Thing Will Be Fine
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Story-less tale of depression isn’t helped by 3D cinematography
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Experimenter
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Cinematic portrait of a provocative psychologist…
Extraction
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Extraction’ is a conventional rogue agent narrative in which a son searches for his M.I.A. father with the help of a more noteworthy female operative.
Extraordinary Tales
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: the definitive works of Edgar Allan Poe on the big screen
- Andy Crump @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: …Extraordinary Tales leaves us wishing for more: more running time, more of Poe’s material, more of Garcia’s macabre animated magic.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Part of the scholarly skill of Extraordinary Tales is demonstrating the vitality of Poe stories even in brutally compressed form. The accounts depicted here—The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Masque of Red Death—have been told and retold in various mediums ad infinitum over the decades since Poe’s death, but rarely with such artful truncation.
The Face of an Angel
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: A filmmaker hired to do a quick true-crime flick about a sordid Amanda Knox-like murder case prevaricates and ultimately gives up, much like the film itself, an unusually wan effort from Michael Winterbottom.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: An overbearingly self-righteous diatribe that manages the neat feat of both exploiting the Amanda Knox trial and chastising viewers for having any interest in the case in the first place, The Face of an Angel is an incredibly misguided, positively excruciating experience to watch unfold on the screen.
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: “The Face of an Angel” é uma obra filosófica que nos acelera o coração com a ocasional cena violenta, mas no fundo pretende apenas que pensemos por um momento e aproveitemos o amor e a juventude, ao mesmo tempo que critica a imprensa sensacionalista e a indústria cinematográfica.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
Faith of Our Fathers
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Amateurishly faltering, Christian-themed saga, preaching to the choir.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: No matter who made Faith of Our Fathers/To the Wall and for what purpose, this is a bad movie – really bad, laughably bad. The production values seem borrowed “The Beverly Hillbillies” up to, and including, the moving back projection during the driving scenes. The screenplay is all over the place. Every development is painfully convenient and the story moves back and forth between pathos and slapstick comedy almost at random, dealing with two characters that are so badly written and acted that they seem like Looney Tunes characters.
Far from Men
The Farewell Party
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Final Girl
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Final Girl’ centres on a complete reversal of circumstances when a group of serial killers set their sights on the wrong victim.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Too bloody and violent for me, but this thriller proves Abigail Breslin is all grown up now and still ready for her close ups.
Five Star
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Stephen Saito @ The Moveable Fest
- Excerpt: If “Pine Hill” was about a man looking for his place in the world onscreen and off, Keith Miller’s second feature “Five Star” has more confidence in telling the story of a man who lets the world come to him.
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: The toned-down and thoughtful approach of Five Star establishes a nuanced perspective of the mundanities of life as a gangster. Miller follows up Welcome to Pine Hill with yet another naturally positive portrayal of a black gang member that impressively shatters cinematic stereotypes.
Flowers
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An alluring drama of love and loss that will bloom in your consciousness and soul.
Forbidden Empire
Forbidden Films
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A frustrating movie in some ways, but an important reminder of the power of cinema to manipulate and seduce us, and not always for the better.
The Forger
- Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
Fort Tilden
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: The film is a bumpy ride at times, but it remains a charming expedition.
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: While Allie and Harper’s personalities may be like nails on the chalkboard, it takes a hell of a lot of work to create such irritating personas — that is a high compliment to Bliss and Rogers’ writing and the performances of Clare McNulty and Bridey Elliott.
Frame by Frame
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: As befits a documentary on such a subject, Frame by Frame is beautiful to look at. The cinematography (by the directors) exhibits a professional’s understanding of composition.
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A documentary about the photo revolution that has taken place in Afghanistan in the past decade.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
Frank the Bastard
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Ineptly written and flatly directed, the film takes real effort to get through, as it practically dares the viewer to pay attention.
Freetown
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: Freetown, the newest feature film in the annals of serious Mormon cinema, does a respectable job of showing the horrors of the Liberian civil war through civilian eyes.However, given that this is a Mormon feature film, we were not going to get the graphic violence…
Fresh Dressed
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Come learn how the B-boys got fresh and dipped
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
From the Dark
- Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Vamping it up, Irish style.
Futuro Beach
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- João Pinto @ http://www.portal-cinema.com [Portuguese]
Gabriel
A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: There are no easy answers, which makes Deraspe’s attempt to provide us with one so frustrating.
Gerontophilia
Ghoul
- Marina Antunes @ Quiet Earth
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: Ghoul is so close in conception to Blair Witch – and so woefully outdated – that I cannot imagine who it will appeal to. In a market over-saturated with this kind of product, it brings nothing new to the table.
Girl House
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Girl House isn’t even close to being high art and won’t be winning any awards for originality—or any awards, period—but it’s waywardly entertaining and well-made for what it is.
The Girl in the Book
The Girl Is in Trouble
A Girl Like Her
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Earnest and well-intentioned but preachy in the way of an afterschool special and stylistically problematic.
Giuseppe Makes a Movie
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Giuseppe Makes a Movie wisely leaves auteur analysis to the viewer, instead focusing on the concrete benefits of Giuseppe’s practice. The result is an amusing portrait of wayward weirdoes bound together through creative collaboration.
Growing Up and Other Lies
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: One of those exasperating, totally fraudulent New York-centric indies about how tough it is to make it in the big city…without actually showing how tough it is to make it in the big city.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Everything about the movie has a sloppy, throwaway feel to it.
- Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: The film generally proves to be a lively, diverting tour of both male arrested development and Manhattan itself.
Gueros
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …shows the influence of the French New Wave and Fellini, even dipping into David Lynch territory with its unique sound design
- Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: Güeros is that rare, remarkable work that conjures a time and place with splendid precision in order to educe timeless truths about the human yearning for identity and purpose.
Guidance
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Greg Klymkiw @ The Film Corner
- Excerpt: Think of a considerably thinner, more handsome, spiffily-attired and decidedly light-in-the-loafers Jack Black from School of Rock and it all adds up to one of the funniest, sweetest and wonkily outrageous low budget indie comedies you’ll have seen in quite some time.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: There’s a little bit of a bad teacher in everyone, but Mills’ saucy substitute is no rotten apple.
Guilty
Hamari Adhuri Kahaani
The Hand That Feeds
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A rousing documentary and the most hopeful political film of 2015 about the triumph of a small union.
