For a film to get its own page on the main 2021 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.
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MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Sarah Pirozek weaves an elegant, noirish tragedy on a micro budget, but it’s far more effective as a portrait of the miserable discomposure of modern teen life than as a feminist vigilante thriller.
12 Mighty Orphans
- Excerpt: The film’s lessons are not only delivered, they’re repeated and underlined to the point where even the most uncritical fan will beg for mercy.
Nell Minow @ Movie Mom
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [The adults’] compassion towards these boys is a piece; the boys’ evolution is the puzzle. And to that end 12 Mighty Orphans is pretty darn effective.
400 Bullets
4×4
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: 4×4 is an engrossing film, and it takes you on a really strange yet compelling ride within its limited setting while also touching on bigger ideas.
Aarkkariyam
About Endlessness
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [Andersson’s] built-in-studio (some amazingly so), neutral pastel-toned scenes filmed with a static camera and a straight face (admirable in his more absurdist moments) comprise a film which expands his trilogy into a quartet.
Kenji Fujishima @ Book & Film Globe
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: This project feels less like a climax to the now-78-year-old Andersson’s brilliant career, and more like an unexpected encore, a gift to hardcore fans who are not quite ready to go home just yet.
Acasa, My Home
- Excerpt: Acasa, My Home is a film that shows far more than it tells…
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Ciorniciuc provides all we need by simply documenting the Enaches as society’s vice perpetually tightens around them.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Strong camera work follows a family from paradise to the promise, as yet unfulfilled, of urban upward mobility.
Ailey
Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro [Spanish]
- Excerpt: You can tell that it was made by people who are passionate about their work and this story in general, which helps to make up for some of its most notable shortcomings.
Akilla’s Escape
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Strong, understated performances, vivid stylistics, and a frenetic enthusiasm elevate a plot that, on a nuts and bolts level, could have been a fairly standard outlaw-on-the-verge-of-retirement story. Akilla’s Escape doesn’t rewrite the formula, but uses the framework to deliver a slick crime tale with a unique point of view and enough intriguing thematic concerns to make it worth checking out.
Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens aka Ali & The Queens
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
All Light, Everywhere
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This mind boggling documentary accomplishes the feat of criticizing the very media it delivers its ideas with as it leads us to question the incontrovertible truth of police body cam footage.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: In light of events over the past few years, our society needs this movie right now.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Anthony’s point, however, is less that objectivity can’t exist than a desire to remind us of our essential need to question what is being sold to us as objectivity.
Josh Taylor @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: All Light, Everywhere implicates the very act of its own creation in its exploration of the flaws of human observation. Theo Anthony’s documentary destroys the conventional wisdom that “seeing is believing.”
All the Streets are Silent: The Convergence of Hip Hop and Skateboarding (1987-1997)
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Fans of hip hop and skateboarding-particularly from this ten-year stretch-will find much to love. For others, mileage may vary, though the filmmakers still craft a compelling, at times bittersweet portrait of a specific time and place.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Fans of hip hop and skateboarding—particularly from this ten-year stretch or those with an affection for the Zoo York Mixtape video—will find much to love.
Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition
- Excerpt: In attempting to fit a lifetime of legendary adventure and personal upheaval into a mere two-hour film, Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition doesn’t manage to tell us that much about any of it.
Antigone
- Excerpt: …the film is carried by Ricci, a magnetic actress appearing in only her second role, who is wholly believable as a teenager whose greatest strengths, including her insistence on absolutes and her tendency to react with her heart rather than her head, are also her greatest weaknesses.
Aristocrats
- Excerpt: Beautifully shot and impeccably cast, Sode Yukiko’s third feature unfolds in bookish chapters to give a portrait of a life, well…lived.
As of Yet
As We Like It
- Excerpt: A near-future spin on Shakespeare continues to play with gender roles, but gets a little lost in their exits and their entrances.
Asia
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Pribar may set our expectations certain ways, once even making me dread the path she had chosen, but her film isn’t the usual mother/daughter movie, upending cliché time and time again in moving and intimate scenes.
At Night Comes Wolves
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Andrew Wyatt @ The Lens
Atlantis
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Filmed in an exaggerated widescreen in a series of single long takes, often static, Vasyanovych uses the horizon to contrast before and after, in one sequence three horizontal perspectives moving in opposite directions.
- Excerpt: Written, directed, shot, and edited by filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych, the film follows one veteran as he tries to overcome the horrors of the past despite being surrounded by reminders in the present. Yet despite some artistic merit and admirable intentions, Atlantis left me as cold as the barren Ukrainian plains depicted in the film.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: An artillery shell of an antiwar movie and a vibrant cautionary tale about the military-industrial complex born anew.
Bad Trip
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A gross-out hidden camera prank comedy with an uplifting view of humanity
The Banishing
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Strong performances and some effective filmmaking provides enough chills, even if it doesn’t totally transcend its routine haunted house formula.
Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Excerpt: With its bravura performances and three-hour length, Qurbani’s Berlin Alexanderplatz makes for an epic exploration of life in modern Germany for those doomed to exist on its margins. And yet, for all its technical brilliance, the film’s decision to modernize a book so very much of its time means that some elements of the story inevitably feel out of place.
Better Days
- Excerpt: Directed by Derek Kwok-Cheung Tsang, the film centers on the unlikely relationship that forms between a young woman who sees the exam as her main means of escaping a rough existence and a young man who has embraced life on the streets as the only option available to him. Through them, Better Days forces us—indeed, it’s more than a little heavy-handed—to come to terms with how the extreme pressure put on young people by society results all too frequently in tragedy.
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Cutler has ostensibly strung together all the feel-good moments that resonate with fans in a way that allows them to live vicariously through her experiences.
Bipolar
- Excerpt: Who is the dreamer and who dreams the dream? Queena Li’s film is all about the journey, beautiful photography, an eclectic cast of characters and one possibly spiritual lobster.
The Blazing World
Bliss
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Whether or not we’re all fake computer simulations, Cahill offers a simple and effective reminder through his new film to interact with the world in a more carefree manner; not amoral, but a bit more live and let live.
Blithe Spirit
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s as though the filmmakers enjoyed the first half of Coward’s play so much that they decided to make a movie out of it and relegate the second half to epilogue status.
Bloody Hell
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: O’Toole’s gleefully deranged dual performance (Rex’s conscience, a device which allows the actor dialogue when alone) and the stylish energy Grierson brings to the film are often reminiscent of Ryan Reynolds’ “Deadpool.”
Sandy Schaefer @ Comic Book Resources
Body Brokers
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Its ideas get stretched too thin, and sometimes the nuance gets lost in the process. However, the story is an engaging one, and the performances keep things together.
Bombay Rose
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: While certain elements might initially seem alienating or inexplicable, especially if you’re not super aware of some of the cultural nuances, Bombay Rose is an evocative and inspired piece of animation.
Boogie
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Luckily the familial and personal stuff has the strength to stick in our heads when the battle on the court fades because the work the actors put in is effective.
Boss Level
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: While Frank Grillo is a perfectly competent grizzled action star, “Boss Level” is a sad attempt at anything flirting with competency.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: An absolute blast of nonstop action.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s thus a violent lark playing fast and loose with its science fiction so Grillo can have a blast.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: A fun and fast-paced movie that will hold your attention for ninety minutes.
The Boy from Medellin
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: The Boy from Medellín is more than a concert film, but its focus on the upcoming show and persistent attempts to show ‘a day in the life’ of J Balvin stiff-arm what would have been the meat and potatoes of a typical Heineman documentary, the unrest in the streets.
Boys From County Hell
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Though the film generally moves along at a brisk, if occasionally meandering clip and throws a few wrinkles into standard vampire traditions, it never truly sinks its teeth into the material.
Brothers By Blood
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Brothers By Blood is an engaging slow burn with a bleak atmosphere that is carried by a weary yet engrossing performance from Matthias Schoenaerts.
Caged
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Caged features plenty of compelling sequences and interesting ideas, though it doesn’t cohere into a satisfying whole. Edi Gathegi manages to use his solitary space as way to really show off his range as a performer.
Catch the Fair One
- Excerpt: A vicious saga of exploitation and vengeance, ‘Catch the Fair One’ is a blood-splattered and grounded thriller that suffers from being oppressively bleak even as it directs focus towards an important and under-discussed topic.
- Excerpt: A vicious saga of exploitation and vengeance, ‘Catch the Fair One’ is a blood-splattered and grounded thriller that suffers from being oppressively bleak even as it directs focus towards an important and under-discussed topic.
Caveat
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Squirm-inducing and enigmatic, CAVEAT has the oneiric quality of a half-remembered nightmare, the half that is the most disquieting, where events move relentlessly and inevitably into the macabre.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Caveat is more of a mood piece than a traditional horror film, relying more on the power of its atmosphere. It’s not for everyone, but it effectively gets under your skin.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I really liked the production design. The visuals ooze creepiness even if the payoff doesn’t arrive until the very end.
Censor
Kyle Anderson @ Nerdist
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Those looking for narrative threads to be tied up neatly won’t find that here as “Censor” spins into literal nightmare territory in its climax, leaving us in a state as suspended as its heroine’s fractured reality.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Censor is a really engrossing horror film, and it does a really terrific job at utilizing influences and paying homage to a very specific period of film history. Niamh Algar brings a strong emotional core to some of the film’s more offbeat indulgences.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: What I personally take away from Censor most of all is that trauma can warp the way a person sees the world, sometimes to the detriment of their better sense and at the expense of social freedoms.
