For a film to get its own page on the main 2018 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.
1945
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Török’s use of black-and-white cinematography becomes a potent metaphor for good and evil with no shading in between.
1983
Sean Axmaker @ Film Noir Foundation
- Excerpt: Think of it as an Eastern European answer to Amazon Prime’s “The Man in the High Castle” by way of the skewed Cold War tensions of “Counterpart,” an Iron Curtain noir filmed in a shadowy style recalling Michael Mann and early Ridley Scott.
1985
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [I] appreciate that Tan embraces complexity, flaws, and compassion when he could have ignored them for a bow-tied catharsis.
#Screamers
- Excerpt: I give #Screamers the slightest, most blink-and-you-miss nod for gunning right for high-pitched squeals, but concept dynamics will be labeled “cheap” by horror vets (and with good reason).
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
¿Quién Eres Tú?
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
1%
- Excerpt: Director Stephen McCallum’s deafening debut dives into the Australian biker underworld with a roar, grabbing that glamorised Sons of Anarchy image and bludgeoning it to death. The raw and disturbing Macbeth riff from writer and star Matt Nable has no sentimentality for the ‘brotherhood’ of the biker; instead power – sexual, physical and psychological – corrupts absolutely.
102 Not Out
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
12 Days
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
12 Strong
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: We don’t question why they do [what they’re doing] because we all saw those towers fall. We simply watch how they managed to complete the impossible. Fuglsig’s job was to document, commemorate, and inspire. He does all three.
14 Cameras
- Excerpt: 14 cameras is at its strongest when depicting the conflicts that Gerald’s behaviour, which quickly extends to stealing from his tenants and messing with their stuff, provokes between them.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: In a day and age where stories about landlords spying on their tenants have become sadly commonplace, 14 Cameras is incredibly relevant. It reflects the fears we have about urbanism, all the anxious aspects of living in a city.
The 15:17 to Paris
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
1950: La Insurrección Nacionalista
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
2.0
- Excerpt: At the end of it, ‘2.0’ ends up a generic, uninspired film that fails to utilize its resources. Rajinikanth is topnotch and so is Akshay Kumar but neither is able to salvage the film from setting in monotony of great degrees.
22 July
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: As per usual, I admire what Paul Greengrass with 22 July, and while I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t work, it does leave me cold.
Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth
- Excerpt: Most parts of “22 July” may have reached their true potential if they had been addressed in individual works. In trying to offer a panoptic view of the Norway attacks, Greengrass has crafted an intriguing but overlong procedural that is at once heavy on details and lacking in depth.
24 Frames
- Excerpt: The Criterion edition of 24 Frames is a fittingly superb tribute to a great artist.
24 Hours to Live
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Uma perda de tempo até para quem toda a eternidade pela frente
3 Faces
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Alan Mattli @ Maximum Cinema [German]
- Excerpt: Under a slightly chaotic surface – probably caused at least in part by Panahi’s newfound “freedom” – “3 Faces” is a captivating exploration of Iran’s social, political, and artistic past, present, and future.
306 Hollywood
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Maybe the Bogarins keep pulling new tricks out of their bag to distract us from the creeping suspicion that this is all just exploitation of a dead woman’s private life.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: If Wes Anderson made a documentary about a deceased loved one, it might look a lot like this one.
Glenn Dunks @ The Film Experience
53 Wars
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Bukowska makes sure we become as fixated on Anna as she is on Witek, as cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk’s camera creeps ever closer to her, his stifling approach matched by dislocating sound design and Natalia Fiedorczuk-Cieslak’s score.
7 Days in Entebbe
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: The hijacking thriller ‘7 Days in Entebbe’ is absorbing enough but barely lifts off the runway.
90th Oscars: Nominated Shorts
93Queen
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An enormously entertaining portrait of Hasidic women who started their own all-female EMS team in Brooklyn. Eye-opening and stereotype-shattering.
- Excerpt: It’s rough at the edges, but it still makes for compelling viewing because the charged nature of the situation an the force of will thereby required to get it off the ground.
A.I. Tales
- Excerpt: The bleak point of view is strongly reminiscent of the TV series “Black Mirror”.
Aardvark
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Abducted in Plain Sight (Forever B)
- Excerpt: Abducted In Plain Sight is an absolutely outstanding crime doc.
Abe & Phil’s Last Poker Game
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper
- Excerpt: The film has its moments, but is it the film Martin Landau deserved as his farewell performance?
Acid Forest
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: From the perspective of the tourist comments, the viewer recognizes the debate. Should we enter the ecosystem and kill the birds, or let them denude our forests as nature takes its course?
Acrimony
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: On one hand, it’s thematically muddled, and it’s treatment of mental illness is a skosh problematic. However, Taraji P. Henson is so engaging and the story is just nutty enough to make it entertaining.
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Tyler Perry Risks It All With ‘Acrimony’
Action Point
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Action Point isn’t the new Jackass that people may have wanted, but I was surprised at how much fun I had with its more simple and nostalgic pleasures. There’s an anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate, punk rock edge that it captures from its influences, and I couldn’t help but get caught up in its celebration of carelessness.
Actors of Sound
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: A perfect illustration of the power of sound.
Adrift
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: True story of a brave young woman who has her heart and hopes tested during a catastrophe at sea.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Kristy Puchko @ Pajiba.com
- Excerpt: Adrift is a film with startling intimacy, grounded romance, and sly sophistication.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Brings nothing new to the table but Shailene Woodley’s superb performance keeps this survival drama afloat – and often emotional.
Against the Night
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Ahockalypse
- Excerpt: Wayne Harry Johnson Jr.’s Ahockalypse wants to be Goon meets George A. Romero, but this knucklepuck of a dreadful horror comedy misses the net, Plexiglas boards, safety netting, and doesn’t even land in the same arena.
Aiyaary
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Alex Strangelove
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
All About Nina
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Hail Mary, full of rage. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is utterly incendiary in this own-worst-enemy dramedy that gender-flips a tired genre to give angry new voice to a woman speaking her own truths.
Danielle Solzman @ Solzy at the Movies
All I Wish
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Most of the comedy bits don’t work as well as the dramatic scenes in this uneven rom-com starring Sharon Stone and Tony Goldwyn.
All the Creatures Were Stirring
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: There is an inherently mixed-bag quality to the omnibus structure, as not every storyline can possibly be tantamount to a bull’s-eye, and in the case of “All the Creatures Were Stirring,” only two out of the five are solid.
All the Devil’s Men
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: High in the bullets per minute ratings but low on the plot and acting scale, there are better things in store for this cast and crew.
Allure
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Way too often the abused becomes abuser, leading to a continuous chain of violence and psychological torment spanning generations. A Worthy Companion seeks to get to the heart of how these tortured souls must impossibly reconcile love, hate, jealousy, and rage at once.
Amateurs
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: “Amateurs” was their brave choice to open the festival. Filmed liked a documentary about two sets of filmmakers making a marketing film about their town, the experimental Swedish film breaks the rules about film-making, challenging the viewer in several directions at once.
Amazing Grace
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Amazing Grace doesn’t just take us to church – it lifts us up to the heavens.
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: [A] soulfully dynamic documentary. Amazing Grace is a resonating reminder of what a legendary entertainer Aretha Franklin was in conviction and consciousness. Purely uplifting in its astounding skin, Amazing Grace does Aretha Franklin’s legacy proud.
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A documentary presenting Aretha Franklin with choir at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles in January 1972.
American Chaos
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: Interviews with Trump supporters in the 2016 Presidential campaign that prove passion beats pragmatism.
American Dharma
- Excerpt: Morris finds himself ultimately negotiating the finer points of a deal with the proverbial Devil. Bannon is here to court the credibility afforded subjects of Morris’ Oscar winning lens, but he has little intention of inviting the filmmaker’s full scrutiny.
The American Meme
Chris Barsanti @ Eyes Wide Open
Los Amores Cobardes
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
An Ordinary Man
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This story isn’t working towards a solution or revisionist history. It merely reminds us that the Devil doesn’t commit atrocities. Men and women do.
And Breathe Normally
Candice Frederick @ New York Times
And Then I Go
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It isn’t sympathy that Grashaw seeks. Just because he doesn’t present these kids with revulsion doesn’t mean he’s setting them up to be forgiven. The film is merely presenting its central character with honesty and authenticity.
El Angel
Anne Hoyt @ AARP.org [Spanish]
Scott Phillips @ The Movie Isle
Angelo
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Not a black and white issue.
Angels Are Made Of Light
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Angels Wear White
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Angels Wear White becomes a bottomless pit of despair consuming complex characters with nowhere to go. There’s a glimmer of hope at the very end, but it can’t help from feeling bittersweet considering the long list of people who’ve been virtually run over by a freight train of hearsay, double-talk, and empty promises.
Animal World
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Rock-Paper-Scissors has never been this confusing.
The Announcement
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Recalling the bone-dry wit of the likes of Pablo Larrain mixed with a dash of the absurdity of Samuel Beckett, this is as much a waiting game as an action plan
Anon
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Works like a half-baked ‘Black Mirror’ episode.
Aos Teus Olhos
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Uma obra aguda, pertinente e contemporânea com uma atuação memorável de Daniel de Oliveira
Apocalypsis
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Taken at face value, Apocalypsis is an ecumenical outreach from the end times crowd to the chemtrails crowd, with bad acting and cheap but surprisingly effective acid trip visuals sprinkled throughout.
Apostasy
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A scathing critique of inhumanity in the name of religion — in this case, Jehovah’s Witnesses — made all the more chilling by its drab colorlessness and mute suffocation.
Apostle
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The influences are clear, but Gareth Evans weaves in and out of several genres in a way that feels distinctly his own, and for what he’s trying to do here, I think it’s one hell of a success.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Have faith.
Scott Phillips @ The Movie Isle
The Apparition
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A touching drama about a teenage girl and the reporter investigating her claims to have seen the Virgin Mary.
Arctic
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Arctic makes you feel the decisions that Mikkelsen’s character has to make.
Arizona
- Excerpt: You’re here for the Danny McBride murder show and you’ll get it – just not much else.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The ride is far from perfect and most characters do nothing but add fuel to an already burning fire, but that’s to be expected. It’s stupid, exploits the housing crisis as fodder for violent lunacy, and murders with impunity. But I did have fun.
- Excerpt: Arizona is a skillfully crafted exercise with a superior cast, and it’s good enough to keep you watching, while delivering plenty of gallows humor and a few shockers you didn’t see coming. It’s a small film that gets bigger the more closely you look at it.
Arthur Miller: Writer
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A thoughtful and ethically illuminating documentary about the famous playwright.
Aruna & Lidahnya
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Assassination Nation
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: As far as this kind of satire goes, it’s a bit on the messy side, especially in terms of coherent theming. However, its anger is palpable and righteous, and – more importantly – it rings true.
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
The Atomic Cafe
Daniel Schindel @ Hyperallergic
Await Further Instructions
- Excerpt: Johnny Kevorkian’s Await Further Instructions buzzes with *hard* sci-fi commentary meant to dissuade civilization’s unhealthy habit of enslavement to screened devices.
A-X-L
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: Intriguing sci-fi thriller that explores what can happen when robots become smarter than humans.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It doesn’t seem to have any ambitions higher than just being another one of these boy-and-his-dog movies, but it has its charms, which will likely work better on younger audiences. It’s bland and by-the-numbers, but not a total waste of time.
Ayka
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
Ayla
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Back Roads
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Alex Pettyfer tells a story that feels like a tragedy transplanted from Ancient Greece to the northeastern, Mid-Atlantic United States, doing so with an emotional depth some older directors can’t manage.
Back to Burgundy
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An appealing blend of picturesque scenes and an engaging examination of the siblings struggling together in a French vineyard.
Backtrace
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Bad Samaritan
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Whatever the reasons for his villainy, this is a fun, clever and tense little thriller that doesn’t exactly offer a fresh take on its genre but executes it well and with a nod toward the cultural and political realities of the present day.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Bad Samaritan isn’t the kind of film I’d recommend you go see. However, if you are having some kind of get together with friends, and you want to watch something that everyone can have fun with, this might do the trick.
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
A Bag of Marbles
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: In Christian Duguay’s impressive real life tale of survival, A Bag of Marbles, there are many lessons to be learned.
Baja
- Excerpt: BAJA reminds the viewer of the 1980s “school break” and “student mischief” films
The Ballad of Lefty Brown
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Bar Bahar
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s been described as an “Arabic Girls” and that’s not far off the mark. There’s a little of everything from gender, sexuality, religion, politics, and urban versus rural lifestyle.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
Beautiful Things
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Beauty and the Dogs
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: There’s no better way to show these power dynamics than via long takes. By letting the events play out, Hania refuses to let her lead off the hook emotionally. Al Ferjani is therefore thrown into the fire, her Mariam an exposed nerve reacting on impulse to everything that occurs.
Before I Wake
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Before I Wake is a warm blend of gloomy nightmares and deceptive brightness, emotionally accomplished in ways that establish an unbreakable, soulful connection.
Beirut
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: BEIRUT is understated in his suspense, but it’s perhaps all the more effective for that approach as it explores its cynical view of realpolitks of the region.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: A limp thriller that feels like a relic of Hollywood’s past. A good Jon Hamm performance isn’t enough to save it.
- Excerpt: We’re still waiting for the role that will prove that Jon Hamm has a future after Mad Men.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Brad Anderson’s ‘Beirut’ is a well-crafted political thriller with Jon Hamm’s best big-screen performance yet.
Bel Canto
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/28631/bel-canto
Believer
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A serviceable, engaging, mostly effective tangled tale of cops and criminals.
Benji
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Too bad there’s no Oscar for Best Animal Performance of the Year. Benji would win hands — er paws — down.
The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Erffa’s willingness to scrutinise her own motivations is what lifts this documentary above the ordinary.
Between Worlds
Ron Wilkinson @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Nick and Franka develop an off-beat chemistry in a light duty possession noir.
Bhavesh Joshi Superhero
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Big Fish & Begonia
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A creative Chinese animated film that marvels at mysterious connections.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The result is a fantasy adventure with high stakes despite death seeming impermanent throughout. Rather than be about finding eternal life like many tales of its kind are, Big Fish & Begonia is about giving it.
- Excerpt: Big Fish and Begonia offers audiences a richly realized world with a fascinating tale, and a blushing romance. It’s absolutely lovely, tip to tail
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Big Legend
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Bilal
James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: While Bilal itself feels ultimately like a misfire, there is enough good within it to suggest the potential for great things to come from Barajoun Entertainment in the future.
Billionaire Boys Club
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Dull, unlikable, and basically works like third-rate, dumbed-down version of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’
Birds Without Feathers
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Wendy McColm’s debut feature is a defiantly odd duck; a near-comedy about self-absorbed young people desperate to connect and perversely unable to get out of their own way. It seems like the kind of script you might write in the aftermath of a post-breakup acid trip.
Bisbee ’17
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: With shots that start before the takes do, showing interview subjects preparing or simply sitting still, it’s clear that Robert Greene, in making Bisbee ’17, is interested in something more than a straightforward account of his film’s subject.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Greene introduces his premise as though a game and then lets the camera capture personal truths his amateur actors learn in the process.
Bitter Money
Daniel Schindel @ Hyperallergic
Black ’47
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: A feast of a famine western.
Blade of the Immortal
Blood Fest
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: The first hour or so is up-tempo and energetic and has a grand old time spraying blood and winking at horror fans. It’s sloppy and bumpy and silly, but it’s also manic and gleeful, a joyous, modestly engaging celebration of splatter and gore. But it falters on the home stretch.
- Excerpt: After an incredibly spirited and entertaining first hour, Blood Fest gets tripped up on its laborious explaining about the hows of this terrifying event.
Blood Honey
- Excerpt: Blood Honey will leave you with a craving for something sweet when it never delivers on its decadently gruesome promise.
Blood of Wolves
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Blood Paradise
- Excerpt: …plays, more than anything, like a calling card for lead Andréa Winter, who is only competent as an actress but who has movie star looks and a fiery sex appeal stoked by her eagerness to frequently disrobe.
Bloodline
Ron Wilkinson @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Revenge thriller stays in safe territory with good effects and a sound plot, but better things are yet to come.
Blue Breath
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Ribeira Quente is a fishing village in S. Miguel Island in the Azores facing the last days of a fishing activity as they know it.
Blue My Mind
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Blue My Mind’s liquid coming-of-self fluidity is a well represented young girls experience with new feelings, unable to wrestle against changes far beyond her control.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A delicate coming-of-age story and tale of female friendship mixed with squirm-inducing body horror, Lisa Bruhlmann’s debut, Blue My Mind, casts unsettling shades of Raw, The Lure, and Cronenberg.
Bodied
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: Bodied is a sharp and hilarious satire that tackles the complexities of woke culture by exploring the world of battle rap.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A wild ride, even if it ultimately doesn’t go anywhere.
