For a film to get its own page on the main 2023 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.
65
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A sci-fi dinosaur thriller starring Adam Driver from the writers of ‘A Quiet Place’ produced by Sam Raimi sounds like it can’t miss. So why is this movie so bad?
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Adam Driver’s intensely focused, utterly unironic performance is the only saving grace of this movie of few ideas and little suspense, mystery, or excitement. There aren’t even that many dinosaurs.
Rick Aragon Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews [Rick Aragon]
88
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Why put these ideas into a fictional thriller? It only sustains the chasm between conspiracy and reality to the point where the whole feels like a satire of its own earnest motives.
#Manhole
- Excerpt: #Manhole undoubtedly jumps the shark, yet still finds a way to remain entertaining.
100% USDA Certified Organic Homemade Tofu
- Excerpt: Here’s a film about body satisfaction that raises more questions than it answers.
12.12: The Day
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: Perhaps a level lower than “Man Standing Next”, “12.12: The Day” still remains a captivating political thriller, benefitting the most by the story, the acting, and its production values.
12th Fail
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
21 Miles in Malibu
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
26.2 to Life
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: We all know there is an adrenaline rush that can come with running, but how that energy channels into transformative behavior is the miracle captured in this intimate film by Christine Yoo, an accomplished filmmaker but first-time documentarian.
32 Sounds
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Well-organized, clearly narrated, and captivating, the visual images and the surround sound take you to an auditory world of amazement.
80 for Brady
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Having four film and television legends team up for a fun comedy should be an easy field goal. Pity that 80 For Brady has the accuracy of a Dallas Cowboys kicker.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Sure, it’s great to see this quartet together in anything, but watching this film continually made me want to see them in a project worthy of their abilities.
- Excerpt: It’s a Cinderella story with four fairy godmothers, but instead of ugly step-sisters forcing them to do housework, these women are confronting the indignities of aging and the limits of mortality.
- Excerpt: Four old friends to Super Bowl go. Their adventure makes quite a show!
Aatmapamphlet
Acidman
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Church delivers one of his best performances as a gentle yet unpredictably scatterbrained crackpot with an intense desire to be heard, but it’s Agron who steals the show with an emotionally charged thaw from guarded uncertainty to compassionate relief.
Adipurush
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Adults
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Adults is still a bitterly funny movie with surprising insight into the ups and downs of the familial bond.
Afghan Dreamers
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: What happens to the girls, who end up becoming famous throughout Afghanistan, and what happens to their dreams, is the content of this amazingly important and touching film.
After Love
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Khan takes that familiar piece of his own history and expands it, using it to explore our sense of identity in relation to those around us with unexpected narrative twists and a profoundly moving conclusion. Joanna Scanlan…is exquisite
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: While this stunning film is not about religion, we do know that Mary is an observant Muslim who prays with devotion. How she handles what becomes evident is a testament to her spiritual strength and core moral values.
After the Bite
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: We humans are a notoriously greedy species. Enough is never enough, whether it be in matters of consumption or recreation. The fact that other creatures—or even fellow people—may also have need of that which we crave has little bearing on our own appetites.
Afwaah
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Against All Enemies
a-ha: The Movie
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Add numerous conversations about image, evolution, and mistakes and the film provides an informative portrait that excels despite its lack of stereotypical Drama. As they say, no one cares about the arguments but them. The songs are what get remembered.
AirHostess-73
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Albert Brooks: Defending My Life
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A documentary guaranteed to make you laugh about one of the greatest comedians of our time.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A documentary guaranteed to make you laugh about one of the greatest comedians of our time.
All India Rank
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
All Man: The International Male Story
- Excerpt: I don’t know if International Male invented the metrosexual or not, but it’s not far-fetched to say that it played a big role in giving men the freedom to be peacocks in a way that has long been expected of women.
All the World Is Sleeping
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The second half is thus where the film shines. Those glimpses into the past solidify into memories, the generational trauma and economic strife showing just how quickly someone can get caught in a systemically broken cycle of poverty and addiction.
Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Aloners
- Excerpt: Gong Seung-yeon’s Aloners is the first feature film to explore what it means to be one of this living-alone people, and does so in a sensitive, understated, and slow-moving style.
Altered Perceptions
- Excerpt: If only it wasn’t fiction
Amanda
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It seems like Wes Anderson has become the main comparison point people have been using to describe Carolina Cavalli’s AMANDA, but I’d lean more towards calling it an arthouse DUMB AND DUMBER. And I say this with earnest affection.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: The performances—especially those of the two leads—are pitch-perfect, Porcaroli and Bellugi conveying simultaneous indifference and vulnerability. The supporting ensemble gets it right, too, layering just the right amount of absurdity into their obvious near-hysteria.
The Amazing Maurice
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Maurice, resembling one of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things crossed with Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire Cat, isn’t the most honorable creature and Laurie breathes just the right mix of self involvement and reluctant hero into him
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: It’s family entertainment with an attitude.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a fast-paced adventure bouncing back and forth between vantage points and devices to keep the jokes loose and the danger light. The film stumbles at times and is definitely convoluted, but it also just plain works.
The American Gladiators Documentary
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a narrative that takes a lot more turns than you may expect. After Part 1 delivers what you assumed, Part 2 becomes more of a fact-finding [tongue-in-cheek] detective case in search of answers on a growing list of questions and hearsay.
Americanish
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Zawahry, in her debut feature film with a diverse cast of American-Muslim females made by a diverse group of American-Muslim women, sorts it out from her perspective creating a zany, enjoyable film that confronts the challenges and yet doesn’t offend.
Americonned
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a call to arms documentary promoting unions to return a balance of power to the American worker.
And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine
- Excerpt: “And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine” is a kaleidoscopic meta-selfie about how we see ourselves through photo and video images.
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film features extraordinary visuals in its midsection, Vicaria watching EMTS working on yet another shooting victim with electrical paddles, the young boy’s eyes meeting hers, sparking to life and draining repeatedly…
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper”s Reviews
- Excerpt: The story follows the plot of FRANKENSTEIN, with director Story staying closer to the plot of the Shelley novel than either James Whale or Terence Fisher did. Once we get to the middle of the film, however, it no longer seems to be using the plot of the Shelley novel. Ultimately, the viewer then must decide what presentation best fits the Shelley.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A well-acted, thoughtful picture that uses horror to address an important societal issue.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: With great practical makeup and effects to up the horror quotient, Story’s film does a really good job pulling FRANKENSTEIN into the twenty-first century. I do think the genre conventions get in the way of fully mining the psychology of the updated concept, though.
Animal
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Anonymous Sister
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: It is the story of the perfidious Purdue-developed and marketed oxycontin, a drug that leaves you wanting more and more until you become debilitated. … “Anonymous Sister” is critically acclaimed and one of the most moving documentaries of all time.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: I hope Jamie takes this film to a lawyer and I hope it has been part of the settlement with Purdue Pharmacy and the Sackler family. What happened to her family happened to thousands of American families. It is the story of the perfidious Purdue-developed and marketed oxycontin, a drug that leaves you wanting more and more until you become debilitated.
Anselm
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: the camerawork, which not only defines space but the textural quality of the artist’s work, is augmented by an intriguing sound design as well, one consisting of whispers, song and recitations. “Anselm” is the cinematic equivalent of a multi media artwork.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Anyone But You
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: With a few tweaks and another script revision, this could have been an outstanding good-time, R-rated romcom the likes and style of which we so rarely see theatrically released these days.