Cherry
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Joe and Anthony Russo treat the material with a flashy visual style which, combined with Holland’s constant narration, give the impression the film was adapted from a graphic novel or comic – perhaps a grittier approach was in order here.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The Russo Brothers are committing the cardinal sin of telling us to feel rather than earning that feeling as a result of what they’ve put on-screen. It’s all just pretend.
- Excerpt: At two and a half hours, ‘Cherry’ attempts to tackle war values, PTSD, drug addiction, teen romance, and crime but the decently-entertaining character study settles to skim the surface of the issues it sets out to challenge. Tom Holland is genuinely good but the Russo Bros need to sharpen their dramatic directorial skill if they want to step away from solely commercial projects.
A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks
- Excerpt: John Maggio’s documentary is workmanlike in presentation but scintillating in its content.
City of Lies
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: City of Lies is outstanding at provoking outrage and an urgent sense of anger at the LAPD. However, the dialogue is so coarsely written and shoddily edited together, this should not be the final work on trying to piece together how and why Death Row Records corrupted LAPD cops to allegedly murder Biggie Smalls.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A spellbinding drama.
Ron Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: The lesson is solid even as the huge production fails to generate the chemistry promised by its cast and crew.
Clean
- Excerpt: Adrien Brody was involved on nearly every level in the conceptualization and realization of brooding revenge-thriller ‘Clean’ but with its ugly aesthetics, empty grittiness, and ridiculously hacky story of a garbage man named Clean “taking out the trash”, you really have to wonder why. Being unintentionally funny at least makes it watchable but otherwise, yikes.
- Excerpt: Adrien Brody was involved on nearly every level in the conceptualization and realization of brooding revenge-thriller ‘Clean’ but with its ugly aesthetics, empty grittiness, and ridiculously hacky story of a garbage man named Clean “taking out the trash”, you really have to wonder why. Being unintentionally funny at least makes it watchable but otherwise, yikes.
Cliff Walkers
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A taut, chilly spy thriller, one full of suspense, betrayal, treachery, and the usual slick execution and eye for detail one expects from Zhang.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: They know it’s about the small victories, the martyrs, and the strength to know when the right choice—the only choice—is letting a comrade die.
Coda
- Excerpt: Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, and the rest of the wonderful cast make ‘CODA’ hit the highest of high notes. Writer-director Sian Heder delivers a feel-good knock-out about a deaf family with a hearing daughter who aspires to sing that has so so much to say, even if it communicates differently.
Come True
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Outside of the shared shadow phenomenon, there’s an unpolished quality to the screenplay with too many loose ends…or untethered one-offs…preventing it from wholly clicking…Stone, who resembles a young Lillian Gish, is quite compelling in the lead
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It’s rare that a movie’s final shot can undo all the good it’s done up until that point, but ‘Come True’ manages that trick, turning a film that was headed for a mild recommendation into a recommended pass.
Coming 2 America
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: while the original’s screenwriters Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield have done little but flip their script, catching up with Akeem, Simmi and the colorful My-T-Sharp barbershop crew is a good-natured trip down memory lane.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: The nicest thing I can say is that Ruth Carter’s costumes are spectacular!
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Everyone wants another Prince Akeem Queens and Zamunda experience. None of us should be remotely surprised or even concerned that the result is more like a knock-off from the McDowell’s menu instead of the real thing.
Josh Taylor @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: Coming 2 America may only have a residue of the magic of the original, but it is still there, which is something.
Concrete Cowboy
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: director Ricky Staub pairs a coming-of-age tale with a real, legendary Black urban equestrian institution and many of its members, giving his film a rich environment while providing an awareness boost for the stables.
Cousins
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s not easy to traverse [such] heavy emotions through interweaving crosscuts of three eras, but you wouldn’t know it the way Gardiner and Smith deftly handle the journey.
Cowboys
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A complete upending of the Western, about not wide open spaces but close-in intimacy, with an unusual female gaze and a hugely provocative dare to gender expectations. Both ironic and transformative.
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.
A Crime on the Bayou
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While the title of her documentary suggests a lurid true crime story, what we get instead is the eye-opening account of how one brave black man’s refusal to accept guilt where there was none…made its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court…
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A delicately elegant documentary tale of an inconsequential moment that illustrates how abominably Black Americans have been treated in their own country, and of the friendship that grew from it.
Crisis
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a flat-footed attempt to apply Soderbergh’s “Traffic” supply chain approach to the current opioid epidemic. Ironically the best performance is featured in the least believable of Jarecki’s three story strands.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: We need well-researched introductions to the topic’s nuts and bolts as much as dramas amplifying its human cost. Just don’t expect this to be both.
- Excerpt: No hope in sight
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Jarecki manages to paint a bleak picture of the effects opioids have on American citizens.
Cross the Line
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Forceful and urgent, once Cross the Line sets its hooks, it doesn’t let up, raking the viewer and protagonist across a lot full of gravel and broken glass. Victori shows us a speck of light at a time, just enough so there’s the possibility of Dani making it out with both his body and soul intact, only to snatch that hope away.
Cryptozoo
Dachra
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a strong debut, artful and eerie.
Dara of Jasenovac
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Director Predrag Peter Antonijevic (“Savior”) shines a light on a little known part of WWII history from the point of view of a young girl in a meticulous and artfully shot production that tells a tale so bleak, “The Painted Bird” seems less relentless in retrospect.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The filmmakers explore an area of WWII that hasn’t gotten the cinematic treatment on this scale, and that new perspective makes it worthwhile despite some otherwise generic plotting.
Dead Air
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: An ancient short wave radio becomes the movie, with mixed results.
Dead and Beautiful
- Excerpt: It turns out that being cursed with beauty, money and limitless time is as listless as one hopes one has the beauty, money and time to find out for themselves one day.
Deadly Illusions
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Deliver Us from Evil
Die in a Gunfight
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The whole is fast-paced despite its numerous exposition-heavy lulls and the production value and energy is nice to look at, but [you’re left] wanting more.
The Dig
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: uses the events surrounding what has been called the ‘British Tutankhamun’ as a reflection on the evolving cycle of humankind by accentuating sex and death…in what might be considered a top notch ‘Masterpiece’ production.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A pleasant, if not deep, excavation of the time period.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: With superb performances, gorgeous cinematography, lyrical editing, and a complementary score, the film proves a melancholic wonder that isn’t easily forgotten.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies
- Excerpt: With assists from the intimate chemistry between Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, Mike Eley’s sweeping visuals, and Stefan Gregor’s lovely piano score, ‘The Dig’ is a quest worth to treasure.
The Djinn
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an effective little chiller, but after its hard won emotional climax, that final twist leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This is a small-scale, yet wildly effective picture that grounds its horror moments in a story that has emotional value.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: I wonder if the budget was perhaps too small to overcome since every moment The Djinn appears ready to transcend, it tragically deflates.
- Excerpt: The kind of horror movie that gives horror movies a bad name, ‘The Djinn’ is an abject failure of understanding what makes horror work. The second feature from writer-director duo David Charbonier and Justin Powell should have been a short film as they clearly did not have enough ideas to flesh out even its paltry 80-minute runtime.
La Dosis
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This is a genre film utilizing its subject matter as a springboard towards drama. The payoff is purely entertainment, not philosophical debate.
Drifting
- Excerpt: Jun Li and an all-star cast explores the duality of Hong Kong in his second feature, a recreation of a real case of homeless rights and overdevelopment.
Drunk Bus
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: In its deeper moments it’s a film about finding yourself.
The Dry
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: has exactly two things going for it – it’s stunning and spatially intelligent use of its widescreen frame and Keir O’Donnell’s (“American Sniper”) thoughtfully nuanced portrayal of Kiewarra’s Sergeant Greg Raco.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Our minds don’t therefore wander to hypothesize what’s coming next because present drama is enthralling enough to monopolize our attention.
- Excerpt: A detective reckons with his past to sort out a murder-suicide involving his childhood best friend in this salty, straight-faced Australian thriller. Eric Bana is solid if unremarkable.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A dramatic and enthralling small town whodunnit with twists all the way down.
Dynasty Warriors
Sebastian Zavala @ MasGamers.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It takes itself very seriously AND presents incredibly ridiculous situations at the same time, resulting in a final product with a very serious identity problem.
Earwig and the Witch
- Excerpt: It’s a bittersweet return for the mighty Studio Ghibli, boldly stepping into a new style of animation but leaving some of their story roots behind in the process.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Skipping] the studio’s bread-and-butter 2D [is a misstep, but it should] entertain kids and adults alike with humor and magic before it fades away later that day.
Eat Wheaties!
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: All actors here are fun to see. The poignant humor got to me. Social media takes a punch. Deservedly would be my hunch.
The Edge of Daybreak
- Excerpt: A hypnotic and meditative journey that uses four decades of political turmoil as the backdrop for a more familial tragedy in this strikingly visually led debut.
Edge of the World
- Excerpt: …a film that commits the ultimate sin for an entertainment product: it’s boring.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Less a rollicking action film than it is an adventure of the spirit.