Harbinger Down
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Plays like the world’s longest special effects demo reel.
A Hard Day
- Sean Axmaker @ Stream On Demand
- Excerpt: Call it a modern Korean cop noir with a wicked sense of humor and an absurdly busy catalog of disasters.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Surprise and tension make this Korean police mystery a fun ride
- Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Hard Labor
Hard to Be a God
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Without knowledge of the source material, a 60s novel by ‘Stalker’ authors Arkadiy and Boris Strugatskiy, the movie can be inscrutable in its early goings, but give yourself over to this singular art film and you will be richly rewarded.
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: It’s a film buff’s film, a cult-classic-to-be. It’s Orson Welles conceived in Hieronymus Bosch, dragged through a Pasolini latrine and stomped on by Werner Herzog hobnail boots.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
The Harvest
- Kimberly Gadette @ doddle
- Excerpt: The primary horror in THE HARVEST comes from watching the superlative talents of Michael Shannon and Samantha Morton wasted on such secondary swill.
- Oktay Kozak @ DVD Talk
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: Secret Garden’ meets ‘Misery,’ anyone? McNaughton’s first film is far too long has much to recommend it, incluing a shriek-worthy performance by Morton. ‘No wire hangers, EVER!’
Heart Like a Hand Grenade
Hell and Back
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Yes it’s a labor of warped love that lives up to its creators’ aesthetic and will probably turn a profit on VOD thanks to Adult Swim’s demographic waiting with open arms, but it isn’t good. It’s sadly a waste of some very remarkable resources.
Hero
Hippocrates
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A thought-provoking film with heart about the developing friendship between two interns at a Paris hospital
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Other than the suspect ending, Hippocrates functions well enough showcasing a health care system barely treading water and perhaps even as a warning to the audience: do not get sick lest you end up in the caring and supportive arms of a labyrinthine bureaucracy and its semi-functioning, thousand-yard stare medical staff.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Home Care
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: In Slávek Horák’s Domácí péce, middle-aged nurse Vlasta (Alena Mihulová) is told she has half a year to live. Doctors can’t do anything to cure her cancer or even prolong her life, and offer her only painkillers to help her deal with the pain.
Home Sweet Hell
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Save for Katherine Heigl’s killer turn, “Home Sweet Hell” leaves a sad, bitter aftertaste in one’s mouth.
Homme Less
- Mark Dujsik @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: A fascinating account of a man who plays a role in order to hide the reality of his life.
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: Thomas Wirthensohn’s Homme Less will certainly alter most people’s preconceptions about homelessness.
Honeymoon
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Hoovey
Horse Money
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Horse Money, by Pedro Costa – Film Review
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The artistic value is high, but the story is so vague, insular and shadowy that, unless you’re an expatriate Cape Verdean intellectual or a careful follower of director Pedro Costa’s career, there’s not much to latch on to.
Hot Girls Wanted
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: If nothing else, “Hot Girls Wanted” is instructional on a real-world level about the risks and minimal rewards of Internet porn.
How to Change the World
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
- Excerpt: On its own, Hunter’s text and the newly produced interviews of others wouldn’t be enough to create as captivating a film as How to Change the World proves. To do that you need the right archival footage to visualize these tales as they’re recounted and the Greenpeace gang serendipitously documented everything during those early years to give Rothwell exactly that.
How to Save Us
The Human Experiment
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A harrowing look at the irresponsibility of the pharmaceutical industry and its continuing use of unsafe chemicals.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
- Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Filled with genuine thrills, gripping tension and rallying hero moments galore, the trilogy comes to a close in epic fashion, befitting its awesome heroine.
Hungry Hearts
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: L’abbiamo odiato dal primo minuto all’ultimo. Ai festival succede. Nulla di personale.
Hyena
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
- Don Lewis @ Consequence of Sound
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: O elevado número de personagens não é difícil de acompanhar, infelizmente algumas delas são tão ridículas que são logo ignoradas por se perceber que não terão interesse na história. Quando todo o tabuleiro está montado e esperávamos um conclusão decente, é o próprio filme que se começa a desmoronar, numa série de cenas sem ritmo, investigações inconclusivas e situações pouco credíveis.
I Am Chris Farley
- Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A celebratory film that serves to remind viewers of the joyful figure Chris Farley was, in spite of his own demons.
I Believe in Unicorns
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: An atmospheric coming-of-age film showing the heartbreak of young love and the importance of self-discovery.
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Many girls, blinded by love, lust and excitement, will let themselves be buried. In martyrdom women throughout time have accepted the pecking order, stayed with their man to “help” him, and swallowed their humiliation. But Davinia sees herself as smart – and what does “smart” do?
I Saw the Light
I Touched All Your Stuff
- Mark Dujsik @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: One gets the sense that the filmmakers feel slighted by their subject, and I Touched All Your Stuff is an attempt to make us feel that sting of disappointment.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] “I Touched All Your Stuff” is a fascinating character study even if you don’t walk out feeling like you had some epiphany.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] Although plagued with inept editing techniques and an irritating overuse of screenshot imagery and repetitive B-roll footage “I Touched All Your Stuff” is a fascinating character study even if you don’t walk out feeling like you had some epiphany.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Although plagued with inept editing techniques and an irritating overuse of screenshot imagery and repetitive B-roll footage “I Touched All Your Stuff” is a fascinating character study even if you don’t walk out feeling like you had some epiphany.
i-Lived
In Jackson Heights
- Chris Barsanti @ PopMatters
- Excerpt: Frederick Wiseman’s immersive portrait of this immigrant neighborhood doesn’t just celebrate the melting pot, it shows that the dream is vulnerable, too.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A fascinating documentary that immerses us in a diverse and lively Queens neighborhood where community activism is alive and well.
In Stereo
In the Name of My Daughter
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Eventually, just as we’ve started to get a handle on the tone, the film starts down the other side of the hill, becoming beguilingly more diffuse before a final, extended coda casts everything in a new light. It’s a film you may want to see more than once.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A French thriller revolving around the theme of betrayal by those you trust
- Robert Cashill @ Popdose
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: Review … a desultory mash-up of tones and styles. It doesn’t really succeed as either melodrama or mystery. Téchiné’s pacing is off and potentially incriminating information is jack-hammered into place.
