For a film to get its own page on the main 2022 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.
892
- Excerpt: Abi Damaris Corbin’s quiet and unobtrusive style helps 892 build tension primarily from character instead of incident.
18 ½
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This charming little indie from cowriter (with Daniel Moya)/director Dan Mirvish takes a ‘what if’ approach to history, imagining that Nixon’s inner circle unwittingly recorded themselves listening to the 18 ½ minutes of tape they would subsequently erase
7 Days
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [Soni] and Sethi’s screenplay make multiple callbacks to such things as Australian sailors, ringing bells and Rita’s art works evoking different emotions each and every time.
A Chiara
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: A Chiara from filmmaker Jonas Carpignano is an Italian-language drama that bears an interesting idea. In the midst of teen angst, confusion, changes and discoveries, what would happen if added to that was the revelation that your father was a wanted criminal? What would be your emotional state? How would it hit you psychologically? You might wonder, but as far as A Chiara you might have to seek answers elsewhere.
A.K.A
- Excerpt: A.K.A. is an excellent documentary that highlights a unique phenomenon in a highly entertaining fashion, as much as a tribute to three people whose stories and opinions are quite captivating to watch.
The Abandon
- Excerpt: Official Closing Night Film of the 2022 Mammoth Film Festival
Abandoned
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Rather than read the supernatural elements as postpartum, we have no choice but to equate postpartum with the heinous crimes inspiring those elements. [It’s] a means to an end that unfortunately cannot shake the damage of those means.
The Act of Reading
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: THE ACT OF READING is a documentary about MOBY-DICK. Director Mark Blumberg flunked his high school English class junior year because he didn’t read MOBY-DICK or do any of the papers assigned, and now Blumberg observes and talks to several teachers about MOBY-DICK, including Janet Werner, the teacher who flunked him.
Adam by Eve: A Live in Animation
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Clearly, it’s Eve’s poppy music and the psychedelic anime routines that are the draw here. But the thin narrative does at least suggest themes of teen love, teen alienation, teen sexuality, and teen suicide, with a sly queer slant.
Adieu Godard
Mark Leeper @ Mark leeper’s Reviews
The Adult Swim Yule Log
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Considering the source, this prank probably caught no one off guard, but it is utter madness in seasonal horror… what impresses more is Kelly’s ability to create genuine unease and suspense amidst all the kookiness…
After Blue
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Because while [it’s] undeniably bold, beautiful, transgressive, and singularly memorable, it possesses nothing of substance for me to care about the journey.
After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: With such a lovingly created psychedelic playground to romp in, it’s a shame that Mandico gives his characters little of interest to do or say.
Against the Ice
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I do believe Against the Ice is a success insofar as its ability to memorialize these unsung heroes. The story itself just isn’t quite as spellbinding as one may believe due to its familiarity and back-heavy construction.
Agent Game
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Too often screenwriters Tyler Konney and Mike Langer allow themselves to fall into that “Three Weeks Earlier” nonsense, a device discounted by even the most undiscriminating viewer and derided even by a particularly clever episode of “Rick and Morty.” These guys ought to know better.
a-ha: The Movie
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Far more substantive than a Behind the Music episode, the movie takes you inside the dynamic of a globally-popular act to examine their success, as well as the toll it took.
Ahed’s Knee
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Ahed’s Knee is an angry, confrontational work wherein Lapid has no qualms with making his audience uncomfortable. [But] some segues are just plain weird.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: When Ahed’s Knee ended, I experienced a somewhat frustrating day-long period of trying to decide how I felt about it. The film is challenging, there’s no doubt about that, an artistic statement about the state of director Nadav Lapid’s native country and his desire to be free as an artist, but how does this all mesh with what is on the screen?
AI Love You
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: AI LOVE YOU is a United States/Thai science fiction film which predates the current A.I. craze by about a year. It has elements of HER, but the basic premise is not that of a robot imitating a human, but that of an AI somehow downloading itself *into* a human.
Alcarràs
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Ali & Ava
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Despite proving a heartwarmingly funny and rich love story, its strength truly lies in its characters’ melancholic confrontation with their underlying pain.
Ali and Ava
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Sweet story about two quite different people who connect through music.
Alice, Darling
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: an effective drama due to the strength of its performances, especially from Anna Kendrick in the lead role.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: addresses an important subject from a unique angle. There are some bumps along the way and that ending doesn’t quite work, but the cast pulls it over the finish line.
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Alienoid
- Excerpt: The first film in a projected two-part series — the second film was shot at the same time as the first and is due next year — Alienoid is jam-packed with jaw-dropping set pieces, great performances, and enough plot for six movies, let alone two.
- Excerpt: In that fashion, “Alienoid” is a movie that definitely deserves a watch for its individual elements, particularly on the big screen, but does not make much sense as a whole.
Aline
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: What a weird but strangely entertaining film…If seeing Lemercier portray a five year-old doesn’t freak you out, hang on for the rest of her portrayal of Dion as a quirky social misfit…
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Aline is one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen.
All Man: The International Male Story
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
All My Friends Hate Me
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The result is as funny as it’s excruciating and alienating as it’s relatable. Look no further than a final line that’s as blood boilingly reductive as it is apt.
All My Puny Sorrows
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: This is emotionally piercing stuff, elevating what could have been a tepid Drama About Life with first-rate performances. There’s nothing puny about them.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Despite Johnny Mandel and Michael Altman’s legendary theme to MASH, suicide is anything but painless. It does bring on many changes, but with it come heartbreak, confusion and years and years of searching for a punctuation, an end-mark, an answer.
All the Old Knives
- Excerpt: Cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s camera is seldom still– it swirls and dollies more than it remains fixed, giving the film a sense of fluidity and also creating some motion in a film largely composed of people talking to each other.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The movie jumps around in time so much that it becomes disorienting. I gave up trying to follow the plot after the first hour because it was an exercise in futility.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Amazon Prime, what are you doing? 2002 nostalgia? Is that what this is? All the Old Knives employs all the old post-9/11 hack-fried government paranoia and disorientation. A little “24” here, a little Bourne Identity there, fused with the kinds of clip-editing, ominous music and who-do-you trust aesthetics that have padded Liam Neeson’s post-Taken career. How does one approach it now? 20 years on, what is the point of re-hashing this stuff?
Alone Together
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It looks nice and the performances are well done, but this feels like a shadow of better romantic dramas.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The only way this could be more tone-deaf is if she waited to reveal that it was set during the first few weeks of the pandemic in 2020 for a third act rug pull.
Along for the Ride
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This is a good-hearted teen romance flick. The characters are sympathetic, the plot resolution takes some work but doesn’t require crushing levels of angst, and the low-key messages are positive without being preachy.
Am I OK?
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It feels quite personal and quite honest, and thanks to an appropriately light tone, it ends up becoming a delightful experience.
The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Using the employees of ‘the happiest place on earth’ for perspective on a country-wide issue gives this documentary a particularly pointed arrow…one which uses a name as American as apple pie to open people’s eyes.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Oh, how I love Abigail Disney’s films! She has an expectation for a better world and has constructive ways about how to get there “with a little courage and imagination.”
American Murderer
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: Twisting through time and space, Gentile weaves his gritty crime drama using narrative feints, parries, and thrusts, leading us to the sharp point of the piece, which is the why and how of Jason Derek Brown’s actions.
Anais in Love
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The film unfolds as a subdued, yet impressively funny tale populated by flawed yet benevolent characters who never become so absorbed in their own self-importance to put something as silly as revenge above their universal and human yearning for happiness.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I liked the low-level intensity of this film. It’s observational about this woman’s mind, her heart and her reckless nature and where it gets her.
The Anchor
- Excerpt: Despite the somewhat obvious story (particularly for fans of crime movies) “The Anchor” emerges as a rather entertaining and interesting movie, that juggles its comments and its thriller premises excellently, highlighting in the process Jung’s direction and the great performances.
Annular Eclipse
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A new blockbuster from China with a theme that take us back to Blade Runner.
Anonymous Club
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It flirts with [the possibility of diving deeper] to deliver an intriguing if shallower than expected look at the humanity behind the fame. It reminds us that our heroes carry and fight the same pain we all do.
Apples
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an absurdist dramedy and psychological mystery that was Greece’s submission for the 2022 International Oscar.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Apples becomes an existential fable raising open-ended questions… The ending is, ironically, memorable.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Art & Krimes by Krimes
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Jesse Krimes’ remarkable story will hopefully be nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. It is that well done and it is that important.
As Good As Dead
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: https://www.thelastthingisee.com/2022/12/as-good-as-dead-2022-movie-review.html
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Though it’s cheap and schlocky much of the time, it coasts on Michael Jai White’s charm, a playful tone, and endearing goofiness, and is decent fun for those of us who love this stuff
Asia’s Elephant Whisperer: The Last Mahout
- Excerpt: Beauty of the beasts
Asking For It
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Mostly, “Asking For It” is a screed made with over-directed excess and a terrific ensemble, beating you into submission with its persuasive mission statement.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Some films approach social issues with nuance and insight, offering carefully crafted critiques that address difficult problems through close examination and critique. Asking For It is not one of these movies.
Athena
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: A blast to the senses – pure adrenaline from start to finish. This is cinematic storytelling at its most primal form.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: With long takes, extreme close-ups, and handheld camera-work, we’re dropped into this fight to witness the intensity and knee-jerk reactionary impulses that risk making things worse. Our collective anger [opening] us up to manipulation in anarchy’s name.
Attachment
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Gislason isn’t wielding gimmicks as much as slowly peeling back the layers he’s built upon an ancient truth those involved were too scared to confront head-on. This film grounds itself as far as how dybbuks and the like would appear in our reality.
Attack on Finland
- Excerpt: Anything is possible
The Automat
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A delightful and culturally rich documentary about a ground-breaking food chain.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Lisa Hurwitz and her editor Michael Levine make their directorial and screenwriting debuts with this lively, informative and nostalgic look at a bit of Americana with a surprisingly profound parallel to American democracy itself.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: What is admirable is the way that Hurwitz remains consistent. There is a temptation to blame the downfall of the automat on the current culture (I’ve done that myself in this review) but she wants to remain optimistic.
The Aviary
Sarah E Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: While The Aviary begins in an apparently realistic mode, over time it raises doubts about how much of what we’re seeing on screen is real.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I wouldn’t say Cullari and Raite necessarily give us anything we haven’t already experienced with the genre or themes, but they utilize them with deft hands to keep us invested in the characters and, by extension, the mystery connecting them.
Babi Yar. Context
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Babi Yar. Context sets itself apart from your standard documentary by simply giving us images, video, faces, snatches of dialogue and interspersed are helpful pieces of text so that we know where we are without gobs of commentary. Sergei Loznitsa’s film is about a very specific event, a massive crime against humanity but there is no narration, no talking heads, only an exemplary film that connects pieces of film into a context that gives us the timeline of an atrocity.
Babli Bouncer
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Baby Assassins
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is a strange descent into mayhem from the perspective of Generation Z.
Babysitter
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: An exercise in style and color that, without working all the time, is very easy to admire.
Bad Axe
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [It] proves an unforgettable indictment on the US political machine fanning flames of hate and a personal, inspirational story of fighting back—with words, actions, and a refusal to let anyone pretend the Sievs don’t deserve to call this flawed town home.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: How Siev guides his family through this time of trouble and influences his son’s video story is so deep, meaningful and good that few will be left dry-eyed.
Bad City
Bad Roads
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …often shocking in its brutality, especially considering it is depicting Ukraine five years before Putin’s full scale invasion… a stark reminder of how quickly our humanity can disappear during war.
Bandit
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Smooth, unassuming, dashing and handsome, Josh Duhamel plays a real-life Canadian bank-robber, Gilbert Galvan Jr. (also known as The Flying Bandit), with James Bond finesse and a Steve Martin kind of self-deprecating humor.
A Banquet
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Uncertainty abounds and Paxton utilizes it to heighten suspense as the family fractures further. Nightmarish images arrive as reality conjures its own form of fear.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Ruth Paxton’s A Banquet works on a couple different levels because of the way Justin Bull’s screenplay depicts a teenager’s apocalyptic visions as either terrifyingly real or potentially the product of a mentally ill mind made all the worse by grief.
Beba
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: She’s documenting ebbs and flows of an identity still in progress so we can relate our own to its highs and lows. Her goal was to begin a deeper dialogue around our “innate correlation.” By never pretending to be anything but herself, she succeeds.
Before Now and Then (Nana)
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Beguiled Company
Belle
- Excerpt: BELLE is a unique cross between Ready Player One and Beauty and the Beast. The animation is beautiful with a story that is emotional and meaningful.
Beloved
- Excerpt: Married and Miserable
Benediction
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: : …an engrossing portrait of an artist and his circle which stalls in the man’s youth, never really crossing the finish line.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Lowden often provides much more through his performance than the script does through its plotting. It’s enough to remain captivated and begin to understand who Sassoon was, but it also reveals that there’s plenty more to discover.
Better Nate Than Ever
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Musical lovers should enjoy this adventure of one brave boy.
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This 70 minute, one take time travel comedy written by its theatrical ensemble Europe Kikaku’s Makoto Ueda works its premise for all its worth without overstaying its welcome, only to reveal it was a meet cute romance all along.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: quick, quirky, and inventive
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Andrew Wyatt @ The Lens
Big bug
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Jeunet se burla de nuestra tendencia a querer que la tecnología nos haga todo (en una escena un personaje usa un dron miniatura para que le encuentre las gafas) y apunta con dardos punzantes a temas como la clonación de mascotas, la futura incapacidad humana ante el contacto físico o la obsolescencia programada.
Big vs Small
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: We live this film and we identify with Andrade, whom we never think of as small but rather as a giant in determination and courage.
Bitterbrush
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: We watch these women do their thing with full confidence and expertise to keep it light and entertaining. Maybe that won’t be enough for some, but it’s definitely enough for the work to be a success.
Black Box
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an aurally based conspiracy thriller akin to Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out.” Given the recent Boeing 737 scandal, its subject is timely and it fills a niche, making it ripe for an American remake.
Black Crab
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Rapace reminds me a lot of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, a blend of toughness mixed with maternal instincts that keep her going, but she never forgets to be a human being.
Black Site
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Familiarity doesn’t automatically get in the way of effectiveness, though. With a better budget and more polish script-wise, Black Site might even be a good film.
Blanquita
- Excerpt: Most truth will never come out
Blind Ambition
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: charts true underdogs taking on a rarified world in an educational and entertaining documentary.
Blood Relatives
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: BLOOD RELATIVES is definitely a new take on the vampire mythos.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Segan and Moroles excel at bringing heart (albeit jaded) to the whole. Because this isn’t your usual master and sire relationship. This is deadbeat dad stepping up and rebellious teen doing all she can to ensure doing so won’t be easy.
Bloody Oranges
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …the movie’s central shock scene, while perhaps cathartic, reveals none of the careful control or wit Meurisse displays throughout the rest of the movie… Instead of sweet orange flesh, with are left with bitter pith.
Blue Island
- Excerpt: Blue Island weaves together past and present in Hong Kong, mixing contemporary documentary footage and staged re-enactments of past events to the point that the only conclusion you can draw is that the past is always present in this island nation.
Blurr
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Bodies Bodies Bodies
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: Bodies Bodies Bodies wasn’t the typical Gen Z slasher they marketed. But it is a darkly funny, unpredictable, and provocative spin on the whodunnit sub-genre.
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Bodies Bodies Bodies’ is a clever whodunit with a killer cast
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: It’s often difficult to determine if the film is satire or just poorly written, though one wants to believe it’s the former since it’s easier to enjoy if it’s knowingly referencing pop culture trends and buzzwords
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The cast is game and Reijn is happy to let their characters shed their humanity with ease. And while the reveal is obvious, its hilarious predictability renders it perfect, nonetheless.
Body Parts
- Excerpt: My body no longer belongs to me.
Il Boemo
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Quando um filme (que ultrapassa as 2h20 minutos) nos arrebata do início ao final é porque se trata, não só de algo muito apelativo, mas também porque está cuidado nas suas diversas componentes. Il Boemo revê a sua estreia mundial aqui em San Sebastian e é daqueles casos raros (e arriscados), embora totalmente conseguido, arriscando-se mesmo a altíssimos voos.
The Book Keepers
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A keen documentary with spiritual insights into grief and resilience.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A book is born; its author dies. Her husband takes up her work in a process of gentle, active mourning. Honest and hopeful, this journey through grief is beautifully structured for maximum poignance.