Eight for Silver
The End of Us
- Excerpt: Henry Loevner and Steve Kanter’s ‘The End of Us’ effectively stages a mumblecore breakup movie in the maw of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than using the pandemic as a jumping off point, the virus is a central element, which will lead to varying mileage depending upon how much viewers crave more panny in their lives.
Enfant Terrible
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: All the contradictory elements are here in Masucci’s intense and terrifying performance, and by keeping all the action not only indoors, but also on sets that are purposefully artificial, there is a sense that we are watching Fassbender’s life pass before his eyes as he died at only 37.
Equal Standard
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is mindless entertainment at its finest.
Every Breath You Take
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A possible success of a movie that is submarined by a cheap shot at horror.
Executive Order
- Excerpt: A disruptive social thriller where a newly-minted Brazilian law forces all black folks to relocate back to Africa,Lázaro Ramos’ ‘Executive Order’ is an entertaining and explosive commentary on racial relationships in governance. The pièce de résistance is the incendiary performances from Alfred Enouch, Adriana Esteves, and Seu Jorge.
Falling
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: We watch [everything] with the implicit request [to] forgive him because he’s a dying old man. No technical or artistic success overcomes [ignoring that request’s danger].
The Fallout
- Excerpt: A vital work that puts the school shooter epidemic into focus, ‘The Fallout’ is an audacious, explosive debut from writer-director Megan Park that makes way for a remarkable performance from Jenna Ortega. Heart-pounding, honest, and at times even hysterical, this is the very best of SXSW’s narrative feature competition.
False Positive
- Excerpt: False Positive threads classic horror-film tropes with a woozy, partially comic sensibility but doesn’t fully commit to this approach.
Fan Girl
- Excerpt: Fandom and power dynamics get interrogated in this brilliantly performed two-hander.
Fatherhood
Nell Minow @ Movie Mom
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: If you love movies from the heart, you can’t beat this one.
Fatherhood
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A kinder, gentler version of comedian Kevin Hart.
Fathom
- Excerpt: An inspiring tribute to the power of curiosity, purpose, and the triumphant joy of adding one more piece to the jigsaw puzzle of knowledge.
Fear Street 1994
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Fear Street Part 1: 1994
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Too many scenes too dark to see. Decoding them is misery.
Fear Street Part 2: 1978
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Bloody events in Camp Nightwing! The witch’s curse goes in full swing.
Fear Street Part 3: 1666
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Most key actors play dual roles. And slasher horror scars our souls.
The Feast
- Excerpt: This gothic folk horror slow-burn possesses intrigue in spades though may leave some viewers wanting more from its relatively opaque mythology. As far as this dinner guest goes, I found ‘The Feast’ a deliciously uneasy slice of disquieting folklore.
The Fever
Final Account
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Parallels to today’s right wing extremism are chilling and there are many examples…a
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: These interviews of the last surviving Nazi flunkies exist in isolation lacking any sort of cohesion
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The movie is equal parts chilling and enlightening. It should be required viewing for every teenager and adult in the country.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: There are so many smiles of deflection and quick answers feigning ignorance because these men and women have probably needed to lie to themselves in order to survive.
First Date
Kyle Anderson @ Nerdist
Candice Frederick @ TheGrio
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Know that you’ll need to embrace [its nightmarish] descent to enjoy it because things can begin to feel laborious if you aren’t in the right headspace.
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.
For the Sake of Vicious
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: For the Sake of Vicious is a mean, ugly little picture. Even at eighty minutes, this exercise in gratuitous violence made my skin crawl so badly that I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: A shame The Forever Purge is another bump in the path of modern social commentary as viewed through a horror lens.
Four Good Days
- Excerpt: The performances, including Stephen Root as Deb’s second husband and Joshua Leonard as Molly’s ex-husband, far exceed the formulaic quality of the script.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: By refusing to choose between the perspective of the addict or the family, they decide to supply each equal footing to thus prove that equal footing doesn’t exist.
French Exit
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: So while I can’t embrace its dramatic import, I can enjoy its comically subversive caricature of aristocratic behavior.
Fried Barry
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s loud, profane, proudly vulgar, and exhaustingly irreverent. Fried Barry is unapologetic in its indulgences, and it’s all the better for it.
Friends and Strangers
- Excerpt: Sydney proves to be a fertile backdrop for a wandering narrative where realism meets ennui.
Fully Realized Humans
Andrea Chase @ EatDrinkFilms.com
- Excerpt: A brashly honest, slyly wise comedy about one couple’s quixotic attempt to rid themselves of their emotional baggage before the imminent birth of their first child.
Funhouse
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Funhouse has a clever idea, but this is the kind of movie that continually comes up just a bit short in every area.
Funny Face
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Cosmo Jarvis and Dela Meskienyar are a dynamic duo that give the film soul. Tim Sutton’s flourishes sometimes pushes its limit, but it ultimately comes together in a meaningful and resonating way.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s more interesting than it is good. Its performances outshine the plot in which they’re stuck. And its motivations are commendable albeit obtusely niche.
A Ghost Waits
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Filmed in evocative black and white, the film takes hoary tropes and makes them not just fresh, but dynamic with smart direction and a performance from Andrews that hits all the right emotional notes with fine undertones of complexity and heart.
Giants Being Lonely
- Excerpt: Familiar, even universal issues of growing up, identity, and intimacy are presented with a lyrical, dreamlike tone.
The Girl on the Train
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
A Glitch in the Matrix
Kyle Anderson @ Nerdist
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Bemusement abounds, as does amusement, and when it’s all over, don’t fight the urge to prove that you are not actually a brain in a laboratory jar.
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.
- Excerpt: As fascinating, thought-provoking, and well-researched a documentary as ‘A Glitch in the Matrix’ is, it also proves to be utterly terrifying in both its study of simulation theory and the dark real world implications it poses.
God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya
- Excerpt: What starts as a strong, visually striking ode to one woman’s act of rebellion gradually runs out of steam, as though the film is unsure of what it is trying to say apart from “down with the patriarchy!” An admirable message to be sure, but not quite enough in this case to carry an entire movie.
Great White
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It takes itself seriously, provides the necessary stakes for audiences not to turn that severity into unintentional comedy, and uses logic instead of explosive theatrics.
Gunda
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Have you ever imagined an adult cow could gambol? With artfully placed cameras shooting in black and white and an incredibly layered, natural sound mix, Viktor Kosakovskiy invites us to consider the lives of the creatures we share this earth with.
- Excerpt: Named for the mama pig who is the film’s central character, Gunda never ventures inside the bloody walls of a slaughterhouse to make its point about why we should value animals as sentient beings; rather, it avoids the easy shock and awe of such brutality in favor of simplicity and beauty.
Hail Hydra: Martial Arts Cinema is Immortal
Happily
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …that most frustrating type of movie experience, one which features leads who really click, starts off really well and promises to keep us guessing only to spiral into pointlessness.
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: By the time you reach the end of “Happily,” all that is left is a series of abandoned ideas, potential character arcs, and a return to relative normalcy.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Add some deep-cut one-liners and a stoned-out-of-her-mind Yi calling shotgun in the most absurd way possible and this ride becomes a gift that keeps giving.
Here Before
- Excerpt: Andrea Riseborough mic drops another outstanding performance in Stacey Gregg’s remarkably unnerving ‘Here Before’, an Irish domestic psychological thriller about a mother convinced that her deceased daughter has returned in the form of her wee new neighbor.
The Hidden Life of Trees
- Excerpt: It can appear to be anthropomorphizing, giving them the attributes of humans. But by the end of this film, you might think that understanding trees on such human terms is not even close to doing them justice.
High Ground
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: It is the colonists against the people and the land in this lusciously shot thriller.
Homeless
- Excerpt: A social family drama from South Korea that manages to mostly avoid being misery porn by concentrating on a handful of characters living on the fringes.
Hope
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Norway’s submission for the International Oscar…is director Maria Sødahl’s painfully real autobiographical reconstruction of how an alarming cancer diagnosis metamorphosized her romantic relationship…a raw and moving modern love story.
How to Deter a Robber
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: There’s not a lot happening under the surface here, but Maria Bissell’s instincts as a storyteller are really solid here, and the comedic chemistry with the cast is incredibly sharp and charming.
The Human Factor
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With his “The Human Factor,” Moreh has laid out complex situation in clear terms that leave us disconsolate at what might have been…
The Human Voice
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: the Scot and the Spaniard have whipped up a riotously colorful bit of manic Almodóvarian melodrama.
Hunted
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Hunted is a thoroughly tense and visceral film, one that manages to bring flourishes that go from surreal to borderline mythic.
Hydra
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Lo-fi, with few frills, the action in Hydra is undeniable. If only there was more or the rest of the movie measured up in any way.
I Blame Society
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A vicious, delicious Hollywood sendup, deconstructing — like a wrecking ball deconstructs — indie filmmaking, cinematic violence, and the industry’s treatment of women. Write what you know? Hoo boy.
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.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
I Carry You With Me
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Intimately shot by cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez, who finds magic in natural light and artfully obscured compositions, the time shifting film makes a strong statement about U.S. immigration through a personal lens of sacrifice and oppression.