“
”
India’s Daughter
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A searing documentary about the chauvinism and patriarchy which undergirds one rape of a woman every 20 minutes in India.
Infini
Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words
- David Crow @ Den of Geek
- Excerpt: More than any sparkling fixture of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Ingrid Bergman was a restless spirit. Other marquee names went through phases of career (and spouses) like the changing fashion of seasons, but the Swedish born Bergman, who would have turned 100 this year, went through all of life with a transcendentalist flair.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words wonderfully humanizes an icon who already seems so down-to-earth in her performances. It’s a warm, frank, and affectionate portrait.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Bergman was always restless. “There is a bird of passage inside me, always wanting more,” she says, and her life was a celebration of the idea that fulfillment is found by following your passions.
The Inhabitants
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s a step up from the Rasmussens’ John Carpenter collaboration The Ward because it isn’t afraid to let its mysteries exist without easy answers. There’s no attempt for twists, just a barebones, atmospherically tense ghost thriller moving at its own pace.
- Frank Ochieng @ SF Crowsnest
- Excerpt: Thankfully, the filmmaking siblings Michael and Shawn Rasmussen put an ignited and distinctive spin on the conventional ghost story formula with their taut homegrown New England-based fear fable. Absorbingly chilly, methodically intense and suggestive, ‘The Inhabitants’ succeeds with its bare-bones blend of gory mythology that taps into the realm of nostalgic ghouls, witches and possessed sacrifices.
Into the Grizzly Maze
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: Grizzly and gory throwback to the man vs. nature movies of previous decades.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: There are moments here that are so over-the-top loony, you might just find yourself clapping your hands and giggling in delight. And then there’s all the other stuff.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Run-of-the-mill “Jaws”-on-land potboiler.
The Intruders
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: In ‘The Intruders,’ a young woman feels something sinister is afoot in her creepy new house, but debates whether it’s imaginary, supernatural or corporeal.
The Invoking 2
The Iron Ministry
It’s All So Quiet
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Obviously striving for “elemental,” It’s All So Quiet winds up torpid and vacuous, yet another willfully emptied-out exercise in festival-friendly austere naturalism.
Jackie & Ryan
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A tender romantic drama about two music lovers who face steep and unruly challenges during hard times.
Jane B. for Agnes V.
Janis: Little Girl Blue
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A compassionate, intimate unpacking of the legend of Janis Joplin that reveals the trouble influences on the force-of-nature singer she willed into being.
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: All we know is that Janis loved the blues, loved life, felt deeply, and that Amy Berg creates a fascinating study of a musician sometimes overshadowed by her fellow untimely death peers such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain.
- Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit
The Japanese Dog
Jason and Shirley
Jellyfish Eyes
Jeruzalem
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s by no means perfect, but things get tense once the demons rise and the rest simply falls away. The cool creature design and authentic first-person cinematography/lighting later on will have you forgiving any early shortcomings.
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser
- Brent McKnight @ Cinema Blend
- Excerpt: I have a deep, possibly indefensible love for Joe Dirt. But, 14 years later, this did not need to happen by any stretch of the imagination.
Julia
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: … studied and stylish — in a very self-conscious way. We’ve seen it all before, in ‘Ms .45,’ ‘Basic Instinct’ and other feminist revenge fantasies.
June
Junun
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: It’s a very enjoyable lark, thanks not only to the great music on display, but also Anderson’s clear love for the setting, but a lark nonetheless. It’s an esoteric work from a major filmmaker, and one that looks like it provided a welcome opportunity for Anderson to get away from the grind of promoting Inherent Vice.
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: [Paul Thomas Anderson] fully embraces the digital aesthetic, and uses the freedom afforded by it to capture the chaos of the creative process. While there are some beautifully composed images of both the recording sessions and of the Fort (one of the earlier shots, in which the camera rotates to show the musicians during a performance, is reminiscent of the graceful tracking shots in Jean-Luc Godard’s otherwise interminable Rolling Stones documentary Sympathy for the Devil), for the most part the camera is allowed to roam.
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: An interesting and likeable watch
Just Before I Go
Just Jim
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
Katti Batti
Keith Richards: Under the Influence
- Samuel Castro @ Ochoymedio.info
- Excerpt: Un documental que entre ensayos de las canciones de su último disco, rememora algunos de los momentos más extraordinarios de la historia de los Rolling Stones.
The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Houellebecq’s writing advice to Mathieu is “to have nothing to do, to be bored, and then something happens in your head.” The movie is a little like that.
Killers
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: the film goes on too longer than it can sustain itself. Still Stamboel and Tjahjanto have a flair for visuals and a great ear for music.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …the film goes on too longer than it can sustain itself. Still Stamboel and Tjahjanto have a flair for visuals and a great ear for music.
Killing Them Safely
- Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: The film’s methods might be cinematically unremarkable, but the picture it paints is nonetheless fairly compelling.
Kingdom of Shadows
Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon
Kung Fu Killer
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- James Marsh @ Twitch
- Excerpt: Donnie Yen plays a convicted murderer sprung from jail to help track down a serial killer targeting martial arts masters in Teddy Chen’s appreciably nostalgic action thriller. While Yen wisely gifts the lion’s share of the fighting to opposite number Wang Baoqiang, Kung Fu Jungle also serves as a reverential ode to the local industry, and something of a swan song for Donnie as Hong Kong’s foremost action hero.
- Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: Above all, Kung Fu Killer is a love letter to Hong Kong martial arts movies.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
Lambert & Stamp
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: You don’t need to be fan of The Who to enjoy this documentary. It’s universal themes include an analysis of opposites attracting, genius marketing, creative nurturing and the inevitable clashing dynamics of a rock ‘n roll band.
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: …an essential movie for any lover of music, culture, or both.
The Last House on Cemetery Lane
- Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
- Excerpt: From its generic title to its overly-familiar premise, Cemetery Lane is almost entirely lacking in entertainment value.
Last Knights
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Last Knights’ has an exhilarating ending and an archetypal display of loyalty as Clive Owen proves his devotion to Morgan Freeman.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Thomas Spurlin @ DVDTalk
The Leisure Class
Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: Somewhere in between “Horrible Bosses” and “Very Bad Things” lies “Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife,” a slight but mildly morbid and wryly twisted indie black comedy.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Somewhere in between “Horrible Bosses” and “Very Bad Things” lies “Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife,” a slight but mildly morbid and wryly twisted indie black comedy.