Aporia
- Excerpt: Jared Moshe’s stripped-down, sci-fi parable lacks the ingenuity to properly explore its intriguing premise.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: APORIA feels akin to PRIMER in that way. Not as heady, but there are definitely aesthetic parallels. Merge that film’s intelligence with the aching heart of LITTLE FISH and you get close to anticipating the vibe on-screen.
Appendage
- Excerpt: Appendage didn’t work for me. While I can praise the creature design and give the cast an A for effort, stretching this 6 minute story into an hour-and-a-half cheap-looking film might have been a mistake.
Apurva
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: A tired pastiche of the super-hero/sci-fi genre most notable for being a perfect distillation of the phenomenon known as “super-hero fatigue”.
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: Jason Momoa’s tenure as the titular Aquaman comes to a close as the DCEU reaches its end amidst waning interest. I can’t say that I’ll miss this wildly inconsistent franchise though ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ does serve as an apt reminder of its oppressive tonal inconsistency. Despite these shortcomings, Momoa and Wilson manage to deliver a few funny moments, and the film does boast its share of visually enchanting sequences.
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
The Archies
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: Having yet to read Judy Blume’s book, leave it to Kelly Fremon Craig to bring together an old-fashioned, coming-of-age dramedy that handles its topics with warmth and hilarity.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
The Artifice Girl
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: High-concept sci-fi is bolstered by promising ideas and an outstanding performance by Tatum Matthews.
Ashkal
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Chebbi’s film is political Gothic that reckons with the present state of Tunisia by grappling with the past.
Astrakan
- Excerpt: …an interesting contribution to the genre from a director with a strong sense of style and a willingness to take risks.
Astrakan 79
Paulo Portugal @ esquerda.net [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Há uma incessante procura de identidade que é inerente ao cinema de Catarina Mourão. Desde logo pela forma como usa a realidade e o arquivo pessoal de família. No fundo, a memória como um palimpsesto
At Midnight
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s broad strokes from start to finish—so exactly what those swooning at the trailer desire and what those rolling their eyes should avoid.
Attachment
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Gislason’s film is full of Jewish folklore and superstition while still a vividly human portrait of the loving connections that bind people together emotionally across space and time, disguised in the cloak of a demonic possession story that’s far from the standard genre fare.
August at Twenty-Two
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a small but relatably honest film about stumbling into adulthood.
Baby Ruby
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a psychological thriller about postpartum depression swaddled in the horror genre… Merlant effectively conveys a woman losing her identity in a maelstrom of infantile demands while trying to project the expected societal maternal image.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: For certain viewers, it might even be cinematic birth control, causing them to swear off ever getting pregnant.
Back on the Strip
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Back on the Strip is an example of a bad movie constantly intruding on a good one.
Bad Behaviour
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The filmmaking is imperfect with the pacing leaving a lot to be desired, but there’s some real potent stuff happening beneath the surface—especially via Connelly’s intensely emotional performance.
Bad Things
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: While there are elements that work well, the overall piece leaves a lot to be desired. It has plenty of potential but doesn’t quite reach it in the end.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Unfortunately, the only impression [Thorndike’s] sophomore film makes is that of a low-rent, semi-coherent take on “The Shining” with little scary about it.
The Battle of Chile
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: O dia 11 de Setembro antes do dia 11 de Setembro. Se essa data, em 2001, poderá ser considerada como um outro ‘dia da infâmia’ (o ‘outro’ fora baptizado no dia do bombardeamento japonês a Pearl Harbor), a verdade é que mais de duas décadas antes, a democracia recebia um duro golpe com a violenta tomada do poder no Chile pelo ditador Augusto Pinochet, derrubando o governo socialista de Salvador Allende, depois de goradas as tentativas manipulação política. Passaram agora precisamente 50 anos.
Bawaal
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Beanie Bubble
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The Beasts
- Excerpt: …a profoundly upsetting story given a gripping treatment…
Beautiful Beings
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a story about the power of friendship and the reality that its strength can be both solid enough to move mountains and too volatile to last.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …the movie’s ample strengths outweigh a certain lack of originality… The bottom line is I found myself engaged with these characters and empathizing with them through their travails, which is all you ask of a film of this sort.
The Becomers
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Nothing] that’s revealed is surprising considering Clark does well to keep clues out in the open, but a lot is shocking insofar as how wild he’s willing to [go]. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but those on its frequency should have a whale of a time.
Before, Now & Then
- Excerpt: Set in late 1960s Indonesia, during the turbulent period of political upheaval that followed the Indonesian National Revolution, the film is a veritable feast for the senses, serving up lush visuals, evocative music, and poignant performances that are no less powerful for their subtlety.
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Biopicture with film clips showcasing the multi-talented pioneering tv and film actress.
Between Two Worlds
- Excerpt: Binoche is convincing in the role of Marianne, and the screenplay by Carrère and Hèléne Devynck provides her with an interesting cast of supporting characters, most of them played by non-professionals
Andrew Wyatt @ Riverfront Times
Big Bang
- Excerpt: Of ovens and men
Big Easy Queens
- Excerpt: The gardenia done it
Big George Foreman
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: An uplifting biopic that reverently presents various highlights of the boxer’s life.
- Excerpt: Big George Foreman is a fascinating tale of perseverance, redemption, and faith. Khris Davis turns in a strong performance as the former world heavyweight boxing champion.
Biosphere
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A sci-fi buddy film that proves life finds a way.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The film’s success is thus more in line with supplying a catalyst for conversation than anything concretely valuable to add to that dialogue. That alone does make what is probably a misguided artwork worthwhile.
Bird Box: Barcelona
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: [The film] introduces some interesting ideas about faith and redemption, I just wish it had more of a chance to explore them.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Birder
- Excerpt: Live free or die
Birth/Rebirth
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: What makes Moss’s creeping horror so effective is how these actresses gradually acquire traits of each others’ characters, the deeply maternal, sympathetic Reyes becoming coldly focused while Ireland’s possibly autistic, single-minded mad scientist begins to show signs of empathy.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: If a good friend asked me if they should see birth/rebirth, I would tell them yes, but I would also feel compelled to issue a warning.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The film is a stunning, dark contemporary update of Shelley, and helps show how so many of Frankenstein‘s themes are still what haunts us today, only in new shapes and forms.
The Bitcoin Car
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: We’re not even a month into 2024, and I already have a contender for most bonkers movie of the year. Coming from Norway, The Bitcoin Car is a tragicomic musical about a small village that begins to experience troubling phenomena when a brand-new bitcoin mining facility starts operations.
Black Barbie: A Documentary
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: This documentary approaches a seemingly benign subject from a number of angles, putting human faces to a popular children’s toy.
The Black Demon
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you can’t make a shark look realistic, don’t even bother making a shark attack movie.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: What’s worse than a shark attack? A giant demon-shark attack! And this movie.
Black Ice
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Davis does well to never let the good or bad overpower the complexity of the full picture so his audience realizes things are simultaneously moving in the right direction while still being a long ways away from “fixed.”
Blackout
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Give Fessenden credit for really jam-packing this low-budget affair with as much political and social commentary as possible—even if a lot of it might come across as somewhat half-baked and reductive. The experience is worth those hiccups.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
- Excerpt: The feature debut of director, composer, and artist Pierre Földes (whose father, Peter Földes, was a pioneer of computer animation), the film adapts half a dozen of Murakami’s short stories from across three different collections to tell an episodic story of the struggle to find human connection in a dreary, disconnected world.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The artwork reinforces the calm, poetic, dreamlike mood.