Book of Love
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Betty Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Is Book of Love a fun movie? Lots of humor sure worked for me!
Boundary: Flaming Feminist Action
- Excerpt: Boundary: Flaming Feminist Action is an excellent documentary, which manages to be both intensely personal and widely universal, highlighting a series of issues and the actions against them in the most eloquent and artful fashion.
Box of Rain
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Throughout “Box of Rain” there is a sense that the Dead community is itself on a journey, working to make peace with life, learning from the other people in the crowd who acknowledge the pain of life.
Brahmastra
Brahmastra Part One – Shiva
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Through the use of film clips, director Nina Menkes shows how a film vocabulary has formed and hardened into accepted practice, one that privileges the male gaze over all other points of view. It is Menkes’ contention that these internalized norms of film construction influence how men and women behave in the real world.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: A description of the various aspects of showing a woman on the screen as it is in the visual language of women in films: subject/object, framing, camera movement, and lighting.
Brazen
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Breathing Happy
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: … it is provocative—almost perverse—to make a recovery movie that plays like a psychedelic trip movie.
Brian and Charles
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: What ‘Brian and Charles’ lacks in a plot or originality it makes up for in overly twee sentimentalism
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: BRIAN AND CHARLES is expanded from a 2017 12-minute film, and serves as evidence that some shorts do not expand well. The plot has almost nothing to do with the premise (an eccentric character builds a robot), which has become more of a MacGuffin.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: An emotional core and the uproarious Charles Petrescu make it enjoyable for connoisseurs of cheerfully wacky comedy.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s a rousing bit of “love conquers all” machinations as Brian realizes what matters most to him and how providing happiness to another is one of the best ways to find happiness himself.
Brighton 4th
- Excerpt: The real selling point in Levan Koguashvili’s Brighton 4th is not the plot, but the way the film creates a portrait of Brighton Beach and its inhabitants. The interiors and character types don’t change that much whether the story is taking place in Georgia or America, and that’s a choice based in reality.
Bro Daddy
Broadway Rising
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Sarah E Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: Amy Rice’s documentary Broadway Rising helps put a human face on all the people that make Broadway happen, most of whom will never appear on stage…
Broken Wings
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Adonis is The Comeback Kid, the guy who despite his death sentence, despite all odds, improves himself and inspires all around him.
Broker
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This one meanders a bit, but its characters linger. Kore-eda’s artful mix of melancholy and humor is on full display…
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Lee Jutton @ Film Inquiry
- Excerpt: Broker, Kore-eda’s latest, is meant to be a companion piece to Shoplifters. And while it doesn’t quite reach the emotional heights of its predecessor, it is still a lovely depiction of a found family brought together in the strangest of ways—this time, by one young woman’s decision to abandon her baby at a church in the South Korean city of Busan.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: With fantastic performances and an intelligence to the storytelling that refuses to sacrifice authenticity for happy endings, he’s showing us society’s flaws while highlighting those best suited to fix them: the ones harmed most by their injustice.
Brother’s Keeper
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Yildiz is wonderful as Yusuf—his emotions worn on his sleeve throughout. That said, however, the adults deliver the most memorable performances. Their duplicity. Their indignation. Their terror.
Bruiser
Marcio Sallem @ Cinema com Critica [Portuguese]
Brut Force
The Bubble
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: The jokes didn’t work when a number of them were outdated for the COVID-related humor that’s never funny at the start. As a result, I only found myself laughing probably twice the whole time.
Il Buco
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With the only spoken words being that of the shepherd calling to his flock…Frammartino and his cinematographer…have created pure cinema, visual storytelling that achieves something spiritual. And oh, what glorious imagery has Berta divined.
Burial
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Ben Parker’s fictional twist on historical fact is both a solid WWII genre thriller and current day reflection on fascism’s relationship to disinformation.
The Burning Sea
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Not terribly disastrous… until it is. Then movie-movie melodrama gives way to eco-cataclysm and new realms of planetary existential nightmare. I cannot recall a movie’s ending haunting me this much.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: Every year seems to bring a Scandinavian film about some sort of disaster or danger at sea or from the sea or underground and every one of them has been fairly realistic and fairly enjoyable, so I was looking forward to seeing THE BURNING SEA this year. But while the script has some new ideas I have not seen in disaster films before it does have a familiar plot.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Burning Sea offers plenty of thrills and human drama, but also a socially-conscious message about the environmental hazards of drilling for oil in the ocean.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: The Burning Sea has a great deal to recommend it; thrills and spectacle and looming peril. Still, it never fully lives up to its potential.
Butter
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This isn’t a perfect film…but it is an earnest one, filled with affection for teens and empathy for their challenges.
Calendar Girls
- Excerpt: Dylan Thomas called on us to rage against the dying of the light. These girls (as they call themselves) would rather dance toward it.
Campo de Sangue
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Depois da estreia de Vierarpad, um documentário baseado nas cartas entre a pintora Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992) e o companheiro húngaro Árpád Szenes (1897-1985), eis que chega esta semana às salas Campo de Sangue, um filme com distribuição da Leopardo Filmes, inspirado no romance de estreia de Dulce Maria Cardoso, publicado há precisamente duas décadas, em 2002.
Cane Fire
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The whole possesses a pretty consistent narrative timeline as each new step builds off the last with more invasive measures keeping colonialists’ descendants fat and happy.
Carmen
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Jubilant movie about a middle-aged woman who has spent her life serving the church and finds a new more fulfilling way forward.
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Maltese director Valerie Buhagiar knows all too well what dangers lurk in the past. Her new feature film, Carmen, set in a small town in Malta in the 1980s, uses humor and good will to reveal the repressive culture behind the picture-postcard image.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Carmen” is a fun film full of spiritual metaphors and implications. As the clapper in the bell is taken in the beginning of the film, it is only returned once Carmen finds her voice.
Cat Daddies
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Portraits of the mutually rewarding relationships between nine men and their cats, showing us what we can all learn from human-animal connections.
Catch the Fair One
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Sarah Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: [Wladyka] makes excellent use of Reis’s physical talents and intensity—her performance was recognized with a Special Jury Mention at the film’s debut at the Tribeca Film Festival—and Ross Giardina’s cinematography captures both the bleakness of Kaylee’s world and the intensity of her determination.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Reis, the first Native American woman…to win a championship boxing title, is absolutely magnetic in the lead and Wladyka… belies his sophomore feature filmmaking experience. Both are talents to watch.
The Cellar
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Muldowney tragically treats [his characters] more like integers in an equation than people. It all adds up, but I sadly felt nothing.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The Chalk Line
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
- Excerpt: https://sofilm.es/jaula/
Cheaper by the Dozen
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: The film might feel preachy and plasticky at times, but it means well and won’t do any harm. When it comes to family viewing, you could do worse.
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: “Cheaper by the Dozen” is harmless enough without being a very good movie.
Choose or Die
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I might have preferred a film that was much more sure of itself, one in which the screenwriter scaled things back and made them more accessible. Trying to get into a room, let’s just say, and not get killed over and over and over. Let’s start there.
Christmas Bloody Christmas
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: …gory, scuzzy, foul-mouthed, metal-infused…
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Things eventually fall apart when the film decides it doesn’t want to end. Milk it a bit, hope things don’t grow too stale, and blow stuff up. It does the job.
A Christmas Story Christmas
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A warm update for people who have seen the 1983 classic many, many times.
Christmas with the Campbells
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Leave it to Vince Vaughn to take the well-worn tropes of your usual Hallmark Christmas movie and drag them through the sex-crazed innuendo of a horny teenager growing up in the 1990s.
Christmas with You
Kirsten Hawkes @ The Noel Diary
Chup
Clara Sola
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Mesén delivers a subtle yet powerful drama matching Araya’s memorably innocent yet determined performance. It uses the magical realism inherent to being a vessel for God as a metaphor for what her awakening entails.
The Class
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: People are still watching The Breakfast Club nearly four decades later. The same won’t be true for The Class.
Claydream
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It was a real blast from the past to see so much of [Vinton’s work] on-screen. That Evans can keep things somewhat objective despite his goal to ensure Vinton comes out smelling as nice as possible only adds to the documentary’s appeal.
Clean
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s as though the film wants to be a hard-hitting drama and action spectacle at the same time but ends up being neither.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A nice looking, competently constructed film, it nevertheless plays like a collection of familiar beats from better movies.
Close
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a sensitive examination of the restrictions society places on masculinity, robbing men of intimacy it deems inappropriate. Eden Dambrine… simply gives one of the great child performances committed to film.
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: This Oscar nominated International Feature Film is a heartbreaking and powerful depiction of a teenage friendship.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: You have to give Dambrine a lot of credit for his performance. Dequenne is fantastic, but he holds his own in the silences and whispers and thousand yard stares.
Cobalt Blue
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Cocoon
- Excerpt: As our heroine discovers her sexuality and herself in the heat of one particularly hot Berlin summer, she metamorphoses from shy teenage girl to confident young woman, much like the caterpillars she keeps in her room and watches transform into butterflies.
Coffined at 15
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Color of Heaven
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Compartment No. 6
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: On its surface, Finland’s shortlisted submission for the International Feature Oscar…is a romantic buddy comedy, but the filmmaker…has gone for something deeper, illustrating the detrimental effects of snap judgments and self-delusion.
The Conductor
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A portrait of a truly inspiring woman who has changed the classical music scene and empowered other women musicians.
Confess, Fletch
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: In a time when reboots and remakes always aim to be bigger and louder, here is a cast-driven vehicle that embraces its frothy style.
Confession
- Excerpt: Apart from this issue, though, the movie is quite good, presenting a rather impactful story with artfulness, while managing to communicate a series of comments about human nature very few people would like to admit, in the most eloquent fashion.
The Contractor
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: From its performances, to the action sequences, and its economical storytelling, it moves really well, and it puts in the effort to make good on everything it needs to in the time that it has, while also offering a little bit of food for thought in the process.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: What makes his and Saleh’s work better than those contrivances is that they are trying to say something with those familiar machinations. While not an anti-military film, it is an anti-propaganda one.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: But the film is forgiven because of its excellent acting, thought-provoking questions and revelations related to business, power and money.
- Excerpt: The Contractor posits that our capitalistic system absolutely prioritizes the almighty dollar above our humanity, and keeps us rooting for our hero to prove his innate value against a stacked deck.
Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I didn’t enter into the Netflix three-part docu-series Conversations With a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes with a lot of enthusiasm for it’s subject. I was here because I admire the work of Joe Berlinger.
Corsage
Gregory Carlson @ southpawilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: All hail Paul Thomas Anderson for bringing this actress to the global stage back in 2017 with “Phantom Thread.” Five years later she stands as a world class actress, her “Corsage” performance a thrilling high wire act.
- Excerpt: The sumptuous settings, elegiac tone, and Krieps’ layered performance bring us into the world of this woman caught between the expectations of her culture and her own desires.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a lively enterprise that goes beyond historical fact to capture a prevailing attitude instead. It’s not about what Elisabeth did, but why she had no choice but to do it.
Cosmic Dawn
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: This would be a fun movie to watch in a basement with a fistful of mushrooms
Costa Brava, Lebanon
James Plath @ Family Home Theater
- Excerpt: A cautionary tale set in the near future, it has an engaging cast and some powerful moments as it tries to sound the alarm to alert people to an impending crisis of waste management.
A Couple
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: In adapting Sophia Tolstoy’s letters and diaries, Wiseman and Boutefeu reveal an insightful and passionate explorer of the human heart, an eloquent writer hidden in the shadow of her uncommonly famous husband.
Cracked
- Excerpt: “Cracked” does not exactly reinvent the genre, and one could say that the cliches here are rather many. However, the combination of all the elements present and the visuals of the movie result in a horror that is definitely bound to satisfy fans of the category.
Cryptic
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: CRYPTID is a run-of-the-mill monster film.
Cuttputlli
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Dark Glasses
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: At 81, Dario Argento wants to remind you he can still make a Dario Argento movie.
Darlings
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Dashcam
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: I want to bash this misguided piece of COVID-panic into the ground and yet its filmmaking earns genuine praise.
Dasvi
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Data Glasses
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Fans of vintage arty European horror movies are likely to be sucked in, although it is not the simple homage it appears to be at first. If the viewer can make it through the slow-paced introductory act, the movie starts to open up, introducing more levels that provide a psychological depth to the characters.
Dear Mr. Brody
- Excerpt: In 1970, a young woman named Renee delivered a package of drugs from her dealer-boyfriend to Michael James Brody Jr. in Scarsdale, New York. Evidently, wide-eyed young Brody was the drug for her because she didn’t leave, and within a month, they were married.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While Brody’s story proves wildly entertaining and tragic in ways you cannot imagine when first hearing his confidant charitable promise, Dear Mr. Brody’s real value is in the people he touched even if he never met them or read their words.
Dear Thirteen
- Excerpt: Dear Thirteen offers a pleasant look at the experience of being thirteen for an interesting selection of young people from different parts of the world.
The Deer King
- Excerpt: Beautiful quality animation coupled with a euphonious score by Harumi Fuuki makes The Deer King a treat for the eyes and ears.
Definition Please
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Its] strength is its authenticity and normalization of minorities away from stereotypes. Unlike Monica’s words, our origins and identities aren’t so stringently defined.
Delicate State
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An ultra-low-budget marvel, a perspective on societal disruption and disorder as everyday precariousness comes for those previously sheltered from it. Barely speculative, maybe terrifyingly prescient.
Delikado
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Malakunas and his team have created a brave film, pointing a finger at corrupt politicians and revealing a cartel business far more dangerous than drugs.
Delta Space Mission
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: If the idea of a kitschy Saturday morning sci-fi adventure with an offbeat, mildly psychedelic Eastern European spin to it sounds appealing to you, you won’t be disappointed with ‘Delta Space Mission.’
Descendant
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A thematically rich documentary about the last ship to bring enslaved people to the United States.
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Descendant’ is a warm, humanist drama about community in the face of miscarriages of justice
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a powerful account of a living history. That which happened doesn’t just end because time passes. The consequences and pain reverberate through generations.
The Desperate Hour
Thomasena Farrar @ MusicMoviesThoughts.com
- Excerpt: It’s fast paced and intriguing, but unfortunately watered down by the preachiness in which the final act culminates.
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Naomi Watts carries most of this to the finish line, but besides keeping the viewer concerned and on edge, don’t be surprised if you’re left wondering if it was all for the right reasons.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Desperate Hour brings together an accomplished director and an actress with two Oscar nominations for a story that’s in monumentally bad taste.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: So while Noyce and Watts try their best to ramp up tension, Sparling’s foundation proves too flimsy to comply.
Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY begins and ends with a lot of archival film of New York at the time of MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Throughout there are copious examples of the media of the day and they really brings back the spirit of the late 1960s.
Devotion
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: What could have been and should have been an exciting, insightful true-life tale ended up bloated, lethargic and blank.
- Excerpt: Such an educational, inspiring, and moving story. Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell are astounding and J.D. Dillard’s direction is impactful.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Guaranteed to leave you moved at the end.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The drama can get pretty heavy-handed and expose just how sanitized and corny Hollywood productions are compared to grittier indies, but the emotional impact at its back is undeniable.
Diabolik
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Dinner in America
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: While undoubtably unhinged politically and socially in ways that made me fondly recall the underrated God Bless America, it’s also one of the sweetest love stories I’ve seen in years.
Disenchanted
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This pales in comparison to the original – in concept and in execution. It tries to catch lightning in a bottle a second time and misses.
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper”s Reviews
- Excerpt: DISENCHANTED is the sequel to 2007 ENCHANTED, with Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey returning as the leads, but while some of the humor of the dissonance between the two worlds worked in the original, it does not work here.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: If nothing else, it proves just how great the original was. ENCHANTED’s magic simply couldn’t be replicated.
Do Over
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: Despite the aforementioned merits, “Do Over” as a whole makes very little sense, at least as a feature film, resulting in a spectacle that is quite hard to follow after a point due to its repetitious and melodramatic nature.
Do Revenge
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: It’s so much more than that one scene of Sophie Turner that went viral….
Dobaaraa
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Donkeyhead
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: At a time when most exercises in representation coming from the entertainment industry feels superficial, pandering, and exploited by corporations for profit, it’s refreshing to see a film that can touch on an underexplored perspective in a way that is truly genuine, totally fearless in its approach, and actually has something to say.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: No matter how funny Donkeyhead can prove, it’s also quite devastating. Just because the other three were able to survive [childhood] better doesn’t mean they avoided scars.