Boom for Real
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Borg vs. McEnroe
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: And while I would have liked more tennis—even if they used archival footage of the match itself—I understand the decision to focus where the filmmakers do. You cannot deny the appeal of stripping away the talk so we see the vulnerability swirling beneath.
Born Guilty
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Boundaries
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: With these details, as with the movie in general, Feste takes the easy route.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Though this road-trip dramcom has sincere sentiments, adorable dogs, and understated performances from an impeccable cast, a few road blocks threaten to ruin the journey.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Mildly wacky road-trip shenanigans meet mildly uncomfortable family dramedy. The saving grace? The cast is a joy to spend time with.
The Boy Downstairs
- Excerpt: Bland, unsatisfying, and a waste of one really good element.
Boy Erased
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Boy Erased means well, but dramatically it’s inert.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Edgerton fleshed out the contradictions and challenges [the Eamons] face very well with the help of nuanced performances. [Not so much the other characters.]
Jonathan Richards @ Pasatiempo
- Excerpt: It’s when he cries out for help and his mother’s protective instincts kick in that the movie realizes its most affecting moments. Kidman, up till then a bit of a cipher, seizes the narrative.
Júlio Cézar Rodrigues @ Megalomania Cultural [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: The script is good and the performances are brilliant, but the most important thing about this project is the story that it tells.
Boys Cry
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Braven
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Jason Momoa goes full raging “papa bear” with a punishing 90s punch (er, axe throw). Garret Dillahunt gets his “mean sonofabitch” on.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: If Jason Momoa wants to churn out one of these DTV-style actioners between superhero jaunts, I’m game.
A Bread Factory
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The film is a delightfully idiosyncratic and ambitious exploration of art and community. It may be long, but it’s also a very rewarding and singular experience.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [It] speaks about just how inseparable art and life is—the ways we use it to heal, grow, and see. Art is that which makes us human.
A Bread Factory, Part One
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: The prime mastermind of this fascinating approach to storytelling is Patrick Wang (“In the Family”), a multi-talented, handsome, brilliant MIT economic major who wrote and directed this rich feast of dramatic excellence.
A Bread Factory, Part Two
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: In case “Part One” wasn’t experimental enough, this time Wang incorporates the ancient Greek play, “Hecuba,” to produce an intellectual banquet.
The Breaker Upperers
Breaking & Exiting
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: Breaking & Exiting should be more than a movie-going misdemeanor in this felonious flop devoted to a pair of lop-sided lonely hearts in transition.
Breaking In
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The simplicity isn’t a bad thing, but what you are supposed to do is use the barebones plotting to create a foundation for stylistic flourishes, nutty setpieces, interesting characters, and genre gruesomeness to be built upon. It’s a shame because Gabrielle Union is giving her all here.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Gabrielle Union is terrific. She deserves so much better than this. And so do audiences.
Robert Yaniz Jr. @ Monkeys Fighting Robots
Breaking in
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Critics
- Excerpt: Experiencing cabin fever in the generic home invasion thriller Breaking In is the least of the problems. And although the beautiful and gritty Union busts some chops in this uneven vanity vehicle meant to showcase a sense of motherly/female empowerment, the audience will feel none of this as Union and her on-screen offspring toil in this recycled, hysterical house of hokum.
Breath
- Excerpt: Simon Baker (from T.V’s The Mentalist and L.A. Confidential) charges into the director’s chair with dramatic intensity and confidence, adapting Tim Winton 70s coming of age novel Breath.
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: A deft coming of age story that explores masculinity and fear, and, like surfing, is equally about what’s beneath as on the surface.
Bright
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Brother of the Year
Bavner Donaldo @ CINEJOUR [Indonesian]
Brother’s Nest
- Excerpt: While this twisted tale has been drawing convenient comparisons to the work of the Coen Brothers, Brothers’ Nest makes Blood Simple look like The Wizard of Oz.
Buffalo Boys
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Matt Donato @ SlashFilm
- Excerpt: Mike Wiluan’s Buffalo Boys is a pulpy, Wild West-inspired revenge thriller by way of Javanese commemoration.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: ‘Buffalo Boys’ is an ambitious effort that loses out to clumsy script and seriously weak direction.
Bullitt County
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: What McCracken supplies during the final thirty minutes is a short film unto itself with relevant psychological import.
But Deliver Us From Evil
Mark H. Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Buy Me a Gun
Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth [German]
- Excerpt: The broad yet aimless selection of ideas makes the film, director Julio Hernández Cordón’s seventh feature in ten years, feel like a debut.
BuyBust
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Fans of ‘The Raid’ take note.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: There’s a lot to like about what Matti accomplished, but it’s tough not to wish it were pared down to be as lean and mean as its star. I’d say I simply expected too much, but the ending shows I didn’t. The film unfortunately spends too long forgetting it had that socially relevant story to tell.
The Cakemaker
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: The Cakemaker, Israel’s 2019 Oscar entry, is a quiet and sweet drama with a great lead performance by Tim Kalkhof.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Rather than become an over-the-top melodrama, The Cakemaker asks profound questions about the complexity of human nature, empathy, and our value beyond archaic doctrines that serve to separate more than unite. It offers two unforgettably complex leads struggling to find their worth in the wake of devastating news that inexplicably find themselves able to help steady the other despite their unknown roles in shattering the other’s foundation in the first place.
- Excerpt: Empathy is the hallmark of first-time filmmaker Ofir Raul Graizer’s ‘The Cakemaker’ which Israel’s official entry to the 91st Academy Awards.
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: An intriguing and atmospheric drama from the debut of the middle-aged Israeli writer-director Ofir Raul Graizer.
Calibre
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
Camorra
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Not much explanation is needed to be immersed in the mournful and well-edited examination of a city in which the citizens become unwitting “foot soldiers’.
Canary
- Excerpt: http://www.jamesweggreview.org/Articles.aspx?ID=2185.
Capernaum
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The plight of the powerless – children, the poor, undocumented immigrants – in [Labaki’s] home country must be a cause close to her heart because you can feel her passion in every frame of her film.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Harrowing and heartbreaking, a nightmare dystopia that could almost be a documentary. This tough but essential film slyly asks us to consider what we owe children, not just our own but the world’s.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: If that sounds extremely depressing, you won’t be surprised to hear it is. What makes Labaki’s work so great is that she still somehow finds a way to inject humor into the horror. It helps that she found a boy as charismatic and fierce as Al Rafeea.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: “Capernaum” has my vote for Best Film in a Foreign Language. There is no master greater in the current cinematic world than Nadine Labaki, writer/director extraordinaire. This is the best film of the year, if not the decade.
The Captain
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: If you think war is hell, see what happens when it stops.
Cargo
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The filmmakers took a simple short film and expanded it in ways that are smart and thrilling while still making its emotionally devastating finale just as powerful, if not more so. Martin Freeman gives one of his best performances here.
- Excerpt: Sometimes slow, sometimes expected, but still Cargo out-dramatizes The Walking Dead with an Aussie’s pep in its step. Blessed be this father, daughter and their unholy pursuers.
- Excerpt: Ramke and Howling have created a distinctive vision of the zombie genre that’s true to its Romero-cemented history of subversion, yet resists his thirst for onscreen carnage.
Carmine Street Guitars
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
The Catcher Was a Spy
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: The true story of a baseball player who loves both games and secrets.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This spy film looks great. Costumes, sets and atmospheric cinematography help create a “you are there” feel to most scenes.
CC
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
C’est la vie
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: Off-kilter characters and a sweet, sentimental heart that builds to a good-natured, ludicrous high.
The Chamber
- Excerpt: One-location films like The Chamber are faithfully reliant on character structures and evolutions, which is where Ben Parker’s execution falters most.
Change in the Air
- Excerpt: The film has about as much resonance as a “Coexist” bumper sticker. Without a compelling, coherent narrative drive, the film’s own spirit sags.
Chappaquiddick
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s a film that should be subversive, thoughtful, and leave the audience with complex emotions, but it just doesn’t. If you know nothing about this story, there is some value here, but unlike Ted’s account of the fateful accident, there is no more to Chappaquiddick than meets the eye.
Simon Miraudo @ Student Edge
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Whether a product of the script as written or of Curran’s directorial decisions, the second half of Chappaquiddick plays like comedy. Ted is literally making things worse with every step forward that he takes.
Charm City
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
The Charmer
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …it is quite the surprise to learn that we’ve really been watching a psychological thriller of sorts, Esmail wearing so many masks we never see him clearly until the film’s final moments.
Chasing Portraits
Chasing the Blues
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: If you can’t buy into [Rosenmeyer and Conner’s] pratfalls and sarcastic anger, the whole can easily fall apart. Luckily they’re quick to endear themselves to us so we can look past any hiccups and let their sitcom antics sustain a brisk sub-80-minute runtime.
Checkered Ninja
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A possessed Ninja doll teams up with a teenage boy to avenge the murder of a poor child factory worker.
Chien de Gare
- Excerpt: A nitty gritty family drama set in the world of petty crime and featuring a roster of actors performing as if each one is in a different film, Chien de garde is bold, but all over the map.
China Salesman
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
The Christmas Chronicles
- Excerpt: With its saccharine score, saturated cinematography, and trite platitudes, the film is formulaic and forgettable except for Kurt Russell’s performance as the lovable legend.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Kurt Russell’s hot biker Santa is naughty and nice, but this otherwise discount holiday schmaltz is only half onboard with him.
Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires
- Excerpt: Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires understands its audience well, and wears its own love of genre proudly on its sleeve.
Cinema Axis
The Citizen
Josh Brunsting @ Criterion Cast
Citizen Lane
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
City of Joy
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: An inspiring story of compassion and service in a program training rape victims to be community leaders.
Claire’s Camera
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A slowed-down drama rendered with simplicity and nuance.
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: O exercício espontâneo de conferir à trivialidade uma artisticidade invisível a nossos olhos
Closure
James Wegg @ JWR [French]
- Excerpt: Coming to a logical conclusion
The Clovehitch Killer
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: What occurs in this movie isn’t a means to expose those “accomplices in silence” as wrong, though. No, The Clovehitch Killer seems to be condoning them.
Cobra Kai
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
CoinCoin and the Extra-Humans
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: ..it captures the Western world’s current mood of ambivalent anxiety as well as anything out there. An apocalypse is coming—maybe—and it’s actually sort of funny—a little.
Cold Skin
Josh Brunsting @ Criterion Cast
Kristy Puchko @ Pajiba.com
- Excerpt: Cold Skin doesn’t have anywhere satisfying to go or anything fresh to say.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Cold Skin is not for faint of heart. But it’s pure cinematic art.
Come Sunday
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Theologically, the movie is the equivalent of a Christmas and Easter Christian.
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Netflix’s ‘Come Sunday’ Will Strike A Chord In Even The Most Reluctant Among Us
The Con Is On
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Talent galore signed up for this misguided comedy. Too bad these fine actors fail to make us laugh.
Cop Chronicles: Loose Cannons: The Legend of the Haj-Mirage
- Excerpt: underneath the willfully dumb gags, Cop Chronicles shows a deep love of this genre, awareness of its flaws, and pokes everyone with abandon
Counterfeiters
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: In this riveting independent film, the director also plays the starring role and earns our empathy despite the character’s wrong actions. Not an easy task!
Cradle of Champions
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Luckily the broader topics of boxing as a sanctuary of mind, body, and spirit shine above [the often warring] individual narratives.
Crazy Famous
- Excerpt: There are moments that are reminiscent of Arthur Hiller’s THE IN- LAWS. The film would be better with more such moments, but I will take what I can get
Crime + Punishment
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Crime + Punishment’ Reveals Devastating Problems With No Easy Answers
Crimosn Red Sky
- Excerpt: Veteran Mani Ratnam’s latest is an unconvincing gangster drama which is high on testosterone and relies needlessly on run-of-the-mill heroics.
A Crooked Somebody
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: A Crooked Somebody develops into a resonant character study depicting the myriad ways we take advantage of others. It’s about the white lies we spin to justify actions we know aren’t quite justifiable because we assume everyone else is doing the same thing.
The Cured
- Excerpt: Inquisitive, symbolic and almost consistent throughout – shades of something greater stuck in a medium place of pretty ok-ish subgenre normalities.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Curvature
- Excerpt: The story is not really new, but it has enough science fiction to satisfy viewers tired of superheroes.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It can be a bit too pandering at times when things that read visually and emotionally are also explained verbally, but I don’t think these moments ruin the effectiveness of the over-arching narrative propulsion. The central journey works in motive and deception very well to keep our interest as far as discovering where it will all lead. From start to finish that trajectory kept me hooked.
Custody
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Custody embodies the essence of harrowing drama in its pure, distilled, un-contrived form.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The intensity is too much to bear in the best possible way. Legrand knows exactly where to position his characters and what’s necessary to break them.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Custody will no doubt be difficult to watch for women who’ve experienced abuse. For everyone else, it’s a film begging society to pay attention, to listen to women when they share those experiences.
Daddy Issues
- Excerpt: Fulfilling a dream takes a curious route
Damo and Iver: The Movie
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Dance Academy
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Leading lady Xenia Goodwin delivers an endearing performance in this lovely ballet film. She projects an ethereal quality when she dances — and even in other scenes.
Dance Baby Dance
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Although a low-budget offering with less than perfect production values, this film makes up for that with its great heart and passion for dance.
Dark Crimes
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Dreariness drowns us in this thriller without any thrills.
Dark Money
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An expose of how political campaigns are being funded with little or no disclosure of where the money is coming from.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s therefore great that Dark Money has the backing of PBS to be utilized as an educational tool. There’s a lot of information, but it’s all given proper context with which to comprehend its explosive ramifications.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: This film by Kimberly Reed needs to be seen by anyone contemplating running for office, anyone holding office, and all of us who are voters wondering what to believe. It’s a film in democracy and how to keep it.
The Darkest Hour
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Embora ancarado pela performance de Gary Oldman, é o trabalho mais problemático de Joe Wright
The Darkest Minds
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The Darkest Minds may be less painful than other films of its kind, but it still feels like business as usual. The filmmakers are trying, but the experience doesn’t add up to anything particularly meaningful or relevant despite ample opportunity to do so.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Hugo Gomes @ Cinematograficamente Falando … [Portuguese]
Daughter of Mine
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Day of the Dead: Bloodline
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: No ifs, ands or Bubs about it, the memory of Day Of The Dead: Bloodline will decay at lightning speed.
The Dead and the Others
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
Dead Shack
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The comedy is where the film excels, the blood and gore a means to earning bigger guffaws while providing survivors with the set-up for their gloriously inappropriate punch lines.
Dear Dictator
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Michael Caine as a Castro-like dictator? That doesn’t work — and silly scenes overwhelm the story.
Deep Blue Sea 2
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Funny how five sharks are shown in the marketing material yet we barely even see one the whole film.
The Delinquent Season
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Demon House
Mark H. Harris @ Black Horror Movies
A Demon Within
- Excerpt: A Demon Within is a seen-it-before possession thriller that brings nothing new to the conversation. Not the worst, but also not a “hidden secret.”
Den of Thieves
- Excerpt: I would have paid good money to be in this film’s editing room when someone justified keeping *so much* useless exposition from being cut.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Just the kind of bargain-bin ‘Heat’ knockoff I wanted.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Destination Wedding
Emmanuel Báez @ Cinéfiloz [Spanish]
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Witty, wonderful and wildly audacious, this uproarious romcom for cynics is a pure delight.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A dark, bitter bonbon of an anti-romcom: so marvelously unromantic, so beautifully catty and witty. Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder were born to play these roles.
- Excerpt: There is so much gleeful fun which comes from watching two misanthropes – played by Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder – hate-watch a wedding.
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: If a decent script ever took his circumstances seriously, it would propel the Detective and the series to a hint of cinematic respect. Instead, Detective Dee must suffer through B-movie CGI, nebulous villains from this year’s political enemy, and a cabinet full of stock character stereotypes. ?
Detour
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: One of the greatest noirs of all time, shot on an almost non-existent budget, lives again.
Deva
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Szöcs has good ideas for the look and framing of the film but a feel for the characters is missing.
The Devil and Father Amorth
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It is a light and quick watch with some moments that do work effectively, and Friedkin makes for a fun host. However, it is disappointing to see a master filmmaker like William Friedkin deliver a very basic and (at times, straight up shoddy) talking head documentary that lacks the visceral and intellectual curiosity of his many classics.
The Devil’s Doorway
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It might not change your overall opinion on the value of found footage horror, but I think this film is one of not-very-many that actually brings a level of artistry that is lacking with other films of its kind. It’s got a ton of mood, rock solid performances, and a thoughtful yet economically told story that gets you in and out within 76 minutes without feeling rushed.
- Excerpt: Given how The Devil’s Doorway barrels straight into Catholicism damnation, you could do *far* worse – especially considering how history and horror collide.
Devil’s Gate
- Excerpt: Devil’s Gate beams into its story with reckless abandon, but advances far quicker than audiences keep up with. At least there are some cool Javier Botet aliens, though?
