Here are some reviews of films coming out at the theater this week as well as others that may be in theaters or newly on home video.
Opening: Feb. 19, 2021
Wide (United States)
None.
Limited (United States)
Nomadland
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
2021 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Judas and the Black Messiah
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Little Things
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Saint Maud
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Ailey
Atlantis
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
- Excerpt: A wild and wacky comedy with bold splashes of the fantastical — including a murder plot involving mosquitos — Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is the vacation from reality we all need and deserve.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Sarah Marrs @ LaineyGossip.com
- Excerpt: An instant comedy classic.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
- Excerpt: This isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but if you’re prepared to surrender to the silliness, you’ll find yourself goofily grinning from ear to ear, even if it’s against your better judgment.
Cowboys
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Cowboys supplies [these characters] the chance to open their eyes with an authenticity that’s not without its tragedies, but hope is never far behind.
First Date
Flora & Ulysses
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I’d like to say those unfamiliar with the source will fare better, but the film’s homogenized narrative renders it inert regardless.
A Glitch in the Matrix
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It provides an appetizer into the feasibility that this outlandish science fiction concept might be real. Someone else will have to supply the main course.
I Blame Society
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s about discovering if she has what it takes to be a filmmaker [by seeing if she has what it takes to get away with murder] since those goals progress in tandem.
I Care a Lot
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The situation [senior abuse] is so distressing, we wonder just how writer/director J Blakeson is going to turn this into comedy gold. The disappointing thing is that he hits that jackpot early, only to blow his fortune.
Jumbo
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Zoé Wittock’s debut exhibits a great deal of craft with its stunning visuals and a sound design that will make you believe Jumbo is a sentient being, but her narrative lags behind, the story never getting beyond a conceptual phase.
M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: The film covers Escher’s entire career, from early “realistic” works through his branching out into more mathematical and surreal art, always in woodcuts, lithographs, or drawings rather than paintings.
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
Roxana Hadadi @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: None of this is particularly challenging, but Allen and Newton are pleasant enough and have easily believable chemistry, and Samuels keeps things moving at a brisk clip.
Mass
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: Though the film can’t help being stagey, it still in a magnificently human way shows us how to have a meaningful dialogue about a current American crisis that’s dividing the country.
The Mauritanian
- Excerpt: The resentment and pain and exhaustion Tahar Rahim carries in his body so palpable and real that it’s impossible to consider The Mauritanian as anyone’s movie other than his.
Music
Roxana Hadadi @ ThePlaylist.net
- Excerpt: This movie is literally and figuratively saying music can save your life, but the execution is all treacle and dust—overly sweet and utterly empty.
R#J
Ruth: Justice Ginsberg in Her Own Words
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Saint Maud
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A compelling study of a woman undone by religious mania.
Saint Maud
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The whole therefore becomes like one of the tornadoes spinning in Maud’s view. It tightens and tightens before touching down to wreak its havoc.
Saint Maud
Sandy Schaefer @ Comic Book Resources
Sator
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Sator can be a difficult watch in several respects, but it explores horror conventions with a personal touch that makes for a unique piece of filmmaking.
Show Me What You Got
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Cvetko isn’t therefore interested in mining what it means for these three to get together. That they join is inevitable. It’s what this relationship gives them that matters.
Son of the South
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Supernova
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Supernova
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It helps too when you have actors of Firth’s and Tucci’s caliber bringing these heartbroken and defiant men to life in ways that expose their circumstance’s vulnerability.
The Swordsman
- Excerpt: Absolutely stunning from top to bottom, I couldn’t possibly have loved The Swordsman more. With a touching father/daughter relationship at its core, a clear mission to pay homage to Japanese blind swordsman series Zatoichi, gorgeous production design, top notch performances, and breathtaking action sequences, this film just hit the spot on every conceivable level.
Test Pattern
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: There is much to ponder here and Ford has crafted a unique perspective with which to do so.
To All the Boys: Forever and Always
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Frantic pacing and too much noise tarnish the gold in this last ‘Boys.’ Yet tender love scenes make us smile and entertain us for a while.
Twilight’s Kiss
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Twilight’s Kiss manages to be incredibly affecting and effortlessly engaging, not in spite of its methodical pacing and lack of closure, but because of it.
The Vigil
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Keith Thomas takes a common horror scenario, that of the person left alone with a corpse, and gives it a specifically Jewish twist, incorporating the rite of the vigil, the role of the Shomer and the Talmudic lore of the Mazzik.
The World to Come
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …the movie belongs to Waterston, whose narration sounds like a voice from the past reading from a period memoir with eloquent elegance.
The World to Come
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: That’s where the film’s true power lies: an expressive silence that alternates between exhilaratingly electric with potential and anxiety-inducingly tense with uncertainty.
A Writer’s Odyssey
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: A wonderful sense of imagination and a number of stellar action sequences easily carry the film through some occasionally flimsy plotting..
2020 Films
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Father
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Greenland
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Minari
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Wild Mountain Thyme
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Antarctica
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Although Antarctica deals with complex and sensitive issues -abortion, consent, sexual and physical violence at school- it does have a sense of humour.
Cowboys
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: The tender and personal film conveys enough warmth for the sympathetic viewer to feel-good about the gentle story.
Ropes
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: If the film excels at anything, it is in the construction of its main character, a quadriplegic girl who has to find new reasons to continue living.