Ibrahim
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Standout performances and a simple yet powerful story of family and growth make this film work.
The Ice Road
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Liam Neeson battling the natural elements is exciting. The subplot about evil businessmen is not.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Surprises and plot twists help move the action along in this riveting film. But it’s the icy road scenes that make it a memorable adventure.
Icon
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Identifying Features
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The quiet, methodical pacing of Identifying Features might not work for everybody, but it ultimately comes together beautifully. Fernanda Valadez has crafted a film with so much empathy and a striking eye for images that will leave a lasting impression.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Acting and locations so real it looks like a documentary, then dissolving into horror in a crashing ending worthy of any classic tragedy.
Infinite
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Knee-jerk clichés abound in a shameless retread of The Matrix in which many levels of storytelling ineptitude are the only depth on offer. Can Hollywood please stop reincarnating the same old movies?
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: All things considered, Infinite is the perfect content for Paramount+: big budget theatrics and low stakes drama.
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: I like Wahlberg just fine, but he is sorely miscast as the lead character.
Into the Beat
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Lively hip-hop group numbers are a treat, but it’s the marvelous duets by Pfeifer and Marscher that blew my mind. Their final routine exudes passion and mixes a little ballet with hip-hop. What a great number!
Into the Darkness
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Instead of caring about where this family ends up when the dust settles, [this film] seeks to highlight the complexities inherent to breathing that dust in without reprieve.
Jockey
- Excerpt: An emotionally-charged and gorgeous-framed film about man’s struggle for serenity in the face of lost purpose, ‘Jockey’ features a career-best turn from Clifton Collins Jr., even if it’s a story that feels like it’s been told before.
John and the Hole
Kyle Anderson @ Nerdist
Matt Oakes @
- Excerpt: Led by an unsettling central turn from Charlie Shotwell, ‘John and the Hole’ is a mysterious, jet black anti-coming-of-age fable about the loss of childhood innocence and wanting to accelerate the pace of growing up that is sure to leave many viewers mystified. For all its lurid puzzlings, this hole feels like Yorgos Lanthimos was charged with remaking ‘Home Alone’ so I still dug it.
Jolt
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Wascha [is] trying to buy more time than [he] already has [for sequels]. Maybe [it pays] off. Or maybe Jolt will forever be a marginally entertaining missed opportunity.
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.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Merlant’s so good that she sells you on her orgasmic abandonment within Jumbo’s metallic embrace, and make a lovers’ spat with a multi-ton hunk of creaking machinery come off as tragic rather than comic.
Keep an Eye Out
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Quentin Dupieux (“Rubber”) is a master of absurdist humor and in this…he flexes his language muscles in a meta comedy which finds its protagonists tumbling down semantic rabbit holes…
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Your enjoyment on Keep An Eye Out will depend on how much you can get on Quentin Dupieux’s wavelength, though this is probably his most accessible and hilarious absurdist exercise to date.
- Excerpt: While Keep An Eye Out is only a brisk 73 minutes, the storyline contains enough surrealist silliness to fill a film twice as long. A comedy that is both eccentric and efficient? Sign me up!
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Quentin Dupieux’s effervescently surreal policier parody recalls vintage 70s cinema. And it’s actually pretty weird.
kid 90
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: More than entertainment for viewers, kid 90 proves a cathartic reckoning for Frye and anyone watching who has gone through the same trials and tribulations on any scale.
Killer Concept
- Excerpt: Killer Concept joins Driven as another enjoyable treat from Glenn Payne and Casey Dillard.
Knocking
Lansky
Ronald wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A modest and entertaining rewriting of gangster history told by characters as old as the formula.
The Last Blockbuster
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The film focuses on the human side of the story; its protagonists, and not so much in the events in which they were involved.
Last Film Show
- Excerpt: A love letter and elegy for film and the unvalued art of the projectionist, ‘The Last Film Show’ is a beautifully-filmed and involving story of coming-of-age in a darkened movie theater in a modernizing India
LFG
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: The biggest difference between the U.S. Men’s & Women’s Soccer Team is not the skeletal structure nor unequal pay – it’s that the women actually win
- Excerpt: This isn’t a deep investigation into the particulars of the USWNT’s case, more a robust summary with a healthy dose of rah-rah feminism. But as a portrait of one of the higher-profile fights to close the gender pay gap, it gets the job done with gusto.
Limbo
- Excerpt: Seldom has a film been more accurately titled than Ben Sharrock’s Limbo, which centers on the plight of a young Syrian refugee living at an asylum center on a Scottish island while he waits for the gears of justice to grind through their motions and determine his fate.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Ben Sharrock’s second feature is a humorously deadpan exploration of the refugee experience that resembles an Aki Kaurismäki movie with a sprinkling of Bill Forsythe’s Scottish “Local Hero” flavor…one of the best films to emerge so far in 2021.
- Excerpt: Sardonic and soulful, ‘Limbo’ is a slow-moving and darkly funny drama about the ennui of immigration and the guilt of leaving behind a life unfulfilled that crescendoes to a thunderous, lyrical peak.
Little Fish
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: A sort of ouroboros that simultaneously travels forwards and backwards to make it so we as viewers ascribe meaning to moments before fully grasping how they truly go together.
Locked Down
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Ejiofor and Hathaway are game, but they’re grasping for something solid, and don’t find it. A deeply unsatisfying novelty artifact of the pandemic that fails to create a necessary sense of transgression.
Lone Wolf
- Excerpt: Adapting a Victorian tragedy to contemporary Melbourne is a disturbingly easy fit in an age of constant surveillance.
The Loneliest Whale
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: More than 52, this adventure also becomes about Zeman’s affinity for whales since childhood. It’s his ambitions and his excitement that propel the narrative forward.
The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …until it really begins to feel manufactured in late stages, the work is very informative, not only about 52, but about the whale songs that engaged human interest in their fates and the perils facing them in today’s oceans.
The Lost Leonardo
Lucky
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Grant, whose committed performance anchors the film, uses the specter of a masked killer who reappears daily to address the myriad ways woman are dismissed from micro aggressions to outright misogyny.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Compact and efficient, Lucky puts a nice spin on the recurring timeline narrative.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: May’s demon isn’t the kind you can destroy. Its faceless patriarchal terror is unrelenting and infinite.
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.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A mellow journey of logical ponderings made amazing by the subject’s illogical pretzel art.
M.C. Esher: Journey to Infinity
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: A crucial biographical document even if it’s an imperfect film. Lutz has composed a university lecture in its own right: educationally pragmatic and historically enlightening.
Mafia Inc
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Let me show you how we do it in Canada.
Mama Weed
- Excerpt: Starring the iconic Isabelle Huppert as the titular translator-turned-queenpin, Mama Weed is a tension-filled dark comedy that explores the lengths some will go in order to survive and thrive in a world that doesn’t seem to care. Some keen points are made along the way about the way migrants are treated in French society, though the casting of Huppert—as marvelous as she always is—as a person of Algerian descent does raise one’s eyebrows.
The Man Who Sold His Skin
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …Ben Hania’s Tunisian nominee for the International Oscar could be accused of the same thing she wishes to condemn, one of the many trippy, circular arguments her film puts forward.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A departure from a reality that is, itself, a departure from reality
Mandao Returns
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The film feels like a true sequel, set to expand the world in which the story takes place, but without losing the charm of the first installment.
Mandibles
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieRevews.com
- Excerpt: Never forget that Dupieux is as ruthless as he is brilliant.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: If you want to see “Blue Is the Warmest Color” star Adèle Exarchopoulos as a woman who can only communicate with her volume turned up to 11 because of a skiing accident who is falsely accused of eating a Chihuahua by a man who hopes to make his fortune training a giant fly, have I got a movie for you!
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
- Excerpt: A painstakingly intimate, conversation-driven drama with phenomenal performances all around (Jacob Isaacs and Ann Dowd are especially extraordinary), Mass is a terrific and terrifically depressing debut from Fran Kranz that will be sure to move audiences to tears.
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
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Tahar Rahim gives a compelling performance in this drama that details a shocking abuse of human rights.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: odie Foster & Benedict Cumberbatch show once again torture did not work & most likely obscured the whole truth behind 9/11
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: An entirely new level of revenge born of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
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.
Midnight in the Switchgrass
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Horsnail and Emmett never provide anything that makes us question how we know everything will end anyway. So why not try and prevent your heroes from becoming pawns?
The Mimic
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: A sharp script and fantastic performances from Thomas Sadoski and Jake Robinson make a sharp and hilarious comedy.
Misha and the Wolves
- Excerpt: This globe-trotting caper is a tale that’s stranger than fiction, perhaps because it just might be, and director Sam Hobkinson manages to weave the tale of a Holocaust survivor who lived with wolves into an entertaining and meaningful exploration of truth and autobiography.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With wildly inventive visuals organically inspired by Katie’s filmmaking chops, offbeat humor including an intimidating Furby army led by a freakily giant-sized one and genuinely earned emotion, The Mitchells vs. the Machines is artful entertainment
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The film is a total blast. I found its energy irresistible, its characters lovable, and its animation thoroughly awe-inspiring in its detail and design.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: An animated treat for children and adults alike
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It has all the well-balanced ingredients that any animated film should include: humor, emotion, action and spectacle.