The Letters
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A tender and touching biopicture on the life and spiritual work of Mother Teresa who viewed herself as an instrument of God’s love.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A fatuous argument for Mother Teresa’s sainthood; credulous and willfully ignorant, and disregards everything about her beliefs that was nasty or skeptical.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A piece of chintzy hagiography that ends up diminishing rather than celebrating its subject. Perhaps Mother Teresa was a saint, but in Riead’s hands she’s become a plaster one.
Lily & Kat
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Review from the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival.
Listening
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Naive, hamfisted, and amateurish indie sci-fi… but as hilarious as the clumsy, clichéd execution is, it still isn’t even worth it for the laughs.
Little Accidents
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: Good aspirations are undermined by the watered-down characters and conventional outcome.
The Little Death
Live from New York!
Loitering With Intent
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Newbie filmmakers (director Adam Rapp and screenwriter-actors Michael Godere and Ivan Martin) flail toward making a cohesive movie about a couple of New York City actors on an upstate retreat to crank out a screenplay in 10 days.
Lost in the Sun
Lost River
- Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
- Excerpt: Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut may be a boondoggle but it’s a highly entertaining boondoggle.
Love, Rosie
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: At its most outré, Love, Rosie becomes something like a rom-com spin on The Tree of Life, a disparate collection of briefly-glimpsed vignettes that seems to convey nothing less than the complexities of life itself.
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
The Lovers
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Flailing among the centuries, it lacks any meaningful connection between the two timelines.
Mad Women
The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The satire has its moments, but they don’t begin to justify the whole.
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
Making Rounds
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A healing and helpful medical documentary with fresh insights on the importance of the patient-physician relationship.
Man from Reno
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An evocative film noir set in San Francisco and a nearby small town.
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
Man Up
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
- Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Manson Family Vacation
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The Manson subtext not only gives the film a darkly comic bent, but deepens its emotional context. This little film is both familiar yet not, marking the debut of a unique voice.
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: A slight twist on a familiar story makes this fast paced brother dramedy fresh and entertaining.
Marfa Girl
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: When not taking timeouts for gratuitous sex, Clark’s characters drone on and on about sex. This being the case, whatever the director has to say about life on the Texas border or the treatment of undocumented immigrants feels both inconsequential and disingenuous.
Marie’s Story
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Robert Cashill @ Popdose
- Excerpt: DVD review
Match
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: The middle section of Match is so strong—looking past the melodrama to the hurt, lonely people underneath it—that it’s unfortunate Belber hurries the resolution…
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Lack of cinematic spectacle is offset by good performances and writing
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: Stripped down and heartfelt essay on what it takes to love and be loved.
Mateo
- Samuel Castro @ Ochoymedio.info [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Mateo es una película colombiana, afortunadamente optimista, opcionada entre las tres candidatas al Óscar por el país.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Josue’s film (her first) is a work of raw, unfiltered emotion.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An almost unbearably heartbreaking documentary rehumanizes the LGBT icon… and makes him newly tragic all over again.
Maya the Bee Movie
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
McFarland USA
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: It might be a familiar story, but it told with sincerity, which makes it much better than one might give it credit for.
Meadowland
Mediterranea
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Sad story about the struggles of two brothers from Burkina Faso who journey to Italy in hopes of finding a better life.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Jonas Carpignano’s timely and revelatory film puts a human face on the contemporary crisis of illegal immigrants and refugees desperate for a better life. That the principal face belongs to a charismatic newcomer named Koudous Seihon adds enormously to the film’s appeal.
The Mend
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: If the characters’ histories are subtle, Magary’s technique is far from that.
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti With Punctuation
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: The timeline unravels as something close to a “day in the life” story about one of most unlikeable protagonists in the history of cinema.
Metalhead
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A rousing drama about a Jewish refugee who is looking for closure on her terrible past and a young lawyer who matures spiritually.
Mi America
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A harrowing portrait of the virulence of racial hatred in a small New York community.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
The Midnight Swim
Misery Loves Comedy
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: If you’re fascinated by what makes comedians tick, you’ll learn something, and enjoy the moments, or some of them anyway, as they tick slowly by.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: If you want to be a comedian, see this enlightening, amusing — and a bit scary — documentary first.
Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter
Mojin: The Lost Legend
- Mark Dujsik @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: Come for the murky action, and stay for the shudder-inducing feeling of nostalgia for Mao’s Cultural Revolution. It’s a very odd movie, indeed.
- James Marsh @ Screen International
- Excerpt: After breaking box office records in China with his 2012 film, Painted Skin: The Resurrection, director Wuershan returns with the star-studded fantasy adventure Mojin – The Lost Legend, which follows a team of expert tomb raiders in search of a mythical stone that grants eternal life. Chen Kun, Shu Qi and Huang Bo star as the legendary “Mojin Xiaowei” adventurers, whose centuries-old team retires after Bayi (Chen) sees a hallucination of his long-dead first love while on a mission.
Momentum
- Oktay Kozak @ The Playlist
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Prentension
- Excerpt: Momentum can’t sustain its interesting groundwork, becoming a fairly by-the-numbers chase film with too little action and too few ideas.
Monsters: Dark Continent
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Suffers from a terrible case of cinematic aphasia. Clearly thinks it’s saying something important and deep, but makes no damn sense at all.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: “Monsters: Dark Continent” fica bastante longe do que os apreciadores da primeira parte estão à espera. Poderia conseguir novos fãs se se apresentasse honestamente como filme de guerra, mas a máscara de ficção-científica não vai ajudar nessa tarefa.
Mr. Kaplan
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Mr. Six
- James Marsh @ South China Morning Post
- Excerpt: In Mr Six, an ailing, retired gangster returns to the fray after a group of rich-kid punks kidnap his teenage son. Feng Xiaogang, the blockbuster director of The Banquet, Aftershock and If You Are the One, steps in front of the camera to play the anti-hero, venting the frustrations of his generation in the process.
A Murder in the Park
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: The film is meticulous in presenting its argument…
Narcopolis
Nasty Baby
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Nasty Baby‘s biggest asset is its cast. Silva and Adebimpe are fearlessly raw with one another, while Wiig continues to impress with her devotion to every idiosyncrasy and emotional wrinkle of her characters.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: as in his criminally underseen “Magic, Magic,” there is a strong sense of foreboding all along, Silva littering his story with clues that this just may be an unholy alliance.