Blood
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an effective spin on usual genre tropes with Monaghan constantly pushing herself beyond the limits of morality to keep her boy alive. Stick with surface and you should enjoy the ride.
The Blue Caftan
- Excerpt: …slow-moving but intense, gradually revealing the complexities of the main characters’ relationships.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an emotional tour de force, a film about love in all its dimensions.
Blue Jean
- Excerpt: Blue Jean is an assured feature debut by Oakley, who also wrote the screenplay.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Like Audrey Diwan’s abortion drama, “Happening,” two years ago, British writer/director Georgia Oakley’s feature debut couldn’t be timelier in creating empathy for a class of people doubly targeted in today’s United States.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: McEwen delivers an unforgettable performance as a woman caught between the love of her partner and the acceptance of her career when one could very well erase the other in an instant.
Blueback
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A brilliantly-crafted story with magically gorgeous cinematography, “Blueback” deals in the essential: what gives us life, gives us meaning and gives us love.
Boat People
- Excerpt: A cautionary tale of ants and aunts
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
Luiz Santiago @ [Portuguese]
Luiz Santiago @ [Portuguese]
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is an extensive, uncensored, and expertly constructed look at the lengths a dictator will go to wield his military regime and secure power. [And the] tireless work [of Bobi Wine to] inspire the masses [against it].
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” winner of the 2023 International Documentary Association Award for Best Feature Documentary, is grass-roots documentary filmmaking at its best.
Booger
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Dauterman’s message is relatable. Wanting to be numb rather than confront the pain should resonate with most audiences regardless of whether the genre device used proves too much to wrap their heads around.
Born to Fly
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Despite a lack of originality, if you like Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick and want to see something similar, this movie is pretty darned fun.
Breaking the News
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Good journalism just might save the world.
Brightwood
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [Elcar pivots to horror] to prove the metaphorical circles of carnage we put ourselves through don’t always have an exit ramp. Whether voluntarily or not, we become comfortable in the chaos.
Brooklyn 45
- Excerpt: The 3rd Annual JanuScary Special continues with Brooklyn 45! A suspenseful little thriller that shows what happens when you mix ghosts with friendship and post-war trauma!
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This is a stunning, thought-provoking chiller.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Nothing that happens on-screen is solely to provide the audience a resolution. It’s about pushing his characters against the wall to see whether they bend or break.
Brother
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A pall of dread, of terrible suspense, hangs over this powerfully empathetic drama about what it means to be a Black man navigating a racist world. Beautifully performed and structurally intriguing.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Virgo is weaving through ups and downs with a deft rhythm to ensure we never get too high or low. Johnson and Pierre provide the journey the authenticity necessary for its sprawling drama to feel lived. Blake is the heart, but these men supply its soul.
Butcher’s Crossing
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Gabe Polsky’s BUTCHER’S CROSSING is a familiarly harsh depiction of men going against nature with nothing but greed, vengeance, and hubris in their hearts.
The Caine Mutiny Court Martial
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A courtroom drama about proper and improper conduct that has contemporary relevance.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A courtroom drama about proper and improper conduct that has contemporary relevance.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: All in all, it remains a compelling piece with solid performances and relevant themes. And as a swan song for Friedkin himself, that middle finger of a finale couldn’t be more appropriate.
Cairo Conspiracy
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: And as Saleh explains in his director statement, that truth doesn’t inherently pick a side. Adam ultimately learns [that] the system is rigged. No “authority” is beyond reproach.
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Talvez não se tenha feito ainda uma abordagem tão aberta e esclarecedora ao tema das lideranças político-religiosas do Egipto quanto esta incursão do sueco, de descendência egípcia, Tarik Saleh. Ou até em outro país muçulmano. Provavelmente, porque essa ousadia por certo chocaria a montante com as previsíveis vibrações de censura.
Canary
- Excerpt: A bird with a song
Candela
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Andrés Farías’ stylish, stunningly photographed (by cinematographer Saurabh Monga) neo noir gives LGBTQ and immigration twists to the noir tropes it honors, its approaching storm reminiscent of “Key Largo.”
Candy Cane Lane
- Excerpt: Candy Cane Lane is a silly yet surprisingly funny movie!
Carmen
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The acting, music, dancing, and production design are so effective that it was easy to sink into the dreamscape of it all.
- Excerpt: The ravishing images in “Carmen” evoke a powerful sense of myth, poetry, timelessness, and dreams. Each shot is exquisitely framed, every detail contributing to the haunting mood.
Cassandro
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [the director’s] chosen the perfect star in Bernal, who projects all the personal and professional hurt absorbed by the man yet performs in the ring with the flamboyant flourishes and technical proficiency that made Cassandro a star.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: This biopic manages to entertain thanks to actor Gael García Bernal as the real-life luchador.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While not the deepest of films, this crowd pleaser hits all the right emotional beats to prop Sául up and establish the complex and often unfair world in which he ascends against all odds.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: In his fiction-feature debut, esteemed documentarian Roger Ross Williams … tells the story of this pioneer with all the pathos and flamboyance he deserves.
Cat Person
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Cat Person only succeeds when it stays in a space of mystery and unknowing.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …writer Michelle Ashford’s adaptation of Kristen Roupenian’s sensational 2017 short story expands it in all the wrong directions, creating an irrecoverable imbalance and rendering Margot a complete lunatic
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The cringe of modern relationships stinks up this antiromance. Its bald truths, all but ignored in pop culture, about how women navigate romantic and sexual relationships with men, demand to be heard.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: As an eighty-minute transformation across artistic mediums, it’s actually quite effective. Here’s the issue: CAT PERSON isn’t an eighty-minute film. It’s two hours long [with a new, tacked-on conclusion].
Rick Aragon Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews [Rick Aragon]
Chasing Chasing Amy
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: By putting [CHASING AMY’s] production and impact and failings in context with Sav’s personal awakening, his documentary supplies a deep dive the likes of which couldn’t happen if a deep dive was the initial goal.
Chess Story
- Excerpt: The latest screen adaptation, Chess Story — one of the alternate titles of Zweig’s book — tells a compelling tale of the things people do to survive and the damage that they carry with them afterward. Yet despite boasting great performances and lavish production values, the film also feels unnecessarily messy, as though its makers were somewhat overwhelmed by the prospect of adapting such a lauded piece of literature.
Chevalier
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Betty Jo Tucker @ AuthorsDen
- Excerpt: An important film I am sure. Chevalier’s work should now endure.
Children of the Corn
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I just wish it didn’t have to be so generic. It once again seeks to sanitize source material that refreshingly embraced the futility of our struggle to survive our own attempts at self-extermination.
Chile ’76
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Martelli builds suspense along with Carmen’s dawning social awareness, her film becoming a paranoid thriller before its devastating conclusion.
Chile 1976
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: É na opção de um ponto de vista de classe exterior à convulsão política que Chile 1976, em estreia nas salas de cinema portuguesas esta quinta-feira, reclama a sua individualidade e, até, urgência.
Chile ’76
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/29248/chile-76
Chomp It!
- Excerpt: Enjoy the meal
Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Christmas as Usual
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Christopher at Sea
- Excerpt: Quite a Voyage
Cinema Sabaya
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: The combination of the setting far removed from a movie studio and the mix of experienced and novice actors gives Cinema Sabaya an authenticity that had me questioning whether I was watching a feature film or a documentary. But we as audience members learn a great deal about the attitudes and challenges of women living in Israel, and that is quite an accomplishment.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The purpose isn’t therefore to magically solve centuries of persecution. It’s to remind us that no one is perfect. No one is unequivocally correct. And no one is truly alone.