MLK/FBI
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A documentary contrasting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and J. Edgar Hoover who were regarded by different constituencies as guardians of the American dream.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: while this is certainly a piece of history worth revisiting, Pollard’s documentary trots out the most notorious accusation made against King…and leaves it hanging, neither confirming nor denying events
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Beautiful in its style, enraging in its substance, this skewering of the FBI’s surveillance of the civil-rights icon is essential for understanding the near-term roots of white supremacy in America.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: This is the paper trail that proves the FBI’s treachery in collecting tabloid fodder in order to ruin the reputation of a man they deemed to be their enemy.
Moby Doc
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Pink Floyd: the Wall’ with a sense of humor.
Moffie
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film, which is both unflinchingly brutal and often quite beautiful, lays a groundwork for understanding the white male South African mindset given the military’s harsh indoctrination into hate politics…
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: We’re floating just outside Nicholas’ head as he reconciles past suffering and current trauma to begin to discover where his levels of complicity and rebellion stand.
Monday
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: If “Monday” makes any point at all, it is that sexual attraction does not a relationship make.
Monster
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: The cast is by far the most impressive thing about this production.
Mother Schmuckers
- Excerpt: This ultra-low-budget Belgian comedy is a tasteless gas that regularly makes light of that which is most likely to offend. Writers, directors, and stars Harpo and Lenny Guit are almost definitely an acquired taste but their weirdo depravity left me giggling nonstop.
Moxie
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Serious theme with comic turn, MOXIE includes a lot to learn.
Murder by the Coast
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
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.
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
My Darling Supermarket
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: The inner life of retail food sales is teased out with beautiful clarity.
My Donkey, My Lover and I
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Attaining more chemistry with the donkey than the lover on the French Appalachian Trail.
My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Cuartas explores issues of family, morality, and sexuality through a vampiric lens, depicting three siblings connected by blood in far more than just the sense of their family bloodline as they grapple with the prospect of losing each other.
My Little Sister
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a moving character piece about the fierce bond between siblings who relied upon each other growing up with theatrical parents while forging their own path in the family’s chosen art world.
My Name is Pedro
Beverly Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: LaSalle might have been dazzled by her charismatic subject. Not everything is fully explained in the film.
My Wonderful Wanda
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A delightful skewering of pretense that bounces from scary to scattered through perfectly executed twists of love, hate and lust.
Myth of a Colorblind France
- Excerpt: The key to the different experiences of expat African Americans and immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, according to Myth of a Colorblind France, is that French racial discrimination has its roots in France’s colonial history, rather than being based exclusively on skin color. Thus, an individual who may have no problem accepting African American celebrities and tourists may at the same time wish that the impoverished, dark-skinned immigrants living on French housing estates would just disappear from the country.
Never Gonna Snow Again
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A lighthearted cautionary tale about appreciating what has been given to us.
New Order
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With a very compact running time, Franco impressively paints a city under siege, then flips the chaos into control of the most horrifying nature, a dehumanizing authoritarianism. “New Order” is shocking, but it delivers an effective warning.
- Excerpt: For those well-versed in zombie movies (by now everyone?), there is a grim humour in how Franco uses horror cinema tropes to escalate tension.
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
The Night
Andrea Chase @ killermoviereviews.com
- Excerpt: THE NIGHT creates an internal logic that is easily perceptible, while also being tantalizingly beyond comprehension. The suspense builds slowly but relentlessly, gearing up for a resolution that is a psychic shock.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The film’s payoff doesn’t quite work, but the buildup that preceeded it is incredibly tense and refined horror filmmaking.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: As a journey inward into the roiling waves of memory and regret, Ahari fulfills his promise with an unapologetic air of penance and disgrace [despite an] egregious misstep.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A synchronous collection of horror tropes keeps up the pressure from beginning to end.
Night of the Kings
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: What is perhaps most unexpected is that Lacôte’s move could almost be considered a dance film, Roman’s words accompanied by inmates creating a striking visual accompaniment via synchronized movement, complementing his words with sound effects inherent in their steps.
- Excerpt: ‘Night of the Kings’ challenges what a film can be, using African traditions of oral storytelling to create an often spellbinding – if not entirely complete – story about, well, stories.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: When Africa does surrealism one is in for a treat.
A Nightmare Wakes
- Excerpt: A Nightmare Wakes is Mary’s story, and in representing her mental state, it frequently blurs the boundary between what’s in her mind and what’s in the reality shared by her companions. This is done with such subtlety that you often don’t realize the film has left the shared world of experiences until you’re well into Mary’s feelings and perceptions.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: This is an oneiric exercise in capturing the truth of a woman and a book that succeeds where traditional narrative could not.
Nina Wu
Ron Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Echoing the me-too movement on a grand scale this story examines how fans kill their idols.
No Man’s Land
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: While the film isn’t necessarily great as a whole, it has little moments that make the film compelling and interesting, and the cast puts in a lot of strong work.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Rather than focus on white Americans’ need to open eyes to [their] vitriol and hate, the script asks their victims to shoulder the responsibility of their own oppression.
No Sudden Move
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Relying on a twisty plot that shifts around perspectives and affords Soderbergh the chance to mess with the audience through visual choices, I had a blast with this film.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It shows that you don’t need big action sequences or a predictable story to develop something interesting and suspenseful.
Nomadland
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Frances McDormand makes us care in a role where her soul is bare. For me, this film is poetry in motion.
Not Going Quietly
- Excerpt: A masterful character study and politically activated documentary about ALS-stricken activist Ady Barkan, ‘Not Going Quietly’ is a powerful and overwhelmingly emotional story of a heroic man honing the power of his voice just as he begins to lose it – and the rest of his physical abilities – to an absolutely debilitating disease.
Notturno
Andrea Chase @ EatDrinkFilms.com
- Excerpt: An engrossing experience that bears witness as few other works have done to the most innocent victims of war.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: “Notturno” is a series of vignettes, some more engaging than others, some featuring stories Rosi returns to, others not… his imagery here often starkly powerful or lyrically beautiful.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: There is only so much one can say about man’s inhumanity to man and this film says it all.
The Novice
- Excerpt: A thrilling character study about an obsessive athlete and her self-destructive drive, Lauren Hadaway’s ‘The Novice’ explosively flips the sports drama on its head.
- Excerpt: A thrilling character study about an obsessive athlete and her self-destructive drive, Lauren Hadaway’s ‘The Novice’ explosively flips the sports drama on its head.
Offseason
- Excerpt: ‘Offseason’ is a skeletal whisper of an idea (daughter of cult-esque escapee reckons with family legacy on a haunted island) that just never finds its groove or flower as a horror story. The fact that it feels long at less than 90 minutes speaks to how thematically and narratively barren the latest from Mickey Keating ultimately is. Big disappointment.
On the Count of Three
- Excerpt: A jet black comedy-drama with serious issues on its mind, ‘On the Count of Three’ finds morbid humor and grave sentiment in a pair of besties with a suicide pact. Christopher Abbott is as good as he’s ever been.
Oslo
Kenji Fujishima @ TheaterMania
Outside the Wire
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Buried underneath opaque layers of what we are misled Outside the Wire is about – drone warfare ethics, weaponized artificial intelligence, and post-Cold War proxy wars – is a muddled treatise on endless wars.
Oxygen
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Mélanie Laurent deserves to be a bigger star.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
P!nk: All I Know So Far
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Pink did not choose between global superstardom and motherhood. Watch tens of thousands of people scream while Pink juggles acrobatics, diapers, and bedtime routines.
Palmer
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A heartfelt and emotionally resonant drama that is uplifted by understated performances.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While the plot progression is therefore familiarly convenient, however, it never felt manipulative. And that’s a big win for this type of film.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies
- Excerpt: Despite of its clichéd and overdone nature of the narrative, Fisher Stevens’ ‘Palmer’ offers a thought-provoking and emotionally powerful drama about acceptance and second chances.
Paper Spiders
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Is brutal in its honesty. It refuses to pander to its audience with platitudes or rainbows, while at the same time, it never demeans Dawn for her condition, nor strips her of her humanity.
The Paper Tigers
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: The Paper Tigers is thoroughly charming and filled with endearing characters. Fans of martial arts movies will have a blast.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Movie fights are great and all, but they mean a lot more when there’s the emotional center to back them up.
Passing
Percy vs Goliath
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: While it is a standard in its construction, the story keeps it engaging. Christopher Walken delivers a terrific performance.
The Perfect Candidate
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Haifaa Al-Mansour handles the material with patience and sensitivity, but also with a firm grip on cinematic storytelling that keeps things effortlessly compelling from moment to moment.
A Perfect Enemy
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Ridiculous excuse for a thriller — obvious, preposterous, ultimately banal — piles on psychological absurdities as it builds from a maddening middle to an enraging crescendo of misogynist nonsense.
PG: Psycho Goreman
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a very clever concept, but although it’s amusing for a while, “Psycho Goreman” spins off in too many directions, plot overtaking its simpler pleasures.
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: By never [giving anyone] a path towards redemption, Kostanski keeps things entertaining with a detached sense of revelry that lets us enjoy the gore without remorse.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Underneath the enjoyably goofy, child-like adventure of Psycho Goreman lie a few interesting themes that use the story’s comedy for satirical purposes.