- Mark Dujsik @ RogerEbert.com
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Natural Resistance
Ned Rifle
Neptune
Nightingale
Nightlight
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
No Home Movie
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: those willing to submit to the filmmaker’s vision may be surprised that a film consisting of minutes-long takes of barren, arid landscapes, her mother’s Brussels apartment and the occasional conversation can have such a powerful emotional build.
- Hugo Gomes @ http://cinematograficamentefalando.blogs.sapo.pt/everest-2015-1662663 [Portuguese]
Noble
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: The true story of charity founder Christina Noble’s empathy in action.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: As its title indicates, this is a straight-up inspirational tale, but its sincerity and above-average execution set it apart from many other similar movies.
Northern Soul
Northmen
Nymph
October Gale
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: a framework that recalls classic ‘women’s pictures’ of the studio era, something we’d most likely have seen from a Cukor or Negulesco and starring the embittered likes of a Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck
Office
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- James Marsh @ TwitchFilm
- Excerpt: In a wild change of pace, Hong Kong director Johnnie To delivers an all-singing, occasionally-dancing adaptation of Sylvia Chang’s successful stage play, Design for Living. While the script has undergone numerous changes along the way, and boasts brand new musical numbers from Dayo Lu and Lin Xi, Office still charts the in-house dealings of billion-dollar company Jones & Sunn as they prepare to go public on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis. To covered similar territory previously – and better – in 2011’s Life Without Principle, but his film does display a keen understanding of Hong Kong’s workplace environment and rituals.
- Rob Wallis @ The Metropolist
- Excerpt: … without any particularly memorable tunes, though, let alone a real showstopper, and characters with less depth than the 3D…
Old Fashioned
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Old-fashioned is right. Like how the Taliban is old-fashioned. Behold some pretty despicable passive-aggressive othering of women in the name of “respect.”
One and Two
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: Masterfully lensed by Autumn Durald, One and Two gives the allusion of a big budget studio film — perhaps a superhero origin story for Eva and Zac? Similar to what Chronicle did for Josh Trank, One and Two seems destined to catapult Palermo into the director’s chair of a Hollywood production.
#REF!
Our Everyday Life
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Bosnia and Hervegovina’s Oscar submission is a subtle slice-of-life drama.
Our Man In Tehran
Out of My Hand
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: In the opening, Cisco (Bishop Blay) is tapping a tree in a Liberian rubber plantation, and in the closing, he’s changing the tire of his New York cab. In the 80-ish minutes that separates those scenes, Fukunaga details how he went from one place to the other, a portrait of a life that plays as much like documentary as drama.
Out of the Dark
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Despite the grim, ghastly ghosts, it’s a forgettable film.
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Paolo Coelho’s Best Story
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Daniel Augusto’s messy biopic samples three periods of the Brazilian author’s career, and flits about between them like a writer with adult ADD, without providing much insight
Parabellum
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: The film has nothing to say and has chosen a very demanding and exploratory way of saying it. Haneke without the brain, Parabellum finishes up looking quite silly and it gets pretty dull.
Parallels
Patch Town
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Patch Town’ notably answers the unasked questions: where did Cabbage Patch Kids come from and what happened to them when we grew up?
Paul Taylor Creative Domain
- Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Riffing on the title of dancer/choreographer Paul Taylor’s autobiography Private Domain, director Kate Geis’s conceit is that she will reveal the secret of Taylor’s choreographic genius. This she does not do—nor do I think anyone can—but she nonetheless offers accumulative detail in showing how a dance is made.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: It will appeal mostly to dance aficionados; for the less passionate, it would be like someone not interested in tennis watching a documentary about Roger Federer doing stretches and calisthenics and drills in preparation for Wimbledon. The genius is apparent, but the process is not for everyone.
Paul Taylor: Creative Domain
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: It will appeal mostly to dance aficionados; for the less passionate, it would be like someone not interested in tennis watching a documentary about Roger Federer doing stretches and calisthenics and drills in preparation for Wimbledon. The genius is apparent, but the process is not for everyone.
Peace Officer
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Don Lewis @ Hammer to Nail
Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Why, through everything she experienced and suffered, was Guggenheim “addicted” to art? That should be fertile ground to explore but Vreeland is content to offer simply that it’s because her subject was “lonely.”
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A vibrant and enlightening survey of the life and work of one of the world’s most renowned art collectors.
- Pat Mullen @ POV Magazine
- Excerpt: Chic new doc about the ‘Mistress of Modern Art’.
People Places Things
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: People Places Things is an unexpected pleasure.
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: With People Places Things, writer-director James C. Strouse completes a trifecta of films about floundering single fathers. Grace is Gone might just be the best of the three films; but People Places Things, albeit much simpler, is a very close second, succeeding in its authentic, personal and sentimental approach to the subject.
The Perfect Guy
Pernicious
Phantom
The Phoenix Project
Piku
Playing It Cool
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: ‘Playing it Cool’ is an ambitious rom com starring Chris Evans and Michelle Monaghan about a commitment-phobic bachelor who finally finds his ideal match only to learn she’s the one that’s hard to get.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Chris Evans and Michelle Monaghan surely brighten the film in spots and make it watchable, but despite some light laughs, how “Playing It Cool” plays it isn’t original, sharp, or charming enough.
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Watching this disappointing movie left me with a bad case of the rom-com blues.
Pod
A Poem is a Naked Person
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: An inside look at the 1970’s Leon Russell that is not much of an inside look at all.
Preggoland
Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
Preservation
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: If you’ve seen the Spanish ‘King of the Hill,’ the denouement won’t come as a surprise. Still, the basic situation is so primal what young filmmaker wouldn’t want to attempt a knockoff?
Pressure
- Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Under pressure!
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
Prince
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Andy Crump @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: …de Jong’s work boasts a naked sentimentality that Refn’s roundly lacks, and for all of its stylistic flourishes, Prince ultimately reads as anti-Refn.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jose Solis @ StageBuddy
The Princess of France
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A playful look at romantic dalliances by an inventive Argentinian writer and director.
Prophet’s Prey
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Amy Berg’s documentary about Jeffs and the FLDS is a study of evil disguised as virtue and of devotion taken to the extreme.
Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2
Racing Extinction
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A horror flick about the blundering of humanity on a scale so enormous that global warming is only a small part of it. But its monster is not unconquerable.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
Reality
- Dustin Jansick @ Way Too Indie
- Excerpt: A strange and multi-layered narrative, you’ll either laugh or scratch your head at Quentin Dupieux’s latest.
- Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Reality is a Chinese puzzle box of nightmares hidden inside of jokes hidden inside of nightmares. It’s the labyrinth itself that interests Dupieux, not the exit.
[REC] 4: Apocalypse
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: Tracing the virus’s history now feels akin to explaining the origins of half-siblings, and with about as much flagging interest as that entails.
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: [REC] 4 may not put itself in the vein of the first two installments, but as a visceral, relentlessly paced ride, it works like a flesh-ripping charm.
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Reversion
The Rewrite
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A funny and charming portrait of a burnt-out, middle-aged screenplay writer
- Nuno Reis @ Antestreia [Portuguese]
Ride
The Riot Club
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The authentic performances in ‘The Riot Club’ make it difficult to watch, but it does not add much to the conversation of inequality.
Rosenwald
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Enlightening documentary, detailing one man’s amazingly effective philanthropy…
Rotor DR1
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A friendly drone in this sci-fi feature comes across as a modern-day equivalent of R2-D2 in the Star Wars sagas.
A Royal Night Out
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A mildly entertaining comedy about the adventures of two English princesses on the evening of V-E Day.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: A spirited, speculative, engaging escapade…
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
The Rumperbutts
Run, Hide, Die
The Runner
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: [I]t might have benefited from a little more of an emotional outlook on the way of things beyond its shoulder-shrugging attitude…
The Russian Woodpecker
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Gracia can’t decide between a straight-faced, informational approach or a more fantastical one that matches the personality of his human subject as well as the Soviet thinking that led to the Woodpecker in the first place. As a result, the film never gels, leaving the audience to do little more than shrug when they should want to run and tell their friends about this fascinating, massive thing known as the Russian Woodpecker.
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti With Punctuation
- Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit
- Jordan Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: Vibrating with a reckless creative urgency, The Russian Woodpecker is a call for political integrity lost long ago, attempting to drill through invalid indoctrinations through sheer will and sobering truth. The world could use more brave souls like these, using research and authenticity as a weapon for political progress.
Safelight
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: An attractive cast can’t rescue this well-meaning but slow, sappy romantic triangle.
Saint Laurent
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Shallow and ill-fitting – at 2 1/2 hours in length, it gets truly tedious – unless you’re a fashion junkie.
- Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Bertrand Bonello’s biopic of the great designer is full of glitz and beautiful gowns, but in the end it’s like a magician’s trick of spewing colored scarves across a stage, a riot of visual exuberance but without much coherent to say.
The Sand
La Sapienza
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Alexandre’s desire to retain existing elements for new construction, as Borromini did, reminds us that cities and towns are an amalgamation of styles from throughout history; Green’s reference to an archeological dig further reinforces the fact that human life on Earth has been built, layer by layer, on the foundations of the past, a repudiation of modernity and its overweaning ego.
- Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: In the end it’s all about space and light, form and meaning, passion and ideals. We’re never too old to learn, and never too young to know.
The Search for General Tso
The Second Mother
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Featuring an outstanding performance from Casé and a global breakthrough for Márdila, “The Second Mother” is a must see for cinephiles.
Secret of Water
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A meditative and luminous documentary about water, the source of all life and the bloodstream of the Earth.
Seeds of Time
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: For glorious Peruvian scenery, ice cold Norwegian vistas and a story about a man on a mission to save the world, “Seeds of Time” is a meaningful, poignant documentary.
Sembene!
The Seven Five
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: It’s brilliantly told and inventively edited, and it makes standard crooked cop dramas look like Turner and Hooch. You may never look at a police officer in quite the same way again.
Sex, Death and Bowling
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A richly emotional character-driven drama.
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
Shaandaar
Shamitabh
Shanghai
- Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: There are some movies that, no matter how hard they try, just don’t work. This is one of those movies.
Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! doesn’t have the same energy at its predecessor, actually it’s a step down if that’s possible. It’s hard to love it, but even harder to hate it. It has a spectacular opening, and a spectacular third act, but it suffers from a mid-section that’s kinda blah.
Shelter
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: They seek redemption knowing the path is an impossible one to climb alone, but they work towards it with each smile and embrace making the possibility seem more real as the numbness melts away. Whereas pain used to drag them down deeper, the other still being there afterwards finally renders it unbearable enough to strive for an escape.
The Sisterhood of Night
- Marina Antunes @ Row Three
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: While very nicely fashioned, winds up as an oddly prosaic cautionary tale [with] the air of an upscale afterschool special.
Skin Trade
- Andy Crump @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: As the story spins its wheels, the audience grows bloodthirsty, and we must slake our cravings.
- James Marsh @ The Society For Film
- Excerpt: Fans of Thai martial arts star Tony Jaa who were left unsated after his all-too-brief appearance in Furious 7 should be more than happy with his turn in Ekachai Uekrongtham’s Skin Trade. Written and produced by Dolph Lundrgen, the veteran Swedish action star wisely gifts most of the heavy lifting (and kicking) to his diminutive co-star, as they team up to take down Ron Perlman’s crew of Serbian human traffickers.
- Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: Admittedly, Tony Jaa’s ability to speak English is stiff. Fortunately, he remains fluent in kicking ass, which he does several times throughout Skin Trade.
Sneakerheadz
Soaked in Bleach
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: This is a documentary that will most likely re-enliven the debates surrounding Cobain’s death; it will also provide Love’s enemies with all the more reason to despise her. For Love’s fan base, however, Soaked in Bleach will be nothing short of sheer heresy.
Some Kind of Beautiful
Some Kind of Hate
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Mark Harris @ About.com
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
Something Better to Come
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Something Better to Come is more than a film about the homeless. It’s a look at humanity itself stripped down to its basics, which include survival but also, touchingly, companionship, cooperation and affection.