Diamantino
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Wilkerson is absolving himself of demons by calling them by their name. But while that sounds revelatory as a live installation, something gets lost in this translation.
The Director and the Jedi
Dirtbag
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Beckey does not wax about the environment, the purpose of life or the comraderie of rock-climbing expeditions. He says his joy is, in part, risking his life and surviving against all odds.
Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A compelling, cantankerous subject who’s also kind of a dick, makes ‘Dirtbag’ fascinating and entertaining as hell.
Distant Constellation
Ronald Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: A slow burn look at memory and reality, hope and forgiveness.
Do You Trust This Computer?
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: This slick gloss on the state of AI is frustratingly scattershot and won’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. But its warnings about how we’ve dealt with huge and rapid scientific leaps before are worthy ones.
Don’t Leave Home
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …Tully’s creepy Catholic allegory hits high notes in its climax that recall Kubrick and Polanski.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Don’t Leave Home is a very assured film that keeps its pacing deliberate, but always unsettling. Not everyone will gel with its wavelength, but it will reward your patience.
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Esta incursão de Tully no género não é para todos os públicos e não deve ser vista ao início da tarde, mas merece uma oportunidade.
Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far On Foot
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: While Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot may lean a bit too hard on the conventions that made Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting work so well, there’s a sense of accomplishment to be found in this film’s performances, Van Sant’s choices, and the genuine feelings the film creates.
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: It’s hard to know how to feel about Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot because it’s never entirely clear how the movie feels about itself, its subject and its themes.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth
- Excerpt: Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is a freewheeling and messy affair full of competent filmmaking, brilliant moments, and questionable ideas. In short, it’s a Gus Van Sant movie.
Diego Salgado @ Guiadelocio [Spanish]
Double Lover
Doubtful
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: An exposed open wound of a performance.
Down a Dark Hall
Steve Biodrowski @ Hollywood Gothique
- Excerpt: Moody and creepy, this Gothic thriller is admirable in its effort to achieve subtle scares but ultimately too tame to truly thrill.
- Excerpt: Down a Dark Hall feels so unsatisfyingly familiar (Guillermo del Toro Lite), from lost children who are never accounted for to horror tropes that are neither clever nor timed correctly to stuffy cinematography.
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal
- Excerpt: Apesar de ter financiamento catalão, é mais um produto para o público americano do que terror à moda espanhola.
Downrange
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Downrange is] a low budget suspense horror focusing on the fears, anxieties, and impatience of a few twenty-somethings stuck in a desperate situation.
Drvo – a Árvore
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
Dublin Oldschool
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Dumplin’
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: Dumplin’ is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. It’s warm, filling, satisfying, and exactly what you’d expect, but that’s why it works.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Although delivering an important message, DUMPLIN’ also ends up being a must-see for Dolly Parton fans and for people who love films about beauty pageants.
Dumplin’
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A lovely movie that warmly embraces a wide(ish) range of girls-and-women-as-people, one that doesn’t reduce its large heroine — the amazing Danielle Macdonald — to nothing more than her size. This should not feel so damn radical, but it is.
Dynamite Graffiti
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Early Man
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: EARLY MAN tells a ripping yarn whose outcome may be a foregone conclusion, but it does take a sprightly scenic route to get there.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Eating Animals
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The philosophical and the sentimental trump the practical in this exposé of factory farming that, while effective in showing us the horrors, offers only simplistic solutions.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: So the question you have to ask yourself is whether a documentary like Eating Animals can really enact substantial change. While I do believe the message here will be lost [like many others], it at least introduces viable alternatives.
Eiffel… I’m in Love 2
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
El Chata
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
An Elephant Sitting Still
ron wilkinson @ its just movies
- Excerpt: A well told yarn within a tightly synchronized day that changes the lives of a multitude.
Elephants
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Alexander Hanno’s impressive ELEPHANTS explores love’s dark side while enticing viewers with fascinating but flawed main characters, witty dialogue, suspenseful situations, catchy music and excellent production values.
Elizabeth Harvest
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Elizabeth Harvest works better the less you know. The key to [its] enjoyment is investment. [And] those that grab hold of the mystery will be rewarded.
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A câmara e tudo o que envolve enquadramento, cor e composição é uma das melhores armas do filme que nos inunda com planos brilhantes, ainda que não seja consistente. Existem muitos planos bons, mas entre eles há um vazio que tentaram encher com uma visão artística de pouca eficácia.
The Emperor of Paris
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
Entanglement
- Excerpt: Filiatrault has an ear for clever, amusing dialog
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Entanglement’ never takes the most obvious path, and the result is a modest, enjoyable charmer.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: So don’t give up on Entanglement early. I’m not one to blindly look past the same clichés every romantic comedy pretends are unique, but this project does transcend its surface if you let it.
Entebbe
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Escape Plan 2
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Escape Plan 2: Hades is not a terrible film, but it is a disappointing one, coming from someone who genuinely enjoyed the first film. Direct-to-video action movies are better than they ever been, so there’s no excuse for this to be as dull as it is.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Estiu 1993
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: If The Greasy Strangler earned the pre-ordained cult following it found, this could too considering its recognizable cast and lack of vomit-inducing viscera makes it more accessible.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: [Director Jim Hosking] compromised by scaling back the most aggressively bizarre elements of his shock debut, while still indulging in enough skewed reality to keep the comedy firmly on the surreal side of the ledger… The results are not entirely satisfactory, but they are also not nearly as much of a sell-out as they might have been.
Every Day
- Excerpt: É material de tele-filme feito para cinema. Seria muito louco acreditar que um regresso ao formato digital e uma exploração do conteúdo interactivo eram o destino perfeito para este tipo de material?
Everybody Knows
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
F20
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog Film Reviews
Fahrenheit 451
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Fake Blood
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
Family in Transition
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Frank and bittersweet, this is a quietly remarkable portrait of one father and husband’s gender transition, and how the family coped — and didn’t — with dramatic upheaval in the most intimate of settings: home.
Fanney Khan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Far from the Tree
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Documentary about the challenges of raising difficult children.
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: Wonderfully contemplative, sensitive, eye-opening and impactful Far From the Tree skillfully delves into the contrasting theory that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” sentiment to reflect how parents and their children are one in the same is not always necessarily the case.
Farming
Fatima’s Revenge
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
The Female Brain
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Yet, despite eventually arriving at a positive message (traditionally feminine behavioral and psychological traits should not be categorized as weaker than masculine ones), Whitney Cummings’ directorial debut is content to hit on a variety of well-worn tropes, both romantic—Toby Kebbell as the stalker with a heart of gold!—and comedic—Sofia Vergara and Deon Cole as middle aged people who try drugs!—on its way to ultimately upholding, rather than destroying, outdated stereotypes.
Feral
- Excerpt: IFC Midnight’s latest “don’t go into the woods” condemnation (in little over a month) is Mark Young’s Feral, which – not subtlety – can be described as “Afflicted meets The Descent above ground.” Except, like, not as interesting as that sounds.
The Field Guide to Evil
- Excerpt: All in all, this was not the wall-to-wall fright fest for which I’d hoped. Still, horror connoisseurs won’t want to miss The Field Guide To Evil.
Filmworker
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: As a long-time Kubrick fan, Filmworker delivers an invaluable look into his process while introducing this new character whose fingerprints can be seen alongside Stanley’s on every frame. It might do nothing to diminish the auteur’s controversial mystique (it reinforces it if anything), but Leon’s presence presents evidence of a softer side too. Leon Vitali was that softer side.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Final Portrait
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: But do we really need another argument in favor of tolerating and accommodating miserable, abusive artists because they may be geniuses?
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: Final Portrait isn’t the kind of movie that will win awards or high acclaim, but that never stops it from being an all around delight.
Final Score
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Unlike many other Die Hard imitators, Final Score understands the fundamentals, and is able to deliver on all fronts. Dave Bautista effortlessly carries the film, not just with the action, but with the central relationship between his character and his niece.
Finding Your Feet
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Fireworks
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: What should be tender and whimsical feels repetitive and off-putting. And without clear rules to what’s happening, we never get a handle on whether anything exists beyond delusions manufactured from Norimichi’s regrets.
First Light
- Excerpt: Science fiction is a harder sell for this critic, but First Light nimbly condenses similar, more complicated stories for a greater storytelling accomplishment.
Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An enchanting tour led by the world’s most famous garden designer and avid plant lover.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Brimming with beauty, Thomas Piper’s sensitive presentation of “The Gardens of Piet Oudolf” is a soft poem of life.
Flipping the Script: When Parents Fight Back
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Jeff Witzeman calls for a re-evaluation of cancer treatment protocols and builds a case for disregarding current treatment standards. However, Witzeman’s advocacy for natural treatments is an empty, unproven, and frankly dangerous option.
Flower
- Excerpt: Flower is the Zoey Deutch show, which is a program I’ll never flip off.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
The Forgiven
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A drama about the forgiveness work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
- Excerpt: The film gives the viewer ample reason to make Tutu a saint, but little reason to make him a dramatic screen hero.
Four Hands
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Fourplay
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It shows how bad things can get when we refuse to see reality, always wanting to believe it will get better with whatever new bandaged solution pops in our head. But that delusion only makes things worse. What could have been an amicable decision about a relationship not working becomes a powder keg explosion that risks ruining the lives of everyone else.
Foxtrot
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Cynicism is the rule of the day in Foxtrot.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
The Friend
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A deeply spiritual drama about the beauties and bounties of friendship.
A Futile and Stupid Gesture
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This crazy biopic boasts one of the most unusual funerals ever filmed, thanks to extreme dramatic license and the lovely sounds of ‘Beautiful Dreamer.’
Future World
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Action sequences seem poorly put together here. Sorry to say they are less than exciting, which does not bode well for a sci-fi thriller.
Gabriel and the Mountain
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Gabriel and the Mountain isn’t a tale of self-destruction; it’s a tragedy whose hero’s fatal flaw is the drive to be the best possible version of himself.
Galveston
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Though Mélanie Laurent’s first English language directorial effort isn’t as sparkling as her previous French language features, her capabilities are certainly on full display
- Excerpt: Laurent’s film takes a deep dive into her characters’ emotions, but she’s kicked away too much of the narrative scaffolding that would anchor expressions of emotion to a story supporting the weight of those feelings.
Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Gavagai
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Rob Tregenza, a phenomenal American director/cinematographer, handles the camera himself, imposing little background sound. In the quiet, observing the widower’s pain, ironically the guide is shown the way.
Generation Wealth
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Emitting a somewhat self-congratulatory feel, “I went through so many pictures,” Generation Wealth works when it unsettles us about the country’s moral decay, but staggers lost and aloof when Greenfield puts herself and her family in front of the camera – something she does far too often.
Ghostbox Cowboy
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Girl
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
The Girl and the Picture
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: This story of madness, courage and resilience is documented by Academy award-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth, who artfully interweaves archival footage, survivor testimony, and Magee’s grandson’s visit to China.
Gloria Bell
- Excerpt: Gloria Bell is a rare remake that surpasses the original.
Godard Mon Amour
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Jared Mobarak @ BuffaloVibe
- Excerpt: Godard Mon Amour plays like an all-over-the-place pastiche of biography and roast that says little. It’s the tale of a rich intellectual sticking his head so far up his behind that it ends up back on his shoulders.
Godzilla 2: City on the Edge of Battle
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Too bad, for a monster movie, it’s humans who really have room here.
The Go-Getters
- Excerpt: Pretty much everyone is up for grabs as Owen and Lacie rain more shit on Toronto than Doug Ford after a bad bowl of chili.
Golden Exits
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: There’s a 20th Century Women-like generational overview to this conceit but that’s not Perry’s main concern.
Goldstone
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I liked Sen’s first go-round with Jay Swan, but the pace was ill suited for a tale harboring so many secrets that ultimately stay hidden until its explosive finale. Goldstone refuses to fall prey to those same trappings, laying everything on the line instead.
Good Girls Get High
- Excerpt: This “high” concept teen comedy about female friendship and panic over the onset of adulthood distinguishes itself in a crowded genre.
Good Manners
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Amanda Waltz @ Pittsburgh City Paper
- Excerpt: As opposed to going for truly terrifying, it cultivates a magic realist tone bolstered especially by musical numbers in the style of cautionary lullabies, a charming motif effortlessly woven throughout.
Goodland
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The result is a tense thriller with noir undertones revealing a more complex web than we ever could predict. [Sadly the] ending can’t be as satisfying as the whole might deserve.
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: As someone who wasn’t much of a fan of the first, but was still able to recognize its merits, this one managed to bring some charm and fun thanks to a likeable cast.
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: While it has maybe half the heart, “Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween” is still an undemanding, briskly paced diversion.
The Gospel According to Andre
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: As I watched Kate Novack’s film my one question was would those who would not know a Gucci from a Givenchy, whose idea of couture shopping is Targét, really care about Talley or his life story.
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Whether he’s rubbing elbows with Michelle Obama, catching up with his blue jean wearing, beer swilling old childhood friend or hanging out with Isabella Rossellini and a bunch of potbellied pigs, Talley is never anything other than himself.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
The Gospel of Eureka
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Gotti
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: From its pro-mob angle to where you expect to see “A Cosa Nostra Production” on the screen to its incoherent manner, Gotti will be a textbook case of what not to do.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: One of the worst films of the year!
- Excerpt: You might think this sounds hilariously bad. It must be so bad it’s kind of good, right? Wrong. Gotti is not remotely fun, even ironically.
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s so dense and yet somehow incomplete—as though we’re watching the abridged theatrical version of a ten part series. We realize Grace Jones is too singular to be placed in one cinematic box—even her own.
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
The Great Buddah+
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: …an odd, philosophical smorgasbord of scathing themes that colorfully decorate this off-kilter social critique of underclass religion and repression…an ambitious, imaginative, and bitingly humorous cultural concoction of meager existences in Taiwan
The Great Buddha
- Excerpt: It’s not often that political and social satire can sleep together in the same cinematic bed, but Huang has found the magic jelly to make his many points with humour, truth and voice.
Great Great Great
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: Overall, Jones’s two-timing tale of a romantically detached woman stuck in a malaise of lust and life may not necessarily be considered great, great, great but there is certainly no shame for the tandem of Jones/Kolasky settling for good, good, good.
The Grief of Others
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: There is a lot happening in “The Grief of Others.” Wang’s signature talent, depicting ordinary life, facilitates viewer identity. He juxtaposes this familiarity to the out-of-the-ordinary, leaving the viewer thinking in over-time.
Gringo
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Gringo is likely too clearly indebted to its 90s predecessors to stand out from the pack but it’s funny (minus a lame fat joke near the end that I could’ve done without), the cast is great (especially Oyelowo, who keeps his hysterical fish out of water routine from running out of air by grounding it in painful humanity) and never suffers from a lack of action.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Sadly there are simply too many characters involved. Sometimes you can’t help but feel the wheels turning whenever Harold is off-screen because Stone and Tambakis have to figure out a way to circle back to him no matter how convenient.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: A star-studded mess.
The Guardians
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A graceful and ethically rich French drama about the heroism of the hard labor performed by families during wartime.
Guardians of the Tomb
- Excerpt: This telling would be of above-average quality on the SyFy Channel and that is probably where it is heading.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: An adaptation of the bestselling novel about how books connect and inspire us.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: History, mystery and romance come together like a fine dance in this superb period drama.
Gurrumul
- Excerpt: Seeing this film makes you deeply grateful that we can continue to celebrate this once-in-a-generation artist.
Hal
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Excerpt: …ovaj je film koristan onima koji su vec ranije stekli filmofilske sklonosti, odnosno onima koje zanima povijest Hollywooda, a koja je u jednom relativno kratkom razdoblju izgledala spektakularnije i ružicastije od svega što je došlo nakon njega.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Scott’s documentary may not be perfect, but its loving embrace of an extraordinary filmmaker will hopefully vault him into a pantheon where he’s so often forgotten.
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Ashby’s daughter Leigh MacManus is one of the few contributors to offer an off-set perspective of the man – and it comes with a poignancy and beat of heartfelt truth that is lacking elsewhere.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Slice-of-life and stream-of-consciousness, this is unlike any documentary before about what it’s like to be poor and black in America. RaMell Ross is an important new voice in American cinema.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The finished work is more akin to home movie than politically driven exposé, its desire to give its subjects a voice over platform enough to force viewers to relate to their ups, downs, and everything in-between.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: The film’s slow pace reflects the dispirited energy of disregarded people who can barely sustain themselves through work in the county’s catfish economy.
Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Hale County This Morning, This Evening’ Is Quiet But Moving
Half Magic
James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: Even if I can’t recommend the film, I also can’t deny that I am absolutely intrigued and excited by the path she’s currently on. At it’s heart, this is a film about the power of setting intentions. If she’s done nothing else here, she’s certainly done that.
Hanagatami
Josh Brunsting @ Criterion Cast
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This nearly three hour epic about the wasted youth of Japan’s war years adapted from Dan Kazuo’s 1937 novel is both a moving tribute and the type of phantasmagorical experience one would expect from the director of 1977’s “Hausu.”