Phil Liggett: The Voice of Cycling
- Excerpt: Even if it’s light on the very thing that made him a legend, this glimpse into Phil Liggett’s life should satisfy those with their own nostalgic memories of his famous tones.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Kirby’s transcendent performance [is rendered] inert [as the film] positions her as a trump card waiting to do the right thing and end what’s become a melodramatic charade.
Plan B
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Verma and Moroles’] comedic timing is only outdone by their authentic, heartfelt terror about the unknown.
Pleasure
- Excerpt: A stunningly provocative exploration of the peaks and valleys of the porn industry led by a wowing performance from newcomer Sofia Kappel, ‘Pleasure’ uses gratuitous sex to speak to structures of power and consent while telling the story of one girl’s thirst for pornstar fame.
Port Authority
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: What makes Lessovitz’s film so great isn’t that she allows these truths into what could have just been a sweet, inclusive romance, but that she lets their impact be felt.
Poser
- Excerpt: An envious podcaster infiltrates the Columbus underground music scene in Ori Segev and Noah Dixon’s engaging debut ‘Poser’. A stalker-thriller featuring a pair of engaging breakout performances, the beats may be familiar in places but are remixed to amplified effect.
Post Mortem
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The Power
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Corinna Faith (BAFTA nominated for her 2006 short ‘Care’) utilizes our fear of the dark to shine a light on both class and female oppression in 1970’s England with her double entendre titled film.
Prime Time
- Excerpt: Jakub Piatek’s attempt to unravel the modern obsession with broadcasting our private lives through the lens of Y2K features a solid performance from Bartosz Bielenia but cannot stir up enough twisty plot momentum to engage on a deeper level.
Prisoners of the Ghostland
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: the real question of the day is: Is Prisoners of the Ghostland truly the wildest movie Nicholas Cage has ever made? With a post-apocalyptic circus vibe, and the cinematic equivalent of throwing half-a-dozen subgenres in a blender, it’s certainly in the running.
Psycho Goreman
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Like a Troma movie, but a Troma movie with heart and soul that’s actually as fun as those movies want to be.
PVT Chat
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: The examination of how we communicate through screens, and how the personas we craft online bleed over into the tactile world, is especially poignant in this moment.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Its journey contains a lot worth delving into, but the destination lacks [the start’s] captivating, darkly sinister energy.
Queen Bees
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [Burstyn’s] best scenes with a Bee are with Loretta Devine’s Sally, whose uproarious bit on ‘underboob sweat’ is the film’s funniest. But these elements are like a life raft on the Titanic.
- Excerpt: Half a dozen veteran performers do their best to elevate a patchy script in “Queen Bees,” a gentle romantic comedy set in a retirement community that one character describes as “‘Mean Girls’ with Medic- Alert bracelets.”
Queen Marie
- Excerpt: Directed by Italian filmmaker Alexis Sweet Cahill, Queen Marie chronicles the ruler’s attempts to convince international leaders that the “Romanian question” was deserving of their attention. And while lavish historical dramas laden with European accents are increasingly out of vogue with moviegoers, Queen Marie isn’t without its charms—including its fittingly regal lead.
The Queen of Black Magic
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Kimo Stamboel’s latest is a thoroughly enjoyable and often unnerving horror film with plenty of nasty and bloody scares.
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Featuring a searing performance from Djuricic, whose reasonable hope giving way to mounting helplessness shrouds the film in unbearable tension, “Quo Vadis, Aida?” is like watching a horrific accident we are powerless to stop.
Maitland McDonagh @
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [We’re never] taken for granted. Rather than show us what we know is happening, [Zbanic] includes foreshadowing, rumors, and expressions to put a chill in our spine instead.
R#J
Rams
Dan Lybarger @ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- Excerpt: It’s difficult to go wrong with good material.
The Reason I Jump
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: accomplishes one of cinema’s primary objectives – giving us the perspective of a world unknown to us.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An extraordinary cinematic experience that immerses us into the personal landscapes of profoundly autistic, nonverbal young people. The empathy it engenders is deeply felt and enormously eye-opening.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Hopefully audiences will see The Reason I Jump and acknowledge the ways in which they can help too. Understanding is the first step.
The Reckoning
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It most doesn’t reach the heights of some of Neil Marshall’s previous works, but there’s enough style, tension, and strange imagery to make its mark.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: For all its familiarity, however, you can’t deny its visual panache via immersive cinematography and production design.
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Red Soil
Ron Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Brings home the sometimes illusive dangers of environmental degradation by showing victims and their families in revolt.
The Retreat
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Retreat holds real terror and true horrors. It’s the embodiment of so many anxieties us queers feel when we’re watching these backwoods slasher-type films, let alone when actually being in the middle of the woods.
Riders of Justice
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: A film that challenges the viewer about the most basic assumptions about law, order, and the mechanics of civilization. It’s also as wildly entertaining as it is profoundly subversive.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Anders Thomas Jensen (“The Green Butchers,” “Men & Chicken”) reunites his regulars Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas in a family-of-shared-issues comedy built around a violent adventure driven by geeky statistical analysis.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Powered by Mads Mikkelsen’s intense performance, Riders of Justice is a wildly entertaining examination of the psychological desire to get even, and where it can lead for better or worse.
- Excerpt: Darkly humorous, deadly serious, and led by yet another commanding turn from the great Mads Mikkelsen, ‘Riders of Justice’ is an absurd and violent saga of vengeance with a surprisingly soft emotional core.
Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer
- Excerpt: Never strident, never glib, this is a compelling film that is unflinching in what it wants to say about the past and the present.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A straightforward yet shrewdly incisive work of journalism, a cutting history of white America’s backlash against Black progress. This is history that is not yet past, and must be reckoned with.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Rise Again proves itself to be an extensive deep dive into a subject that needs to be taught. It’s time to remove [our collective] blindfold.
River
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: You can’t have us invest in a human story only to figuratively (and in some cases literally) tell the characters to unceremoniously ignore it for something else.
The Rookies
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This hyperactive Chinese action comedy has a lot of outrageous moments that are fun to watch. They’d be even more fun if they were surrounded by a coherent plot and three-dimensional characters.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: People who like this type of film will have a blast while those who don’t are caught glancing at their watches in hopes the end is finally near.
Rose Plays Julie
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With its lush art house production aesthetic, unsettling exploration of identity and double entendre dialogue, “Rose Plays Julie” unfurls with an elegant sense of dread.
Running Against the Wind
- Excerpt: A good training or racing montage…can always lift the spirits, and the straightforward nature of running (the point is to cross the finish line first, and everyone can see who does so) makes the sport inherently film-friendly.
Rurouni Kenshin
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Russian Raid
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: …a bunch of gnarly Russian dudes pounding one another into oblivion.
Ruth: Justice Ginsberg in Her Own Words
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Ruth: Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words
- Excerpt: [Ruth] gives you some idea of what it took for her to make her way in a field in which, as we see her telling a group of schoolchildren, she started with three strikes against her: being Jewish, being female, and being a mother.
Sabaya
- Excerpt: Though one may be left wanting more footage and more character after watching the horrifying ‘Sabaya’, there is no denying the raw power of Hogir Hinori’s guerrilla documentary which shines a light on one of Earth’s darkest spots.
Saina
Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar
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.
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Scales
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: While Scales did sometimes test my patience, I think there is a lot to really like about this film. Shahad Ameen’s exploration of womanhood in a man’s world is explored with a haunting and fresh vision.
- Excerpt: While Scales is hauntingly beautiful and contains a powerful thread of feminist anger, the story is sparse to a fault, barely summoning enough narrative to fill its already brief running time. Nonetheless, the film’s unique vision announces Ameen as a rising filmmaker to watch.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s not enough for Ameen to merely expose that universal truth. She must also show the personal cost by pulling the curtain on what it is that’s really happening.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Scenes from an Empty Church
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Leave it to Tukel to take a cynical interpretation of organized religion, wrap it around a moment mired in a crisis of faith, and find a way to embrace the humor and hope.
School’s Out Forever
Seance
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: A solid if unspectacular debut that attempts to play with horror conventions to mixed results.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Rather than subvert things as a rule, Barrett often leans into tropes to lull us into a false sense of security before adding a deviation that surprises enough to stay fresh.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The discussion of urban legends and privilege that Seance brings up are icing on an already tasty genre cake.
Sentinelle
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Quick, to the point, and violent, it gets in cracks skulls, and gets out. With a compelling, layered protagonist and badass turn from Olga Kurylenko, this more than scratches a particular action itch.
Settlers
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The thing about withholding plot information is that you must generally divulge that which you’ve held back at some point. [Rockefeller] never does.
Sexual Drive
- Excerpt: Bringing together Japan’s twin histories in cinematic erotic and the glorification of food, Kota Yoshida’s anthology may make you reassess your relationship with at least three food groups.
Shadow in the Cloud
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Liang isn’t content with one wild scenario, presenting Maude with obstacles on all fronts, and just when you think the filmmaker’s gone too far (as I did with that package reveal), she manages to make it work.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s not a great movie, but there’s fun to be had, especially with Chloë Grace Moretz effortlessly carrying the ride on her shoulders.
A Shape of Things to Come
Sheep Without a Shepherd
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an entertaining ride piloted by a master manipulator.