Don’t Make Me Go
Double Threat
Double XL
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Downfall: The Case Against Boeing
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This terrific documentary is one of the scariest films I’ve seen in a long time! But it’s definitely a movie that matters.
Dream Life
- Excerpt: Newly restored in 2K from the original reversal Super 16 mm elements by Elephant – mémoire du cinema Québécois in honor of the film’s 50th anniversary, Dream Life is a lush snapshot of 1970s Montreal as seen through the eyes of two twentysomethings best friends, colleagues at a local production company who spend their free time daydreaming about what else life and love may have to offer.
The Duke
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is a great story, beautifully told, combining a do-gooder with a heart of gold with the only theft in the history of the National Gallery.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: You almost have to wonder how a story this crazy needed sixty years to finally get a big screen adaptation, but I’m glad it did since I don’t think anyone could have filled Bunton’s shoes quite like the affable Broadbent.
The Earth Is Blue as an Orange
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is a film about adult women and children in war, and in its cozy domesticity full of caring creatives, in some ways it is like a modern day equivalent of ‘Little Women.’
Earwig
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: There is something about human teeth in movies that is inherently creepy.
Easter Sunday
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It operates as a symbol of representation rather than a well-developed, cohesive story.
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Jo Koy’s first film ‘Easter Sunday’ offers few laughs
Echoes of the Empire
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Lieberman, Hoard and their team have painstakingly researched the history and modern times of the Mongol people. “Echoes of the Empire” is the third documentary in their trilogy of Asian studies.
Eiffel
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Comfortably unchallenging French romantic drama, though it does Freudian-slip into implying that the engineer was only inspired to erect his soaring tower when an old flame reawakened his, er, heart.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: The better love story is the one between Eiffel and his most famous work. It is touching that the tower wasn’t built with a functional purpose.
Ek Villain Returns
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Ela e Eu
Márcio Augusto Sallem @ Cinema com Critica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Certas histórias apresentam-se como sementes que, regadas com carinho, possibilitam ao espectador refletir acerca das ramificações dessa árvore.
Emancipation
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: When it’s not trying to do too much, though, EMANCIPATION does prove an emotionally-charged drama with enough suspense to keep us invested.
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: While commendable for its depiction of brutality, there’s little present allowing this film to function as much more than an overlong action film with little to say about its important context.
Emergency Declaration
- Excerpt: A box office smash when it opened earlier this year in South Korea, the remarkably prescient Emergency Declaration boasts impressive performances from the likes of Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun, and Jeon Do-yeon. However, even a cast packed with charismatic stars cannot fully distract the audience from some of the film’s weaknesses, including a script packed with soap opera plot twists and a lengthy running time that overstays its welcome.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The plane is in danger. It can’t land until a plan to alleviate that danger is made on the ground. Everything that occurs reinforces those two truths. Even so, it’s never boring.
Endless Sunshine on a Cloudy Day
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Actor and screenwriter John Connors, who makes his directorial debut chronicling the devastating battle that Anthony, his wife Kim, and their children, Jade and Eion, waged over the next two years to beat back cancer, shows a deep empathy for his subjects as he unspools their story.
The Enforcer
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Iliff’s script and Hughes’ direction might not provide anything we haven’t seen before, but both allow the actors the necessary room to give us what we need to stay invested.
Enola Holmes 2
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Nell Minow @ rogerebert.ccom
- Excerpt: Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill), returns in this cheeky, breezy sequel that’s better than the original.
- Excerpt: Millie Bobby Brown still makes Enola a very interesting character who talks to us directly as she goes about her exciting adventures.
Enough! Lebanon’s Darkest Hour
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Enough!” is the how-and-why story that every thinking person concerned with the disintegration of society needs to heed.
Entergalactic
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: A gorgeous and vivid experience – a classic romance set against a backdrop rich in individuality, music, and culture.
Escape from Kabul
- Excerpt: Jamie Roberts’ terse, painfully precise documentary “Escape from Kabul” zooms right in on one episode—the massive last-minute airlift of Afghans and remaining American personnel from Kabul in August 2021—and never looks away, even when you might wish that it did.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A hard-hitting documentary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghan citizens.
The Eternal Daughter
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: “The Eternal Daughter’s” climactic twist may not be all that surprising, but Hogg’s film haunts in all kinds of unexpected ways.
- Excerpt: Joanna Hogg has long mined her own life for her semi-autobiographical, deeply personal films, most notably in her two-part opus chronicling a young filmmaker’s coming of age, The Souvenir. Her latest, The Eternal Daughter, is both a continuation and a departure from this practice, channeling Hogg’s memories of her mother through the medium of a ghost story that bears the influence of Lewis Allen’s The Uninvited and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
- Excerpt: Joanna Hogg does so much with so little in this COVID-19 production, using the constraints of her setting and cast to create a wonderful mother-daughter mood piece.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The messaging and metaphor resonate. I simply posit that they still would if pared down to a thirty-minute short since I couldn’t stop checking my watch.
Etharkkum Thunindhavan
- Excerpt: “Etharkkum Thunindhavan” has its faults, mostly deriving from the masala concept, but still emerges as a rather entertaining and intriguing effort, particularly due to the comments and their overall presentation.
The Exorcism of God
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: The Exorcism of God’ is most fun when Hidalgo and company let loose and get wild, which fortunately encompasses most of the back half of the film.
Explorer
- Excerpt: Any single one of his accomplishments could have earned the Guinness Book’s Icon award, but as the list of some of them scrolls through the early part of this film, the cumulative impact is breathtaking.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: What hits me most strongly is Ran’s drive to live and live fully. He is on a hero’s journey, as we all are, but his is intense and his spirit is driven.
Fabian: Going to the Dogs
- Excerpt: Kästner’s tale of a young writer in the Weimar Republic who sees his life and career unraveling parallel to the Nazis’ rise to power has now been adapted to the screen by German filmmaker and cultural critic Dominik Graf. Starring two of Germany’s most compelling actors in Tom Schilling (A Coffee in Berlin) and Albrecht Schuch (System Crasher), along with rising star Saskia Rosendahl (Lore), Fabian: Going to the Dogs is a sprawling tale of hedonism and heartbreak set during one of the most infamous periods of upheaval in European history.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Schilling is perfectly cast, delivering a performance that sustains both the weight and wit of the writing [for a] memorably tragic romance between man and hope in an era of hopelessness.
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
Facing Monsters
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Facing Monsters captures all this splendor, all this peril, as well as one man’s connection to the waves that runs as deep as any ocean.
Falling for Christmas
Kirsten Hawkes @ The Noel Diary
The Fallout
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s only until we can talk about these issues openly that we are able to find some hope of overcoming them.
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Family Squares
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: The screwball elements of the story don’t always work well with the more nuanced character studies and leave audiences confused.
Far Away, Further Away
- Excerpt: “Far Away, Further Away” lies on a slightly lower level than the great “Reiko and the Dolphin”. However, it is funny, sensual, interesting in its comments, and in general, another rather easy-to-watch title by Imaoka, who presents one more very entertaining work.
Father
Fear
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: : a delightful take on a serious subject that ends on a note of whimsy and will reward anyone willing to give it a chance.
- Excerpt: In highlighting the absurdity inherent in such xenophobia, Fear gives us permission to laugh at people’s close-minded attitudes while also highlighting the bravery of those who take a stand against them.
The Festival of Troubadours
- Excerpt: Lubezki-like skies and folk songs make up for any filmic wrongs. And two main actors seem so real, their performances clinch the deal.
Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Raim has not only constructed a lively and informational documentary about a beloved musical but crafted a love letter to its director. This is the type of work that should captivate anyone interested in cinema, “Fiddler on the Roof” fandom or familiarity not required.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN, directed by Daniel Raim, and written by Daniel Raim and Michael Sragow, is more than a “making-of” documentary. The people involved with making the film talk not just about making the film, but their own backgrounds and emotions, and how they affected their work.
- Excerpt: If this documentary never makes it out of the category of “interesting DVD extra” into a standalone film, it still has some entertaining inside stories and some insights into the art of cinematic storytelling.
A Fine Morning
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Fire in the Mountains
James Plath @ Family Home Theater
- Excerpt: It’s a visceral film that all but invites you into the world of this family to imagine yourself in their position. Considering that Fire in the Mountain is the debut feature of a self-taught filmmaker, that’s especially impressive.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Ajitpal has written that his intention is “not to take a side, but explore and question.” His work is a master class in the metaphors of social justice and moral challenge.
Fire Island
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s a traditional story told in a non-traditional way, and that’s a good thing.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With the exception of its Asian racial subtext, director Andrew Ahn does a complete 180 from his sensitive, moving “Driveways” with this fast-paced piece of frothy summer fun.
The Fire That Took Her
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: While it would be easy to dismiss the package in which these interviews and recordings arrive as conventional, the subject matter can’t help but elevate the material beyond our objectivity too.
Firebird
- Excerpt: This film is a bittersweet love story about characters burdened by oppression, but the theme of liberation is as palpable as the sense of loss.
The Fish Tale
- Excerpt: “The Fish Tale” is an excellent film, very easy to watch and interesting contextually, as much as a proof that both Okita and Non are currently at the top of their game..
Flaming Ears
- Excerpt: Newly restored in 4K by Kinothek Asta Nielsen e.V., the queer sci-fi spectacular that is Flaming Ears must be seen to be believed…and even then, you’ll likely be left with a strange sense of disbelief about what you just watched.
Flux Gourmet
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [Strickland’s] films are often creepy if not downright horrific yet can also be perversely funny, both the case with his latest, a film that’s had me breaking out in giggles for the last 24 hours.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: With insane anecdotes, psycho-sexual hang-ups, and overwhelming sensory cues via kitchen close-ups and deafening industrial sound, Flux Gourmet is as unique an experience as any of Strickland’s films. A bit shallower perhaps, but no less captivating.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Adventurous palettes know they can’t go wrong with a serving of Strickland, even if it only primes their appetites for something more substantial.
Fogo-Fátuo: Eis os corpos deste querido Verão escaldante
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Fogo-Fátuo é mesmo um filme escaldante. Em suma, um filme de corpos, abertamente erótico que incendiou a Quinzena dos Realizadores, em Cannes. Saboreia-se assim a nostalgia de um amor perdido, neste ‘querido verão’ que atravessa épocas bem diferentes, desde logo iniciando por um provocador 2069.
Follow Her
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Considered the Best Film of FantasPorto 2022, “Follow Her” is a strong indie horror film.
The Forgiven
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: writer/director John Michael McDonagh (“Calvary”) has made a film about two characters that diverges into two films, one far more successful than the other…one feels such a strain to craft their ‘witty’ conversation as literary, it turns into a parody of itself.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: How we get there isn’t perfect, but the sentiments are never confused. Fiennes doesn’t become a different man by the end. He’s merely ready to admit who that man is.
Four Samosas
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: It is as funny as many action comedies which have much larger budgets, and definitely worth watching.
Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr.
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
The Friendship Game
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This is one of the most maddening, unpleasant-to-sit-through films of the year.
From the Hood to the Holler
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: In “From the Hood to the Holler,” Pat McGee captures a new political presence, similar to Martin Luther King, who may just have what it takes to change Kentucky, if not America.
- Excerpt: “Justice is not a destination, it’s a journey”
Full Metal Alchemist: The Revenge of Scar
- Excerpt: “Full Metal Alchemist the Revenge of Scar” does not reach the levels of some of the recent anime adaptations, as in the case of “Rurouni Kenshin” or “Mole Song”, but still emerges as an entertaining watch, particularly due to its action scenes, that will satisfy both fans of the original and of sci-fi movies.
Futura
- Excerpt: While Futura doesn’t unveil any extraordinary new insights into the minds of teens and twentysomethings, it does force us to reconcile with the necessity of changing the world now so that we can all look forward to some kind of future, let alone a better one.
Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down
- Excerpt: This documentary is about resilience and advocacy, but most of all it is a love story.
Gagarine
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Writers/directors Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh (with co-writer Benjamin Charbit) developed Gagarine into a tale of lost childhood and memorial.
Gangubai Kathiawadi
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Sanjay Leela Bhansali continues to prove himself to be one of cinema’s greatest visual stylists. It’s a rich film not just through its visual tapestry, but also through its emotions and Alia Bhatt’s lead performance.
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @
- Excerpt: “Gangubai Kathiawadi” in an excellent film, a masterclass on how to shoot a biopic that focuses on entertainment, and testament of the great abilities of Bhansali and Bhatt.
Gehraiyaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Get Away If You Can
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Braun and Martin make some interesting choices and craft a gorgeous looking film on an obviously shoe-string budget, but none of that matters when my one wish was for these characters to never see each other again.
Ghumjeeling : A Meeting by the Railways
- Excerpt: At 75 minutes, “Ghumjeeling : A Meeting by the Railways” does not particularly overextend its welcome, but the quality and watchability of the film would be much higher if the focus was more on the “Indian Arc”.
The Girl and the Spider
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s that dreamlike quality that makes the Zürchers’ work so memorable and resonant because it allows the performances to shine above plot—the just left of center reality allowing the actors to exist inside their heads as much as out.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: One is tempted to look at The Girl and the Spider and toss it into the bin of ‘art for art’s sake.’ I get that.
Girl in the Picture
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The film understands that, when it comes to real life tragedy and loss, the crime is not always (and probably shouldn’t be) the main attraction.
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Critica [Portuguese]
Give Me Pity!
- Excerpt: It’s Sissy St. Claire’s big night, although things don’t go quite as planned. Amanda Kramer’s sharp dissection of the medium continues as she takes us back to an era of glitz, glamour and psychedelic existentialism.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) nightmarish and always unpredictable, ‘Give Me Pity!’ is a surreal showcase of female insecurity, acted out on a disco stage where glamour fades into mockery.
Glorious
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: The cosmic horror movie about a sentient roadside glory hole you didn’t know you needed in your life.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: There’s more to Glorious than its surface-level comical surrealism, though. Beyond the out-there notion that Wes’ penis might be the only thing that can save the world is the unspoken question concerning why it must be Wes in the first place.
God Forbid
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
God’s Country
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Society has been pushed into the gray areas to acknowledge that innocuous events can spiral out of control and that incendiary ones demand a response. Newton delivers a character who can no longer avoid accepting that these truths are universal.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: God’s Country proves that being subtle and understated is sometimes best when developing a dramatically powerful story.
God’s Creatures
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Watson ignites a powerful slow burn as she does a literal and figurative dance with Mescal, their initial reunion portrayed more like lovers than mother and son.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a fantastic piece of storytelling with an authentic air of emotion that never feels unearned or embellished. A somber, heart-crushing affair where dreams must forever remain unfulfilled fantasy.
God’s Time
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A low-budget independent production that nevertheless manages to have a tone that oscillates between the eccentric and the dramatic, narrating a surprisingly emotional story with style and tension.
Gold
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: In a dry, dusty, desperate landscape, Zac Efron goes full grunge, effectively underplaying physical and psychological implosion. But there’s nothing unexpected in this brutal open-air chamber piece.
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: “Gold” is a gruelingly intense journey for survival, but for those who are ready for it, Efron makes an unforgiving Vitamin D overdose a harrowing experience.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: To call writer/director (and actor) Anthony Hayes’ Gold minimal is a bit of a stretch. Minimal is an overstatement.
Gone in the Night
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [The finale is] simple, flirts with extremes only to pull back, and even finds itself concluding with a pitch-black final frame that may in fact prove to be subtly darker than the myriad other possibilities.
The Good Boss
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The film is a slow-moving trainwreck from which you don’t want to avert your eyes because each thing that occurs is juicier and more disastrous than the thing that preceded it.
Good Guy with a Gun
- Excerpt: The world is not going to get any better
Good Luck Jerry
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Good Madam
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Jenna Cato Bass has crafted her own Apartheid spin on Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” with a new, delicious twist.
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Goodnight Mommy
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Goodnight Mommy’ is a pointless, soulless carbon copy of the German original
Govinda Naam Mera
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Granada Nights
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A young man’s adventures in Spain that reveal how travel can be transformative.
Great Freedom
- Excerpt: Great Freedom doesn’t shy away from highlighting how bleak it is to be deemed a criminal just because of who you choose to love, yet it also shows us that in the face of such seemingly insurmountable odds, love can still be found regardless.
Una Great Movie
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: UNA GREAT MOVIE (written and directed by Jennifer Sharp) is basically a remake of the 1989 Kevin Bacon film THE BIG PICTURE, which given the title, may not be an accident. A screenwriter talks to various Hollywood executives, and gradually her screenplay about a Black women traveling through Mexico looking for romance becomes full of stereotypes, and white-washed to boot.