Hannah
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The plot therefore unfolds between the lines. Pallaoro creates a scenario and then removes it except for its impact on his lead’s motivations. It’s a decision that could have easily sunk all hope of investment and yet its success keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
A Happening of Monumental Proportions
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The title is intentionally ironic, and yet still feels like a bad and desperately unfunny joke. The spectacular all-star cast holds their noses and gamely dives in anyway, for the sake of Judy Greer’s directorial debut.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: When Daniel tells [his daughter] he’s glad she takes after her mother rather than him, I couldn’t help but nod in agreement because all these insecure men have literally nothing to offer the next generation. And sadly neither does this film despite so much talent making us hope it might.
Happy as Lazzaro
Alan Mattli @ Maximum Cinema [German]
- Excerpt: Alice Rohrwacher firmly establishes herself as a leading voice of modern Italian cinema with this richly inventive magical neorealist drama-cum-Christian parable.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [Rohrwacher] provides the truth of our collective contemporary paranoia. Rather than see [Lazzaro] as a saint to exploit, he becomes a devil harboring ulterior motives yet unleashed.
Happy End
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Simon Miraudo @ Student Edge
The Happy Prince
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Everett finds a less fascinating avenue into the vagabond’s tragic life. At least it looks gorgeous
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Jonathan Richards @ Pasatiempo
- Excerpt: The movie is a worthy tribute to one of the greats of English literature, and a timely, cautionary reminder of the devastating effects of bigotry on an individual, and a culture.
Have a Nice Day
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Liu Jian’s rough around the edges animation reflects the harsh and bleak realities that the characters inhabit, but it does so with a cool, sly sense of humor.
He’s Out There
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
The Head Hunter
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Shot in Bragança, Portugal, The Head Hunter is a suprising low budget fantasy thriller with a great visual and a stunning main performance!
The Heart of Nuba
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An inspiring and enlightening portrait of a Catholic doctor in Africa serving a million people every year.
Heavy Trip
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: Heavy Trip is a joyous and affectionate love letter to the outcast that is almost impossible to resist.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Because your movie watching doesn’t contain nearly enough “symphonic post-apocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme war pagan Fennoscandian metal,” Finnish import Heavy Trip is here to rectify that glaring oversight.
The Heiresses
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Hell Fest
Alex Brannan @ CineFiles Reviews
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The film is a really great time, and it captures the thrills of old school slashers without feeling like 80s pastiche. Plus, the location helps make the film a perfect start of the Halloween season.
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: A slash-orama set inside a horror-themed amusement park, “Hell Fest” scratches a horror fan’s itch to see a straight-up, R-rated throwback to the slasher pics of yore with a killer backdrop.
Hellraiser: Judgment
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Hellraiser: Judgment is a stuffy police procedural masquerading as a torturous Pinhead franchise entry. As bad as a straight-to-DVD ninequel sounds.
Her Smell
Here and Now
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The film believes itself to be more than the quiet, contemplative emotional study it might have been. It unfortunately can’t sustain that goal.
Hermanos
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Hichki
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Holiday
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Holmes & Watson
Frank Ochieng @ rec.arts.movies.reviews
- Excerpt: One would gain more chuckles watching the short-lived ’70s sitcom “Holmes and Yoyo” than withstanding the big screen strained silliness of Holmes & Watson. Indeed, Holmes & Watson need to definitely get a comical clue.
Un Homme Pressé
George Zervopoulos @ Movies Ltd [Greek]
Hot Summer Nights
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s definitely a hollow pastiche of a number of gritty teen movies, but in a way, it feels appropriate given the small town “have you heard about so-and-so doing this-and-that” vibe that the film has. Elijah Bynum makes a stylish and promising directorial debut.
Hotel by the River
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It basically repeats the same thematic beats of the last two films, and feels the most needless of the three. While it isn’t going to win over any newcomers to the series, for anyone who enjoys these characters and the fast paced and visually inventive humor, this will be a delightful time.
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
The House of Tomorrow
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The House of Tomorrow isn’t just a testament to the power of mohawks and mosh pits, though.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Clever dramady about sheltered youth who finds his own way into the rebellious world of R. Buckminster Fuller.
The House That Jack Built
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The House That Jack Built is goofy in all the wrong ways, violent without substantive purpose, and unsubtle enough to wonder if von Trier actually had anything to say besides, “Thank you for letting me get away with this for so long.”
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The House That Jack Built won’t please everybody. For fans of von Trier, as well as lovers of horror who feel it’s a discredited genre, this film is a masterpiece.
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
Júlio Cézar Rodrigues @ Megalomania Cultural [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Lars von Trier’s new movie shows the eccentric, provocative and philosophical style of his director. It’s oddly annoying and brilliant at the same time.
The House, the Hand and the Hatchet
How It Ends
- Excerpt: If The Snowman replaces its winter atmosphere with aridity, or ice with ash, How It Ends shows up.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: While ‘Girls’ is not a must-see cult hit, it’s not a waste of time, either; at the very least, it’s an unconventional offering that could find a future Netflix audience of adventurous youngsters.
The Hows of Us
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Hreditary
Hunting Lands
- Excerpt: Hunting Lands is a fantastic thriller which keeps the audience engaged until the very last frame, never quite knowing how it’s going to end. I was completely sucked into the story and when it was over, I was left with a few images I couldn’t shake, particularly the final shot of Frank’s face. Completely riveting.
Hurricane
- Excerpt: It’s down to a deadpan sense of humour that Hurricane ultimately takes flight, piloted largely by the charms of Rheon and a game cast, and emerging rather an endearing World War II biopic.
Husband Material
- Excerpt: In his first full-fledged love story, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap presents three characters who are liberated, flawed and original, substantiating the film’s Hindi title to perfection.
I Am Not a Witch
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a powerful feminist message as magical realism, a piece of political folklore resounding through generations.
I Am Vengeance
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: Routine revenge flick offers little to the genre.
I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: A brilliantly conceived film.
I Kill Giants
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An adventure story about a teenage girl who uses her imagination to cope with her fears and problems.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Give the filmmakers credit because they have written this young girl with a perfect mix of commendable sass and heartbreaking deflection. While the film isn’t as subtle as A Monster Calls or [Where the Wild Things Are], it captures the messiness of suffering just as well.
- Excerpt: I adored I Kill Giants for all its scrappiness, fury, and fantasy.
I Think We’re Alone Now
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Reed Morano’s I Think We’re Alone Now is a highly polished objet d’art, shot in stunning widescreen with sound design mixed in Dolby Atmos.
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
I, Daniel Blake
I, Tonya
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Simon Miraudo @ Student Edge
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A atuação de Margot Robbie coroa um trabalho ácido e melancólico sobre uma grande atleta
Ideal Home
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Ideal Home is a modest little film about same-sex parents that doesn’t wallow in misery or tragedy, and instead plays things light, playful, and with a lot of heart. The performances are great across the board.
- Excerpt: Imagine if the high-concept comedy Three Men and a Baby met the biting British sitcom Vicious.
Illang: The Wolf Brigade
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s not one of Kim Jee-woon’s best, but it’s still an evocative, well crafted, and beautiful piece of filmmaking.
The Image Book
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Contorted, baffling, polarizing and idiosyncratic documentary.
In Darkness
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: In Darkness has several compelling elements, but you do have to be willing to swallow a lot of strange story choices in the second half. Nonetheless, it offers a cool, modern noir that evokes Hitchcock with a compelling leading lady.
- Excerpt: I can’t wait to see what (Natalie) Dormer the screenwriter shows us next.
In Fabric
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Movie Critics
- Excerpt: Writer-director Peter Strickland’s strange and stimulating retail horror/comedy/romance In Fabric takes on a whole new meaning to making a startling fashion statement. Brilliantly bizarre, sardonically twisted and eerily suggestive…
In the Fade
In the Last Days of the City
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An earnest and imaginative look at a filmmaker in Cairo who is struggling to make a tribute to the city.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Filmed in 2008, about two years before the Egyptian Revolution and the fall of Mubarak, El Said’s film can be seen as a perspective on the Middle East if not the entire world.
The Incantation
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Incident in a Ghostland
- Excerpt: Incident In A Ghostland plays house with mentally unstable maniacs only to achieve the bluntest misunderstanding of “horror” I’d challenge to be dethroned this year.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Several reviews out there have criticised Incident in a Ghostland as being misogynistic, when it’s actually critical of misogyny in horror rather than playing a part in perpetuating the genre’s problems. Sometimes you have to dig deeper.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Pascal Laugier’s latest is no ‘Martyrs’ but still offers a solid and effective torture-porn for the fans.
Infinity Baby
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, this watches like an outline or a rough draft someone never got back to.
Inner Ghosts
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Inside
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Even ignoring my distaste for this film’s finale, it’s shocking to feel such bottomed-out enthusiasm over a situation that pits two hopeful mothers in a competition for one’s unborn child.
Instant Family
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Fostering interest.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Sure the movie doesn’t go far enough depicting the hard realities of the foster care system – all while its running time somewhat went too long, but ‘Instant Family’ has its heart in the right place.
The Insult
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A spiritual masterwork about the harm that can be done with
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Fault is a rabbit hole of intent. This is where The Insult excels: showing how easy it is to find the hypocrisy in one’s actions if he is forced to face it.
Intelligent Lives
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: A solid case for tearing down the walls created by intelligence testing supported by the uplifting stories of those whose have escaped this segregation.
Introduzione all’Oscuro
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Aims more for emotional beats and resonances than factual musings.
Inuyashiki
- Excerpt: Inuyashiki is a marvel of a film, the kind of manga adaptation that anyone, fan or otherwise, can enjoy and experience with all five senses.
Invasion
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Shahram Mokri combines a love of genre films with an experimental approach to time and complex single take action choreography, but his love of experimentation so obscures basic storytelling principles that he leaves us little to latch onto.
Irreplaceable You
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A tearjerker starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Michiel Huisman, who tug fiercely at our heartstrings with charming portrayals of two people who fell in love as they grew up together.
The Island
- Excerpt: The Island shines a notable spotlight on the plight of the human condition under duress in all its corrosive, uncertainty, and societal impishness. Indeed, Huang’s stinging freshwater farce definitely stays afloat in all its darkened levity.
Island of the Hungry Ghosts
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Itzhak
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Watching him onscreen removed from his art and yet still so connected to it becomes our education and ultimately inspiration. He has overcome his ailment not only for himself, but also for those who blindly dismissed him because of it.
Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Soon, though, what Papierniak seems to be positioning as a quintessential Los Angeles movie devolves into a series of unexamined stereotypes about the city as a background to a lazy wisp of a plot.
- Excerpt: Davis ought to be a big goddamn star…She can turn from snarlingly abrasive to profoundly tender with one blink of her eye-liner smudged lids.
Jane Fonda in Five Acts
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An extraordinarily intimate and perceptive new biography of the legendary actor and activist. Fonda reveals insecurities and anxieties that are achingly raw and very personal, but which many women will see themselves in.
Jim Gaffigan: Noble Ape
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Gaffigan’s unique self-deprecating delivery enhances his sometimes “unthinkable” material and helps him win the hearts of viewers.
Jinn
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: At a time when Islam has become weaponized as a synonym for ISIS, we need [these] glimpses at its positivity and humanity.
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Identity And The Glory of Girlhood Stand At The Center Of Nijla Mu’min’s ‘Jinn’
John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Faraut is less interested in how cinema affects tennis than how they overlap. He’s searching for the line separating reality from performance and may ultimately prove one doesn’t exist.
Johnny English Strikes Again
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Better than the unfunny first one, not as witty as the clever second one. But it has a bit of sly Brexit bite that is very welcome right now. Laugh until you cry!
Jonathan
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The filmmakers lead us to dark places in the process, flipping stigmas on their head to hide the psychological consequences of what’s happening beneath emotional ones.
José
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Although the story is slight, Cheng treats the subject matter with care, allowing a slow but certain heat to build between José and Luis
Journey to a Mother’s Room
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Journeyman
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Journey’s End
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A meaningful portrait of a World War I British soldier who proves himself to be a wounded healer.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Joy
- Excerpt: At the start of Sudadeh Mortezai’s downbeat trafficking tragedy “Joy” there’s some reason to think that one is about to see a story of power and independence. But there is no battle and no heroism.
Judith Hotel
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Juliet, Naked
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: These people need to just grow up already.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This perfectly cast film (Lily Brazier, who plays Annie’s sister Ros, actually looks like she could be Byrne’s sister) plays to the strengths of its principals, particularly Hawke who performs both the Crowe music we hear and a live cover of The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Station.”
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A gentle, generous confrontation between fan and artist, and between a past full of regret and the possibility of a happier future, made warm and human by the terrific central performances. An instant new comfort movie.
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A thought-provoking drama about the reactions to a lone terrorist who kills 77 people in Norway in 2011.
The Kamagasaki Cauldron War
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: This is an income inequality play delivered in an indomitable comedic form. The irony is that the very policies of the business world that don’t want to have the poor inconveniently littering the streets create the poverty of the day laborers and unemployed who have nowhere else to go.
Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story
- Excerpt: Though a brutal watch, I recommend Kangaroo. In 99 minutes, it swiftly acquaints international audiences with the complexity of this issue.
Karma
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Karwaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Kedarnath
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Tusshar Sasi @ Filmy Sasi
- Excerpt: Kedarnath’ belongs to that sphere of Bollywood romances where the rebellious heroine would succumb to destiny rather than taking some responsibility herself. The climactic floods notwithstanding, Abhishek Kapoor’s latest film is quite a disaster.
Kill Order
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Killing Jesus
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: A gritty, raw portrait of grief, revenge, systematic poverty, and inescapable cycles of violence.
Kin
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Kin doesn’t work, at least, whenever it strays away from the central story about brotherhood. It’s a poorly thought out attempt at genrebending that fails to provide the emotional resonance it needs to make an impact.
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: At one point, James Franco whips it out and pisses all over a gas station floor – that about sums up Kin. A movie about a firearm fetish masquerading as an indie road trip drama; the longest 102 minutes of my life.
Dan Lybarger @ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- Excerpt: Labor Day is usually when studios drop movies that have no chance of finding an audience in the summer or award season. Kin sadly follows in that long, predictable tradition.
The Kindergarten Teacher
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A character-driven drama about a schoolteacher who yearns to nurture the poetic brilliance of a student.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The Kindergarten Teacher isn’t a bad film, but it’s a very underwhelming one. Maggie Gyllenhaal is good enough to elevate the thin material into something genuinely compelling.
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: The Kindergarten Teacher definitely makes the grade as a winningly uncomfortable and compelling observation of a disillusioned middle-aged woman stuck in an artistic and emotional rut …an unnerving, slow burn…explored with haunting conflict
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Maggie Gyllenhaal and Parker Sevak astonish us in this disturbing but intriguing drama about the power and unfortunate results of obsession.
The King
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: The King is interesting in some aspects, as meandering as the road in others.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Documentary about the rise and decline of Elvis Presley as a metaphor for the rise and decline of America.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: A bouncy and reflective sentiment about Presley’s ever-lasting staple on the American psyche…dutifully seduces us with the Elvis mystique and his brand of antiquated celebrity applied to the current-day mindset of American consciousness.
King in the Wilderness
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An extraordinary documentary on the last 18 months of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s selfless and harrowing spiritual journey.
The Kingdom
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Kissing Candice
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Knuckleball
- Excerpt: It’s essentially a simple premise but the delivery is a thing of beauty.
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: “Knuckleball” is an admirably stripped-down thriller that escalates with a sense of portent and overturns expectations by not exactly going where one predicts.
Kodachrome
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It shows just how rote cinema can be and why we need more original works of pure imagination rather than yet another umpteenth variation on a tired trope.
Komunia
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: …the idea that such a film has made it to such levels of recognition is impressive and perhaps speaks to the intensifying issues of income inequality and the choice it seems women must make on how much to continue sacrificing for the greater good.
Kusama: Infinity
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: You’ll come away from it having learned something but probably not having been moved by it.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice [German]
- Excerpt: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/arts/reviews/view/27778/kusama-infinity
Amanda Waltz @ Pittsburgh City Paper
The Land of Steady Habits
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: An engaging and well-acted drama about the challenges of middle age and suburban living.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Steady your enthusiasm.
Laplace’s Witch
- Excerpt: With Laplace’s Witch, Miike takes another step toward mediocrity, and for that I am sad.
Larger Than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story
The Last Resort
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: The Last Resort explores 1970s Miami Beach, when it was a mecca for Jewish retirees, through the photographs of Andy Sweet.
Le Fidèle (The Racer and the Jailbird)
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Leaf Blower Massacre 2
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Leaning into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Leaning into the Wind is Riedelsheimer’s follow-up, after a gap of sixteen years, to Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time, his initial portrait of the artist.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Another creative documentary adventure with the environmental artist.