Something, Anything
Son of a Gun
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
- George Zervopoulos @ Movies Ltd. [Greek]
Song of Lahore
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: It may be instructive to aspiring documentarians to note that, when the film’s sites seem to be set lower, it’s actually more able to translate its point about what music means to these men and to Pakistan. Song of Lahore is ultimately hobbled by its clumsy first half but it reaches greater heights when its goals aren’t so self-consciously lofty.
- Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit
Song One
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An emotionally rich drama about the healing powers of music.
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
The Sound and the Fury
The Squeeze
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Won’t efface memories of the best caper pictures. Golfgers, however, may well find it a pleasant diversion. At least it shouldn’t tee them off.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: One of my favorite golf movies!
Staten Island Summer
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Have I mentioned that none of this is funny or even slightly amusing?
Stations of the Cross
Steve Jobs
- Courtney Howard @ Sassy Mama In LA
- Excerpt: A perfect movie even a perfectionist like Jobs would adore.
Still
Stink!
Stinking Heaven
Stonewall
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Andy Crump @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: Getting a bead on Stonewall is nearly impossible.
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Comes across as a heartfelt piece of work, but one that’s stilted, cliche-ridden and grossly manipulative.
Strange Magic
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Let’s just say it’s a bizarre, bad ‘Dream.’
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Apparently this was inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it has about as much in common with that as Burger King does with Macbeth.
- Nell Minow @ The Movie Mom
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Great songs, a fun story and fascinating animation. One of the most delightful animated musicals I’ve ever seen.
The Stranger
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Stray Dogs
- Pete Gkaris @ www.moviesltd.gr [Greek]
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: Stray Dogs is then a somewhat confounding film that powerfully conveys humans in terrible situations only to drop that focus in favour of surrealist and experimental aesthetics.
- Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
Stung
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Andy Crump @ Movie Mezzanine
- Excerpt: …a creature feature calibrated to satisfy much simpler, old-fashioned pleasures.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
The Suicide Theory
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Suicide Theory is funny and disturbing, and a picture that’s tough to take your eyes off once you start watching it.
- Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: A great setup, and well-acted, but it runs out of steam at the end; it doesn’t slay, but call it a near-miss.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A darkly humorous rumination about the primacy of fate or free will presented in the form of a twisty thriller with a smidgen of the supernatural…well worth investigating.
The Summer of Sangaile
- Mark Dujsik @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: It’s a movie of lovely surfaces that only alludes to and rarely explores what is happening beneath them.
Sunset Edge
- Phil Hall @ EDGE Boston
- Excerpt: Review of Daniel Peddle’s narrative feature directing debut.
Survivor
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: If there’s a thriller to be found in international travel regulations, this is not it. Makes a mockery of the unsung heroes it’s meant to celebrate.
- Don Lewis @ Consequence of Sound
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Routine post-9/11 espionage thriller that leansd far too heavily on ticks taken from far better Hitchcock films.
Tab Hunter Confidential
Tag
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- James Marsh @ South China Morning Post
- Excerpt: Opening with a busload of schoolgirls being violently sheared in half by a malevolent wind, Sion Sono’s Tag certainly gets off to a promising start. But the provocative Japanese auteur soon finds himself wallowing in lurid exploitation and unpleasant misogyny.
The Tainted Veil
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A documentary on opinions swirling around Muslim women wearing the hijab.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
Tamasha
Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango
Tanu Weds Manu Returns
(T)ERROR
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: (T)ERROR becomes a frightening story about how even the most inept among the powerful still wield a tremendous amount of power.
That Guy Dick Miller
That Sugar Film
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: This funny and enlightening exposé of how unhealthy “healthy” processed food actually is is shocking, even if you’re already down on corporate food.
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
These Final Hours
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Frank Ochieng @ SF Crowsnest
- Excerpt: In the blistering and noteworthy 2003 Australian apocalyptic low-budget film ‘These Final Hours’, writer-director Zak Hilditch delivers a somber and sleek story about mass paranoia and the redemptive vibes of one man caught up in the hysteria of the catastrophic bleakness that persists.
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Those Who Feel the Fire Burning
Tiger House
- João Pinto @ http://www.portal-cinema.com [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: It’s very bad and very simple…..Do I have to say more?
Time Lapse
- Marina Antunes @ Quiet Earth
- Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Brent McKnight @ Giant Freakin’ Robot
- Excerpt: ‘Time Lapse’ gives you a look at your dark, twisted future.
Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast
To the Fore
- James Marsh @ Screendaily.com
- Excerpt: Dante Lam returns to sports-based drama after the success of 2013’s Unbeatable, which scored US$5.7m at the Hong Kong box office (and US$18.5m in China) to become the year’s most successful homegrown offering. Throwing his net wider than the MMA cages of that film, To The Fore follows a trio of professional cyclists as they ascend into the sport’s top tier.
Tom at the Farm
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An overwrought pastiche of Hitchcock that makes less sense and renders its protagonist far less plausible the longer it goes on.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
- Aaron Pinkston @ Battleship Prentension
- Excerpt: Tom at the Farm film sits somewhere between a satisfying genre exercise and the complete vision of its filmmaker, sullying the idea of what could be if both are working at their highest level.
Top Spin
Trash
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Trash es una película yincana, y para pasar de una pista a otra, la trama da demasiados pasos; pero curiosamente, para resolver conflictos importantes, cogen atajos y los resuelven de la forma más simple e inverosímil posible.
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The boys deliver truly engrossing performances full of drama and inexplicably the same amount of optimism despite it. Each one proving the capacity to instill change is within us all.
- Sarah Ward @ Trespass Magazine
Triple 9
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: How did a genre-smashing director make a heist thriller so generic, with characters too unlikable to be engaging but not twisted enough to be intriguing?
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
The True Cost
Tu Dors Nicole
Two Men in Town
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Bouchareb’s tapestry of everyday life in this Southwest community is egalitarian and liberal in the manner of John Sayles. Both filmmakers are interested in the under-explored lives of those on the common fringe.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Excerpt: a standard dramatic exercise that ends in more or less the same place as it begins—a wide open expanse of dry, empty space.
Two Step
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: Two Step is a contemplation on laziness and the American dream of getting rich quick.
Unbranded
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Four modern-day cowboys drive 16 mustangs from Mexico to Canada in this sumptuously packaged and goofily charming oddball feature-length advocacy advertisement about America’s wild-horse overpopulation crisis.