Great Yarmouth – Provisional Figures
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: É o confronto entre o homem e o animal que Marco Martins explora com pertinência e arrojo no avassalador Great Yarmouth – Provisional Figures, um filme que partiu a loiça toda na sua apresentação em San Sebastian. E que nos faz viver uma fortíssima experiência de cinema.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The coming-of-age of age of a NY meathead who goes off on a well-intentioned lark only to be schooled in a real world fog of war works on an emotional level even if the filmmaking itself is hit and miss.
- Excerpt: Truth is stranger than fiction, and The Greatest Beer Run Ever is an excellent example. With its stellar cast and entertaining story, this is a film everyone can enjoy.
Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone
Rick Aragon Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews [Rick Aragon]
- Excerpt: Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone…may be the Citizen Kane of vanity projects.
Guántanamo Diary Revisited
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: It is a documentary of uncommon depth that compels deep thought about American decision-making both in the military and at the highest levels of US government.
- Excerpt: Nothing new under the sun of torture
Halftime
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: I’ve admired J. Lo’s work for a long time, and this movie increased my respect for her even more.
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: The origin story of the spiritual song that has swept the world as a modern prayer.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The in-depth look at how the titular tune worked its way from obscurity to ubiquity is a testament to the power of music.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: In Cohen’s life as in his music, there is a cycle of renewal and growth, both spiritually and psychologically.
Hanging Garden
- Excerpt: “Hanging Gardens” is an excellent film that benefits the most from the story, direction and cinematography, as much as a truly original and meaningful main concept.
Happy Ending
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
The Harbinger
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Someone has finally made a pandemic film that both taps into the universal fear of the moment and the unshakeable sense of futility felt by those of us who have yet to accept the lie that it’s over.
Hard Hit
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The story has an identity of its own, combining strong direction, editing, action choreography, and performances to keep us engaged.
Hashtag Blessed
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This Christmas story made me smile as it unfolded to beguile.
Hatching
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer Ilja Rautsi wittily associates such things as bulimia with a mother bird’s regurgitation of food for its young while offering a monstrous version of motherhood as good, protective example compared to the reality on display here.
- Excerpt: It’s a wonderfully twisted, pastel-colored Finnish fairy tale of the fractured sort.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While the horror aspects are a nice touch to keep audiences interested in blood happy, HATCHING’s true success is its authentic depiction of the sort of childhood trauma too many laugh off as growing pains instead of a destruction of innocence.
The Hater
- Excerpt: The best thing about the movie is its refusal to make any character one-dimensional or completely unsympathetic, especially when we find our own expectations challenged.
Hellbender
- Excerpt: Hellbender is a lo-fi punk rock horror assault on the senses that marks yet another fascinating entry in the coming-of-witch subgenre
Sarah E Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: [Hellbender} keeps you on your toes for its 82-minute running time, through interesting shots and visual effects, abrupt shifts of mood, and a twisty plot that has no interest in sticking to anyone else’s playbook.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: While there’s always a humorous slant to the proceedings, that edge of danger is where it excels. Never underestimate the ingenuity of supernatural storytelling.
Hello, Goodbye, and Everything In Between
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: As teen romances go, this is comparatively low on sex and high on long-term perspective.
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Jennifer E. Smith’s adorable teen romcoms are always well-fleshed and terrifically crafted, with enough brains and minor variations on cliches to make the experience fresh rather than phoned in.
Hellraiser
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Sure, the horror is sleek on a technical level, but dramatically there’s nothing that keeps us locked in.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The new Hellraiser is almost as good as the original.
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Andrew Wyatt @ The Lens
Here Be Dragons
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Here Be Dragons” is an exceptional work of art by an accomplished team who worked with Brown and his superb cast to present a work of uncommon depth and moral strength.
Heropanti 2
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
He’s Watching
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: A masterfully crafted film that blends the real and the supernatural so seamlessly, that a hammer defying gravity is at once reasonable and terrifying. Taut, smart, and eloquent, it’s a jolt to the system and to the psyche.
Hidden Letters
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: In their very moving documentary, Hidden Letters, directors Violet Du Feng and Qing Zhao show how generations of Chinese women found cracks in their oppressive, patriarchal society and created a way to find a small ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak existence, through nushu, a private language they invented to write letters to each other to share their pain and gain comfort in communion.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: HIDDEN LETTERS is a documentary about Nushu, a secret script developed by women in China several hundred years ago. Few original Nushu writings survive, and the documentary shows how attempts to preserve it fall prey to attempts to make it of interest to tourists, or to commercialize it as a brand name.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: At about an hour and a half long, there are slow times in the film and some difficulty reading the white (outlined thinly in black) captions when on pale backgrounds. But still, “Hidden Letters” has received Oscar buzz and has won the Bergen International Film Festival Award for Best Documentary.
High Heat
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: It’s down and dirty, to the point, and coasts on certain compelling charms, and while it won’t blow any minds, it offers up a nice diversion.
Hilma
- Excerpt: Directed by Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, Chocolat), Hilma stars his wife, the acclaimed actress Lena Olin, as the older af Klint and their daughter, Tora Hallström, as the artist as a young woman. Yet despite — or perhaps because of — the prestige of those involved in the project, Hilma is far too ordinary a film to do justice to such an extraordinary subject.
Hinterland
- Excerpt: Here, post-war Vienna is rendered dark, distorted, and dangerous, a heaving mess of mind-bending angles and crooked architecture from which a person could lose their sanity trying to find an escape. But once you manage to look past the film’s extravagant visuals, it’s hard to not be left wanting something more.
Hold Me Tight
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Amalric impresses behind the camera, multiple timelines and locations melting into one another via match cuts as sound is both overlaid and bleeds from one scene to the next, both devices illustrating Clarisse’s psychic connection to her family.
- Excerpt: The sixth feature film directed by acclaimed actor Mathieu Amalric, Hold Me Tight explores the fog of memory and loss through one woman’s attempts to come to terms with what really is and what can never be.
Hold Your Fire
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a gripping account of a landmark police confrontation with armed hostage takers…But while one can appreciate Forbes trusting his audience to parse conflicting testimony, one also wishes more facts were provided to answer some obvious questions.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: HOLD YOUR FIRE is a documentary about a 1973 robbery/hostage situation in Brooklyn that began the process of using “hostage negotiation” rather than brute force to resolve these sorts of incidents.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Forbes is] presenting the facts that surrounded this landmark crime. [He’s] peeling back the layers of manipulation to ultimately reveal a truth we all know too well: America is a white supremacist nation built upon violence.
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
- Excerpt: Harrison discusses Hotel Transylvania: Transformania for the 1st Annual JanuScary Special!
The House
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: this three part stop motion animation featuring the same manse in three separate time periods is a stunning piece of craft and wild imagination verging from haunting fairy tale to creepy/weird/funny parable to hopeful cat puppet drama.
Mark Leeper @ Mark leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: THE HOUSE is three stories about a peculiar house, in the past, present, and future, though the stories are not really consistent with each other.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A documentary filmed inside a special orphanage in the Ukraine where the children express both sorrow and hope.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Simon Lereng Wilmont’s A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS takes a fly-on-the-wall approach to get us inside those “walls of sorrow.” This is a purgatory of healing run by saints whose necessary existence proves just how damaged our world remains.
- Excerpt: One can only wish that this captivating documentary was actually fiction; thanks to Putin and his cronies it is an awful truth.
House of Darkness
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A great deal of build-up is given for a rather minimal payoff.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: That we’re in on it makes the whole more intriguing because we can never know when the other shoe will drop. It depends on how long LaBute wants Mina, Lucy, and whomever else to teach their lesson. And in what way that lesson will be taught.
The House of the Lost on the Cape
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The film is therefore about healing above all else—with a dash of mythologizing come true. A solid, heartwarming drama that balances the real world with the supernatural.
Howling
- Excerpt: “Howling” has its issues, but in general, emerges as a very interesting film to watch, particularly for its visuals and original approach to its subject, while it is also a rather hopeful debut.
Hridayam
Huesera
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Huesera is a psychological thriller dealing more with the myriad uncertainties that have ravaged Valeria’s life. Cervera and co-writer Abia Castillo are breaking Valeria down to build her back up.
The Human Trial
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This is an extraordinarily well made, suspenseful film that tracks the human research project through six years of human trials. Susan Metzger, editor extraordinaire, gets high marks.
Hurdang
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
I Came By
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: A passing interest for fans of thrillers. It’s not the greatest example of the genre, but neither is it the worst.
I Didn’t See You There
- Excerpt: Try walking a mile in my chair
I Heard the Bells
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: An elegantly-mounted production with significant appeal for people seeking an inspirational story of faith this, or any, holiday season.
I Want You Back
- Excerpt: The end result is that what should be a 91-minute piece of February fluff runs inexplicably close to two hours with only as many laughs as a somewhat promising 20-minute sitcom pilot episode might supply.
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: Eastwoods aside, “I Want You Back” isn’t altogether awful. It’s a perfectly pleasant movie, with an admittedly cute ending, that will inspire the occasional chortle and leave you feeling just fine.
The Immaculate Room
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The Immaculate Room isn’t breaking the mold on this type of conceit. If anything, it’s purposely embracing a narrow scope of mental fracturing the scenario can ignite and counting on the actors to make it compelling.
In Our Prime
- Excerpt: In Our Prime is a bit naive and cliche on occasion, but in the end, emerges as a very entertaining movie in crowd-pleasing fashion, particularly because it is quite easy to watch.
In Search of Bengali Harlem
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Interspersed alternately with archival shots of early ship workers, stand-up clips from Alaudin’s one-man act “Dishwasher Dreams,” and honest reflections as he uncovers the truth about his mother, “In Search of Bengali Harlem” proves to be a high-interest documentary.
Incarnation
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The humor has it’s laugh-out-loud moments despite a relatively subdued overall tone. We’re often laughing at these characters’ pain, so that uncertainty of whether to gloat or wince comes with the territory.
Infinite Storm
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Watts is good enough to pick up the slack and has some genuinely affecting moments here, but not even an Oscar-worthy turn can save the whole from its glaring tonal, pacing, and script issues.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: t must be written into the fabric of lone survivalist women in the movies that they can’t just brave the elements and come out the other side alive but psychologically dented, there has to be some personal baggage bringing up the rear, usually in the form of a recent tragedy.
The Inspection
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The beautifully cast film gives Bratton a true collaborator in Pope, whose heartfelt and emotionally stirring performance gives the audience the filmmaker’s POV into the tough and troubling experience through which he ultimately triumphs.
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While the movie does its best to center French’s trials and tribulations as a not-so-closeted gay man doing everything in his power to graduate, it doesn’t necessarily do enough to elevate what ultimately proves just another abusive boot camp depiction.
Interceptor
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The production spent too much time trying to make this a well balance diet when it was begging to be junk food cinema.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: We usually see a male actor in action movies like this one. So it’s refreshing to watch Elsa Pataky bring brave Captain Collins to life on screen.
Inu-Oh
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is an incredible true story, but as adapted by Akiko Nogi and directed by Masaaki Yuasa it has become a fusion of period piece, fantasy and modern day rock opera with themes of artistic political rebellion versus mandated conformity.
- Excerpt: Inu-Oh is a fun rock ‘n’ roll-inspired anime film beautifully produced by Science SARU.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Without a strong story and characters who have more than one dimension, Inu-oh is just an assemblage of gorgeously animated scenes presented for their own sake.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The juxtaposition of what they’re doing in such an antiquated setting is intriguing enough to keep our attention. The music being catchy and the performances being invigorating is icing on the cake.
The Invitation
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It lives or dies by how much you’re willing to just hang with the cast as they chew scenery and pretend we didn’t already know what’s really going on.
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Is That Black Enough for You?!?
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Josh Taylor @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: What Questlove did last year for a single music festival with his documentary Summer of Soul, film and cultural critic Elvis Mitchell has done for an entire decade of cinema and beyond with Is That Black Enough for You?!?, the first-time director’s new Netflix documentary.
It Turns Blue
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “It Turns Blue” is an excellent movie, both contextually intriguing and well shot, in another testament to the quality of the modern Iranian cinema.
Italian Studies
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Random events leave marks. Memory interprets what those marks are. It’s by no means a perfect system, but it’s what makes us human.
I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A Canadian drama about a quirky woman’s creativity and passion.
Jalsa
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Janes
Chris Barsanti @ Eyes Wide Open
- Excerpt: A disarmingly cool and matter-of-fact yet utterly crucial documentary about some of the most daring, radical, and largely unsung heroes ever put onscreen.
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
- Excerpt: Frank Marshall and Ryan Suffern’s Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story is a celebration of the Festival, the city that hosts it, and more generally of good music, good food, and taking pleasure in life.
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: The annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival draws more than 100,000 people each of its seven days to hear jazz and its many musical offshoots on more than a dozen stages, eat arguably the best food on the planet, enjoy crafts booths and exhibits, and absorb the unique energy and spirit that any visitor to the Crescent City feels the moment their feet hit the ground.
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Nowadays, any movie that dares to tell a story about people in their 60s is a bold decision.
Jerry and Marge Go Large
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A spunky and thoroughly satisfying morality tale about generosity.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: JERRY AND MARGE GO LARGE is that rare film that makes mathematics look like fun with a seemingly super-powered handling of multiplication.
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass
Diego Salgado @ [Spanish]
Josep
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: cartoonist Aurel directs the film in a number of distinct styles, his own modern, colorful approach used for the storyteller, Bartoli’s own work animated in flashback
The Jump
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Žickyte opens with vintage U.S. news coverage, immediately engaging his audience with the need to know just why the U.S. would have handed a defector back to the Soviets.
Jungle Cry
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Justice of Bunny King
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Davis delivers] a strong performance shifting from protective mother hen to crazed and erratic survivor with her back to the wall. The climax might be over-the-top and too on-the-nose, but the emotional wallop is just right.
Kaepernick & America
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Kaepernick & America” tells the story of Kaepernick’s life and the factors leading up to his silent 2016 protest during the National Anthem as the starting 49ers quarterback. His life story is a profile in courage.
Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 — Agni Pariksha
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Kicking Blood
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The result is a dialogue-heavy independent film that uses its high concept hook as its entrance rather than purpose. It looks good despite its paltry budget and possesses solid acting too.
Kids vs. Aliens
Kimi
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A timely, tense, and ethically rich high-tech thriller.
- Excerpt: Kimi might be the first great pandemic-era thriller.
Thomasena Farrar @ MusicMoviesThoughts.com
- Excerpt: A tightly woven narrative, penned by David Koepp, that perfectly plays out in 1 hour and 29 minutes, “Kimi” conveniently and cleverly uses the current pandemic, its isolation, the main character’s agoraphobia, and a web of digital intrigue to create an interesting and thrilling story.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: There’s a nice mix of comedy and thrills with some great sound design as things escalate from confusion and fear to full-on violent, home invasion attack mode.
King Otto
- Excerpt: How did a team with no real reputation or big international stars find themselves lifting their first—and, to this date, only—major trophy? That’s the story told by King Otto, a feature-length documentary directed by Christopher André Marks that revisits Greece’s famous underdog victory with a particular focus on the man who inspired the team to win.
The Kings of the World
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [It’s] in many respects a ghost story about five lost souls fending for themselves on the streets of Medellín who leave in search of the life that was taken from them when the government seized miles and miles of land from their people to mine gold.
- Excerpt: Everything in the world has an owner
Kuthiraivaal
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: What should have been fun and/or intriguing is instead ponderous.
Laal Singh Chaddha
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is a story of people giving into their desires regardless of wealth or privilege, but it never goes beyond its physical manifestations. Sure, things get hot and steamy, but is anything there beyond that?
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s controversial novel placing the emphasis on love leading to a new life.
Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend
- Excerpt: While the cast is exceptional and the story is interesting, Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend is a project that could’ve used another 30 minutes to flesh out the second half.
The Last Bus
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Last Film Show
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: writer/director Pan Nalin’s semi-autobiographical film delves more deeply into the essential elements of cinema itself, reveling in light and shadow, silver nitrate film and the mechanics of projecting it.
The Last of the Winthrops
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Deceit, even with kind intentions, has repercussions.
- Excerpt: You can’t choose your relatives
The Last Thing Mary Saw
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The acting is effective throughout and the period aesthetic stays true to a slow and quiet trajectory skewing more towards a menacing air than full-on suspense.