The Leisure Seeker
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Perhaps the main takeaway from Ella and John’s trip down the Eastern seaboard is that America is, in fact, already great; not just the beautiful countryside but the people, too, from small-town folks to Syrian immigrants pumping gas in New Jersey to the Latino wedding they encounter and crash at Hemingway’s estate.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Pursuing pleasure and delight after 50 years of marriage
L’enkas
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Where most films of this ilk are driven by aggression, Marx instead pushes hers forward with a mix of melancholy, quiet desperation and futility.
Let The Corpses Tan
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: While the lack of characterization and emotional connection might sound like this would be a deal breaker, I was legitimately in awe of its bold and electric stylistic filmmaking for practically the entire runtime.
Let the Sunshine In
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: In the end the whole of Let the Sunshine In reveals itself to be [a product of poor writing]. It’s not necessarily irredeemable, just a monotonous bore of miscues and failed judgment.
A Letter to Congress
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Narrated using a letter written by Wallace Earle Stegner, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award Winner in the 1970s, the 3:15-long film, winner of the 2018 Best Short Film in the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, presents the case for the continued, careful stewardship of America’s lands.
Lez Bomb
Danielle Solzman @ Solzy at the Movies
Life and Nothing More
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: By letting the cast improvise their reactions through the lens of their experiences, Esparza finds truth [to] expose how injustice is the new “normal” and how the consequences of one’s misfortunate reverberate well beyond him/herself.
Life of the Party
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: While it’s not great or very memorable, I think it’s harmless and at times, genuinely sweet. There’s an earnestness to this that didn’t quite come through in Tammy or The Boss, and when it does lean on the moments where Deanna is bonding with her daughter and her friends, it almost wins you over.
Lifechanger
- Excerpt: The whole thing is beautifully shot in far higher resolution than most viewers are likely to get the benefit of.
- Excerpt: Lifechanger is a lean, mean, and intense dose of shapeshifter horror with a chilling message perfectly suited to the complex conversations of the Me Too era.
Like Father
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s fun watching this estranged daughter and father begin to know each other again through crazy cruise activities, especially karaoke.
Like Me
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It plays with stereotypes that we laugh at, but doesn’t quite give them life beyond labels. [Mockler] delivers a mirror of which we’re already aware.
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Little Pink House
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A vehement critique of economic injustice, class warfare and corporate power.
Little Woods
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: In Nia DaCosta’s Tessa Thompson-Starrer ‘Little Woods,’ Women Save Themselves
Liverleaf
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Lives Well Lived
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: If we knew the secret to being happy, would it change how we lived our lives? Sky Bergman, inspired by her grandmother who, at almost 100 years old still worked out, has made a film of interview responses to questions related to what might help us live in the now.
Living Among Us
- Excerpt: I appreciate the world of Living Among Us and the medical explanations for vampirism, but only with less found footage redundancies. If only there was an air freshener livening up this stuffy casket watch.
Living Universe
- Excerpt: Living Universe is the Walking with Dinosaurs of space documentaries. While it commendably uses our evolving understanding of the universe to tackle problems our next generation of explorers will face, it fails to do so in ways that are dramatically or cinematically interesting.
Liz and the Blue Bird
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: These are real teens so desperately searching for their place amongst each other that they forget to unearth what it is they want on their own terms.
Lizzie
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: We’re brought a little closer to what made [Lizzie Borden’s] heart tick. Too bad the production is lacking a pulse.
- Excerpt: To see the swing of the axe as cleansing rather than grotesque was the last thing I expected. And I’m grateful for it.
Henry Stewart @ Slant
Andrew Wyatt @ The Lens
Lo Innombrable
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
The Load
- Excerpt: Leaves us with bleak images that are still haunting even if the Yugoslavian conflict is now all but forgotten for most people not living in the Balkans.
The Lodgers
- Excerpt: Crimson Peak + The Shape Of Water – Guillermo del Toro = meh?
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The Lodgers reveals itself to be a beautiful gothic horror with a captivating truth mishandled in a desire to surprise more than resonate.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Loi Bao
- Excerpt: Lôi Báo is good fun and hopefully a harbinger of a new Vietnamese action renaissance that will bring back the spirit of the films from a decade ago.
London Fields
Dragan Antulov @ [Croatian]
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The Long Dumb Road
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: With few ambitions other than to entertain, it largely succeeds.
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Jason Mantzoukas gets his chance to shine in a leading role.
The Longest Game
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: What could have been a straightforward document of adorable old men living their twilight years with activity and laughter becomes a mirror onto just how small the world proves when ego isn’t present to deny the opportunity for discovery.
Looking Glass
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: We try to invest but can’t because it’s all smoke and mirrors meant to pad the runtime of what’s a throwaway episode of procedural television at best. And every distraction is infinitely more interesting than what’s actually going on.
The Looming Tower
- Excerpt: The Looming Tower illuminates how a small and loosely affiliated network of mostly amateur recruits successfully circumvented the most sophisticated efforts of the world’s mightiest nation to protect itself.
Lords of Chaos
- Excerpt: Lords Of Chaos is a bubbling cauldron of blackened biopic malevolence that’s as puckishly anarchistic as it is deranged, hellborn and pure evil.
Loro
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Lost Child
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An extraordinarily delicate balancing act between drama and horror, visually and psychologically expansive, set in a place where stories of monsters are not mere entertaining fun, and where superstition is not harmless.
Lost Gully Road
- Excerpt: Donna McRae’s Lost Gully Road is a gothic Australian thriller with a sting in its tail.
Lou Andreas-Salomé
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Created by first-time filmmaker Cordula Kablitz-Post, “Lou Andreas-Salomé” is a crucially important tribute to a woman who began her path of feminine independence before women had the right to vote. Andreas-Salomé demands respect and acceptance, not as a beauty or prospective wife, but for her study and analysis of great thinkers.
Lou Andreas-Salomé, the Audacity to be Free
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: If [Nietzsche, Rée, Rilke, and Freud] were the ones the history books wanted to highlight as geniuses, they would surely relegate Lou to “muse.” But as Kablitz-Post and cowriter Susanne Hertel explain, nothing could have been further from the truth.
Louder! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’, Wimp!
- Excerpt: Louder! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’ Wimp! one of the early contenders for film with the most heart of 2018.
Louder! I Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’, Wimp!!
- Excerpt: Somewhere between Aggretsuko, A Star Is Born and Benny Hill shenanigans exists Satoshi Miki’s Louder! I Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’, Wimp!. An utterly delightful blend of headbanger rambunctiousness and proper coming-of-self sweetness.
- Excerpt: Imagine Marilyn Manson going on a madcap adventure with Carly Rae Jepson and the Three Stooges. That is the astonishing blend in the Japanese musical-comedy LOUDER! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin,’ Wimp!
Love & Bananas: An Elephant Story
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: This extraordinary documentary will touch your heart
Love After Love
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: So what does Love After Love deliver? Performances. Harbaugh and Mendelsohn are less interested with plot than creating an environment with which to let their characters screw up.
Love Gilda
- Excerpt: Regrettably, Love Gilda offers little new information for long-time fans of the iconic comedienne.
Love Per Square Foot
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Love Sonia
- Excerpt: Filmmaker Tabrez Noorani’s ‘Love Sonia’ chronicles a tale where a spirited 17-year old goes in search of her sister who has been to trafficked to a big, bad city. It isn’t essentially a tiring watch but the film emanates a vibe of insufficiency and predictability throughout, making us impossible to stay fully invested in the proceedings.
Love, Gilda
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Informative and emotionally touching documentary about the beloved comedian.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: For a documentary about a comedienne whose greatest gift was joy, “Love, Gilda” is quite the downer.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Who doesn’t love Gilda? Tied together by Radner’s own words — sometimes read by current comedians and comediennes — this wonderful documentary is a well-deserved homage to a terrific entertainer.
Loveless
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: It’s an overwhelmingly bleak, fascinating film
Loveling
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Gustavo Pizzi’s Loveling is ultimately an astute portrait of motherhood.
Júlio Cézar Rodrigues @ Megalomania Cultural [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Deeply subtle, psychological profound and greatly acted, this Brazillian movie is a future classic.
Loving Pablo
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Loving Pablo had the opportunity of making Virginia Vallejo its star. The filmmakers [instead use] their most intriguing component to sell a unique perspective, but waste her as a springboard towards the same old story.
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: The esteemed and revered Spaniard had been circling the most optimal opportunity to place this figure for twenty years. Masking himself in the obesity and deplorable evil intentions, the result is one force of nature playing another.
Ronald Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: A thriller without a twist, the love affair that may, or may not, have brought a big man down.
Lowlife
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It plays like one of those many mid-90s Tarantino knock-offs. I don’t think the film is a total success, but it’s a film that plays with ideas that are big, relevant, and it really swings for the fences.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The result is a film that’s as brutal in its imagery as it is funny in its execution.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: What Prows manages to do is present a multicultural view of those stuck suffering under the bourgeoisie class of America, and the hierarchy in which many of these people perpetually exist.
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Lu Over the Wall
- Excerpt: Lu Over The Wall is a totally enchanting crowdpleaser for all ages.
Lust Stories
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Lust Stories continues a fascinating collaborative effort from four great Indian filmmakers, all bringing their own unique sensibilities and idiosyncrasies in exploring a complex and necessary subject matter. The performances are outstanding.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Four terrific actresses bring four fascinating women to life on screen. Kudos to Radhika Apte, Bhumi Pednekar, Manisha Koirala, and Vicky Kaushal!
Luz
- Excerpt: Luz is one freak-without-a-leash, non-conventional horror dive that grows stronger as satanic unknowns pile up.
Mabel, Mabel, Tiger Trainer
- Excerpt: Zamekis is an entertaining if not particularly innovative documentary maker.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: How she trained her cats, how she progressed through the male-dominated circus business and how her marriages affected her career is revealed in Leslie Zemeckis’s inspirational documentary.
Madame
- Excerpt: The sweet wine of the first act turns to vinegar by the time this short 91-minute film completes
Madeline’s Madeline
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Decker and her collaborators–chiefly Howard, Parker, July and cinematographer Ashley Connor–have crafted a uniquely powerful, deceptively simple and staggering, ultimately transformative work of cinema.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Madeline’s Madeline can be a tough watch at times because the anger Howard displays cuts through our hearts. We see her character’s “performances” as the actual display of trauma they are.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: 19-year old Helena Howard—who plays everything from a confused teen to a kitty cat to her own mother—makes everything watchable, grounding the sometimes flighty project and showing breakout star potential.
Malevolent
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Malevolent isn’t going to be anyone’s favorite horror movie by the end of the year, but it’s still a really solid effort that is worth your time if you’re looking for a gnarly ghost movie that takes some fun turns.
The Man Who Feels No Pain
- Excerpt: Vasan Bala’s semi-absurd ode to vintage Indian actioners, ‘The Man Who Feels No Pain’ celebrates the VHS era unlike any film from the sub-continent in a very long time.
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot
Kyle Anderson @ Nerdist
Josh Hurtado @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: [W]hat starts out as an interesting attempt to take on aging and the regrets we gather as we move toward our twilight years ends up… a cheap imitation of better films with a dash of gore thrown in to placate the genre film fanatics.
- Excerpt: There are the makings of a great film here but too much time is spent telling the story and not enough showing it.
- Excerpt: The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot feels like a cross between Inglorious Basterds and Cocoon.
Mangoshake
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: … a nearly plotless experiment evoking a certain summer slacker ennui through comic vignettes that err towards the goofy side of absurd. It’s sort of a sunny combination of ‘Clerks’ and Korine that sets out to subvert teen cliches.
Manmarziyaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Manta Ray
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: The film remains mysterious without being confusing – you don’t need to grasp every detail to understand its metaphors and message and its enigmatic aura invites repeat viewings.
Manto
- Excerpt: Partly a case of an opportunity missed, ‘Manto’ derives a great amount of its appeal from Nawazuddin Siddiqui who dazzles you completely in what appears to be his most challenging role till date.
Mantra: Sounds Into Silence
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An edifying and inspirational documentary about the global phenomenon of kirtan music.
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Epic yet intimate, this is a visually gorgeous and emotionally lush fantasy drama about love and hope set in a violent but beautifully realized invented world.
Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Marilyn
- Excerpt: What is your breaking point?
Mario
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: A meticulouly controlled surface barely contains the seething fury within.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: A drama as steeped in gender politics as tense thrills underneath a western lens of gorgeously static wide-angles, a mesmerizing score, and brilliantly emotive performances.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Marrowbone
Jon Patridge @ Cinapse
Kristy Puchko @ Pajiba.com
- Excerpt: Seek out Marrowbone, and give yourself the chance to sink into Sánchez’s soulful and scary love story.
Mary Magdalene
Mary Shelley
- Excerpt: Mary Shelley is a fascinating look at the struggles of a writer in the early 19th century and specifically the struggles of a woman writing at a time when female authors were still a minority.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s far from a disaster, but a good Elle Fanning performance and some nice costumes aren’t enough to keep it going. Its exploration of a fascinating historical figure comes across as remarkably shallow and on-the-nose.
- Excerpt: Al-Mansour seems a perfect fit for the material that is Shelley’s life. But there’s no life here! What Mary Shelley needed was a jolt of energy.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Romance, imagination, misery, feminism and love of writing combine in this intriguing biopic starring Elle Fanning, who gives the performance of her career in the title role.
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A tremendous backgrounder, intimate and personal, on the massively popular — and massively political — hip-hop artist. Here is the source of all her anger and passion, and here is why she needs to be heard.
May the Devil Take You
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: While lovely looking, the movie’s conflicts and characters are so underwritten it is hard to connect with them or understand them. And those too-many-jumpscares are just too damn annoying. High on the noises but very low on the thrills.
McQueen
- Excerpt: [McQueen] captures the humanity of its subject, British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, while also vividly capturing the beauty and transgressiveness of his designs.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Bonhôte and Ettedgui reveal a world that took more than it gave this man because he loved it at the cost of his own mental and physical health.
Measure of a Man
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Measure of a Man wants to spotlight its lead by letting everyone else serve his adolescent awakening as well as try and provide depth to characters that have specifically been drawn as those one-dimensional pawns serving him.
The Meeting
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Memories of My Body
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Mercury 13
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A splendid documentary about the little known female pilots tested for spaceflight in 1961.
The Mercy
Simon Miraudo @ Student Edge
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
The Merger
- Excerpt: It’s one thing to mean well. Damian Callinan actually does well with his good-hearted and genuine footy comedy The Merger.
Michael Inside
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Mid90s
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: I’m a bit mixed overall with Mid90s. I think Jonah Hill certainly has what it takes to be a good filmmaker, but there’s not a lot here that hasn’t been covered more effectively in films that he’s clearly pulling from.
- Excerpt: Jonah Hill’s first film as a director, Mid90s, highlights his many personas, without him ever appearing onscreen.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Watching Suljic have a blast with 90s music blaring over the visual nostalgia of film grain and full frame aspect ratio is enough to enjoy every second spent with him, but Hill underestimates the others’ appeal. Stevie’s tale is fun, but the real drama lies with them.
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: The ambition of this film feels pretty low-key, making it utterly fitting as an A24 release.
The Midnight Man
- Excerpt: The Midnight Man begins by striking a meteoric horror high, only to plummet back down towards repetitive genre bumbling once the game’s true – and less enticing – plot begins.
Midnight Sun
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: If all a tearjerker needs to do to be considered succesful is making you cry, then this does the job. But there isn’t much to this that hasn’t been done many times before and better.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Midnighters
- Excerpt: Midnighters leaves you with the taste of something more complex – truly, there’s quite a lot happening – but it all folds together with such homogenized doughiness.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A thriller ride of surprises that don’t seem to stop, most of which involve the root of all evil: MONEY.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Casey Wilder Mott’s delightful modern day version of Shakespeare’s work is perhaps the punniest, most meta adaptation of the bard’s output to date.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Modernizing Shakespeare is a worthy effort and in the right hands can reinvent how you see the play (Romeo + Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing), but the attempt can also fall on its face. There is promise in the idea of contemporary Hollywood as Athens, but the haphazard translation produces far too many “WTF”s to succeed as a coherent whole.
The Miracle Season
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s not a great movie, but it’s earnest and ultimately won me over. This could be a great underdog sports movie for little girls.
Mohawk
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Geoghegan epitomizes why an argument like “all sides” cannot work in situations fueled by hate speech. He allows his characters to find themselves in a position of sympathy, but never lets us forget who they are.
Molly’s Game
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Simon Miraudo @ Student Edge
Mom and Dad
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: MOM AND DAD is a clever conceit, done with panache
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: While the goal is to entertain with violence and gore, the concept is still a metaphor for how parents feel behind closed doors.
James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: Mom and Dad is a new midnight classic that is immediately destined for cult acclaim. It delivers its juice—hilarity, violence, suspense—liberally, ensuring that you’re almost always either laughing or screaming.