La Civil
- Excerpt: La Civil is ultimately an uneven crime thriller carried by an exceptional actress. Still, its subject matter is so important, and certain moments so impactful, that one is almost inclined to overlook its weaknesses.
The Civil Dead
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It can feel a bit long at times, but I don’t think the filmmakers ever overextend the joke. It helps that they acknowledge the darker places inherent to the conceit.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Clock
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is the story of a woman surrounded by fanatics attempting to indoctrinate her against her will. Because despite volunteering, the violence that ensues proves she does not consent.
Close to Vermeer
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: For those who didn’t have the great fortune to attend in person, we have Raes’ insider look at just what the folks who mounted Essential Vermeer think makes a Vermeer a Vermeer.
Close Your Eyes
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Sim, Cerrar los Ojos foi o grande filme(e a descoberta) deste festival. Mesmo que sem ter estado em competição para qualquer prémio.
Cobweb
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Cobweb is a contemporary Gothic tale of the ways in which human behaviour creates haunted houses and haunted bodies.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
James Wegg @ JWR
- Excerpt: Very hot film noir
- Excerpt: Very hot film noir
A Compassionate Spy
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: https://www.reelingreviews.com/reviews/a-compassionate-spy/
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [Rather than an account of his spying] this is instead more a bio-pic of the man himself and the life born out of his treasonous act of defiance. And more than that, it’s a love letter to him as told by his widow Joan.
Concrete Utopia
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …both a disaster movie and a Serlingesque exploration of human behavior in an apocalyptic situation.
- Excerpt: In using well-trodden genre tropes to explore all-too-real issues of class and status, Concrete Utopia stakes its claim as the heir apparent to Parasite and Squid Game and should have similar crossover appeal for international audiences.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: For those who don’t understand that THE WALKING DEAD is about the living monsters rather than the undead ones, director Tae-hwa Eom and co-writer Lee Shin-ji’s CONCRETE UTOPIA might be able to drive the point home.
El Conde
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Pensar que los políticos son unos chupasangres que se alimentan de nosotros no es, digamos, una novedad.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Carmencita will take flight in a tour de force scene of the hilarious acrobatics of an amateur finding her mid-air balance, and, combined with…Lachman’s luscious black and white photography…seems like something out of a Roy Andersson film.
The Conference
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
A Confucian Confusion
- Excerpt: As the film unfolds, it becomes quite clear that A Confucian Confusion is quintessentially Yang, from the keenly sensitive glance he directs toward fading romances to the way he portrays the rapidly evolving city of Taipei—a place that can bring people together just as easily as it can tear them apart.
Consecration
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s the age-old conundrum: are evil deeds truly sinful if they are performed in the name of God? Who’s to say [Catholics] haven’t been fooled by the Devil since the first words of the Bible were written down?
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: While Consecration isn’t near Smith’s best horror film, it’s an interesting little story that digs into the abusive secrecy and historical misogyny of the Roman Catholic Church.
Copenhagen Cowboy
Diego Salgado @ Rockdelux [Spanish]
Corner Office
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The film is making a comment on the trials and tribulations of working in an office setting, but the messaging is fuzzy.
Country of Blind
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Fans of cows singing songs will surely be satisfied… The rest of us will at least be willing to hear the movie out: it contains much intriguing strangeness, while also held back a bit by a tangled thicket of themes and the sometimes underwhelming familial drama.
Cracked
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Although I never got that chill down my spine as I do watching a really scary horror flick, there wasn’t a moment where I wasn’t fully invested with what was happening.
The Crime Is Mine
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Draws on the same giddily rules-trampling pre-war mood as ‘Chicago’.
- Excerpt: A period piece set in the 1930s Paris rendered so delightfully decadent in classics such as Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise and Mitchell Leisen’s Midnight, The Crime is Mine boasts lush Art Deco production design, gorgeously lit cinematography, and an ensemble cast packed with both up-and-coming and established French talent—including the legendary Isabelle Huppert, chewing the scenery to bits as a faded silent film star who still craves the spotlight.
Dark Harvest
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: All in all: I had fun. Slade is going super dark, but also super corny with the period flair. Think a horror riff on GREASE with Partridge’s Bram Stoker Award-winning plot as its scaffolding.
Daughter
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Sadly, the film is all build-up. While this fact ensures the end will be unsatisfying in its ambiguity, it also means that everything coming before the letdown is quite effective.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: By the time they get around to cornea surgery, those who’ve seen Phil Tippett’s “Mad God” or even “A Clockwork Orange” may have feelings of déjà vu…like cinematic punk rock Da Vinci.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That’s not to say the journey isn’t worthwhile, though. I loved the candid dialogue. My mind [simply wandered too often] whenever we weren’t lost inside someone’s flesh.
Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court
- Excerpt: If you had a drinking game for every time someone in this movie talks about “shattering norms” or “abandoning precedent” or the equivalent, you would be tipsy, which may be the best way to watch the fourth episode about the chaotic, scandal-prone recent years.
- Excerpt: The pointed subtitle lets us know that this is not the story of how the Court shaped the country, as it might have been if it was made in the 1970s.
A Deadly Invitation
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Dear David
Death & Ramen
- Excerpt: “I can’t die with an empty stomach”
The Deepest Breath
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The film is not just an examination of an extreme sport, but an exploration of two people learning to live for themselves and each other.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: In this beautifully photographed and edited movie, director McGann crafts riveting, and fully three-dimensional, profiles of the protagonists, bringing in plenty of supporting voices and characters, as well.
The Delinquents
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [The dualities] are fun and provide the whole a nice clean, circuitous pathway forward towards a pitch-perfect farce of an ending, but the idea that it takes a crazy premise for both men to finally come alive is the real point.
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
James Wegg @ JWR
- Excerpt: “Where is freedom?”
Devilreaux
- Excerpt: Sometimes movies can be so awful that they cross over into the funny territory… Unfortunately, Devilreaux is not one of those movies.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: With its cheap aesthetic, atrocious acting, insipid screenplay, and flat direction, Devilreaux is an embarrassment to all involved.
Dicks: The Musical
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Director Larry Charles is not one to shy away from controversial pictures, having collaborated with Sacha Baron Cohen several times, but this one isn’t even up to his standards.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It ain’t pretty. But ‘Dicks’ ain’t about pretty, except for ‘that’s pretty gross.’
The Diplomat
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An eight-part series revealing the multiple challenges faced by a woman ambassador.
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The documentary traces the major events of Hite’s career, marking the importance of her many conclusions, particularly as they refuted earlier studies or questioned established norms, as well as the emotional toll constantly defending her work took as her challengers attacked not only the integrity of her research, but her personally.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While [Oprah] footage is the linchpin connecting the good will earned beforehand and slander that followed, Newnham does a wonderful job accompanying it with the context necessary to understand its relevance to both Hite’s life and America at-large.
Disco Boy
- Excerpt: A most unexpected (but understandable) dance of death
- Excerpt: A most unexpected (but understandable) dance of death
District of Second Chances
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: In “District of Second Chances,” outstanding director/producer Wynette Yao focuses on three men, including Pete, who committed murder in their youth and received life sentences. She follows them in prison, through their appeal and then once they are released.
A Disturbance in the Force
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Nick Kush @ MovieBabble
- Excerpt: Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak’s ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ doc is a window into a very specific and interesting moment in time.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Coon and Kozak show that The Star Wars Holiday Special truly exists on an island alone as an unwitting cautionary tale never to be repeated again.