The Legend of Molly Johnson
- Excerpt: Skillfully weaving in themes of race, gender, abuse, and historic injustice while making each character authentically human, the film calls on us to consider the human strength and the human cost of history.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Purcell and Collins are unfortunately made to suffer for their trouble, their performances a moving tribute to the sacrifices so many have made for their people to live on with the promise of more.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: How much of this story is legend, based on a short story by Henry Lawson, and/or autobiographical as re-written by Purcell, is a secret. What is certain is that the story of Molly Johnson will stop you in your tracks.
Leonor Will Never Die
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: : that doesn’t mean Leonor’s script is very good and despite Francisco’s charm, the film is an exercise in tedium which devolves into a meaningless meta musical number as it completely runs out of gas.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: You could argue that ‘Leonor’ has too many ideas and strays from narrative and thematic rigor, but the ragged impulses and loose ends are a large part of what makes it a weird, and wonderful, experience.
Lie Hard
Mark Leeper @ Mark leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: In LIE HARD, Rob, a not-very-bright twenty-something, borrows $4 million from the mob to impress his girlfriend’s father. Then the mob wants the money back.
Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive
- Excerpt: Wayne Wang (Chan is Missing, The Joy Luck Club) has been revising his marvelously titled Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive since its initial release in 1989. Largely overlooked in the United States at that time — it didn’t help that it was slapped with an X rating — it is now landing in theaters in a new 4K restoration of Wang’s preferred 2021 cut, which he has declared to be the definitive version of the film.
Lina From Lima
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A very good drama with interesting musical touches, which feels different from what is usually produced in Peru and in Latin America in general.
Lingui, The Sacred Bonds
Little Nicholas – Happy As Can Be
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: entertains with the subject’s exploits while adding the complexity of his creators’ artistic inspiration, collaboration and friendship…It is an unusually moving tribute delivered in an unusually creative way.
The Long Night
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Fans of the genre may recognize familiar elements, but the craftsmanship and style might be enough to make the viewing experience worthwhile.
- Excerpt: Harrison discusses The Long Night for the 1st Annual JanuScary Special!
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Everyone involved does the best with what they’re given, perhaps saving The Long Night from being even more forgettable. The script does none of them any favors by fearing its own mythology and hiding it in a way that makes it seem like it has none.
The Long Walk
- Excerpt: A rich, complex tapestry of a film, woven together with elements of horror and science-fiction, The Long Walk confirms Do as one of the most intriguing new artists working in genre cinema.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The background Buddhism, and the presence of the mundane and the mystical in the same frame, will put viewers in mind of Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul, although Do’s work is a more plot-driven and less audaciously poetic.
Looking for Home
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A variety of accounts of the meaning of home around the world.
Looop Lapeta
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Lost Illusions
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: : an over reliance on narration holds the film back from achieving true greatness. That is not to say this isn’t a film to luxuriate in…like a lush visualization of a well structured audiobook.
Lotawana
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a production that would be the envy of much larger budgeted films. “Lotawana” is beautiful, with strikingly edited montages escorted into the film by Ryan Pinkston’s lovely piano score and top notch sound mix.
Blake Howard @ Graffiti With Punctuation
Lou
- Excerpt: Allison Janney in this role is entertainment for the soul.
Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With access to Armstrong’s voluminous archives comprised of audio tapes, clippings and letters, director Sacha Jenkins (“Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James”) sketches a picture of a man who was far more complicated than his public image.
Love & Gelato
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Love in the Time of Fentanyl
- Excerpt: Askey’s Independent Lens-bound film is a humane, loving, and sorrowfully impassioned portrait of the people who staff the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) in Vancouver’s addiction-riddled Downtown Eastside neighborhood.
Love Nonetheless
- Excerpt: “Love Nonetheless” is a very interesting and entertaining film, and hopefully, a stepping stone for the pinku industry to adapt to current times and become relevant once more.
A Love Story
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A simple, sensitive film about love, loss, and the nourishment provided by music.
Loving Highsmith
- Excerpt: [Loving Highsmith] does better than a more conventional work might in conveying an understanding about the context in which Highsmith lived and worked, and how she interpreted and altered the reality of her world in her creative works.
Sarah E Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: Loving Highsmith isn’t a straightforward biographical film, but more of a mood piece that doles out nuggets of information within a visual context that’s more about creating a vibe that reporting facts and details.
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Loving Highsmith, a 2022 documentary by Swiss director Eva Vitija, uses archival footage, Highsmith’s letters and diary entries, and filmed interviews with some of the writer’s lovers and relatives to try to get into the mind and heart of this artist and the times during which she lived.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: A biography of the author Patricia Highsmith, with particular emphasis on her lesbianism.
Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The film enriches that which we know in generic terms with the specificity only lived-in experience can provide.
Luck
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: In a time where animation can do just about anything, where the storytelling avenues are boundless, this feels strangely underwhelming.
- Excerpt: Luck is a forgettable first outing for Skydance Animation. All the right components are there, but it lacks the synergy to make something great.
- Excerpt: “Luck” is a vibrant animated Alice in Wonderland-style story about an 18-year old named Sam who follows a black cat to the lands of good and bad luck and learns neither is really what she thought.
Luckiest Girl Alive
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Mila Kunis delivers a good show, but something is lacking.
Lucy and Desi
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Sometimes the cinematic version of comfort food can really hit the spot.
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A transformative film set in Bhutan about finding happiness and cultivating a good heart.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: : It plays to the beats of the influential “Local Hero,” right down to its melancholy last scene, while also championing the value of teachers. “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is the very definition of a crowd pleaser.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Captures the juxtaposition of big city living and small town surviving in a way that resonates beyond its cultural specificity because we all understand the contrast.
Lux Æterna
Lynch/Oz
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Mack & Rita
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This is an inane, laughless movie that doesn’t seem to have any point.
Mad God
Beth Accomando @ KPBS Cinema Junkie
- Excerpt: Every frame is dense with detail, revealing the influence of Dutch painters Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel. The end result is something bleak and dark but also gorgeously seductive in its meticulous craftsmanship.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a mind blowing visual experience, albeit not one for the faint hearted or those looking for a linear narrative. Tippett hasn’t created a story so much as envisioned everything from the Big Bang to earth’s apocalyptic destruction…
A Madea Homecoming
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: Like other Tyler Perry offerings, “A Madea Homecoming” is a cringe-fest, full of sexual innuendo and vaguely incestuous jokes, amplified in this film by references to bestiality and an obsession with testicles.
Maika
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Maika is for the kids, for them to identify with the characters, and for them to dream of meeting an alien who helps them grow up. And in that sense, the film works quite well.
Maja Ma
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Man from Toronto
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It features performers all working below their capabilities but is not entertaining enough to make up the deficit.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Man of God
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This true-life story of Nektarios of Aegin grabs attention from the start and soon spreads into your heart and soul like the incoming crash of a Mediterranean wave.
Man of Integrity
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: While “A Man of Integrity” has lapses in plot development, perhaps just from a western perspective, the longer you stick with it the more you get caught up in the depth of your own soul’s conflicts. It is a diamond in the rough.
Maneater
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: 89 minutes of stupidity.
Manticora
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project 4
Marvelous and the Black Hole
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Tsang does a wonderful job keeping the emotions authentically raw along the way, never shying from the pain Sammy is experiencing as her flipped-upside-down life is seemingly being turned right-side-up by everyone but her.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Marvelous and the Black Hole is the most harmless movie that I’ve seen in a while. I was in a good mood watching it, and maybe that helped. Were I in a sour mood, it’s cuteness might have been galling.
Masking Threshold
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …a successful, immersive, and credible experiment in diving into one man’s particular rabbit hole universe.
Matilda the Musical
- Excerpt: I applaud choreographer Ellen Kane for the fascinating dance numbers here. As a former dancer, I loved the precision and enthusiasm of the youngsters.
Maxima
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Inspiring, unexpectedly joyful portrait of the shy, funny, humble woman battling environmental disaster, corporate malfeasance, and civic corruption. A harbinger of the resource wars that are coming.
McEnroe
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: McEnroe is the kind of complete documentary anyone interested in a seminal figure in history wants to see.
Me Time
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Me Time’ is Netflix’s attempt at a ‘Grown Ups’ knockoff starring Kevin Hart
Medusa
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Medusa’ has a great look and sound, a few memorable scenes, and a fine central performance by Mariana Oliveira to ground the chaos, but the whole feels less than the parts.
Meet Me in the Bathroom
- Excerpt: I found Meet Me in the Bathroom to be a startling disappointment, a documentary that skates through history without telling us anything we don’t already know. If you were wondering what made that era special, you won’t really find answers here—which left me wondering if it was really even special at all.
Memories of My Father
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The 1983 ‘present day’ is presented in black and white and, in addition to introducing the film, provides its last act, but it is the burnished gold memories beginning in 1971 that give the film its heart and are the most pleasurable aspect of the film.
Memory Box
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Credit the filmmakers for going to those darker places with the impossibility of living through so much death and destruction. And for deciding that letting that pain out and realizing they don’t have to battle it alone can lead to happy endings too.
Metal Lords
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Imagine Judas Priest recording a concept album based on a John Hughes movie and you’ve got Metal Lords.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: We’re here to see how the characters grow individually and together, not a generic plot progress as it has for decades. Good and bad, it met expectations.
Mid-Century
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: I walked away not feeling excited, scared, entertained, or provoked. In fact, I felt nothing at all.
Miracle
- Excerpt: Writer-director Bogdan George Apetri’s latest feature, Miracle, is a thought-provoking exploration of morality and mortality divided neatly into two parts: the first chronicling the lead-up to a devastating crime, the second the investigation that follows. It’s an intriguing storytelling approach with mixed results, one that frustrates and fascinates in equal measure.
Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: The plot is thin, the characters thinner, and the solution to the puzzle isn’t hard to figure out but a good time is had by all.
Mole Song Final
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Even if that pacing and comedy isn’t your thing, however, it’s impossible not to enjoy the underlying message of kindness. You can use your rage to victimize others or remember its pain and set them free.
Mondocane
- Excerpt: Yet despite a keen sense of style and some great performances from the young cast, Mondocane fails to truly capture the imagination in the way so many other dystopian thrillers have done before.
Monica, O My Darling
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Monstrous
Jeremy Kibler @ Horror Obsessive
- Excerpt: Monstrous offers a game Christina Ricci and not much more.
Montana Story
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The siblings may have found their way back to one another by the time they separate, but their story is never as satisfying as that little seen, symbolic horse’s is.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Montana Story is a film of uncommon depth and meaning.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The climax lives up to the expectations. Teague and Richardson had spent almost ninety minutes internalizing their reactions to not give the other an inch and suddenly the filter is removed.
Moon Manor
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Moon Manor’ aims at persuasion, and how well you like it will depend on your position on the right to die (and on whether you think opposing viewpoints should at least get a fair hearing). But it’s also a living eulogy for an extraordinary man, which makes the movie harder to criticize or dislike.
Mother Schmuckers
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: More despicable than what almost sounds like a Dardenne brothers-John Waters collaboration, “Mother Schmuckers” is a celebration of bad taste that deserves the middle finger.
Mothering Sunday
Motherland
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A work of passion, “Motherland” tells the story of ongoing genocide that is ignored by the UN and its member nations (except Macron’s France).
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A supernatural drama based on a Stephen King story that raises questions about cell phones.
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: How was this approved by Stephen King?
Munich: The Edge of War
Betty Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Although we know how the end goes, this thriller keeps us on our toes.
The Munsters
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: There was a moment when the Count said, “I can feel my brain cells dying,” and that’s how I felt the same way with each passing minute in its overlong runtime.
Murder at Yellowstone City
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I won’t lie and say I expected what started as a slow-paced drama to devolve into an all-out gunfight. The path’s convoluted, but not entirely unwelcome since zero sequel aspirations means everyone becomes expendable.
Murina
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An intense and well-acted psychodrama about misogyny.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s Camera d’or winning feature debut recharges the coming-of-age story with multi-generational sexual heat and a constant threat of danger in a sun-splashed, Adriatic setting.
- Excerpt: Director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic made a splash at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival with Murina, winning the prestigious Camera d’Or for Best First Feature. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, Murina combines the sinister tension of noir with the emotional agony of coming of age to tell the story of one young woman’s attempts to escape the future laid out for her.
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
My Father’s Dragon
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It accomplishes what every great family film does: bringing us into a world of imagination and leaving us with lessons we can carry for a lifetime.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Love should never be conditional. It’s a necessary lesson to be learned and Twomey and company are very willing to tell it with the seriousness children films demand.
My Imaginary Country
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Patricio Guzmán’s documentary leaves open the possibility of a future for Chileans that isn’t beholden to the trauma of history.
My Little One
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Together, their characters cross-stitch into an outstanding ensemble of exceptional art, founded in a belief that we actually do have the freedom to create the life we want – to a certain extent.
My Love Affair with Marriage
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Latvian animator and director Signe Baumane offers a loosely autobiographical accounting of the life and loves of Zelma (voice of Dagmara Dominczyk), a Latvian artist who finds that her romantic programming and the biochemical workings of her body conspire against her long-term marital happiness.
My Old School
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: McLeod’s film works far better in its secondary goal, his positively charming current day class ‘reunion’ recollections, than it does in its primary, where he belabors his efforts to maintain suspense, over milking his cow.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: What’s great about letting everyone have their say is the realization that this isn’t just one person’s story. Who he was to them is much different than who he is to the world once the truth of his charade is revealed.
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: A stranger-than-fiction documentary.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: That’s where the film’s genius lies; in highlighting the ridiculousness of the situation, and the fact that reality is often stranger than fiction.
My Policeman
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Instead of burning with desire and longing, the film plods along as though it were simply going through the motions.
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Respectable if poorly structured with weak acting save for David Dawson, My Policeman should have been retitled Brokeback Brighton.
Kirsten Hawkes @ The Noel Diary
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: MY POLICEMAN is primarily set in a 1950s Britain where “the love that dare not speak its name” is still “the love that dare not speak its name.”
My So-Called Selfish Life
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Dismantles myths about motherhood and misconceptions about child-free women with brisk, cheeky humor and intersectionality, and begins to build the cultural scripts we need for paths without kids.
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Netflix’s newest “tapes” documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes is a disgusting bag of tabloid trash, a movie that purports to take us behind the Hollywood façade to the real-life Norma Jean heard through audio tapes made more than 60 years ago. What it is really doing is gluing together pieces and parts of rumors, speculation and mythology (read: gossip!) into a movie that wants to root around under this poor woman’s fingernails and unearth a lot of nonsense without any real commentary or – God forbid – genuine concern for this troubled soul.
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: Unheard Tapes
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Is there anything new to be learned here? The answer is: Not really.
Next Exit
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: The opening of NEXT EXIT is reminiscent of the ALIEN logo, but if it is trying to look science fictional, it does not succeed. It is more fantasy, taking a new approach to life after death.
A Night of Knowing Nothing
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Kapadia’s work is formally strong with a captivatingly sensorial atmosphere, so it’s easy to see why it has found such staunch defenders. It’s not too difficult to fathom someone hating it too, though.
Night’s End
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: There is still a message to be had in doing so: namely telling Ken that he needs to deal with himself before dealing with others. I don’t think Night’s End lets him, though.
Nitram
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film has been divisive in its native Australia, but Kurzel and Grant have succeeded in delivering both a strong gun law message and artistic achievement.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Nitram isn’t exploitation. It’s not turning the camera onto a monster to humanize him. On the contrary, its vantage point turns the camera onto us instead. Because this is the cost of so-called freedom.
No Exit
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: In a sea of mid-budget thrillers, this one rises above the pack.
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: None of us are too good for an airport paperback of a movie, and “No Exit” does right by those parameters.
Nocebo
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: While everything you can probably guess early on does more or less come to fruition, it won’t be entirely in the way you thought. Because karmic retribution can create as well as destroy.
Nocturna: Side A
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Calzada has uncannily made his film itself appear haunted, the whole cloaked in a greenish tinge of decay, Ulises’s paternal guilt weighing heavily upon him.
Nocturna: Side B
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: David Lynch’s influence is felt even more strongly in Side B, which has the look of his early shorts…
The Noel Diary
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Noise
- Excerpt: Despite some of the regular faults of Japanese movies, “Noise” is an interesting, entertaining crime film that will satisfy all fans of the genre.
Non Mi Uccidere
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: From Italy to Netflix…A new “Twilight” themed movie!