Monrovia Indiana
Jonathan Richards @ Pasatiempo
- Excerpt: Wiseman has pretty certainly chosen this epitome of red America in response to the Trump presidency, but there is not a MAGA cap or a political rally to be seen.
Monrovia, Indiana
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
Monsoon
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Monsoon is at its best when it lets its characters be vulnerable enough to slide into a rage that can’t simply be shrugged off with a laugh.
Monster Party
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: The emptily mean-spirited “Monster Party” is depraved fun, until it’s not.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: We need the attacks to increase in frequency with little breathing room because Monster Party’s success comes from our being too wrapped up in the brutality to question logic.
Montparnasse Bienvenüe / Jeune femme
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
The Mountain
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: If you want to see trauma, you’ll get an eyeful here.
The Mountain Range
Anne Hoyt @ AARP.org/Español [Spanish]
- Excerpt: El mal flota como una bruma en las montañas de la cordillera andina donde se realiza una cumbre de presidentes latinoamericanos; metáfora del ambiente enrarecido en el que los políticos toman decisiones supuestamente en beneficio de los que están abajo
Mountain Rest
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Eaton has a gift for creating miniature moments of subtle unease. But the story here stays too restrained; every time it threatens to move in a dangerous direction, it pulls back and goes for the obvious angle.
Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Andy Serkis and screenwriter Callie Kloves have crafted a radical, riveting feature sure to engage both the head and heart of appropriately-aged audiences.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: A human attempting to be an animal within the state of nature would confront a host of psychological pitfalls and is ripe for kids to engage with it. Too bad most of them will beg their parents to turn off the blood and guts before they reach those parts.
Moynihan
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: The life and accomplishments of a bold creative spirit in American politics.
Mug (Twarz)
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Following in a fine tradition of ‘the grotesque’ stretching back into fairy tale, Jacek may face physical deformity as a result of the transplant but he remains a warm and upbeat character, while the moral ugliness of those around him is accentuated in relief.
Museo
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: ..cinematographer Damián García knows exactly how to shoot it, the boys feet magnified as the gingerly step through archeological models, his camera swiveling until they are upside down on screen, then casting their shadows on a wall as they approach the guard house then wriggle past below the partying guard’s eyelines.
Anne Hoyt @ AARP.org [Spanish]
ron wilkinson @ its just movies
- Excerpt: Just do it! But once you become famous, there is no turning back.
Museum
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: The director has an aptitude for taking a dash of the familiar and giving it an individual twist.
The Music of Silence
- Excerpt: Michael Radford directs, but his effort is more to show off the music than to delve into the souls of his characters with much complexity.
Mute
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Kristy Puchko @ Pajiba.com
- Excerpt: Mute feels like a dream: strange, amorphous, emotionally remote, and senseless.
Naila and the Uprising
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Notably executive-produced by Abigail Disney, the more general aspect of “Naila and the Uprising” is that when women were involved in the leadership, the Palestinian struggle was most successful. When they were excluded, the struggle floundered and lost ground.
Namaste England
- Excerpt: Indian cinema is evolving but ‘Namaste England’ is one of the rare, contemporary films that will prove you otherwise. Shoddily written, this showy relationship drama comes sans energy and a profound purpose for its characters.
Nancy
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The film proves a beautifully composed character piece refusing to languish in hopeless melancholy for added drama to see what can be accomplished by simple and honest grace.
Naples in Veils
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: A sensual, gorgeously filmed psychological thriller.
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Neomanila
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Netizens
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A documentary film that matters to us all, “Netizens” boasts an urgent call to understand the suffering the “wild west” internet can bring.
Never Goin’ Back
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: Frizell possesses an honest, irreverent and observational eye on the wayward mindset of young female-centric co-dependency attached at the hedonistic hip. Interestingly, girls behaving badly in the realm of slacker-induced mischievousness as they settle in the glow of blow definitely is a natural high for the roguishly crafted Never Goin’ Back.
Never Look Away
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [The film] really draws you into this chaotic and fractured world to see truth rise from the ashes and memories that won’t allow themselves to be buried away forever.
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
Jonathan Richards @ Santa Fe New Mexican
- Excerpt: Von Donnersmarck can lapse into cheesy cinematic devices from time to time, and the powerful music score gets a bit bombastic. But overall, the sweep and skill of his storytelling carry the weight of the film’s three-plus hours gracefully.
Never Steady, Never Still
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This film becomes a journey of trials and tribulations with as much inspirational grace as crippling resentment. For every kindness comes an explosion of rage or embarrassment. For every opportunity to prove self-worth, a misstep that risks erasing every ounce of confidence earned. It’s only through these detours, though, that they can learn to accept how individuality isn’t about not needing someone else as much as realizing where in your life you do.
Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: It’s fascinating to glean wisdom and insight into the legendary filmmaker’s thoughtful, at times torturous, creative process.
The New Romantic
New Year, New You
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: They’re showing us a glimpse at the monsters we all have the potential to become if one lucky break arrives to change the course of our future for the better.
Nico, 1988
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Dyrholm finds Nico’s center by concurrently repelling and compelling, her love for Ari genuine even as she puts her junkie son in harm’s way, verbalizing total disdain for her audience before delivering her most dazzling performance…
Nigerian Prince
Ronald Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: A coming of age dramedy that loses its way in the mean streets of modern Africa.
The Night Comes for Us
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It features the most viscous and viscerally satisfying action you will see all year. I loved every bone-crunching, blood-splattering second of it.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: The Night Comes for Us is nothing short of the best action movie of the year, the best action movie in years to be honest.
Night Comes On
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: This revenge film with unshakable heart is an assured debut for most of those involved.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The whole therefore hinges upon Fishback’s performance and she assuredly carries it upon her shoulders. Spiro and Nwandu allow her to shine by letting the internal struggle she wages be the main thrust of everything we see onscreen.
The Night Eats the World
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Zombie movies have been done every which way, but once in a while, one comes along and puts an inventive spin on the proceedings and breathes a bit of live into the often stale horror subset.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Don’t walk into Rocher’s film with a Hollywood horror mindset. This is not an action-packed gore-fest hiding scares around every corner. It only uses its genre for the situational rules it dictates to anyone caught within them. Rather than be about how Sam gets out of his predicament, The Night Eats the World portrays how he remains entrenched within it.
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: The morning after a party, a young man wakes up to find Paris invaded by zombies.
Nightmare Cinema
Kyle Anderson @ Nerdist
Matt Donato @ SlashFilm
- Excerpt: Just as countless horror anthologies of past years have been defined by their own grab bag results, Nightmare Cinema is a mixed collection of eerie crescendos and deflating downswings – but ratios trend positive.
No Date, No Signature
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …a trenchant exploration of guilt and the disparity of judicial punishment based on the class of the offender.
Nobody Dies in Longyearbyen
Bev Questad @ it’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Set in Longyearbyen, the northernmost town in the world, this documentary (posted at the end) reveals why bodies can’t be buried either in Longyearbyen or any other place in the frozen permafrost. However, the additional problem is that Longyearbyen is also the Norwegian settlement that is home to the Svalbard World Seed Vault.
Nobody’s Fool
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Movie Critics
- Excerpt: Unfocused and a total mess in narrative sensibilities. Perry and Haddish again show audiences that we’re the fool for lining up at the box office for this trippin’ tripe.
Nostalgia
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: NOSTALGIA is not an easy film, but it is one that is rich and rewarding, even cathartic,
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
November
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: November is thus composed of numerous contrasting pieces that converge in terror, laughter, or at its best both. When we want tragedy to befall our heroine because sacrifice is safer than obsession, we have reached a point of clarity. Fairy tales don’t provide happily-ever-after. They deliver evidence of our inevitable sorrow.
Number One
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
October
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Of Fathers and Sons
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Watching boys being immersed in violence and trained to become killers as part of their role as Al Qaeda members.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Of Fathers and Sons shows us a corner of the world, plagued by endless social and political issues, where raising children has become more akin to the process of raising soldiers.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: A true underground reporter in a dangerous world, Derki captures the life of this Syrian extremist and his six sons, all 13 and under.
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: The reigning champion of documentary access, director Derki shows us a future without a future, war in the Middle East.
Oh Lucy!
- Excerpt: Harnett delivers one of his best performances in the process and yet Minami and Terajima constantly prove how he’s the outsider in this tale rather than them. Terajima’s ‘Lucy’ magnificently wields the full spectrum of emotions to deliver an imperfect character that’s broken yet still willing and able to heal.
On Her Shoulders
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Alexandria Bombach, director, cinematographer, and editor, sensitively orchestrates this haunting documentary that captures the essence of Nadia, who has no family pictures or friends or relatives to interview. Her camera’s eye exposes Nadia’s aloneness, her blank stare, her listless regard for herself as she softly says, “I am worthless.”
Once Again
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Once Upon a Deadpool
M. Enois Duarte @ HighDefDigest.com
- Excerpt: The Merc with a Mouth returns in Deadpool 2 and takes aim right in the feels with another plot driven by an emotional core that places the irreverent mutant hero in a journey of self-discovery. But overlooking all that mopey, mawkish fluff, the sequel delivers more of the same cheeky, raunchy humor with the action visuals to match while also feeling wholly original.
Dan Lybarger @ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- Excerpt: Now I know what it’s like to drink a keg of O’Doul’s laced with de-caffeinated sugar-free iced tea in one sitting.
One Cut of the Dead
- Excerpt: An unconventional zombie comedy that rewards patient viewers with a satirical, enjoyable third act – as long as you make it there.
The Open House
- Excerpt: Unless you’re irrationally afraid of cold showers, The Open House fails to deliver on a premise that can be summed up by no more than two lines of text.
Opera
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Operal’ watches like a Dario Argento greatest hits collection.
The Other Side of the Wind
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: All’s Welles that ends Welles.
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
Our House
- Excerpt: OUR HOUSE…in the middle of NO MATT. SHUT IT DOWN. (It’s a creepy ghost story about science experiments, loss and moving on that you’ve admittedly seen before).
- Excerpt: Director Anthony Scott Burns delivers some real chills but it’s the positive aspect of the film, the sense that there’s still room for joy in these difficult lives, that makes them so potent.
Our House
- Excerpt: Instead of a fresh and frightening story, Our House becomes a cluttered collection of horror iconography.
Out of My Head
- Excerpt: Having a variety of people, of different ages and genders and ethnicities and walks of life, describe their migraines is a great approach to the subject, because migraines, their triggers, and their symptoms are all so individual.
The Outlaws
- Excerpt: Come for an oh-so-savvy “mop-up” plan to scrub the scum from Seoul’s underbelly, stay for the knife play and fists of fury, and be pleasantly surprised each time Ma Dong-seok holsters his meaty paws in favor of another hilarious and degrading whoopin’.
The Outsider
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Jared Leto steals this Japanese gangland thriller with his chillingly hypnotic performance — one that keeps us guessing what his character will do next.
Overboard
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: There’s no point, there’s no logic, there’s no chemistry, there’s no reason for anything with Overboard.
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Critics
- Excerpt: Mawkish and manipulative, the sinkable Overboard is no more than a big drip that besmirches the memory of the original…does nothing to add new or reinvent and really just further cements the production to nothing more than a dandy of a dud retread.
- Excerpt: É um filme para ver num dia quente de Verão, enquanto se desfruta do ar condicionado da sala, e esquecer no dia seguinte.
Overwhelm the Sky
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s challenging as a murder mystery story and engrossing as a psychological character study.
Paangshu
- Excerpt: Through his latest film Paangshu, director Visakesa Chandrasekaram throws light on some of Sri Lanka’s horrifying political developments with remarkable success. Amplified by terrific central act by Nita Fernando, the film is deeply involving despite its slow pace.
Padmaavat
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Pandas
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Enchanting, enlightening and educational in equal measure, this is one to go wild over.
Paradox
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Parallel
- Excerpt: I liked Parallel quite a bit, but it definitely feels like Ezban has a ways to go before he finally makes his masterpiece.
Pari
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Parting Glass
Jonathan Richards @ Pasatiempo
- Excerpt: In it, a tight-knit family travels to wintry Missouri to gather kid sister Colleen’s (Paquin, who co-produced) things after her death. On the cramped and tension-filled journey, the family faces good and bad memories, as well as regrets regarding Colleen and themselves.
Paul, Apostle of Christ
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Pause
- Excerpt: With ‘Pause’, Cypriot filmmaker Tonia Mishaili delivers a massive blow on the face of patriarchy without explicitly referring to it. Stella Fyrogeni’s performance as the long-suffering Elpida is amongst 2018’s finest.
Paying the Price for Peace
- Excerpt: Few people love this country so much that they could make the sacrifice Willson did.
The Peacemaker
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Fascinating documentary on a Don Quixote peace maker trying to bring healing to a war-torn world
People’s Republic of Desire
- Excerpt: The screen may be smaller, but the rules are much the same as they always were.
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Movie Critics
- Excerpt: [The] work is brilliantly combined with the toxicity of Chinese youth-driven angst where the passport to unreachable prosperity and respectability is situated in the cradle of manufactured exploitation — a shadowy solution to the destitution and detachment of China’s aimless populace.
Permission
- Excerpt: (Director Brian Crano) gives Permission a tremulous tone that’s in turns sexy, tender, and heart-trembling.
Petit Paysan
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Phantom Cowboys
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Phantom Cowboys’ Beautifully Twists and Bends The Coming-Of-Age Genre
The Photographer of Mauthausen
- Excerpt: This is a sensitive mournful movie with a carefully controlled revelation of brutality; the movie reminds us of the how easily humanity is lost and how heroes can be made in different ways.
Pick of the Litter
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: A remarkably suspenseful account of the service dog training of five puppies.
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: An uplifting doggie film.
Piercing
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: By the end of its short runtime, Piercing will become both the sexiest movie since The Handmaiden and the most unsettling since, well, The Eyes of My Mother.
Pity
- Excerpt: There’s dark comedy, and then there’s Efthimis Filippou.
Please Stand By
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Please Stand By is a sweet-natured, well-intentioned movie with a solid cast but it’s disappointingly unwilling to dip beneath its own surface.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Dakota Fanning’s fantastic performance is the heart of Ben Lewin’s heart-wrenching ‘Please Stand By.’
Pledge
- Excerpt: “Masculinity” as a weapon, downfall and twisted take on horror. Lean, mean and quick to the punch.
The Polka King
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Its true purpose, however, eventually reveals itself to be an elaborate excuse for Jack Black to act crazy and speak in a thick, goofy accent.
- Excerpt: In The Polka King, Forbes amp up the lunacy, star power, and energy to create something not only sensationally fun, but also enticingly thought-provoking.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: The Polka King’ reminds us that sometimes good people do bad things as well as how hard it is to resist temptation. Jack Black plays the title role with vim, but sometimes less is more, as the old saying goes.
Pooka
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Pope Francis: A Man of His Word
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: This documentary has some words of wisdom within it, but it also has an idealized version of the Holy Father, more a set of homilies than an intimate portrait.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An inspiring profile of the Catholic Pope who truly walks his talk about love, mercy, and service.
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: As flawed as the work might be as a film, especially compared to Wenders’s documentary masterpiece Buena Vista Social Club, Pope Francis: A Man of His Word does stand as a powerful testament to a pope whose papacy transcends its religion and has the ability to touch the hearts and minds of all people.
The Possession of Hannah Grace
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Unless self-opening morgue drawers and the sounds of bones cracking are unnerving enough for 86 minutes, “The Possession of Hannah Grace” just kind of lies there without any legitimate scares.
- Excerpt: It’s factory-line horror as predictable as it is bland.
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: [An} utterly flimsy and formulaic goosebump thriller. The Possession of Hannah Grace elicits unintentional chuckles more so than crafty bloody knuckles. Unimaginative, lazy, and stillborn in its sinister sensibilities.
Possum
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Possum is an important work of modern horror that feels like it could have been made during any decade since the 1960s. Holness conjures a disturbing view of what child abuse does to an adult later in life, mixing British kitchen sink realism with surreal dark fantasy.
The Prayer
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The Prayer is all the more engrossing for leaving the answering of these questions up to us.
The Price of Everything
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Nathaniel Kahn creates a peek behind the curtain experience at the contemporary art world, which comes off as a sleazy business full of snake oil salesmen – including the buyers, the dealers, the auction houses, and even the artists.
The Price of Free
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Prodigy
- Excerpt: a much better actress than we might expect.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Filled with exquisite suspense, “Prodigy” earns a place on my list of favorite contemporary thrillers.
Prospect
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Smart, gritty-stylish indie science fiction that is actually about ideas, and about building a future world that is authentic and lived-in. It has a really memorable teen-girl protagonist, too, who is badass but still a real kid.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A slow-burn, morally ambiguous western saga about two unlikely partners who aren’t sure if they can trust each other, but have no other choice. Except, you know, in space.
Jon Patridge @ Cinapse
Kristy Puchko @ Pajiba.com
- Excerpt: Whether or not you love Westerns, sci-fi, Pascal, or stories about angry girls finding their strength, you’ll find Prospect is a gem.