The Dive
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Narratively, the film works for its first two acts, May’s…memories sketchily filling in some blanks about the sisters’ relationship, but a rushed third act incorporating a prop that’s been apparent for some time blunts the movie’s overall impact.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Intermittent moments of fleeting suspense punctuate literal and figurative murkiness (I gave up trying to figure out what was going on) as it flails around trying to pad itself out to feature length.
Divinity
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: I didn’t really know what Divinity was about when I walked in, and I knew even less when I walked out. This is the strangest movie I’ve ever seen in a theater.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: DIVINITY will not be something you can soon forget. It’s not action-packed, but it’s never boring. Not if you open yourself to its themes of awakening.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: Even as motivations and resolutions sometimes defy strict dramatic logic, the joy is in the mystery, as well as the raw beauty of what is on screen. Divinity lies, as always, within these small details.
Double Life
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The stakes never rise high enough to wow the audience, but it’s a decent option for escapist melodrama on a rainy day of channel surfing.
Down in Dallas Town
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Beautifully crafted with sensitivity and intelligence, DOWN IN DALLAS takes us beyond the images of 11/22/63 that have become so familiar that they have lost their initial power.
Dreamer
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Dunki
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Dusk For A Hitman
Dennis Schwartz @ dennis schwartz reviews
- Excerpt: Differs from the usual hitman film.
Earth Mama
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Touching story of a single mother who is trying to reshape her life to regain custody of her small children.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Touching story of a single mother who is trying to reshape her life to regain custody of her small children.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: depicts the horrible injustices of an uncaring system while giving us a face of someone utterly deserving of support.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Having her lead character fully conscious of what’s coming proves a crucial piece to the [filmmaker’s] objective lens. It’s not therefore about success or failure. It’s merely the reality that most of these scenarios fall somewhere in between.
The Eight Mountains
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch adapt Paolo Cognetti’s novel with spiritual profundity…illustrating the intensity of close male friendship and the potentially fraught nature of father and son relationships.
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It is equal parts beautiful, funny, and grotesque. It takes real world villains and repurposes them into over the top caricatures.
- Excerpt: Pablo Larraín’s fascist vampire analogy ‘El Conde’ somehow trivializes the Pinochet monstrosity at its core.
Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Jennings and his crew do a great job, and what you may learn, even if you live in the big city, may save your home and help you support ways to save your state.
The Elephant Whisperers
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Up-close and personal portrait of an indigenous couple in India who tutor us in the spiritual art of caregiving to animals.
Emptiness
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: EMPTINESS is an experiential approximation of the isolation, confusion, and fear. It’s a ride through the unknown. A detached and disposable journey devoid of substance.
The End We Start From
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a solid story that looks and sounds great, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover it works better on the page insofar as digging further to unearth the weight of emotion that’s ravaging Mom’s heart.
The Equalizer 3
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: Even though this third installment lacks an exciting narrative this time, The Equalizer 3 continues the franchise’s strength in showcasing Denzel Washington’s performance as an action hero, bringing the series to conclude with a mixed bag.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovierReviews.com
- Excerpt: Washington is, as usual, terrifically charismatic as the methodical and thorough killing machine. He adds a spark of genuine, if understated, delight to McCall’s metamorphosis. There’s a new sense of ease heretofore missing from that character who, while always calm, was also always on guard.
Esme, My Love
- Excerpt: Esme, My Love is long on atmosphere and ambiguity, its shifting moods bolstered by the cinematography of Fletcher Wolfe and the music of Stephanie Griffin and Charlotte Littlehales.
The Eternal Daughter
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
The Eternal Memory
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: ¿Qué somos si no la suma de nuestros recuerdos? ¿Y qué queda de nosotros cuando esos recuerdos se van desvaneciendo? Esa pregunta recorre las imágenes de “La memoria infinita”, el documental estrenado en Netflix hace unos días, dirigido por Maite Alberdi
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: although “The Eternal Memory” parallels a nation’s history with one man’s, the film is most notable for the deep love story between the man whose memory is fading and the woman determined he remember her.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: By the end, the viewer emerges with a rich panoply of scenes to contemplate, each one building on the impact of what came before.
Ever Deadly
- Excerpt: Tagaq views her art, and her identity, as bound up with the land, so it’s not surprising that she feels strongly about maintaining traditions and repelling the attempts of outsiders who want to impose suburban rules on a much older way of life.
Every Body
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: For anyone wondering what the ‘IA’ recently added to the LGBTQIA acronym means, along comes director Julie Cohen (“RBG,” “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down”) and her three fearless subjects to clue you in about the ‘I’ part of the equation
Everyone Will Burn
Nadine Whitney @ Loud and Clear Reviews
- Excerpt: Everyone Will Burn mixes soap opera with horror in the Spanish mindbender.
Expend4bles
- Excerpt: as a late summer blockbuster, this comeback is 100 minutes of disposable thrills.
Extraction 2
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Shoot. Stab. Repeat.
The Fading
- Excerpt: The tragedy of loss
Failure to Protect
- Excerpt: “I am not perfect”
- Excerpt: “I am not perfect”
Fair Play
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a relationship thriller with loads of dramatic tension…Unfortunately, once the inevitable happens, Domont takes things so over the top, and multiple times at that, that any impact her film had gets lost in the ludicrousness of her final act.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: This was marketed as an erotic thriller. It’s neither.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Domont creates a story to not only expose how deep-seated patriarchal norms are in corporate culture, but to also honestly portray how its victims will often attempt to believe those hurting them most are still worth saving.
Fairyland
Roger Walker -Dack @ Queerguru.com
Falcon Lake
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: You could say the real ghost is love itself. That invigorating sense of inclusion and fullness that can so easily and unexpectedly disappear, haunting those who’ve lost it.
Family Switch
- Excerpt: “Family Switch” is a Dad Joke of a movie, genially corny but enjoying its corniness so much that it invites us to enjoy it, too.
Fantastic Machine
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Faraaz
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Fast Charlie
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Full of betrayals, low-life criminals, grizzly deaths and corpse-eating alligators, “Fast Charlie” remains irresistibly emotionally low-key and charismatically matter-of-fact.
Filhos de Ramsés
Paulo Portugal @ esquerda.net [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Em estreia esta quinta-feira nas salas portuguesas, o filme desenrola-se num emaranhado cosmopolita onde o negócio do corpo se confunde com o tráfico e a contrafação e a religião com o charlatanismo.
Film, the Living Record of Our Memory
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Lee Jutton @ Film Inquiry
- Excerpt: With the ubiquity of smartphones and the ability to upload videos to YouTube, it is easier than ever to make, distribute, and watch moving images — but that doesn’t mean we should neglect and forget all of those that came before. Film, the Living Record of Our Memory provides ample evidence as to why it is so important that we continue to remember, and to support those who make it possible for us to do so.
Film: The Living Record of Our Memory
- Excerpt: Digital is great in many ways, but it has one big drawback—it’s not a preservation medium.
FInal Cut
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: These walking corpses are full of life.
Finestkind
- Excerpt: Like its main characters, this movie is at its best on the sea.
Fingernails
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: There are too many interesting questions to call the whole a failure and too many holes and distractions to deem it a success. Regardless, I do think it’s worthwhile.
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Despite a talented cast, there’s no way of getting around viewing this superficial film as anything but trash.