Not Okay
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: Not Okay is unnecessary tedium that will be forgotten as quickly as it takes to refresh an Instagram feed.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A stinging commentary on the narcissism that grips our social media-fueled world.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s a familiar trajectory portrayed with a boldly wanton disregard for the consequences. Whereas most dark comedies of this ilk would play it all for redemption, however, Shephard understands the value of holding horrible people accountable.
Nothing Compares
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: This is a story of resilience and trauma, told with the sort of raw honesty that O’Connor herself evinced.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: With a series of film festival awards and nominations for best documentary, “Nothing Compares,” featuring O’Connor’s hit written by Prince, is a masterpiece of character study and sensitive film-making.
The Novelist’s Film
- Excerpt: Hong Sang-soo does not reinvent himself with “The Novelist’s Film” but presents another title that highlights how he has perfected his particular style, which is bound to garner awards and attention from festival audiences for many years to come.
Nr. 10
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: That dry humor keeps us invested while also lulling us to sleep before genial smiles inevitably turn into cold-blooded smirks. And it culminates with a finale as satisfyingly cathartic as it is diabolically open-ended, thanks to Günther’s naivete.
NYC Dreams
- Excerpt: Do what’s right for you
O Palestrante
Márcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Fábio Porchat utiliza a autodepreciação como fonte do humor e elemento de construção de personagens inadequados onde estão.
Objectos de Luz
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: O festival de Locarno recebeu Objectos de Luz, a estreia de Acácio de Almeia (e também da sua companheira de várias décadas Marie Carré) na realização. A presença sublinha precisamente a juventude que se sente no seu olhar. E que reflecte, ainda que se uma forma subliminar, a história de amor deste casal, que se funde com os rostos e uma paixão intemporal pelo cinema.
Offbeat Cops
- Excerpt: Despite some issues here and there, mostly deriving from the overall mainstream approach implemented here, and the fact that “Offbeat Cops” does not reach the levels of his independent work, it remains a highly entertaining movie that is quite easy to watch while admiring Abe’s evident charisma.
Official Competition
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Oscillating between a dark comedy and drama, it examines the quirks and eccentricities of its characters as they clash toward one shared goal.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: I haven’t laughed out loud so much in ages. Whoever chose Penélope Cruz’s explosion of a frizzy, red wig deserves a trophy for that one contribution to this film alone.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Watching these three clash offers plenty of wicked fun.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Offseason
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: “Offseason” envelops the viewer in the off-kilter goings-on for as long as it can. It just doesn’t add up to more than a genre exercise with fog machines.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: a tense, brisk, gripping tale of seaside fright, primordial chills, and sinister small-town mystery.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Maybe it doesn’t stimulate your intellect as much as other recent genre fare, but it definitely provides an engrossing setting with which to travel through for eighty-minutes.
Old Man
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Old Man is the most monotonous movie I’ve seen in a long time.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The (un)reality of what’s happening beneath the surface is hardly unique or secretive, but [how] Veach writes its revelations and McKee films its visual labyrinth spanning past, present, and purgatory ensure the drama unfolding is never without intrigue.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Old Man is a mysterious cinematic chamber play that tackles the weight of guilt in a story about a man grappling with the horrors of his past. The film revolves around male possessiveness—the urge for men to lay claim and ownership to people, places, and things, though especially women.
The Old Town Girls
- Excerpt: What follows is a film as extended flashback, showing us how these characters ended up trapped in such a tangled web of economic stress, familial strain, and teenage angst. Yet while the neo-noir plot of The Old Town Girls was inspired by a true story, the film’s criminal side feels like an unnecessary distraction from what is otherwise a powerful coming-of-age story.
Olga
- Excerpt: Olga, the first feature film by Elie Grappe, presents a realistic picture of high-level gymnastics training, aided by excellent, unfussy cinematography by Lucie Baudinaud and expert editing by Suzana Pedro.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This is a political film. While Olga’s pursuit of her Olympic dream is often narratively truncated, what it means to be in Switzerland while her loved ones remain in Kyiv risking their lives at the protests isn’t.
On the Come Up
- Excerpt: While the performances are good and the messages important, On the Come Up is not an ideal follow up to The Hate U Give. It feels as if the studio didn’t give this film the care, attention, and budget it deserved.
On the Count of Three
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: There are hints here of such classics as “Mean Streets” and “Scarecrow,” but while Carmichael realizes a good sense of pacing and shepherds actors well, he doesn’t scale those heights…Abbott is this film’s scene stealer.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [The film] propels us forward for an eighty-six-minute thrill ride with tension constantly being ratcheted up for what seems like a perpetually postponed release. It’s a wake-up call that’s unafraid to acknowledge the complexity of existential terror.
One Fine Morning
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Hansen-Løve’s warm and wonderful film…finds the beacon of light that guides us through life’s painful passages. Seydoux personifies it.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: It’s not a picture that will necessarily blow you away, but it certainly offers a compelling portrait of a woman trying to sort through the issues that are plaguing her life.
Only in Theaters
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a fascinating wartime tale…Arthur Harari’s classical filmmaking style brings us back to the war epics of the 50’s and 60’s and his narrative, with a run time of 167 minutes, certainly qualifies as epic.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a fascinating wartime tale…Arthur Harari’s classical filmmaking style brings us back to the war epics of the 50’s and 60’s and his narrative, with a run time of 167 minutes, certainly qualifies as epic.
- Excerpt: The result is a hallucinatory look at the horror of war that revels in the absurdity as well as the tragedy of Onoda’s thirty-year refusal to face reality—something that feels disturbingly timely when one considers society’s ongoing preoccupation with “fake news.”
Operation Seawolf
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: The film is primarily about the conflicts within the German military towards the end of the war. (I should point out that this movie is fiction, and not based on an historical event.)
Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin
- Excerpt: Dreams, memories and producers
Origami
- Excerpt: “Origami” is an excellent documentary that manages to hide much context in its minimalism, while having an ideal duration for its subject matter, just a bit below the hour.
The Other Me
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It’s not an easy film to decipher, but it does have a thematic and emotional dimension that could be satisfying for certain audiences.
The Other Tom
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Poignant story of a mother trying to decide what is the best approach for dealing with her son who has ADHD.
The Oufit
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Moore [baits us] into thinking we know everything there is to know so we don’t go deeper to figure out the rest. I don’t say that to now go digging. I say it so that you don’t let your frustrations with familiarity and contrivance ruin the [experience].
Our Father
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The manipulative filmmaking undercuts what is being told, making the doc more about the beast than the people.
Our House Party
- Excerpt: Shuichi Kawanobe had some good intentions in presenting his subject, but in the end, his effort ended up a film that tries to do too much in a very short time, and without any particular contextual direction.
Out of the Blue
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I can’t therefore stop wondering if Out of the Blue is intended as parody for the noirs sprinkled throughout. He shoots it with the earnestness of homage and yet those intertitles and lack of deception renders the whole silly.
Pacifiction
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Paid in Blood
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: There are promising pieces in place. Paid in Blood is a nice-looking movie, slick and well put together; the acting is strong across the board; and the core idea could be interesting.
The Pale Blue Eye
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Thankfully, strong performances and a striking ending lift it beyond its shortcomings. There’s a gem here if viewers are willing to find it.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Scott Cooper adapts Louis Bayard’s novel about a fictional mystery which shaped future works by Edgar Allan Poe from the inside out, two character studies exposing as much about the other as themselves.
- Excerpt: The 2nd Annual JanuScary Special continues with The Pale Blue Eye! Harry Melling and Christian Bale deliver in this creepy murder mystery.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It gets much darker than I anticipated and excels at maintaining an air of sophisticated drama while also delving into some horror corners. A solid piece all-around.
Palm Trees and Power Lines
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Depicting [sexual grooming] is neither entertaining nor exciting. Dack can therefore push her narrative forward with methodical precision instead.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A powerful and devastating film, which fortunately never victim-blames, and rather manages to intertwine an important message with a well-told story.
Papai é Pop
Márcio Augusto Sallem @ Cinema com Critica [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: É uma comédia dramática com a cara da sociedade que finge ser progressista, mas que trata com tolerância o homem / pai pelas razões com que impõe cobranças à mulher / mãe.
Paris, 13th District
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s that messiness and uncertainty that lends the whole a refreshing authenticity devoid of contrivance or manipulation. This trio is built as human beings above narrative.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: The stories are not so much about what happens but about how the characters respond to them and how they all connect, disconnect and reconnect via digital technology, which seems to exist in their personal space as personal space.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The problem is that the film doesn’t seem to have anything new to say, and that many of its characters end up feeling really unsympathetic, because of how cynical, selfish and just plain unpleasant they can be.
Peace by Chocolate
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Jonathan Keijser makes his feature debut with a true story from his Native Nova Scotia which illustrates both the struggles and the triumphs, the foes and friends, of refugees forced to build a new life after losing everything.
Pedro
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Persuasion
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Although the cast tries their hardest to keep things afloat, they each exist on an island. Each person is playing a song, but no one is playing the same rhythm.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Dakota Johnson is an absolute delight as Anne Elliot. The overall chronicle is less compelling.
- Excerpt: The actors seem to love their parts, and romance angle tugs our hearts. While not perfect, this film will do. Dakota conquers something new!
The Pez Outlaw
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
The Phantom of Open
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: : resembles the Australian comedy “The Castle” by way of “Happy Gilmore”…after “Don’t Look Up,” Mark Rylance’s approach to comedy appears to be popping in a dental appliance and acting spacey and the filmmakers’ cuddly approach rings false.
The Phantom of the Open
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN stars Mark Rylance (BRIDGE OF SPIES and WOLF HALL) as Maurice Flitcroft, a middle-aged working-class Briton who has never played golf, but who decides in 1975 (for reasons never explained) to enter the British Open.
Phone Bhoot
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
A Piece of Sky
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: After a few days, I am still haunted by this film of uncommon moral depth and perspective. Michael Kock, in his second film, shows uncommon courage, sensitivity and insight.
Piggy
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Pereda mixes many genres, her genius concept in having a bullied, ostracized teen ‘seen’ and treated sympathetically by a serial killer a twist on the coming-of-age trope of naïve young girl falling for the wrong guy.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: So, don’t expect to know how it’s all going to end since Pereda makes certain to save the blood for the finale. Everything else is mired in the unknown with screams in the night and heated confrontations by impotent adults desperate for answers.
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The Pink Cloud
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Sarah Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: The point of The Pink Cloud is not the science of the cloud, but the way people react to enforced togetherness and abrupt changes in their lives.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Gerbase [is] presenting things with a level of authenticity that demands introspection. This isn’t satire. These are people like [us] being pushed to their breaking points.
Plan A Plan B
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Playground
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Wandel and her cinematographer Frédéric Noirhomme keep their focus tightly on the schoolchildren, adults rarely seen above the waist, heard only as part of Nora’s ambient experience. The effect is one of intense immersion.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Wandel pulls no punches in her depiction and both Leklou and Vanderbeque deliver performances well beyond their years. With only seventy-minutes at their disposal, Playground pushes forward with powerful intent.
Diego Salgado @ [Spanish]
Please Baby Please
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Andrea Riseborough showcases her true talent!
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It seems like the script was written to answer the question, what would happen if the leather daddies from ‘Scorpio Rising’ took over the set of ‘West Side Story’?
Pleasure
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: That the porn industry is ruled by the patriarchy and women are objectified and abused is really all “Pleasure” has to offer, its ‘theme’ represented by a score contrasting male rap with ethereal female chorales.
- Excerpt: Starring newcomer Sofia Kappel and an ensemble cast of adult industry performers?—some of whom have said they feel hard done by the film’s portrayal of their industry?—Pleasure is an eye-opening and eyebrow-raising look at what women in porn often endure on the road to the top. Yet when one strips away the shock value inherent in the film’s subject matter, one is left wanting something more.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While Thyberg’s unrelenting vision puts its truth into the public forum, it’s Kappel’s performance that gives it purpose. Not every dream is a fairy tale.
Polar Bear
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The same problems that have marred earlier efforts crop up here – simplistic anthropomorphization and an overly kid friendly approach that is light on facts – but this one is also haphazard in its timeline and continuity.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Though Polar Bear lacks much in plot, awesome vistas is what it’s got. Plus, visual lessons that we need about the Earth’s dangers indeed!
The Policeman’s Lineage
- Excerpt: Despite some minor issues in the script, “The Policeman’s Lineage” emerges as a captivating crime thriller, which, although does not reach the level of the masterpieces of the category, remains entertaining from beginning to end.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Poly’s daughter has done her proud with an intimate, yet all-encompassing portrait of an extremely talented and complex woman. “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché” is yet another in a string of fabulously engaging rock docs.
- Excerpt: The punk anthem “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” was released by the band X-Ray Spex ten years before I was born, yet the first time I heard it as an angsty teenager it felt as prescient as ever. Just as much an outburst against aggressive consumerism as it is a feminist call to arms — if not more so — it’s impossible to hear Poly Styrene’s voice screaming those lyrics and not feel equal parts enraged and empowered. A mixed-race woman fronting a rock band in the 1970s while the National Front was spreading its racist rhetoric throughout the UK, with a mouthful of metal braces and a closetful of futuristic homemade fashions, Poly Styrene was a unique artist who remains an iconic figure to this day, with her influence felt everywhere from Afropunk to Riot Grrrl.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: . This is wonderful documentary, for fans of Poly Stryrene’s music as well as anyone else.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A loving appreciation, but never a blinkered one, of the punk philosopher, a woman ahead of her time and still timely: iconoclastic, creative, ever-searching, a cultural observer who saw deep and far.
Ponniyin Selvan: Part One (PS-1)
Poser
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: works a lot better as a portrait of a regional indie music scene that it does as a character study. Fledgling actress Sylvie Mix is fine in the lead…but as written…she’s playing a borrowed tune in more ways than one.
- Excerpt: Take a dash of Persona, mix it with a dollop of All About Eve, add a big pinch of punk energy, and what do you get? Poser, the debut feature from directors Noah Dixon and Ori Segev.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Despite knowing the fantasy must come to an end eventually, credit the filmmakers for adhering to the reality that there’s sometimes no turning back.
Potato Dreams of America
- Excerpt: As the younger Vasili, Hersh Powers charms the camera with his apparent naiveté and boyish good looks; once in America, Tyler Bocock readily exudes his inner gay with panache.
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This is an angry, violent movie and the only interesting question it leaves behind is how on earth it wound up in Disney’s portfolio.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A portrait of Diana’s depiction in the press that is incendiary, incisive, and transfixing. A litany of horror, in retrospect, and an incredibly valuable look at how public stories are shaped by media.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Even at a relatively brief 94 minutes, I found myself feeling relieved when it was done because the monotony became oppressive.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Rapunzel by way of The Raid
Private Desert
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [His characters aren’t] reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes. He draws them as equals insofar as their inability to fully embrace who they are away from external forces.
Private Property
- Excerpt: The movie is 45 minutes of people explaining their life problems, 30 minutes of backstory, and 10 minutes of actual tension.
The Privilege
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Project Wolf Hunting
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The whole works on a level of pure [bloody] entertainment alone, but the gradual introduction of backstory and motivations definitely does add another gear.
The Pupils
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Purple Hearts
- Excerpt: Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine turn in such convincing performances! Here’s hoping this splendid work jettisons them into more lead roles.
Qala
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Railway Children
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Too dark for kids and too simplistic for adults, it makes a potentially engrossing idea come off as bland and unmemorable.
Ram Setu
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Random Call
- Excerpt: “Random Call” has its issues, with Ohkanda’s insistence to present all the thoughts and comments she wanted resulting in a bit of “too much context” for a 77 minute film, but overall, the whole endeavor emerges as a worthy effort that definitely overcomes its budgetary limitations, resulting in a rather easy to watch title.
Raymond & Ray
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: In RAYMOND & RAY, the title characters (played by Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke) are two very different half-brothers on a road trip to their father’s funeral. The brothers use the time to vent their anger at each other and at their father, and of course family secrets are also discussed and revealed, as is predictable in this sort of film.
[REC] Terror sin pausa
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Red River Road
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a vividly realized, artfully constructed, thoroughly professional piece of work that belies its DIY origins. Schuyler’s slow burn paranoia piece keeps unsettling us by continually shifting our perception…
Reflection
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Vasyanovych’s style is reminiscent of Swedish director Roy Andersson’s, although Vasyanovych’s tableaux flow into each other, his colors darker than reality
Reroute
- Excerpt: “Reroute” is a movie addressed to people who want their exploitation with a pinch of art-house and drama, in a title that is definitely intriguing to take a look at.