Shiva Baby
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A wonder of emotional claustrophobia and narrative economy. Rachel Sennott is delightfully caustic in this painfully poignant, dryly funny portrait of a deeply awful moment of young adulthood.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The awkwardness this situation supplies is the film’s best attribute because it’s both funny and relatable.
Shiver
- Excerpt: Toshiaki Toyoda delivers another dazzling collision of sound and vision, teaming up with legendary taiko drumming troupe Kodo for this beautiful hybrid film.
Shoplifters of the World
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Shoplifters of the World is a love letter to both The Smiths and their fans.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The best thing about “Shoplifters of the World” is its soundtrack, but despite the film’s flaws it has an endearing quality.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The result isn’t perfect, but its messaging and execution is a lot more resonant than I expected going in—a less successful sibling to Blinded By the Light.
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.
Silat Warriors: Deed of Death
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Hardcore fans of martial arts cinema should give Silat Warrior: Deed of Death a chance. Outside of that demographic, however, it’s a hard sell.
Silat Warriors: Deed of Death: Wait for It
Silk Road
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: There is a wealth of confirmation to be found about many our worst nightmare in SILK ROAD, a cautionary tale of stereotypes, specialization, and the consequences of absolute freedom.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: At the end of the day this is a hollowly reductive account of what happened with a weird subtextual rich punk against blue collar cop agenda falling woefully flat.
Silo
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …a great procedural on the complications of a grain entrapment rescue…But while Burnette’s created a wide variety of characters in his rural New Hope, it takes the better part of the film to figure out how they are interrelated.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Marshall Burnette shows strong instincts in highlighting character within the margins of a story that is otherwise devoid of anything remotely superfluous.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: A little subtlety where those parables are concerned would have been nice, but they’re effective just the same.
Silver Skates
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Sisters on Track
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Answering how Bell pushes these sisters through a broken system] is the film’s strength because it presents a blueprint reaching beyond them alone.
Sisters with Transistors
Six Minutes to Midnight
- Excerpt: The concept is intriguing, mostly because it is a World War II story that we haven’t heard before; Izzard apparently spent years researching the school alongside the curator of the Bexhill Museum before writing the script. Yet despite this impressive undertaking, the end result is not much more than your standard spy thriller: solid, yet unremarkable.
Skyfire
Sandy Schaefer @ Comic Book Resources
- Excerpt: Skyfire is an enjoyably goofy natural disaster genre movie throwback that manages to be truly ridiculous yet utterly sincere at the same time.
Slalom
- Excerpt: It’s clear where Slalom is headed, and it wastes no time getting there—but what’s really interesting in Slalom is what happens in the remaining two-thirds of the picture, which takes an unexpected direction.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Presents the news headlines of scandalous abuse in elite competitive sports in a deeply personal perspective.
Slate
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Overall, Jo serves up a strong, entertaining, odd-enough-to-standout action film, and if Ahn Ji-hye becomes a big international action star, much worse things could happen.
Slaxx
Kyle Anderson @ Nerdist
Sarah Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: Slaxx isn’t aiming for the Oscars, unless “best socially conscious midnight movie” has become a category and I somehow missed the memo. But it’s a lot of fun, and at 77 minutes does not overstay its welcome.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: As silly as Slaxx gets, it’s clear that is has quite a bit on its mind. Elza Kephart proves herself more than capable at balancing the weird and outrageous with thoughtful theming.
Some Kind of Heaven
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With “Some Kind of Heaven,” Oppenheim’s created a spiritual successor to Errol Morris’s “Vernon, Florida with the style of Todd Hayne’s “Far from Heaven.” It’s a must see.
Sometime Other Than Now
- Excerpt: Sometime Other Than Now is a frustrating watch—it keeps teetering on the brink of almost being good but never quite makes it. I never thought I’d miss the skill (if not depth) of Nicholas Sparks, but here we are.
Somewhere with no bridges
Federico Furzan @ Screentology
- Excerpt: A compelling insight into loss, and the effects of human kindness. A celebration of life like you’ve never seen.
Son of the South
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Sound of Violence
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Strings together gorgeous, extravagant bursts of violence and color, and cool, inventive sound design with flimsy storytelling beats.
- Excerpt: Destined to be hated by many and cherished as a cult classic by others, ‘Sound of Violence’ is an off-the-rails hoot where a deranged musician tortures people to make the ultimate club-thumping beat. The only way to satisfy her craving for sonic perfection: lots and lots of violence. If you’re not laughing, you’re definitely watching it wrong.
Space Jam: A New Legacy
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: There’s a moment where LeBron is flattered that Bugs Bunny knows who he is. More of that charm, please.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: LeBron James proves to have plenty of charisma onscreen, even if Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t need to worry about being overtaken in the world-class acting department.
- Excerpt: There may be a big, corporate, algorithm-like formula deciding that a quarter-century later it’s time for another “Space Jam,” but it’s good to see that the insouciant anarchy of Termite Terrace is still pure, unrepentant id.
Space Sweepers
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Space Sweepers offers a good old fashioned adventure that sweeps you up in a whole new world with wonder, wit, and plenty of personality. It has the kind of heart and imagination that you don’t see in a lot of modern American blockbusters.
The Sparks Brothers
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Wright’s labor of love may be guilty of a fan’s over indulgence, but his subjects will charm the pants off of you, make you laugh and amaze with their creativity and sheer endurance.
Spirit Untamed
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A pleasant little film that has real charm.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: The kiddies may not understand that Spongebob and Patrick are dissecting the tropes of a buddy picture versus a hero’s journey as they set off on their journey, but they will enjoy the exchange that ends in rocks and sand, literal and figurative, filling the characters’ heads.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Really, what more do you need to know than Keanu Reeves has been cast as a tumbleweed?
Spoor
- Excerpt: An ecological thriller that is not without flashes of humor courtesy of its wonderfully weird cast of characters, Spoor is guaranteed to make many audience members uncomfortable. In my case, it also left me hopeful.
Still Life in Lodz
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Elbaum’s position as someone [paying respects and gaining insight] allows her to be the perfect steward with as much curiosity, knowledge, and reverie as we could hope [for].
Stowaway
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …the type of film that seems to exist all for its excruciating climax, one in which Penna keeps upping the ante to unbearable degrees.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: This is well-acted character study. Just not a particularly exciting one.
Stray
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A bittersweet, multilayered vérité portrait of the street dogs of Istanbul. Startlingly immersive, howling with moral questions about what we owe these creatures of intelligence, dignity, and feeling.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: I bawled my eyes out in aching nostalgia with this absolutely delightful dive into the creation of the educational TV show and its carefully crafted chaos that had an outsized impact on Generation X.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: There’s so much about “Sesame Street” that deserves to be celebrated considering how it really did change our perception of television and the power of marketing.
Sublet
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The strength of the film is with its leads, the award winning veteran and screen newcomer connecting so believably from such opposing romantic ideologies we come away from the film with hope for humanity.
Sugar Daddy
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: McCormack and Morgan aren’t interested in sanitizing the messiness that goes into a woman accepting herself outside the men’s world she was born into.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: In adapting the Aidan Chambers novel ‘Dance on My Grave,’ prolific writer/director François Ozon elicits fine performances in a striking location in service to an unsatisfying narrative.
Summertime
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While the individual spoken word poets, rappers and singer/songwriters all have unique voices…Estrada has made the whole work beautifully…If this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, neither did it mine and yet it is all kinds of wonderful…
Sun Children
Ronald wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: As gritty and up close as any street drama with a twisty ending second to none.
Superior
- Excerpt: Erin Vassilopoulos’ ‘Superior’ is a moody psychological drama that suffers a middling script while leaning on effective, evocative aesthetics and too-subtle character development.
Swan Song
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Topped off by one of the best performances of the year, this is funny and sweet, sad and joyous, simultaneously soul-crushing and life-affirming, and deeply, deeply human.
Sweat
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Magnus von Horn’s film’s powerful portrayal of the addictive nature of social media and the way its psychologically tuned algorithms Impact self esteem is enough to make one want to swear off their platforms.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Nuanced, sensitive peek into the world of a social-media influencer, with a beautiful central performance. Uncynical and pragmatic about the seachange human society has endured in the 21st century.
The Swedish Boys
James Wegg @ JWR [Swedish]
- Excerpt: A varied collection of shorts that includes a few third wheels
Sweet Thing
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …if this one doesn’t make a star of [Rockwell’s] eldest, Lana, the right people aren’t paying attention.
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.
Ten Minutes to Midnight
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: takes risks and makes unexpected choices, the film has concerns other than bloody theatrics, and there are more ambitions and ideas to chew on than the package indicates.
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.
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Josh Taylor @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: The most thrilling thing about Test Pattern is Ford’s unapologetic point-of-view. This is a story told from a Black woman’s perspective, and the director makes no concessions to any other gaze.
There Is No Evil
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Mohammad Rasoulof encourages you to think, and he does it in a manner best suited for the medium of film, by getting you involved with characters and using the camera to explore these ideas in ways that are challenging yet compelling.
Things Heard & Seen
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Seyfried engenders sympathy and a rooting interest that carries us through a film whose supernatural aspects almost feel like an afterthought and which carries its subplots a bridge too far.