Fireworks
- Excerpt: Set in a small Sicilian town in the early 1980s, the plight of blossoming love between two young men is dealt with honestly, emotionally and horrifically.
- Excerpt: I’m not goinh anywhere.
The First Slam Dunk
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It may feel like your usual run-of-the-mill David vs Goliath sports drama, but Inoue choreographs it with an electric pace and infectious humor. The draw is what happens between these teenagers’ ears—the memories conjured by each conflict on the court.
The First Step
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: The First Step” is an inside revelation about the dynamics between what’s good for the country and the war between political parties. It’s the frustration and wisdom of Jones, who wants to get something done, that makes this film into a bit of a thriller as we watch to see if he can succeed.
First We Bombed New Mexico
- Excerpt: Lipman has cobbled together a compelling condemnation of US “leadership” looking the other way…
- Excerpt: Lipman has cobbled together a compelling condemnation of US “leadership” looking the other way,
Fist of the Condor
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
The Five Devils
- Excerpt: The sophomore feature from director Léa Mysius—whose previous credits include co-writing Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon and Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District—The Five Devils is an intoxicating exploration of love, identity, and memory, filtered through the eyes (and nose) of one very special child.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: A film that has more atmosphere than true horror, Five Nights at Freddy’s is surprisingly tame but entertaining.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A dull horror movie about a security guard constantly dozing off in a pizzeria. You’ll want to join him.
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Flamin’ Hot
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a serviceable fairy tale as corny as a Frito, a television movie featuring a couple of lovely supporting performances that is the cinematic equivalent of the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos which drive it.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Rather than being smart and incisive, it packages a true story in a traditional, predictable formula.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Because while it may not be particularly memorable or unique, FLAMIN’ HOT makes good on its promise to bring a lesser known rags to riches tale of Latino exceptionalism to the masses in a self-deprecatingly comedic fashion.
- Excerpt: In Flamin’ Hot, Longoria crafts an upbeat, encouraging, humorous, and fairy-tale-esque version of the true life story of Richard Montañez, a janitor-turned-executive at Frito Lay whose incredible story was ripe for feature film adaptation.
Flora and Son
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is one of those movies that goes down smoothly, like a song you can listen to over and over again.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: As usual with a Carney film, music is the connective tissue, this time veering into rap, which Flora discovers her son is actually very good at and which meshes surprisingly well with what Flora’s been learning about guitar and song construction.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: FLORA AND SON might not be as great as ONCE or SING STREET, but it is charmingly sweet and funny en route to a rousing bow-tied ending performance that should have you leaving with a smile on your face.
The Flying Sailor
- Excerpt: Be careful what you smoke
Foe
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Ronan and Mescal do not stint on their respective talents for digging deep emotionally, but the film about a disintegrating marriage is wrapped within a clunky sci-fi shell which distracts more than it illuminates.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The young cast is mesmerizing, but all this dusty dystopia has is vibes and vague metaphors. It only just barely touches on the potential of its science-fiction ideas to explore the human condition.
Founders Day
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: What’s fun about the film is that it proves to be [about justice and jealousies] at once. And rather than be a cop-out as a result, this reality enhances the whole.
Four Daughters
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: In documenting the Islamic radicalization which splits apart a family, Ben Hania’s film becomes something of a therapy session but “Four Daughters” is also often a joyous occasion of recollections, laughter and love.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Only with [this experience and] knowledge, as well as the tools to make it work for them, can women Eya and Tayssir’s age attempt to finally break the cycle of exploitation and persecution into which they were born.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: While “Four Daughters” does provide a startling and creatively filmed window on the potential effects of female abuse and repression and how that may relate to extremism, it is a subjective, idiosyncratic account that lacks the lens and objectivity of a true documentary.
- Excerpt: Feeding rebellious youth
The Four Quartets
- Excerpt: Words speak louder than actions
Free Skate
Sarah E Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: Free Skate is beautifully shot by Mikke Kaurio, and skating scenes involving the central character are cleverly framed to disguise the fact that Vilo was a world-class gymnast, not a skater…
Fremont
Freud’s Last Session
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An imagined conversation between the renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cowriter/director Matt Brown lets his stars do the heavy lifting in this imagined intellectual joust that relies more on a few well-placed zingers than depth of argument, its stage origins all too evident in this stodgy production.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Despite solid performances and an entertaining script built upon flashbacks that show Freud and Lewis’s own flaws and hypocrisies, the film mostly just moves in circles.
Friday Night Plan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Frybread Face and Me
- Excerpt: [Frybread Face and Me] is faithful to the approach Benny attributes to his grandmother in his opening narration (voiced by Luther): “In Navajo storytelling, symbols mean more than facts, and time means nothing at all.”
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: There is both happiness and misery in equal measure, some of it related to the mistreatment of indigenous people on American soil, and some of it just the usual family dysfunction of anywhere and everywhere. It’s a bittersweet tale with moments of genuine connection between the characters, as well as sections of real profundity.
Fugue
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Full River Red
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: So, for every person who finds the [comedic] tone helps make this mystery feel breezier than you expect, there’s bound to be another who cannot separate [its] surface distraction from an otherwise highly convoluted tapestry of convenient twists and turns.
Full Time
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A realistic drama about a single mother coping with a possible job change amidst a transit strike.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Aided by Victor Seguin’s fluid, constantly moving camera and Irène Drésel’s anxiety inducing synth score, “Full Time” is a nerve-shredding experience until the joyful, climactic sigh of relief the filmmaker finally allows both Julie and his audience.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: This relentless, heart-in-your-throat, ticking-clock thriller about precarious single-motherhood could not be more timely or more intimate. As real, and as recognizably stressful, as the genre gets.
Furies
- Excerpt: Ngo’s action cinema roots are on full display here and Furies feels like a Hong Kong style heroic bloodshed tale, with maximal melodrama to accompany the flying fists and bullet ballet.
The Future
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is a world dictated by science and driven by conquest that cannot understand why a promising young woman could throw her life away because it refuses to understand that becoming a murderer was the only job it allowed her to have.
Gadar 2
Gaslight
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Gender Transformation: The Untold Realities
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Getaway
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Ghosted
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It does what is required but doesn’t strive to go beyond that. When you have actors at the top of their stardom, don’t you want them to be in something that’s more than just ok?
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: Ghosted had the potential to be a charming action rom-com, but it never delivered on that promise. Chris Evans and Ana de Armas sparked little chemistry when everything surrounding them was bland from an action and dialogue standpoint.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The plot becomes secondary to [Evans and de Armas’] dynamic. This is both a testament to them as performers and evidence that the plot leaves a lot to be desired.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Giraffe
- Excerpt: Giraffe is a slow, meditative film that echoes the way of life Dara is documenting, one far removed from the stresses and strains of modern suburban and urban life.
Giving Birth to a Butterfly
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Glisten and the Merry Mission
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: If you want to take your kids to see a sweet Christmas picture that imparts an uplifting message for the holiday season, this is exactly what you’re looking for.
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: It’s cinema as catharsis in the best possible way.
God Is a Bullet
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: God Is a Bullet is a reprehensible film that takes great pleasure in showing scene after scene of women being brutally beaten or killed.
Godland
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Inspired by old photographs and his own relationship with Denmark and its former colony of Iceland, writer/director Hlynur Pálmason fashions a strange and brooding tale pitting the fear of God against nature.
God’s Time
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a ton of fun. Groh is the exact type of manic energy you love to witness from afar with Costelloe’s unmoving innocence and desire to not ruffle feathers proving the perfect foil while Caribel steals control via a take-no-prisoners attitude.