Rescued by Ruby
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This production isn’t perfect – it has a made-for-tv feel – but it succeeds in telling a true story with sincerity and heart.
Retrograde
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: A portrayal of hubris and mismanagement on behalf of the world’s so-called “protectors” and abject futility on behalf of those who rose to their feet to risk everything in pursuit of a promise left unfulfilled.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: In the top 15 nominations for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, this is dramatic film-making at its very best.
Return to Seoul
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Chou astounds with a slippery conclusion that launches Freddie out into the world, now the self reliant adult she merely pretended to be at the film’s onset.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Return to Seoul is a very slow-paced movie, yet it has an allure that eventually drew me in.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This journey is less about forgiveness or hate than it is acceptance. Acceptance for her past, present, and future as well as the role she plays in all three no matter what externally unfair hand she might have been dealt.
Revealer
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: A heartfelt parable wrapped within a bloody and profane, 80s-aesthetic package.
Riceboy Sleeps
- Excerpt: “Riceboy Sleeps” is an impressive debut, a story that is both meaningful and entertaining, and a a rather well-shot movie that is bound to find admirers throughout the cinematic spectrum.
Rise
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Is this yet another Disney-backed underdog sports film? Yes it is, and it’s a good one.
Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: In this production, the superior musical numbers overshadow a disjointed and cluttered story
Rogue Agent
- Excerpt: Starring James Norton as the con man and Gemma Arterton as the woman who falls for him, then decides to take him down, Rogue Agent has a wonderfully outrageous truth-is-stranger-than-fiction premise but doesn’t make the most of it, forcing its two lead actors to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to keeping the audience engaged.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I’m surprised the studio gives up the game in its marketing materials. By going in blind, I became seduced by Freegard just as effectively as his victims.
Rosaline
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It re-imagines the Romeo and Juliet world and does so with humor and charm.
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: ROSALINE is similar to CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY in that it is set several hundred years in the past, but uses modern language and modern sensibilities. But while CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY is a new story, ROSALINE is based on a throwaway bit from ROMEO AND JULIET–she was Romeo’s “true love” before he saw Juliet.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: You know that thing where a movie is fine, but the performance from the lead actor or actress is something really special? That’s Rosaline.
The Roundup
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Ma Dong-seok just wrecking dudes, is a true thing of beauty.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The filmmakers balance the tone perfectly—thanks to Ma’s charismatic ability to shift from subtle humor to extreme violence on a dime—and keep things moving smoothly despite a ton of moving parts.
The Royal Treatment
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Rubikon
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A shallow story about a complex theme.
Saloum
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: director Luca Guadagnino reflects patriotic pride with his flawed yet fascinating portrayal of a man, his trade, his innovations and their impact on the movie business and Hollywood glamour.
Sam & Kate
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: https://aisleseat.com/sam-and-kate.html
Beverly Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: The fact that we are seeing the actual son and daughter of acclaimed Academy Award and Golden Globe winners in a low-key narrative brought bursting to life by their parents’ brilliant talent is a feat. But the love from the younger generation that comes across for their parents is powerful and offers a fourth reason to see this lovely little film.
The Same Storm
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A look at what is revealed about New York City residents during the pandemic lockdown.
Sanka: Nomads of the Mountain
- Excerpt: “Sanka: Nomads of the Mountain” is an excellent movie, a true gem of Japanese cinema and one I feel everybody should watch.
Sanka: Nomads of the Mountain
- Excerpt: “Sanka: Nomads of the Mountain” is an excellent movie, a true gem of Japanese cinema and one I feel everybody should watch.
Satan’s Slaves 2: Communion
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Satan’s Slaves: Communion” may be addressed to a younger audience than Anwar’s horrors of the past, but the artistry, the humor, the story, the smartly presented comments, and most of all, the atmosphere are once more on a top level, highlighting the fact that the Indonesian is a master of his art.
Scare Zone
The School for Good and Evil
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A stunning visual, but a shady story
The Score
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This meet is the reason Troy and Gloria cross paths, but what they do with that fateful collision is why we keep watching. It would be impossible not to since Poulter and Ackie are so cute together with their acerbic flirtations.
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
- Excerpt: Scrooge: A Christmas Carol is as if someone made a bet that one of the most enduringly beloved works of literature—adapted with great success innumerable times featuring everyone from Mickey Mouse to the Muppets to Mister Magoo to classically trained British actors to Jim Carrey, to Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell just a couple of weeks ago—could be remade so poorly that it was close to unwatchable.
The Sea Beast
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It presents a world that doesn’t have easy answers, where doing the right thing may not always be the popular choice.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: there are few surprises along the way, but “The Sea Beast” features some stunning animation, rousing action scenes and colorful vocal performances.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It becomes a surprisingly emotional journey pitting duty against justice and memory against doctrine to find out that being a hero doesn’t automatically mean you’re right.
See for Me
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Debuting feature screenplay writers Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue reshuffle a bunch of genre clichés so that their deck comes out just off kilter enough to keep us interested by defying expectations
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
See You Then
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: http://armchaircinema.com/see-you-then/
The Seed
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: If you’re down for some grotesquely goopy (and tactile) practical effects this side of Brian Yuzna’s bonkers, jaw-droppingly icky social satire “Society,” “The Seed” is gross fun.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It wants to be funny and polished and sometimes even finds that sweet spot. Walker has some interesting ideas and an eye for panache, but the whole leaves much to be desired.
Senior Year
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A million humorous possibilities exist in the premise, but the film finds none of them.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: An overcaffeinated 12-year-old could have written this.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This is Rebel Wilson’s best movie. Like Buster Keaton, she left me exhausted at the end of the show.
Seobok
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A bit long in places, Lee’s film remains compelling and moving throughout, deftly using its characters to personify and present its ideas.
Seobok: Project Clone
- Excerpt: While the film devolves all too quickly into a cavalcade of unfortunate dialogue and confusing double-crossing, Gong’s performance in it is a reminder of his considerable star power—and the main asset of Seobok: Project Clone.
Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Servants
Sex Appeal
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Sex with Sue
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: Canadian “sexpert” who battled ignorance and prejudice with an arm full of sex toys fills the 31st Raindance Film festival with unabashed lust and joy!
Shari
- Excerpt: Experimental short filmmaker Yoshigai Nao looks at nature in and out of balance in this idiosyncratic observational documentary about rural Japan.
Sharmaji Namkeen
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Sharp Stick
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Sharp Stick’ explores some interesting material with some great performances. It just can’t bring its themes together
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The film tries to bother and generate immediate reactions in the viewer, but unfortunately it only manages to stay on the surface.
Shattered
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: That’s the best way to describe Shattered; it could have been fun.
She Will
- Excerpt: Directed by Charlotte Colbert (in her feature debut) from a script by Colbert and Kitty Percy, She Will boasts some striking images and solid performances, but the film’s story falls surprisingly flat in its attempts to channel aspects of the #MeToo movement through the medium of psychological horror.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: SHE WILL combines witchcraft revenge with the #MeToo era in a psychological horror film that is more style than substance.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This is about overcoming the constraints dictating a woman’s existence in a man’s world. Both Krige and Eberhardt deliver subtly quiet performances within this atmospherically fragmented pursuit of vengeance, ultimately transforming into agents of change.
Shepherd
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The first two acts work well in developing this world and allowing cracks to creep in.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Its resulting visual and tonal intrigue, while effective, unfortunately feels hollow when juxtaposed against Hughes’ noteworthy performance.
The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs
- Excerpt: The personal and the political are fully intertwined in filmmaker Pushpendra Singh’s fourth feature, The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs, which begins a weeklong run at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on January 12. Adapted from a story by acclaimed Rajasthani author Vijaydan Detha—making it the second of Singh’s features to draw upon Detha’s work—the film mixes the magic of centuries-old folklore with the modern realities of human migration.
Shin Ultraman
- Excerpt: “Shin Ultraman” is a great sci-fi film, elaborate in all of its aspects, and one of those movies that definitely deserves to be watched on the big screen.
Shithouse
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It may have some technical flaws – weird cuts, awkward camera movements – but they’re not enough to spoil the good acting and entertaining script.
A Short Story
- Excerpt: Commissioned by a cat supply company, A Short Story takes viewers along on the strange, surreal journey of a large black cat seeking something precious in this world, only to discover that the answers may lay startlingly close to home.
Sidney
Candice Frederick @ HuffPost
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: SIDNEY is a fairly straightforward biography of Sidney Poitier; its interest lies in the story of Poitier’s experiences and how they shaped his life and his work.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Just because this memorialization treats its subject with unabashed reverence doesn’t negate its power to move audiences or champion his rare talent and austere presence.
Significant Other
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: If a horror movie is judged by its effective shocks, then this one delivers at least one (maybe two) that are off the charts.
Sirens
- Excerpt: Truth be told, some more focus on the rest of the members of the group would also be welcome here, but in the end, “Sirens” emerges as an excellent documentary that manages to present the story of the group and its members rather eloquently, and combine it with a series of sociopolitical comments.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: There’s a poetic nature to the whole too as Baghdadi avoids strict narrative plotting for emotional through lines. She shows just enough via expressions, body language, and actions to understand motivations and attitudes.
Skies of Lebanon
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Social breakdown and the insanity of war are timely subjects for many parts of the world. Skies of Lebanon suggests that love is the one thing to which those of us in dire straits can turn for solace and a way forward.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Rohrwacher is wonderful in that role, steadfast and determined regardless of whether Lebanon is her adopted home. Mouawad provides the stoicism and defeat of a man unsure about his identity.
The Sky Is Everywhere
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Slapface
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Some can see past shaky performances and pacing to let the message shine. Others can’t. I implore you to try because there are a ton of interesting ideas in play for those willing to look.
Slash/Back
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Slash/Back offers up a thrilling teen adventure with a distinct, singular perspective and infectious energy.
Slumberland
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Jason Momoa helps make ‘Slumberland’ a surprising delight
Small Town Wisconsin
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Debuting screenwriter Jason Naczek has concocted a manchild redemption story using metaphors as heavy as a hammer and a fairy godmother who makes everything alright with a seeming flip of the switch.
Smyrna
Beverly Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This epic story of the majestic cosmopolis of Smyrna starring Mimi Denissi, Greek actress, writer, director and producer extraordinaire, will have a one-day-only showing in the US and Canada on Dec. 8, 2022.
Sneakerella
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: Diverse families looking for representation in film will certainly find it here.
Sniper: The White Raven
- Excerpt: Best to be neither seen nor heard
Soft & Quiet
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: All at once, Soft & Quiet tackles racism, as well as the role many white women play in upholding white supremacy, and how white women use toxic masculinity to help patriarchy operate to its fullest, best extent.
Solomon King
Something in the Dirt
- Excerpt: A truly DIY affair—Benson and Moorhead serve as co-directors, co-stars, co-editors, writer (Benson), and cinematographer (Moorhead)—Something in the Dirt is proof that massive amounts of ingenuity and invention can still be found in the movies…that is, if one knows where to look.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s a case where logistics seem to dictate content. The whole looks great and the acting is solid, though. Fans should have a good time.
Sparta
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: O título acima reproduzido seria porventura adequado a suscitar a curiosidade dos leitores à procura da polémica de Sparta, o filme assinado pelo austríaco Ulrich Seidl, apresentado a concurso em San Sebastian, embora já envolto num manto de escândalo. Sobretudo depois da sua programada exibição ter sido vetada do festival de Toronto.
Speak No Evil
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This Danish/Dutch coproduction from cowriter (with brother Mads)/Christian Tafdrup is a frustratingly flawed but thought provoking analysis of a victim’s culpability in his own fate.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: It’s a take-no-prisoners horror film that’s scary because you can almost certainly relate to it.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The filmmakers have us wondering if our protagonists are actually making matters worse themselves. We’re so quick to forgive and forget that a monster blaming us for their actions isn’t wholly wrong.
Special Delivery
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: More Park So-dam fronted action movies please.
Spiderhead
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: As sci-fi, [the film] operates as time filler, utilizing somewhat interesting ideas but doing nothing interesting with them. As a thriller, it’s even worse.
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: Spiderhead is proof that a good concept does not necessarily make for a great film, and that sometimes more is actually less.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Hemsworth and Teller do their best. But plotline should be put to rest.
Spin Me Round
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s not sharp enough as satire or funny enough as a comedy…We end up wondering what it’s trying to say, if anything at all.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: I’m assuming the locations were the draw…Either than or something got lost in translation along the way, the film veering from cringey character comedy to plain old cringe.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: In SPIN ME ROUND, several managers of “Tuscan Grove” restaurants win a trip to Italy to the headquarters of their chain. Somehow it seems too good to be true.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The genre hopping that results might give you whiplash, but in the best way. [Baena is] humorously leading us towards extremes with the sole goal of subverting our expectations.
The Spine of Night
Spirit Halloween: The Movie
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Little more than a glorified advertisement for Spirit Halloween stores.
Spirited
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Spirited’ is a dull, soulless, unfunny retelling of ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: I don’t know if the movie will become a perennial classic, but it’s certainly a terrific way to spend two hours this, or any, Christmas season.
Spirited
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: It can overstay its welcome and the cool plot can be messy from time to time, but thanks to the relationship between Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds and some catchy songs, there’s some charm to be had.
Spiritwalker
Spoiler Alert
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: The simple and beautiful ‘Spoiler Alert’ is the surprise great weepy rom-com of the holiday season
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: In the end it’s an effective tearjerker with solid and stable marks across the board (extra points for the supporting cast thanks to Sally Field and Bill Irwin stealing scenes as Kit’s parents).
Squeal
Sr.
- Excerpt: Chris Smith’s latest doc is an incredibly sweet look into a father-son relationship, filmmaking, and the inextricable connection between the two.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: There’s some real emotion and catharsis at play, regardless of whether either is ever truly mined beyond the moment before humor gets used as deflection.
Stanleyville
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The more I think about [the film], the more I like it.
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: “Stanleyville” will firmly not be everyone’s cup of tea. But if you like this type of tea, it never wavers from its bizarro, off-kilter sensibility.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s a high concept structure built with a lo-fi aesthetic that’s populated by darkly comic performances lending a surreal dryness that captivates as the whole spirals out.
Stars at Noon
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s two people in a complicated world that’s glossed over so their lust takes the spotlight. A tease of intrigue fizzling out every time we fool ourselves into believing a payoff may yet arrive.
Stay Awake
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Stellar: A Magical Ride
- Excerpt: Despite some issues here and there, that do not allow it to reach the top of the category, “Stellar: A Magical Ride” is fun and quite easy to watch, and that is where its true value lies.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
The Stranger
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Thomas M. Wright’s true crime suspense thriller is a collection of shattered fragments, from its crosscutting among various story and timelines to the shattered psyches of its protagonists…
Strawberry Mansion
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This trippy travel through time and space and dreams is like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” by way of “Alice in Wonderland” with the artsy craftsy production style of the “Be Kind Rewind” crew.
- Excerpt: A deeply weird and visually striking journey into the subconscious, Strawberry Mansion packs more imagination into one scene than many films with far bigger budgets do in their entire running time. And while that doesn’t mean everything about it works, it does mean you won’t be able to tear your eyes away while watching it.
Stutz
- Excerpt: Jonah Hill’s Netflix doc takes its time to reveal itself, but when it does, it slowly morphs into a gently touching look into a therapist-patient relationship.
The Substitute
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Summering
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The film starts strong and loses its way.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s as though Ponsoldt and Percy brainstormed a bunch of universal stereotypes for a coming-of-age film and let their characters rise from them rather than even attempt to make their identities anything but one single trait each.
The Summoned
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: anchored with strong performances, it offers up an effective, minimalist sacrifice to the horror gods, one that’s worth checking out and bodes well for what’s to come from Mark Meir as a filmmaker.
Superior
- Excerpt: While filmmakers often end up expanding old shorts for their first features, this Superior is actually a sequel to the original. Picking up six years after the short left off, it chronicles the reconciliation of the twins after a long separation and the blurring of their identities that results.
The Survivor
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The best biopics don’t just tell you what a person did, they tell you who that person was.
The Swearing Jar
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Death looms large and the characters are all struggling with its impact, but they’re doing so in a way that will ultimately lead them towards productive means to cope, heal, and find happiness again.
The Swimmers
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: True story of two sisters who flee war-torn Syria and as refugees use their swimming skills to help and inspire others.