Things Heard and Seen
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
- Excerpt: The winner of the Special Jury Prize for Visionary Filmmaking at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and Lesotho’s first-ever submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is a devastating depiction of one woman’s fight to maintain the traditions of her people when the crushing wave of modernization threatens to sweep them away. Written and directed by Mosotho filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese and starring the late, great South African actor Mary Twala Mhlongo in her heartbreaking final performance, the film forces us to examine the idea of progress and the irreparable damage this purportedly positive force can do when it lacks a beating heart.
Thunder Force
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy share outrageous dining and dancing sequences that almost save Thunder Force.
‘ Til Kingdom Come
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A deep dive into US evangelical Christians teaming up with Israeli charities in an absolutely terrifying unholy alliance that has geopolitical implications that should worry everyone, believer or not.
Till Death
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Till Death might not provide the most complicated or nuanced story, but it’s a thoroughly engaging cat-and-mouse thriller that relies on the lead using their wits to survive, and Megan Fox carries you through the twists and turns effortlessly.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While I can easily recommend giving Till Death a shot, it’s difficult not to notice how often it misses its opportunities to fight above its weight class.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The film tackles trauma in a compelling way through Fox’s protagonist and the harrowing journey she must undertake to be free of her husband’s figurative, and literal, shackles.
Tina
Glenn Dunks @ The Film Experience
- Excerpt: It is admittedly a curious directorial choice to have their own subject say they’re sick of talking about the story at hand and then make a film about it anyway.
Tiny Tim: King for a Day
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Getting the real story from those who loved him beyond the “act” is crucial to realizing that Tim demands to be remembered as more than a flash in the pan curio.
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.
Tom & Jerry
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Modernization is the enemy of the classics.
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: The updated theatrical version of ‘Tom & Jerry’ directed by Tim Story offers nothing but rehash of old comedy moments that are barely funny.
Too Late
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Tove
- Excerpt: The film focuses on the decade or so during the 1940s and 1950s in which two events changed the course of Tove Jansson’s life and career forever: her passionate affair with theater director Vivica Bandler and the success of the Moomins at the (temporary) expense of her more “serious” paintings. Thanks to Bergroth’s empathetic direction and a magical lead performance from Alma Pöysti, Jansson’s ongoing struggle to find personal and professional fulfillment pulls you in tightly and refuses to let you go.
Tribhanga
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Trigger Point
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Anyone who watches this genre will be able to guess what’s happening fairly early. It therefore becomes about the character. Liking him makes the journey worthwhile.
The Truffle Hunters
- Excerpt: …Watching this film is something like taking a vacation to a place where everything is simpler and less stressful, and that’s no small thing as *pandemic travel restrictions stretch into their second year.
Truth to Power
Beverly Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: “Truth to Power” showcases the results of Tankian’s mission.
The Tunnel
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: As stuffed with soap-opera clichés as its cinematic precursors, but this is nevertheless a solid and diverting rescue procedural… and it’s somehow even more shocking for how mundane its disaster is.
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.
Two Lottery Tickets
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: This sly and charming story meanders along making its point about cinema and human nature with nary a trace of pretension, nor a pandering nod to political correctness.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s the kind of comedy that works because it taps into a reality that many people experience. Many moments had me laughing out loud thanks to the performances and the sharp writing from Paul Negoescu.
Two of Us
- Excerpt: The debut narrative feature from writer-director Filippo Meneghetti, Two of Us provides a stirring look at the longtime love between two older women and the way it is put to the test by a health crisis. With a story hinged on the disapproval and disappointment of others, some of the plot twists feel startlingly retrograde for a film about a lesbian couple in the twenty-first century, but an absolutely brilliant lead performance from the legendary Barbara Sukowa makes it impossible to stop watching regardless.
Ultrasound
- Excerpt: From the very first frame, the mysterious science-fiction midnighter from Rob Schroeder sets out to dazzle and bewilder audiences with a magic trick of a film. Smart and captivating, ‘Ultrasound’ comes fastened to committed performances from a game cast and a perplexing plot that leads to a resoundingly clever conclusion.
The United States vs Billie Holiday
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Andra Day, who both looks and sounds more like Holiday than [“Lady Sings the Blues’” Diana] Ross, is outstanding in her debut, but the film itself lacks focus, shooting off in too many directions with too many players.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Even Andra Day’s flawless performance can’t save this mediocre movie.
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Andra Day’s performance is phenomenal. This first-time actor seems born for the role and hopefully will garner the levels of attention she deserves.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It won’t be enough to save it for some, but those daggers of truth make it hard for me to simply disregard the whole.
Val
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [The filmmakers’] dreamlike, memory infused editing reflects the past in the present, in one extraordinary sequence bringing Kilmer’s mom alive again as her son enters her now empty house… With “Val,” Poo and Scott will have many reconsidering Kilmer, a man who has been true to himself.
Vanquish
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Then you watch the final result and realize it was a paycheck job for everyone involved, and that no one really cared too much about what they were doing.
The Vault
Ron Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Nice editing mixes the hysteria of World Cup finals with sweaty vault raiding in this safe and sane procedural.
Violation
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It is designed to be difficult to watch, especially given the time it will take for viewers to piece it together. However, it ends up packing a serious punch.
The Virtuoso
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: I recommend The Virtuoso to patient viewers who enjoy less action but more depth of character portrayals – even in hit man sagas.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Enjoy the noir and put the rest aside.
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Some will find The Wanting Mare to be too slow or abstract, but it packs so much imagery and ideas in a way that is challenging, rich, and a feast for the eyes.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
We Broke Up
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: We Broke Up was never destined to be much more substantial than what it is on the surface. And that’s fine. It’s a pleasant enough foible, which is the intent.
Wet Season
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Wet Season is made with patience and restrant, but it is never dull. Yeo Yann Yann’s performance makes a strong and lasting impression.
What Happened to Mr. Cha?
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s an amusing comedy that has fun with the real life persona of its star.
- Excerpt: This South Korean comedy gets metatextual as Cha In-Pyo plays a JCVD-style version of himself. For the star’s sake, let’s hope this is as far removed from reality as possible.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A comedy with laughs galore. Dear Mr. Cha, we want some more!
Wheels
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Wild Men
- Excerpt: Starkly funny and wholly original, the sensational Danish dark comedy ‘Wild Men’ sees a forty-something father in the midst of a midlife crisis wander into the wilderness to unwittingly befriend a drug smuggler and run from the police. An outstanding cast of characters and sparkling writing makes this one Tribeca’s best debuts.
Willy’s Wonderland
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: It has Nicolas Cage fighting his way through Satanic animatronics, and enough earnest goofiness to fill out a roughly 90-minute movie in pleasing fashion.
Witch Hunt
- Excerpt: ‘Witch Hunt’ struggles to execute an allegorical deathblow to real-life systemic prejudice but manages to remain a worthwhile watch for those who want their witchcraft served with a slice of political commentary.
The Witches of the Orient
- Excerpt: The Witches of the Orient has an unusual pace and structure for a sports documentary, lending a mythical tone to its subject.
- Excerpt: A remarkable story about an equally remarkable team of Japanese volleyball players and their unbeaten lead-up to their victory at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Without Remorse
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: The latest reboot of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan universe is far more blood splatter and head shots than fans of his novels are used to, but Michael B. Jordan’s John Kelly is a fresh protagonist to push forward what used to be a Vietnam story into our times.
- Excerpt: Without Remorse’s major crime is not that it’s unoriginal; it’s that it doesn’t know how to incorporate these influences into a cohesive whole, nor does it make us care about anything that happens to anyone.
Woe
Woman in Motion
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: We’re here to learn about Nichols’ deserved place in our space program’s history [as] an innovator and influencer who quite literally dragged it into [the] present.
- Excerpt: Wonderful and weird go hand-in-hand in this truly bizarre film that just keeps getting stranger – and that’s just one of the things to love about it.
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.
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..
Wrong Turn
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Not without glaring flaws, the new Wrong Turn is also a ton of mean, nasty backwoods horror fun. You know, if people getting crushed by logs is your idea of fun I guess.
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: Comes with a new look (no cannibal mutant hillbillies) but it keeps the kills bloody violent and innovative.
Ronald Wilkinson @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Campers in trouble Part 86 gives way to a curiously current portrait of a country divided and a loving father surprisingly good with an ax.
The Yellow Wallpaper
James Jay Edwards @ The Big Smoke America
Lee Jutton @ Film Inquiry
- Excerpt: It is a mark of Gilman’s genius that she manages to pack a feature-length film’s worth of feminist commentary and gothic atmosphere into such a succinct little story, and her critique of men’s misguided attempts to diagnose and treat women’s health problems — both mental and physical — remains tragically relevant to this day. So, it’s no wonder that “The Yellow Wallpaper” has been adapted for the screen multiple times in the past.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Yellow Wallpaper is depressing, though a necessary story. The issues Gilman wrote about in the 1800s may have changed somewhat, but they still exist, in one form or another.
Yes Day
- Excerpt: But it is an entertaining, family-friendly romp with wish-fulfilling yeses, extended comic mayhem, and satisfying consequences. And yes, there is learning and hugging.
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A mom agrees to one YES DAY and thinks that might just pave the way to change how the kids think of her. Rambunctious fun ensues, for sure!