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Golda moves well and keeps things going, even if at times it becomes a bit heavy-handed with its symbolism.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: In a film that is spare, Golda is the center, and the camera keeps its lens on Mirren with an intimacy that is never static, allowing her a performance that relies little on words. Nor does it need to.
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: GOLDA isn’t therefore a bad film. It’s simply a forgettable one save its central performance (although even that shouldn’t make much of an impact during awards season).
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Golda is at its best in the tense tête-à-tête encounters between Meir and her Cabinet, or Meir and Kissinger, highlighting the way realpolitik always complicates action.
The Goldman Process
Paulo Portugal @ www.insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A grande estreia da semana nas salas de cinema é uma entrega firme aos códigos da intriga de tribunal. Algo singular num país onde não abundam muitos exemplos dignos de nota.
Paulo Portugal @ www.esquerda.net [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A grande estreia da semana nas salas de cinema é uma entrega firme aos códigos da intriga de tribunal. Algo singular num país onde não abundam muitos exemplos dignos de nota.
Good Burger 2
- Excerpt: Good Burger 2 isn’t simply junk food. It is a petrified Happy Meal buried in the back of your childhood closet, reheated in the microwave.
Good Grief
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Dan Levy (TV’s ‘Schitt’s Creek’) makes his feature debut with this well intentioned exploration of grief that succeeds with its realistically messy onscreen friendships but could have used some humorous breaks from its overt sentimentality.
The Good Mother
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The film is an empty calorie page-turner. A primetime movie of the week that forgets its compelling true-life tragedies are worth more than being rendered as color for generic twists and turns.
A Good Person
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Touching story about three people who are able to face addiction and grief through their kindnesses to each other.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Despite a number of character choices which defy credibility, “A Good Person” is an honest portrayal of grief, addiction, forgiveness and accepting personal responsibility and Braff’s best film to date…Pugh has delivered for him in spades
The Gospel of the Beast
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
The Great Escaper
- Excerpt: The Great Escaper is not at all the film you expect it to be and is all the better for it.
Green Border
Paulo Portugal @ www.esquerda.net [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Estreia esta quinta-feira nas salas portuguesas este filme que parte de um guião feito de centenas de horas de análise de documentos e entrevistas com refugiados, residentes próximos da fronteira entre a Polónia e a Bielorrússia, bem como depoimentos anónimos de guardas fronteiriços.
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Num robusto registo de ficção documental, a polaca Agnieszka Holland aproxima-nos da experiência radical e diversa de refugiados em busca de asilo nas duas fronteiras do seu país: Bielorríssia e a Ucrânia.
Nadine Whitney @ In Their Own League
- Excerpt: “Green Border” is one of Holland’s greatest cinematic achievements in years. It is both an act of compassion and a call to recognise harm. The grand stateswoman of Polish cinema has returned with a gripping piece of political and humanistic art.
The Gullspång Miracle
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: One thing is guaranteed, however: you will debate the enigma of The Gullspång Miracle long after it is over.
Gulmohar
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Gumraah
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A riveting war story that reveals the bonds that build between soldiers and interpreters
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: The heart of this account isn’t the thrilling action but rather a compelling friendship between two men united by war.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That Salim and Gyllenhaal are so good almost seems like an afterthought because Ritchie has us too involved in their characters’ plight to get distracted by the artifice.
A Handful of Water
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Zapf shows us that when we work together we can start in a positive direction.
Happiness for Beginners
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Are there better rom-com options out there? Sure, but there’s also a ton that are worse.
Hidden Blade
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: On a purely aesthetic basis, this is a slick and handsomely made production
Hills and Mountains
- Excerpt: A wedding as a funeral
Hilma
- Excerpt: Af Klint was an unconventional subject, but this is a very conventional, slightly stuffy biographical film: a series of defining moments and significant encounters in beautiful period settings and costumes.
His Only Son
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Anyone seeking a good Biblical drama will almost certainly walk out of this picture feeling satisfied and raised up.
The Hole in the Fence
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: No matter how vicious you might assume the metaphor for [white supremacy within] contemporary Mexican society Joaquin del Paso’s THE HOLE IN THE FENCE will get, he and co-writer Lucy Pawlak can always take things further.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Hole in the Fence is a quietly disturbing and powerful critique of how boys are groomed by men to become the masters of society, the next generation of patriarchal monsters who’ll terrorise the world.
Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: A lot of people these days on the Internet and elsewhere seem to have an unquenchable thirst for celebrity biographies. In this regard, HOLLYWOOD DREAMS & NIGHTMARES is just feeding that appetite. Here the biographer is telling the history of Robert Englund, who in his fifty-year career is best known for the role of Freddy Krueger.
Home is a Hotel
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: What happens to each featured character after five years becomes gripping and even surprising. But what remains exasperatingly frustrating is that after 50 years across America we still have not fixed the working poor housing shortage, much less the homelessness of the handicapped, mentally ill or addicted.
House Party
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Harrison Martin @ Flixfrog
- Excerpt: While it’s not as good as the original, House Party (2023) is a solid movie. The cameos are plentiful and Kid Cudi elevates the comedy to another level.
How to Have Sex
- Excerpt: In a social landscape often dominated by the unsaid and the unaddressed, How to Have Sex mirrors reality by avoiding explicit discussions of the traumatic events at their core.
How to Rob
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: It is to Horgan and his actor/producer partners Uche and Koopman’s credit that both characters appear ten years older by the time their adventure ends days later…This gritty little indie deserves a look and word of mouth could lead to a cult following.
Huesera: The Bone Woman
- Excerpt: In the process of shedding her old life and taking up the new, [Valeria] becomes disoriented and separated from herself, and finds no understanding for what she’s going through.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Huesera stages an existential battle between the weight of expectations that come along with heteronormativity versus the reality of queer people who are forced to conform to hetero norms and what happens when they break free of the spell later in life.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The film does an excellent job balancing the narrative’s seriousness with its comedy as Sasha’s unique diagnosis lends itself to humorous interactions with Paul and her family.
Hundreds of Beavers
- Excerpt: There were, in fact, hundreds of beavers.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While this live-action LOONEY TUNES epic of silent-era slapstick nonsense is definitely too long, it proves itself to be a vast improvement over its predecessor by fully leaning into the madness until you can’t help reveling in its charm.
Hypnotic
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
I Like Movies
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Lehtinen plays his role to perfection, annoying everyone on- and off-screen with his complete lack of interest in the world outside himself and movies.
IB71
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Idiot Fish
- Excerpt: It only takes one lie
L’Immensità
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Sarah Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: Miserable situations in real life can make for interesting drama on the screen, however, and newcomer Giuliana is more than up to the role of Adri, creating a complex portrait of a young person who is not sure about a lot of things but has a strong sense of self and a warm relationship with their family, father excepted.
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
In From the Side
- Excerpt: In from the Side looks great, the rugby action is convincing (the director must have recruited real-life rugby players as extras, since they clearly know how to play), and there are certainly a lot of handsome men featured in various states of dress and undress (if you like bearded guys, that goes double).
In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: one wild ride and an essential piece of rock history.
In the Dusk
In the Shadow of Beirut
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: By following four families during the course of five years, the documentary proves a damning indictment on living conditions made increasingly worse with every new law change.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: I chose to review this movie because I was curious about what the Clintons would choose to sponsor. I recommend it because it touched my heart.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: I chose to review this movie because I was curious about what the Clintons would choose to sponsor. I recommend it because it touched my heart.