Uncle Nick
- Sean Burns @ Movie Mezzanine
- Excerpt: I was not offended by the subject matter so much as I was depressed by the lazy, lameness of the gags.
Underdogs
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Unfreedom
United Passions
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: It’s deceptive, disgraceful and deplorable…
Unity
VANish
Veteran
- James Marsh @ South China Morning Post
- Excerpt: A renegade cop takes on the spoilt heir of a family-run conglomerate in Ryoo Seung-wan’s tightly-paced and sharp-witted crime thriller Veteran. Hwang Jung-min and Yoo Ah-in lead an impressive ensemble of familiar faces, while the themes of endemic corruption and cronyism in Korean big business strike a poignant chord.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Veteran is like Beverly Hills Cop remade with the young Jackie Chan.
Vice
The Walking Deceased
- Jeremy Kibler @ Diabolique Magazine
- Excerpt: The one high point about “The Walking Deceased” is that it at least doesn’t waste any talent.
The Wanted 18
- Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
War Room
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: This is the Kendrick Brothers’ most polished, most accomplished, most competent film, a massive leap in terms of both their own work and Christian independent filmmaking. It’s a testament to what can happen when writers/director get out of their own way, not make themselves the center of attention, move minorities up-front and center, and acknowledge(albeit in a small way) that there is such a thing as sin.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Proselytizing domestic drama, aimed at a church-going audience…
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Slick production values cannot overcome a preachy script full of strained metaphors delivered by wooden actors. Like a corporate promo video for God.
- Mike McGranaghan @ Film Racket
- Excerpt: One of the more entertaining and relatable faith-based films to hit the big screen in recent times.
We Come As Friends
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This beautifully shot documentary is an in depth examination of Sudan from myriad points of view.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The Sudan is big, unruly, magnificent, chaotic, sometimes beautiful, often painful. This movie is a lot like that too.
- Jonathan Ricjards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The Sudan is big, unruly, magnificent, chaotic, sometimes beautiful, often painful. This movie is a lot like that too.
Welcome Back
Welcome to Leith
The Well
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Western
- Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: Western sees their eye for subtle symbolism and ear for poetic soundscapes pushing further into the affectingly abstract, masterfully guiding us along a forlorn tour of a west where the hopes and dreams promised by the American frontier have begun to dissolve in a flood of offscreen drug fueled bloodshed.
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: A poignant story of a traditional, peaceful and productive way of live ripped apart by drugs and politicians.
What We Did on Our Holiday
- Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: A charming slice of British comedy that will contain many-a-moment recognisable to anyone who’s ever been on a holiday with their family.
- Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
- Sarah Ward @ Concrete Playground
When Animals Dream
When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
Wild Canaries
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: For suckers of whodunits where a would-be detective dresses in a Columbo trench coat, sunglasses and a floppy hat, and ducks behind trees when trailing the suspect, “Wild Canaries” is entirely inconsequential but utterly likable.
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Canaries is a lark, offering chuckles and grins if you let your defenses down
Wild City
- James Marsh @ TwitchFilm
- Excerpt: Ringo Lam’s first feature in 12 years sees the Hong Kong director return to familiar territory, as a former cop and his tearaway younger brother take on a violent gang of Taiwanese thugs after their paths cross that of a beautiful mainland woman. Since the 2003 Jean Claude Van Damme actioner In Hell, Lam has been all but absent from the filmmaking scene, with only a segment in 2007’s Triangle to his name in the interim. Wild City, which Lam also wrote, sees the helmer of City On Fire and Full Contact return to the bullet strewn streets of Hong Kong in typically assured fashion.
Wildlike
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: Using a blend of original footage, found footage, and traditional talking-heads-type interviews, Afineevsky easily encapsulates the sprawling messiness of the situation into a potent but digestible depiction of the complicated events that would soon give way to Russian retaliation in the form of the annexation of Crimea.
- Jennie Kermode @ Eye For Film
- Pat Mullen @ POV Magazine
- Excerpt: Filmmaking from the front lines
Wolf Totem
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Presented in IMAX 3D, there are scenes in this film that are literally breathtaking when they are not capturing or breaking the heart.
Woodlawn
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A film taken with the singular American delusion that Jesus loves football… though it also throws in a new delusion: Jesus hates the U.S. Constitution.
The World Made Straight
The World of Kanako
The Wrecking Crew
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: ‘The Wrecking Crew’ Introduces The Musicians Behind American Pop Music’s Biggest Records
- Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
- Frank Ochieng @ The Movie Database (TMDB)
- Excerpt: In many ways director Denny Tedesco’s music documentary “The Wrecking Crew” serves as a personal valentine…the message is still the same then as it is now: the blast to the past in sound and spirit will remain refreshingly in tact courtesy of the legacy that the famed The Wrecking Crew left in its everlasting wake of numerous musical avenues too plentiful to count.
The Yes Men Are Revolting
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: The continuing escapades and creative pranks of the Yes Men whose espousal of Crazy Wisdom bothers corporations and government agencies.
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Their pranks are no longer shocking, even when they work
- Ron Wilkinson @ Monsters and Critics
- Excerpt: Then, again, so are many corporations.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
- Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet isn’t a perfect film, and it doesn’t really burrow into the grieving process the way another thoroughly humane family film, Tiger Eyes (2013), does but it is a visually stunning, entertaining film loaded with sight gags and some genuine adventure.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A typical Jeunet film, which means that it’s amazingly accomplished from a technical point of view but synthetic and emotionally remote…a truly personal effort that has to be taken on its own terms or not at all.
- Sarah Ward @ FilmInk
Zarafa
- Carson Lund @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: While Zarafa shares surface similarities with vintage Disney films like Aladdin and The Rescuers Down Under, it misses their machinelike narrative simplicity. The film crams a great deal of cross-country incident into its lean 78-minute runtime without sticking to an emotional through line within the sprawl
Zhong Kui: Snow Girl and the Dark Cryatl
Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal
- James Marsh @ Twitch
- Excerpt: Acclaimed Hong Kong cinematographer Peter Pau takes another swing at directing a major motion picture with this grand scale fantasy about legendary demon queller Zhong Kui. Assisted by co-director Zhao Tianyu and featuring some spirited performances, the result is a bumpy, yet enjoyable tale of otherworldly romance and adventure.
Zipper
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Another cautionary tale that hits a snag…
- Oktay Kozak @ The Playlist