Proud Mary
Wesley Lovell @ Cinema Sight
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It doesn’t matter how good you are when the material cuts you down at the knee. This film does exactly that to everyone, proving they deserve better than TV movie artificiality cobbled together from what must have been a more complex script than shown.
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Critics
- Excerpt: There are many variables transpiring in the gritty, yet grating, urban crime flick Proud Mary that want desperately to embrace themes of unconventional motherly instincts and clichéd street-wise mayhem. Unfortunately star Taraji P. Henson (who also has an executive producing credit for this lopsided actioner), her labored foray into the criminal action-packed genre feels rather generic in its pseudo-throbbing urgency.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Proud Mary is a movie that promises an action funfest that it refuses to deliver.
Psychokinesis
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The film is a strange little concoction full of wit, wonder, excitement, and so much heart. Sure, it can be a very silly film a lot of the time, but it is a part of the charm, and it at least embraces the sillier notions of the genre better than some superhero movies that I’ve seen.
A Punk Daydream
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Although lacking polish and sometimes frustrating in its refusal to volunteer more historical context, either of the country as a whole or the Dayak, this remains an intriguing snapshot.”
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Fans of ultra gory horror films will have fun with this, especially if they’re watching it with a crowd, but its mean and problematic sense of humor might prove too much for most mainstream moviegoers..
- Excerpt: Offensive, in-your-face gory and unapologetically inappropriate. You’re gonna need an acid bath to wash this film’s exploitation filth away.
Putin’s Witnesses
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Mansky’s bigger picture about the manipulation of a nation is crystal clear.
The Quake
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: While it doesn’t break any new ground, the sequel, The Quake, picks up the mantle and does what it does exceptionally well, offering grounded thrills and the emotional substance most blockbusters of this ilk lack. Sure, it may be more of the same, but when the same is this good, you can certainly let it slide and enjoy a wild ride.
Raazi
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Race 3
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Rainbow Bridge Motel
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: You shouldn’t be surprised [by the broadly hyperbolic comedy] considering Rubin’s National Lampoon background. To his credit, however, he’s also tackling a lot of honest and poignant issues beneath that veneer.
The Ranger
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Like Chelsea, there’s a lot going on beneath the film’s surface. Wexler uses horror tropes as a mask for a poignant look at identity and finding the strength to wield it as a weapon rather than hiding it away to fit in.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Ranger is a punk rock manifesto for women, using the backwoods slasher sub-genre as a method of delivery. Survival is a woman’s game in horror all too often, making it no different from real life.
Reach
- Excerpt: Its heart is in the right place when it comes to many of the boldly-portrayed sentiments, but it plays like a hokey after-school special rather than an alarming wake-up call.
Relaxer
Josh Brunsting @ Criterion Cast
Rendezvous in Chicago
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: Smith’s canny talent to pen and juggle a triptych is not what impresses the most. Rather, what is greater, quite simply, is his sense of feel as a storyteller and filmmaker.
Restoring Tomorrow
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: An inspirational documentary about restoration of the beautiful Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.
Return of the Hero
Jonathan Richards @ Pasatiempo
- Excerpt: It’s the work of its two stars, ably supported by the secondary players, that gives this nicely-pitched comedy its staying power. Dujardin is awash in charm, but it’s the smart astringency of Laurent that really makes the chemistry sizzle and the fun sustain.
Return to Mt. Kennedy
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Instead of waxing nostalgia on the lost days of Camelot, the hope of Bobby Kennedy’s run for president, the revitalizing beauty of nature and environmental issues, this doc exposes Bobby Kennedy’s namesake, Bobby Whittaker, in one surprise after another.
The Riot Act
- Excerpt: While the writing could have used more work, the production designer makes a small budget work double time; the look and feel of 1901 and 1903 Arkansas feels authentic to me…
The Ritual
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Bruckner’s a solid craftsman and the cast is turning in solid work but The Ritual never amounts to anything but a rundown of references to better movies, both horror and otherwise.
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: The Ritual may start on familiar footing, but trust in David Bruckner’s ability to summon some nasty tension and a third act that horror fans will be talking about all year. A fierce and folksy blend of natural thrills.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Being focused on the past can prevent us from moving forward, such as when we dwell on guilt or pain, or worship a pagan death god from Norse mythology. The Ritual is about the rituals through which we put ourselves to dull our mistakes and weaknesses, and also those that allow us to break free of them.
- Excerpt: The Ritual’ Is 2/3 Of A Good Horror Movie, 1/3 Bollocks
The Road Movie
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: So while Kalashnikov opens a window onto the human experience as far as our relationship between horror and relief, The Road Movie also reveals our diminishing respect towards fate’s unyielding power.
Rodents of Unusual Size
ron wilkinson @ its just movies
- Excerpt: Eat, drink and be happy. Oh, yes, don’t forget to cut off the tails.
Rokuroku: The Promise of the Witch
- Excerpt: For most of its length, RokuRoku feels like an anthology film, a series of bizarre incidents in which puny humans come up against supernatural foes, but if you pay attention you’ll begin to notice that all these tales are linked.
Rosie
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: The outlook is anything but.
The Row
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: “The Row” would like to draw us in. Too bad it’s clear who did the sin.
Roxanne Roxanne
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s not a bad film by any means, but in trying to make the film accessible to audiences who might not know about these people, the reliance on standard musician biopic tropes end up hurting it more than helping it in the long run.
Ruin Me
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: Ratchets up the mystery and treks into unexpected territory.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a moving and marvelous look at an artist and his inspirations through decades
Sadie
Ken Bakely @ Film Pulse
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: This tale of a teenaged girl’s crossing the boundary from childhood to too-early adulthood, simultaneously a portrait of a society quietly yet inexorably collapsing, has a disturbing power that sneaks up on you.
Sammy Davis, Jr.: I Gotta Be Me
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: But never did a man try so hard to be accepted. He hoped that through his talent he could change hearts about him and about his race.
Sanju
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The central performance by Ranbir Kapoor and compelling father-son dynamic keeps the film engaging and entertaining. However, it doesn’t quite make you forget that you’re watching a biopic made by longtime friends of the subject.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: The excellent Ranbir Kapoor breathes life into this not-so-honest biopic about the controversial Sanjay Dutt.
Sanky Panky 3
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Satan’s Slaves
- Excerpt: Satan’s Slaves reminds me of Babak Anvari’s Under The Shadow – two piss-yourself-scary stories so deeply rooted in overseas culture and indigenous circumstance.
Saturday Church
- Excerpt: Swift, sweet, and spirited, Saturday Church is a gem.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Focused on the ocean’s coral system and its benefit to earth, Peter Coyote, an Emmy-winning narrator, actor, and author, explains what corals are, what they provide, and what their loss might portend.
Scarred Hearts
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: As he exhibited in “Aferim!,” Jude has an extraordinary ability to address dark themes with a great deal of humor.
Scorched Earth
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: If you’re in the mood for a direct-to-video post-apocalyptic bounty hunter saga starring a former female MMA champ, ‘Scorched Earth’ is 100% your shit.
Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
Glenn Dunks @ The Film Experience
- Excerpt: Scotty is the documentary version of a gossipy brunch with daiquiris and mimosas aplenty… What the film doesn’t do, and which I really wish it had, is actually use Bowers’ story to interrogate the ethical and societal issues that his story raises.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Not so much a who’s who of salacious Golden Age details, but a study of the pimp who outlived them all. Welcome the curtain opening and reminder there are not a sect of famous people better than you out there, they just have full-time publicists telling you they are.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Tyrnauer captures this figure with empathy, humor, and as much fascination as we too possess watching. At the end of the day Bowers’ list of clientele is far less captivating than the fact each member loved and trusted him as an equal.
The Seagull
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Season of the Devil
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
The Second Time Around
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: [A] gently exuberant and inspiring mature romancer. Nevertheless, the main ingredients that allow The Second Time Around to effectively resonate are its two veteran leads in the always radiant Linda Thorson and spunky Stuart Margolin
The Secret of Marrowbone
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Sequence Break
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: While the stakes do escalate, little happens to provide clarity for anyone’s motivations. For too long we find ourselves stuck on the surface.
Set It Up
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: A few minor quibbles aside, Set It Up is the kind of rom-com that reminds you why you loved rom-coms to begin. It’s nice to see something from this genre that keeps things simple and easy going, but given the kind of polish, and charm that many recent attempts have been lacking.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Sharp Objects
Marcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: By Maria Clara Bubna
Shelter
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A well-acted thriller about trust between a vulnerable Israeli agent and the Lebanese woman she is assigned to protect.
Show Dogs
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
Siberia
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: So what appeared a stripped-down, tense thriller about a resourceful criminal showing his mettle with back against the wall actually reveals itself to be a psychological character study of a passionless automaton finding the desire to reignite himself and remember life’s intrinsic worth. It’s a commendable choice that just tipped me onto the side of enjoying the whole.
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Silencio
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: Within in the 98 minutes of Silencio, this little dual-language flick accomplishes what few high concept indie films have been able to achieve with their wildly audacious ideas. It builds a bridge, not a wide and sturdy one, mind you, but a successful structure nonetheless, from the nonsensical to the profound. That is a normally a huge canyon of belief and consideration to cross.
Sir
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Sensitively written and directed by Rohena Gera, “Sir” truly embodies the theme of the 2019 Portland International Film Festival (PIFF): Empathy has no ethnicity.
Skate Kitchen
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Crystal Moselle beautifully balances fact and fiction in telling a story about female friendship and skate culture.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Skate Kitchen works because of the believable non-professional actors playing versions of themselves and how Crystal Moselle leans back and lets the film breathe through extended skating montages to break up the more common plot line. I still do not understand the desire to board and skate culture as a whole, but Moselle made me appreciate it.
Daniel Schindel @ Splice Today
The Skin of the Teeth
- Excerpt: Believe nothing; savour it all
Sky Migrations
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: An exhilarating film narrated by a guy in love with wilderness.
Slice
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The film feels like it was ripped right out of the shelf alongside VHS tapes of Repo Man, Miracle Mile, and The Return of the Living Dead. It’s wild, hilarious, and full of details that will groom a cult following.
- Excerpt: Slice’s cinematic world-building is hot, fresh, and ready for consumption, even if the center is still a bit raw.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: From the white witches disguising their deviousness with social justice to a community of different groups learning to co-exist and maybe even work together, Slice never holds back on using horror tropes and expected genre characters – witches, ghosts, werewolves – to skewer just how divided our society’s become.
Snake Outta Compton
Mark H. Harris @ Black Horror Movies
So Help Me God
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Sobibor
ron wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: Teetering on the edge of violence porn, a successful story of extreme heroism in the midst of extreme adversity.
Soft Matter
Mark H. Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Sol de Medianoche
Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
Sollers Point
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A Strong Indie Surprise
The Sonata
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Great acting by Freya Tingley!
Songwriter
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This unique music doc shows creativity in motion. While watching the home videos included, I felt like a fly on the wall at each of Ed Sheeran’s songwriting sessions.
South Wind
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog Film Reviews
Souvenir
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: That’s all Souvenir ends up being: cute. It’s whimsical enough to laugh every once in awhile and charming enough to invest in the character development if only to see the reactions of those caught on the periphery.
The Sower
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Speed Kills
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: A screenplay with great potential fails to catch the wave.
Springsteen on Broadway
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A breathtaking personal tribute by the songwriter/storyteller to the spirituality of place, relationships, and service.
Scott Phillips @ The Movie Isle
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Don’t expect anything because Dunham is playing with your expectations in a way that renders his conclusion worse than any bullet to the head could prove.
Scott Phillips @ The Movie Isle
Still Human
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: The sincerity is earned by Still Human’s meaningful journey and the dedicated performances of the leads.
Still/Born
- Excerpt: Still/Born may not cleverly shake themes about like Prevenge – morphing motherhood fears into something unexpected – but a solid 20-or-so minute stretch of home alone dread is worth the ride.
The Storyteller
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Magical and mysterious, a homeless little girl (played by Brooklyn Rae Silzer) simply enchants us in this irresistible and touching film.
Stratton
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: We skim the surface without hope of diving below, every sequence feeling identical to the last regardless of setting as a result. And it’s all shot with such unwavering severity that we can’t even have fun laughing at the film.
Stree
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
A Sublime Life
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal
- Excerpt: O problema é que sem orçamento não se consegue ter um elenco em condições e “Uma Vida Sublime” foi feito com um orçamento de curta-metragem. Apesar dessa falha isolada, é ainda um dos poucos títulos imperdíveis do cinema nacional em 2018 e dos melhores desta década.
Submergence
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An intriguing romantic thriller that takes us into dangerous otherworlds beyond our world.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: James McAvoy and Alicia Vikander manage to stay afloat but Wim Wenders’ ‘Submergence’ is an over-stuffed mess.
Summer ’03
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A charming little feel-good indie that will have you reflecting back on your own adolescence.
Summer 1993
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Nothing could have prepared Frida for the sudden changes and adjustment in her life and nothing can prepare you to witness Summer 1993‘s towering compassion and humanity.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Summer of 84
- Excerpt: A very “fine” thriller that’ll kill any time you may have laying around – which, coming from the RKSS camp, leaves us wanting a bit more.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Taken on their own, the last 15-20 minutes of ‘Summer of 84’ work reasonably well. They would have worked even better if the film had done a single thing in the previous 80 minutes to earn the climax
Summer of ’84
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
Sunday’s Illness
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Both main characters slowly draw us into their worlds and make us care about what happens to them. We beg to know them better as each frame of the film teases us along.
Supa Modo
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: I’m glad movie theaters are dark because I ugly cried through all 74-minutes of ‘Supa Modo.’
Super Troopers 2
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: If you’re the kind of person who has been praying for a Super Troopers 2 since 2001, you will probably be alright with this, but only because it does the absolute bare minimum. For everyone else, this offers very little.
- Excerpt: Super Troopers remains king, a film that withstood my college years and still delights to this day, but numero dos is still a goofy state patrolman farce worth your time.
- Excerpt: Super Troopers 2 won’t be the cult classic its predecessors are, but it makes good on their Indiegogo promise from 2015. It honors the characters they created almost two decades ago even if it does so in a safe fashion.
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Critics
- Excerpt: Hence, without question, there is again no notable arresting development for the empty gags perpetrated in this latest asinine policing puff piece. For the rest of us, this fruitless farce will be as appetizing as getting sprayed in the face with mace while jaywalking.
Superbly
- Excerpt: A pointless creation that completely missed the cultural point of its own iconic original.
SuperFly
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: SuperFly is a moderately flashy, mostly fun update of its 46 year old source material but also a reminder of how little has changed in that time.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Easily one of the biggest surprises of 2018. What seemed like a generic, standard issue urban gangster movie is instead something that is much smarter, more biting, more interesting, and more nuanced than anything I expected.
Frank Ochieng @ Screen Anarchy
- Excerpt: Still, 2018’s Superfly feels like some padded, bombastic length rap music video that is overly showy in naughtiness but offers nothing constructive, calculating or crafty to its macabre mischievousness of storytelling.
Superlopez
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Susu
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A clunky narrative with too many asides comes with zero surprises and leaves the audience wondering why.
The Swan
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The monster that lives in the mountain’s lake is no match for those that haunt each [character]. Our experiences, good and bad, are what drive us to the edge of oblivion and what coax us back.
The Swan
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Pratice
- Excerpt: A sober-minded and intense girl in Iceland deals with epiphanies about adults and nature.
Sweet Country
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: This is why the briefest of glances from Brown, Wright, Leslie, and Morris can stop you in your tracks more than anything else. It’s their recognition of personal errors whether they’re willing to change or not that resonates by showing progress is possible if we’re strong enough to embrace empathy over discord.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Swinging Safari
- Excerpt: If you need a way to laugh at all the reasons you’re deficient, or to examine why your white Australian friends are the hot messes they are, grab your sluggers, lather up that body in oil, spark up a dart and laugh. And, hopefully, don’t cry.
Symphony for Our World
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A celebration of the beauty and diversity of the Earth with natural history footage combined with an original symphony composition.
The Tale
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Fox is directly taking on the nasty, complex long term effects of abuse, insisting that, in our #MeToo moment, we resist the easy route of seeing victims where there are people.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It avoids a lot of the sensationalism and exploitation that is often found in stories like this, and it helps that it’s informed by someone who has been through this. The experience of it is one of the most maddening, moving, and profoundly affecting that I’ve seen in a long time.
Tales From The Hood 2
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Despite some flaws, the film has an anger fueled by the current political climate that gives the it a lot of the energy and passion that made the original a cult classic..
Tau
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
Tehran: City of Love
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Three disenchanted characters: an ex-champion bodybuilder, an overweight beauty clinic secretary and a dispirited religious singer, yearn for love and connection in Tehran.
Tel Aviv On Fire
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Zoabi uses farcical comedy as his warm-hearted messenger, presenting his argument with a disarming hug and a surprising dash of romance.