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Switchback
- Excerpt: Truth be told, in the end, “Switchback” emerges as a mixed bag of a film, particularly since the mystery does not serve a clear purpose, the grown-ups seem unfulfilled as characters, and the presentation of Obu is not exactly one that will make someone wishing to visit the place. On the other hand, and quite mysteriously, the collection of different elements here works quite well, resulting in a movie that holds the viewer from beginning to end, even though the reasons why are not exactly clear
Tahara
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This coming of age tale is the contrasting character study of quiet, introspective Carrie…and showboating, self-absorbed Hannah…a combination which results in both moving drama and cringey comedy.
The Tale of King Crab
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …like the discovery of a long lost art film from the 1970’s, a homespun bit of magical folklore.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The Tale of King Crab is thus a singular cinematic work that brings folklore to life less to provide a morality lesson than a fictionalized historical account of the places economic inequality pushed impoverished men who had already forsaken their souls.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I like where this movie has its head. It is slow-going, but it is one of those movies in which you are completely and totally engrossed at every single moment.
Taming the Garden
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Taming the Garden” is a slow-moving documentary that motivates introspection and insight. It’s a grand cinematic study of uprooting as well as an expose of the inexplicable squandering of wealth.
Tantura
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Documentary about the conflicting accounts of the genocide in a Palestinian village by Israeli troops, revealing the power of denial.
A Taste of Hunger
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Contemplative and tenderly observed, a slow-burn romantic and family drama about two complicated, difficult people and what they’re willing to risk to achieve their dream. Plus: Scandi food porn!
- Excerpt: The film moves back and forth through time and is divided into chapters, from their sweet first meeting to a sour betrayal, and the heated climax when all of the elements combine.
A Taste of Whale
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A sad, haunting melody with the plaintive cries of seagulls screeching far overhead introduces this fabulously told story of survival, barbarism, community, and tradition juxtaposed to protest and poison in the isolated Faroe Islands of the North Atlantic and Norwegian Seas.
Ted K
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: TED K is the story of Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber. As Ted Kaczynski, Sharlto Copley (probably best known for DISTRICT 9) really carries this film.
Le Temps Perdu
- Excerpt: The second installment of filmmaker Maria Alvarez’s trilogy of documentaries about art and aging (following Las Cinéphilas and preceding Las Cercanas) could not possibly focus on a more fitting subject. In Le Temps Perdu, Alvarez eavesdrops on a group of elderly people who have been meeting together for nearly two decades in a Buenos Aires cafe to read and re-read Marcel Proust’s masterwork, In Search of Lost Time.
Terrifier 2
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Where the other chapters were pure homicidal rage, TERRIFIER 2 better balances the tonal juxtaposition of blood, guts, and vaudeville humor.
Terror Train
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This may appeal to completionists wanting their Leatherface fix, but I don’t know if it’s going to win over any newcomers.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: One of the greatest things about this newest instalment of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that it treads new ground by bringing Leatherface into a contemporary story, rather than keeping him stuck in decades passed, while simultaneously echoing Hooper’s film in the most important ways by keeping the story focused on socioeconomic issues, as well as on Leatherface’s queered identity.
Thar
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Candice Frederick @ HuffPost
Three Headed Beast
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A story that unfolds in a very visual way, taking advantage of the expressions of its talented protagonists, their body language, and of course, the numerous —but never gratuitous or too explicit— sex scenes.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a reverential and moving forensic study of three minutes of film which spirals off into individual stories and Holocaust history.
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: THREE MINUTES–A LENGTHENING is a feature-length documentary based on three minutes of genuine “found footage” taken in a Jewish town in Poland in 1938 by a man who has emigrated to America many years earlier. However, it is not just a documentary of old footage, but also a consideration of what the footage represents, and the varied reactions we have to it.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Much like the ancient vases discussed, this celluloid is mined as a reflection of humankind at its specific moment in history—a priceless artifact itself.
Three Tall Women
- Excerpt: Of course, all of us know that life is finite, but few of us manage to acknowledge that fact until the final curtain is lowering.
Three Wishes for Cinderella
Beverly Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: I see the Norwegians wanted to create a stronger female prototype and be more inclusive in male stereotyping, but for my best friend, the film was just too much Norwegian imposition on a romance of magic that at its original core was kindness – kindness to all creatures.
El Tiempo Perfido
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Curious literary documentary.
Tiger 24
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Pereira, from his perch with a camera, gives us a spectacular view of the wild and the civilized, as well as the brutal and the ignorant. This is a film to see.
The Tiger Rising
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Tigre Gente
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Ungar is the Indiana Jones storyteller of environmental cinema. At its core, her work, like the Indiana Jones series, is about good and evil at work in the world, anchored by the belief that good will prevail and evil will be judged.
The Tinder Swindler
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The direction and editing balances out the details, delving into the intricacies of the fraud and its massive ripple effects.
Cecilia Barroso @ [Portuguese]
Titanic 666
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
To Be Killed by a High School Girl
- Excerpt: Truth be told, “To Be Killed by a High School Girl” never reaches the level of Miike’s“Lesson of the Evil” that follows a similar narrative path. Nevertheless, it is well shot, the story is quite intriguing in its manga-style premises, and the whole movie emerges as rather entertaining, from beginning to end.
To Leslie
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Andrea Riseborough gives a transformative performance.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: This is slice of life humanity brimming with authenticity and propped up by one of the best performances of the year so we can understand the pain and self-loathing beneath every mean-spirited and vindictive action Leslie takes.
To the Moon
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Friend handles the confusion and tone very well for the first two-thirds of the runtime. It’s so well-paced that the final twenty minutes hit with an urgency I wasn’t expecting. Fumbled landing or not, however, To the Moon does ultimately succeed.
Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: am Jones’ loving documentary Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off (now playing on HBO Max) make the point over and over that Hawk is no sell-out. Yes, he has his named attached to everything from T-Shirts to video games but there is something to the man, a sense of perfection that comes with anyone who rises to the top of their profession.
Toolsidas Junior
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Topside
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Every element of the production is outstanding… But without the belief we invest in Held and Farmer, the film would never work and the filmmaker and her young charge are heartbreakingly real.
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I have nothing bad to say about the intent, only the execution.
Torn Hearts
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Torn Hearts fits perfectly alongside 12 Hour Shift and Lucky in that it allows [Grant] to have fun with the material without losing the effective weight of its inherent character-driven drama.
A Trip to Infinity
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: A TRIP TO INFINITY uses interviews, films, and a variety of animation styles to try to explain infinity, both as a mathematical concept an as how it relates to the universe, both in the small and the large.
Troll
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: TROLL is the latest movie featuring this creature from Nordic folklore.
- Excerpt: Entertaining and scary too, this Norwegian film should please you.
True Things
The Tsugua Diaries
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: charming and playful while also exploring the dynamics of collaborative filmmaking and the often magical effect of following whims.
Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: When their stories converge, it is with a mixture of affection and aggravation..Lizzie finally films the duo together, the employees of Knopf amazed to see two legends wandering their work hallways in search of a number 2 pencil.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The crisp, congenial charms of this intimate exploration of a decades-long working partnership overlay an unsentimental elegy for an era in journalism and publishing that has all but disappeared.
The Twin
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Taneli Mustonen’s sturdy direction, a handful of creepy moments, and a dedicated, sympathetic lead performance do smooth out the musty familiarity of this material, making “The Twin” more effective than not.
Ultrasound
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: ULTRASOUND has a disorienting first scene, and continues to be disorienting.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Intrigue to morphs into impatience, and finally into apathy.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It’s the script that’s the standout here. Ultrasound‘s profound paranoia resonates in our gaslit world of deepfakes, fake news, and fake claims of fake news.
Unicorn Town
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
The Unmaking of a College
- Excerpt: The many clips of students waxing poetic about their experience at Hampshire tends to make this film feel at times like a recruiting video…
Unplayed Lullaby
- Excerpt: “Unplayed Lullaby” is funny, intriguing, and visually appealing. In the end, though, whether one will like the film depends on how theatrical one likes his movies.
Unrest
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Utama
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: addresses climate change from the POV of people with a spiritual connection to their environment whose culture is on the brink of disappearing… like a south of the equator response to Milko Lazarov’s 2018 “Ága”
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The best thing about “Utama”, however, is in its honesty; in the conflict between its characters, and how real it all feels.
V/H/S/99
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The idea of urban legends in V/H/S/99 feels like the first wave of internet folklore just prior to the emergence of creepypastas and other forms of internet storytelling.
- Excerpt: V/H/S/99 is the best of the series, maintaining a tightness and consistency that eluded previous episodes.
Valerie
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A warm and loving portrait of star Valerie Perrine.
The Valet
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: Genre fans will appreciate that this rom-com manages to provide madcap fun and plenty of laughs.
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: An amusing and light comedy, that without having great ambitions, manages to entertain with a sufficiently well-narrated, but rather predictable story.
Vata
- Excerpt: “VATA” is not an easy film to watch, and a knack for the particular style of music, which is actually heard throughout, and for travelog-style of films is a necessity here. However, the cinematography, the presentation of this rather unknown custom and the last segment compensate to a significant degree, making the movie one that deserves a watch.
Vedette
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Even though Vedette appears to be humanized by her owners and Bories, the role of animals in the world and how they should be treated is what makes this film truly thought-provoking.
Venus
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Ed Travis @ Cinapse
Vikram Vedha
Virus :32
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The result is a series of thrilling action sequences shrouded in darkness. Add a memorable atmosphere of hazy dread augmented by a couple long-takes and the journey proves itself worthy.
Vive L’Amour
- Excerpt: Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival, the film is a tightly constructed study of how one can feel alienated and alone even in close proximity with others. Now available in a new 2K restoration from Film Movement Classics, Vive L’Amour is a must-see for anyone who has ever felt themselves being swallowed up by the city swirling around them and stretched out a hand for salvation.
Voodoo Macbeth
Mark Leeper @ Mark leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: VOODOO MACBETH: VOODOO MACBETH is a narrative film (i.e., not a documentary) about the Federal Theater Project production of MACBETH in 1935 in its Negro Theater Unit, headed by Rose McClendon and John Houseman.
Vortex and Emergency
Beth Accomando @ KPBS Cinema Junkie
- Excerpt: Vortex” may display his most genuine humanity. But this is a Gaspar Noé form of humanity, so there is nothing warm and fuzzy about it.”
Wake Up Punk
The Walk
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This well meaning but scattershot portrait of South Boston during the 1974 bussing crisis spends more time with its white savior Boston Irish cop’s relationship with childhood friend turned thug ex-con than it does with actual school bussing.
War on the Diamond
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Warhunt
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: War, dead Nazis, blood-drinking witches, cursed woods, spooky magic shit, mystery, just a smidge of cannibalism, Micky Rourke in a shiny eyepatch; Warhunt has a little bit of everything. And while certainly not for everyone, damn if it doesn’t kind of rule.
Warm Blood
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Gritty, grainy, and based on the diary of a teen runaway, Rick Charnoski’s debut, Warm Blood, paints an immersive, impressionistic portrai
The Waxing and Waning of Life
- Excerpt: One could say that the directors lost their sense of measure after a fashion, resulting in a title that gets lost in the narrative and audiovisuals they created. At the same time, the whole approach is rather unique, in a movie that remains intriguing from beginning to end, definitely deserving a watch even if just for this uniqueness.
We Are As Gods
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Presents the tension of visionary vs. pragmatist.
We Need to Talk About Cosby
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Andrew Wyatt @ The Lens
Werewolf by Night
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: With Halloween just around the corner, this creature feature provides a timely but forgettable experience for MCU completists.
- Excerpt: Werewolf by Night is a major win for the MCU! It’s brutal, gory, and occasionally funny. Giacchino shows promise as a director. Can’t wait to see where these characters pop up next. We need more Marvel Studios Special Presentations ASAP.
Wes Schlagenhauf Is Dying
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It’s that closeness — and the down-to-earth portrayal of three young, creative, and at times incredibly selfish guys — that turns the film into light-hearted yet curiously relevant (and not too problematic) entertainment.
Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation
Makr Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: WHAAM! BLAM! ROY LICHTENSTEIN AND THE ART OF APPROPRIATION (2022) is a documentary about Lichtenstein, Eisman, Heath, Barsalou, and others, covering both the history of comic book art as both low and high art, and Lichtenstein use of it. This is a documentary of interest to those interested in art, in the history of comic books, and the legal and moral issues of intellectual property.
The Whaler Boy
When You Finish Saving the World
Cecilia Barroso @ [Portuguese]
Chris Barsanti @ Slant
- Excerpt: Jesse Eisenberg’s satire hits its targets dead on, but he flattens his mother-and-son narcissists to the point of caricature.
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: When You Finish Saving the World doesn’t really have a moment that had me recalling being emotionally resonant enough to care what these characters are going through, although I believe there’s a large amount of empathy with them that could’ve been explored more with a longer runtime.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A very good debut for Eisenberg as a director, so much so that I will be (impatiently) waiting for his next behind-the-scenes job.
The White Fortress
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Despite the differences in their economic and social circumstances, Faruk and Mona are both looking for understanding, “a feeling of belonging,” as Mona says. The White Fortress offers a ray of hope to the Monas and Faruks who face an uncertain and possibly bleak future, but wisely confronts the realities they can’t afford to ignore.
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: It was only after the turn of the millennium that several employees and former employees began to publicly cry foul by calling out that the company, headed by CEO Mike Jeffries, not only pressed their ads toward beautiful white people but deliberately set hiring practices that kept beautiful white employees up front for the peak shifts and minorities in the back room working night shifts – if they weren’t fired for how they looked.
Who Invited Them
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The four principals deftly play the power shifts occurring between Adam and Margot as well as the two couples, at least until Birmingham loses the thrust of his own final reveal.
Who We Are: A Chroncle of Racism in America
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Who We Are: A Chronice of Racism in America
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is the nation’s history which Republicans are desperately trying to hide from their constituents…and writer Jeffrey Robinson is just the right tour guide, his concise insights cutting right through their rhetoric.
Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A startling and thoroughly researched documentary about the history of slavery and racism in the United States.
The Wild One
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: I was thrilled to learn so much about the complicated life and artistic integrity of Jack Garfein, a man to whom all lovers of film and theatre owe a debt of gratitude.
Wildcat
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: parents should be warned that this is no DisneyNature film…a complex account of people struggling to find their way while helping disadvantaged creatures make their own way back into the natural world.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Wildcat,” exploring what it means to be wild both in nature and humanity, has exceptional cinematography, an outstanding story, and an emotional impact that beats out the field of feature films this year.
Wildhood
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Writer/director Bretten Hannam’s feature debut is a thoughtful and sincere film that embraces the intimacy of their adventure, demonstrates the healing abilities of community and captures their journey without frills, but not skill.
The Will to See
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: While he narrates “The Will to See” he reminds us that despite man’s inhumanity to man, we still need to care. His take on his experiences and his refusal to become numb and indifferent, make this excellent documentary an inspiration for our time.
Wire Room
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: An 194-minute documentary on “folk horror” in cinema, an amazing in-depth study that every folk horror fan should see.
The World for the Two of Us
- Excerpt: The intensely art-house approach implemented in “The World for the Two of Us” makes it a somewhat demanding viewing, but the title seems like a perfect fit for the festival circuit, additionally because it highlights a concept that is very rarely witnessed on cinema.
A Wounded Fawn
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Stevens intentionally uses our expectations to surprise us with subversive twists when it comes to genre conventions.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Stevens certainly doesn’t hold anything back in A Wounded Fawn, which, for some, may be a detriment, however, when a serial killer film embraces a spirit of hatefulness towards the killer and uses mythology to do it, then why hold back at all?
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: If you like your horror on the surreal side, ‘A Wounded Fawn’ is sure to scratch your festering itch.
The Wrath of God
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Wyrm
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Part absurdist farce and part earnest bildungsroman, the movie’s two agendas seem like they should work at cross purposes—but while you can sometimes see the seams, it all comes together as a charming addition to the quirky teen outcast genre.
XxxHolic
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: The new live-action anime adaptation sensation from Japan.
¿Y Como Es El?
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Cleverly melds cringe comedy with emotional resonance.
The Yellow Wallpaper
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Stiflingly literal mounting of the classic feminist tale. Flat and stilted, with no cultural context and no visceral insight into its protagonist’s plight, and emptiness where there should be empathy.
You Are Not My Mother
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: A strong and confident first-time outing for Dolan, marked with enough chills and insight to make for a compelling horror experience.
Gregory Carlson @ Southpawfilmworks.net
Young Plato
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Example after example is given on how the great philosophers can still guide us. This is truly an inspirational and instructional documentary.