Terra Franca
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
Terrifier
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
The Testament
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: This personal, yet also universal plane is where truth has an absolute value and deciding role to play. How Greenberg orchestrates Halberstam’s burning struggle takes this film into the realm of stunning masterpiece.
That Summer
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Heavy as it may sound, That Summer is mostly a fun 80 minutes spent in the company of charming characters.
They Remain
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: As a mood piece, it has a creepy and unsettling atmosphere that never lets up, filled to the brim with arresting imagery, eerie music, and a sense of place that keeps you anxious. It’s a wonderful example of filmmaking that is able to keep you engaged with clever writing and a keen eye for psychological depth and detail.
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Mark H. Harris @ Black Horror Movies
They Shall Not Grow Old
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Peter Jackson uses living history as a foundation to build upon in a revolutionary way, shaping these harrowing tales into a powerful new entity.
Alan Mattli @ Maximum Cinema [German]
- Excerpt: What Peter Jackson offers is solid documentary storytelling and game-changing cinematic handiwork.
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: The creative miracles of technology have stepped in with the striking documentary They Shall Not Grow Old. Palpable and prodigious in accomplishment, this film can become a monument all its own.
They Will Love Me When I’m Dead
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: The Other Side of the Other Side of the Wind.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Fans of Orson Welles should not miss this revealing documentary about Welles’ last film, ” The Other Side of the Wind.”
The Third Murder
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda takes an entirely different tack from his family dramas for a critical look at Japan’s justice system. This is his first film with Koji Yakusho, outstanding as the mysterious murderer…
This Giant Papier-Mâché Boulder is Actually Really Heavy
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Just as this desire to homage and parody at the same time provides the film’s best moments, however, it also generates many of the worst. Rather than empower geeks, Nicolson trivializes them in lieu of normalizing a “real” man by comparison.
This is Congo
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This is Congo captures a moment of time and an entire history simultaneously. To understand the hypocrisy involved, McCabe takes us back into the past to understand how things got so bad.
Thrist Street
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Uma experiência irresistível que combina Roman Polanski e Brian De Palma
Thugs of Hindostan
- Excerpt: In retrospect, Vijay Krishna Acharya’s ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ should rather have been an irreverent spoof on India’s struggle for freedom. For the rest, there is no chance for such a hackneyed screenplay to find relevance in this day and age.
Thunder Road
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s a true powerhouse performance as Cummings shows his uncanny ability to traverse the delicate roads of a public nervous breakdown with pathos and humor.
Tigers Are Not Afraid
- Excerpt: Tigers Are Not Afraid is a tremendous balance between social rot and “Lost Boys” (Peter Pan) brand adventuring that centers around a particularly alarming phenomenon.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Haunting and gorgeous, dreamy and dreary, ‘Tigers are Not Afraid’ is by turns a dark and joyous reminder to be careful what you wish for.
- Excerpt: Tigers Are Not Afraid (also known asVuelven) feels like Pan’s Labyrinth meets The Florida Project.
Tilt
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I liked what Tilt had to offer, but the way it’s delivered is too literal. I enjoyed the why of Joe’s fall, but not the fall itself.
Time Trap
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie
- Excerpt: Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie tackles many aspects of this often controversial figure and her complicated history with feminism.
The Titan
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s a moderately engaging sci-fi film. However, it’s ultimately forgettable, and doesn’t dig into its ideas as much as it could have.
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal
- Excerpt: Faltou um pouco de química entre os protagonistas e em especial entre os militares, mas se pensarmos que o objectivo do filme não era entreter e sim alertar para o ponto de viragem que enfrentamos, está cumprido. Consegue prender-nos à história e ser minimamente convincente do ponto de vista científico.
Tito and the Birds
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s a human story that simply resonates beyond language and borders to expose how we aren’t alone in the troubles we face.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Emmanuel Báez @ Cinéfiloz [Spanish]
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a swoon-worthy teen romantic comedy with a heart of gold and a trailblazing protagonist.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: This shows the audience within the first few minutes why it belongs in the upper echelon of “fake relationship” romcoms.
- Excerpt: All the basics of a high school rom-com line up as though their names are being called out in home room attendance-taking.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Incurable romantics of all ages should enjoy this heartwarming teen rom-com.
Tokyo Vampire Hotel
- Excerpt: A bizarre, bloodsucking battle royale that would make Blade blush.
Too Late to Die Young
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Sotomayor’s coming of age tale is unique in that her focus is not only on the young, but the (less well defined) adults whose choices are every bit as questionable.
Traffik
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: When you begin your story, you have to – in a sense – provide a thesis or some idea, or throughline, and you have to see that through to the end. This films opens with the pretense of shunning simplistic stories in favor our hero’s more thorough, complex, and thoughtful mindset, but it doesn’t follow through with that philosophy at all.
Mark H. Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Frank Ochieng @ The Critical Critics
- Excerpt: The main jam to Traffik — if you will — rests on the flimsy film’s lazy-eyed script, transparent direction and staged cheap thrills that would not plant goosebumps on a life-long coward in the confines of a dark closet.
Train to Zakopané
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This fine Henry Jaglom movie about bigotry is heartbreaking but a must-see.
Transit
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell is a frosty Graboid rehash that’s running on franchise fumes at this point.
The Trump Prophecy
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: If the movie was designed to convince non-believers that Trump really is God’s selection, the paper-thin storytelling won’t do the trick.
Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Winter lies somewhere in-between with an agenda to shed light on real world applications in order to pique interest, demystify, and cut through the bullshit spouted by talking heads on television that use sarcasm because they don’t fully understand the subject themselves.
The Truth About Killer Robots
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: So while The Truth About Killer Robots doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, Pozdorovkin expertly curates these stories, philosophies, and dangers into a narrative that explains how Skynet should never have been our greatest fear. It’s always been ourselves.
Tumbbad
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Tumbbad is a spectacle of epic horror, like a great, terrifying, and sociopolitical piece of classic literature brought to life. The personal and the national become one in a Gothic fable about the corrosive nature of greed which explores how a people can be damaged by colonialism and imperialism, as well as how a spiritual culture can become warped by capitalist forces.
A Twelve-Year Night
- Excerpt: A biographical piece, A Twelve Year Night will appeal profoundly to those who analyze ideological sanity of individuals who fight against oppressive political changes. Actors Antonio de la torre, Chino Darín and Alfonso Tort pitch in spellbinding performances.
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Tyrel
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Silva attempts to stoke social commentary within a raucous portrait of male camaraderie, however, he’s uninterested in delivering any sort of impactful poignancy.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Silva goes to great lengths to replicate the psychological horror people of colour are put through often by oblivious, even well meaning whites.
Umbilical World
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The experience is like leaving Firth’s YouTube channel on autoplay while waiting for the drugs to kick in, then checking in just when you’re peaking to find something on that plays like a collaboration between Don Hertzfeldt, Lars von Trier, and a serial killer.
Uncle Drew
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Even though the origins of the film are purely commercial, it honestly doesn’t show as much as you might expect. It’s shockingly funny, sweet, and earnest in all the ways a feel-good sports movie should be.
Under the Silver Lake
- Excerpt: Even the most outrageous Hollywood stories need connective dedication paid in full, which isn’t David Robert Mitchell’s forte here.
- Excerpt: Under The Silver Lake is a love letter to Hollywood. Not one written on sweetly scented paper but rather scrawled on the shit-smeared bathroom wall in a streaky Sharpie.
Under the Tree
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: You’ll find yourselves laughing and hating yourself for doing so because Sigurðsson doesn’t play scenes for comedy despite very obviously writing for it. This is a testament to his direction and the actors’ heightened states of borderline farce played with complete sincerity.
Under the Wire
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A harrowing portrait of the slaughter of civilians and the urban destruction that was the siege of Homs in 2012, and a terrific honoring of journalist Marie Colvin, who died getting the story out to the world.
Upstate Story
Josh Taylor @ www.forgetfulfilmcritic.com
- Excerpt: The movie suffers from solipsism, with no meaningful dialog coming from any character other than Ellis. Defying a cardinal rule of cinema – show, don’t tell – the entirety of Ellis’s dialog is delivered in voice over, making Upstate Story a kind of visual novel.
The Vanished
- Excerpt: The charismatic Kim Sang-Kyung tends to dominate scenes even when playing a downbeat character, but Kim Kang-woo is impressive in the quieter role of the troubled Park
Vazante
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Brazilian drama about a misogynistic slave owner and those suffering under his control.
Veere Di Wedding
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s a really fun movie that works because it’s able to craft characters that you genuinely enjoy spending time with. I don’t think it’s quite great enough to be anything more than a mere footnote in the future when female representation like this in mainstream Indian cinema will, hopefully, no longer be a rarity, but it’s solid.
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Victor Crowley
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: My review of VICTOR CROWLEY, which – as a fan of all three previous HATCHET films – was a bummer to write. Doesn’t matter. Fingers crossed for a HATCHET V so I can hop back aboard.
Vidar the Vampire
- Excerpt: What Vidar The Vampire accomplishes in phallic and comedic genre charms dances a fine line that’ll divide audiences.
A Vigilante
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: A Vigilante succeeds not by exploiting torture, but instead shifting focus to Olivia Wilde’s painful, so very real performance.
Violence Voyager
- Excerpt: Violence Voyager is an unforgettable experience both in terms of the insanity happening on screen, and the fascinating technical construction of the film.
Viper Club
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Susan Sarandon’s impressive performance as a dedicated ER nurse whose son is missing ends up being another notch on her way to becoming the “mother of all film moms.”
Vodka Diaries
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Volcano
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Bondarchuk’s more absurdist moments are matched by the film’s more graceful contemplative elements.
VooDoo
Mark H. Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Wanda
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Wayne
- Excerpt: Wayne, a documentary about racer Wayne Gardner, slows down when it should speed up
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- Excerpt: A solid, but faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s gothic fairytale about two peculiar, ostracized sisters hiding a dark family secret.
We the Animals
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: features the wonder of childhood pierced by parental problems of Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project,” some of the magical realism of Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and the fragmentary impressionism of Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.”
Anne Hoyt @ AARP.org [Spanish]
Brent McKnight @ Seattle Times
- Excerpt: It plays like a gauzy, mezmerising, half-remembered dream.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: There’s a powerful love beneath the frustration of [this family’s] impoverished life on oblivion’s edge. [Zagar] seeks to express it with objective authenticity to understand its role in the boys’ evolutions.
Weed the People
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A smart, vitally important documentary look at medical marijuana, how it is helping real Americans right now, and why Big Pharma has ignored its healing properties.
Welcome Home
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: Welcome Home is nothing more than a kitschy thriller that makes for a perfect popcorn-fueled late-night hate-watch.
Welcome to New York
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Werewolf
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: McKenzie needs us to be mad at the situation and selfish desires of those caught in [poverty’s] grip to find the epiphany that there’s more to it than statistics and financial subsidies. At its core the idea of the poor is and always should be an issue about people — human beings.
West of the Jordan River
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An Israeli director’s look at the devastating fallout from the 50-year occupation of Palestine.
Western
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The best films are generally those that craft their characters first and let the plot write itself through them. Grisebach draws these men with three-dimensional, complex identities and watches them butt heads and shake hands knowing their inherent drama is enough.
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: There’s nothing fawning and plenty ironic about this essential first documentary to cover a major female fashion designer, a woman whose life is almost a perfect reflection of the trajectory of 20th-century feminism.
A Whale of a Tale
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: A Japanese documentary that returns to the small town featured in The Cove to record the continuing controversy over the killing of dolphins.
What a Country!
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog Film Reviews
What Is Democracy?
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
What Keeps You Alive
- Excerpt: What Keeps You Alive is a solid thriller, constructed with style, that makes its manipulations matter.
- Excerpt: Colin Minihan’s What Keeps You Alive is a beastly hybrid of survivalist and relationship thrills, savage like a wolf hungry for innocence.
What Still Remains
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Those hoping for zombies stumbling through the forest will be disappointed, but those searching for the complexities of how such things alter our psychology will not.
What Will People Say
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Iram Haq is a terrific filmmaker, and she is able to tell a very personal story in a way that is both deeply affecting and evocatively told.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: At the end of the day, every action undertaken by her family, social workers, and friends occurs to portray an experience that must not be underestimated: namely what it means to be a young woman in a patriarchal culture. To watch Mozhdah endure so much pain and suffering is to see how easily faith and God can be warped to fit a flawed humanity’s sense of pride.
When Jeff Tried to Save the World
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: Not only has writer-director Kendall Goldberg fleshed out this excellent main character, she guides it through this plot with a matching sense imagination and earnestness. The nuances win in a story where heart and pragmatic approachability outshine any need for shock value and raunch.
Where Hands Touch
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Asante refuses to erase the complexity of the situation at-hand. This film is about identity above all and that goes for those looking down the barrel and those holding the gun.
Whitney
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Deeply moving, truly tragic; a biography with a keenly journalistic but hugely sympathetic eye. Powerful compassion and a get-up-and-dance deployment of Houston’s music may well bring her a new generation of fans.
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Whitney is sobering but lacks a fresh perspective.
Whitney, the King, and Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
Glenn Dunks @ The Film Experience
- Excerpt: Three recent musical documentaries about Whitney Houston, Elvis Presley, and Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Who Will Write Our History
Jonathan Richards @ Pasatiempo
- Excerpt: In a move that carries uncomfortable echoes today, the occupying Nazis built a wall to seal Warsaw’s half-million Jews off from the mainstream of the city’s life.
Who’s Watching Oliver
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
The Wild Boys
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
The Wild Pear Tree
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Wildling
Matt Donato @ We Got This Covered
- Excerpt: Wildling may swerve last-minute into a less dense finale, but Bel Powley’s performance is worth this fierce and untamed coming-of-self arc that’s so exquisitely female-centered.
Jon Patridge @ Cinapse
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s refreshing to see so many important themes dealt with in a horror film. Coming-of-age, self-identity, family, bullying, love and compassion all receive attention this very engrossing movie.
The Wind
Scott Phillips @ Timed Edition
Winter Brothers
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Palmason] lets his visuals provide whatever explanations are necessary and therefore leaves it to the viewer to catch details themselves. The resulting uncertainty only adds to Emil’s unpredictability.
The Witch in the Window
- Excerpt: A Quiet Place, Pyewacket, Cargo – add The Witch In The Window to 2018’s ever-growing list of horror movies that have made this a banner year for parental horror.
The Witch: Part 1. the Subversion
- Excerpt: The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion is a hell of a lot of fun and will both satisfy Korean action fans looking for something different, and leave them desperate for more.
A Wizard’s Tale
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This colorful animated film might not work for many adults, but most youngsters should be entertained by all the action, whimsical creatures, and fantasy/reality jumps.
Woman Walks Ahead
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A portal into the Western frontier revealing the prevalence of racism and sexism.
Working Class Boy
- Excerpt: The Jimmy Barnes documentary Working Class Boy is very likely to make grown men cry…
The Workshop
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
The World Before Your Feet
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Fascinating documentary about a zealot, the turf he loves, and his gift of wonder.
The Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: A glorious tribute to a captivatingly astute writer, “Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin” intermixes original images and motion graphics of the environments described in Le Guin books to tell the story of one of the greatest science fiction writers in the last 100 years.
Write When You Get Work
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: So we’re left with a problematic façade that can’t avoid tainting the thought-provoking crime mystery unfolding beneath it.
Wyeth: American Masters
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality and Practice
- Excerpt: An engrossing documentary on the life and legacy of the very popular American painter.
The Year of Spectacular Men
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Nothing occurs merely for the punch line — not even the punch lines. This is both a boon and bane as the light tone becomes infectious just as it proves damaging to the authentic drama unfolding.
Yomeddine
- Excerpt: In its brief run-time, director A. B. Shawky’s Egyptian road film ‘Yomeddine’ spreads optimism and packs in a bunch of heartwarming moments originating from a notably organic space.
You Have the Night
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: After leaving the ship on which she works, Sanja finds herself stranded, with nowhere to go but home. The shipyard has filed for bankruptcy, leaving many workers out of work. A storm comes; one life is lost.
You Might Be the Killer
Scott Phillips @ The Movie Isle
The Young Karl Marx
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: Without any hint of emotion or immediacy, we’re left with a depiction that will be recognizable to “Film Twitter,” a bunch of overconfident men jockeying for position by being dicks to each other.
James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: While not as incendiary as I Am Not Your Negro, The Young Karl Marx continues to showcase Peck’s remarkable abilities as a filmmaker. This is a grand film with epic designs, and Peck scales up beautifully, bringing to life the dismal realities of the era
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
Yuli
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: It’s in dance that the film’s strength lies, illustrating, through choreography, Acosta’s more abstract – and more negative – emotions, including fear, loneliness and lust.
Yuva
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: In the moments when Yeksan’s film is good, it is truly stunning.
Zero
- Excerpt: A definitive lack of originality notwithstanding, ‘Zero’ indeed has its moments of warmth and an ever-reliable Shah Rukh Khan to save the day.
Zoo
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A fine family film that shows the importance of protecting animals.