In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A pilgrimage with Pope Francis to visit the people and express his concerns for the world.
Influencer
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a well-executed thriller wherein we’re allowed to check our compassion at the door. There’s no one to therefore root for, so we bask in the potential carnage to see who (if anyone) escapes alive.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: A horrific reality check for those lost in the monetised sauce of the internet’s digital fakery.
The Innocent
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Garrel’s script continually references the art of acting, his own character amusingly the least convincing at pretending…
Inside
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Whether or not Vasilis Katsoupis’s film achieves escape velocity from genre limitations though overt sociopolitical commentary is questionable.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: It is a testament to Mr. Dafoe’e sheer physicality as well as his on-screen presence, that it remains watchable. Even during a sequence where his character, an art thief with specific taste untethered by market value, turns very expensive tropical fish into uncertain sushi.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Katsoupis’s themes are as clear as the water in the indoor feature Nemo begins to use as a toilet, but his film does work as one of those single-trapped-human-fighting-for-survival movies…
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Willem Dafoe is one of the few actors who can command the screen all by himself. That’s precisely what he does in Inside, a one-man movie that allows him to give an awe-inspiring tour de force performance.
Insidious: The Red Door
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is a forgettable movie that does nothing to take the franchise to new heights.
The Integrity of Joseph Chambers
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Robert Machoian follows up his masterful “The Killing of Two Lovers” with the same crew and star for another exploration of the male ego pummeled into vulnerable submission.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Thankfully, that repetition serves an authentic series of mistakes and second thoughts leading to what one can only be described as catatonic shock.
Io Capitano
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: It’s a harrowing, if ultimately rewarding, experience.
Nadine Whitney @ The Curb
Andrew Wyatt @ The Take-U
It Ain’t Over
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A wide-ranging portrait of the extraordinary baseball player and coach, cultural icon, and family man.
It Is in Us All
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
It’s Burning
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: A shockingly racist confrontation symbolises a systemic problem in this prescient German drama
It’s Basic
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: The biggest favor “It’s Basic” gives us is the encouraging, heartwarming stories of what happens to the working poor when they receive a small guaranteed monthly income. The shame comes when we realize how so many employers pay their employees so little that homelessness, crime, double and triple job shifts (destroying family cohesion) become the only options.
Jaane Jaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Jack Has a Plan
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Jack, it turns out, had a very good plan, indeed.
Jacob the Baker
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: First published in 1989 by Random House, the “Jacob” books carry messages of wisdom and caring as does this remarkable film.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: First published in 1989 by Random House, the “Jacob” books carry messages of wisdom and caring as does this remarkable film.
Jawan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Action thriller, drama, romance, musical, comedy, and political commentary all into one explosive spectacle.
Jesus Revolution
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Harrison Martin @ Flixfrog
- Excerpt: With fine talent behind and in front of the camera, Jesus Revolution manages to tell an intriguing and educational story that is not overly preachy.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: If it wasn’t all in service of public relations, I might even say it’s good. But we live in an era where bigots and racists hide behind religion to persecute, control, and kill. Good propaganda might be well-made, but it’s still propaganda.
Jethica
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: the best thing Ohs and his cast have accomplished is never undermining the seriousness of stalking while achieving a gently comedic tone before wrapping with a feel good ending you may not see coming.
Sarah E Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: …has the freshness of a micro-budget film that relies on creativity and ingenuity to make up for a lack of financial resources.
- Excerpt: On the surface, supernatural horror-satire Jethica is a decidedly small-scale affair; director Pete Ohs co-wrote the script with the four main actors in the cast while also serving as producer, editor, and cinematographer. Yet what the film lacks in flashy production values, it more than makes up for with considerable ingenuity and cleverness — not to mention, a great deal of delightfully dry, deadpan humor.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Seeing how Ohs and company achieve [their] success on a small indie budget while subverting genre conventions might be worth having to sit through [a rather egregious] blunder.
Joan Baez: I Am a Noise
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A raw look at the public and private struggles of the singer and activist
Journey to Bethlehem
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A wide-ranging documentary on the life and work of the prolific writer, outspoken political activist, and dedicated educator.
Joyland
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While “Joyland” has become known as a romance between a married man and the trans dancer he begins to work for, it is actually far broader in scope, addressing how Pakistani patriarchy oppresses women and the LGBTQ community.
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Nick Kush @ MovieBabble
- Excerpt: Saim Sadiq’s banned-at-home debut has a tender touch and plenty of empathy of go around.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: JOYLAND ultimately proves itself to be about complicity. The ways in which our silence allows for the systematic dismantling of another’s chance to be free.
Judy Blume Forever
- Excerpt: Judy Blume Forever is a film for fans of the author, who will love it to death, but it also has a lot to say about children’s literature, censorship, and being a woman in American society.
Juniper
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [A] poignant film centering the psychological toll of difficult lives rather than the goal to ease their pain. That exists too, but as a byproduct of their strength to deconstruct the games society often demands we play in lieu of confronting the truth.
Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Kho Gaye Hum Kahan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Khufiya
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Tusshar Sasi @ Filmy Sasi
Kids vs. Aliens
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: There are kids, there are aliens, there are kids versus aliens!
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: KIDS VS. ALIENS provides a rollicking good time with tweens swearing up a storm as bodies fall left and right. And while I assumed it would embrace that sense of fun absurdity, I didn’t anticipate how impressive the stakes might prove.
Killer Book Club
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Kim’s Video
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
King Coal
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: As a work of cinema, King Coal proves aesthetically stunning, while also holding our attention as cultural anthropology. McMillion Sheldon pulls off the impressive feat of making such a specific documentary a meditation on the state of the nation as a whole (without any form of heavy-handedness to alert us to what she is doing).
The Kings of the World
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Kitchen Brigade
Klondike
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Kompromat
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: while “Kompromat” is a popcorn political thriller with some genuinely tense moments, it suffers from believability issues with its two main characters.
Kuttey
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Landscape with Invisible Hand
- Excerpt: Its message about art and its significance to those who create it and those who observe it, comes through with great clarity.
The Last Repair Shop
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
The Last Rider
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Last Rider is packed with details about the interactions and strategies of Tour de France participants that help make Greg LeMond’s resurgence even more impressive.
Last Sentinel
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Whereas you might assume this low budget Estonian production would devolve into an “us versus them” mentality ripe for fireworks, the script refuses to deviate from its anti-war wake-up call approach.
Last Shadow at First Light
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Last Summer
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: La cámara se va a quedar observando en ciertas escenas y durante varios minutos el rostro de cada uno de los tres personajes principales, sin cortes, en un ejercicio que es excitante e incómodo por partes iguales.
The Last Voyage of Dementer
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Spanish creature actor Javier Botet does an excellent job capturing Dracula’s unnatural movements and physique… accomplishing the complete opposite of Gary Oldman’s sensual fiend.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: I’m glad this is the “last” voyage because I don’t want to board this ship again.
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: There are too many other good Dracula films to watch other than this flawed one.
The League
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: At its most engrossing, the film vibrantly sketches out the historical roots of the Negro Leagues.
Leave
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The answers ultimately come very quickly at the eleventh hour, tidily wrapping up what is an overly drawn-out narrative of repetitive examples of patriarchal domineering. I think von Rittberg [does] a good job keeping us invested, though.
Leave the World Behind
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: For a cast this talented, and a visual palette willing to take chances, we come away feeling like we ran around in circles with nothing to show for it.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A meandering conversation without a compelling payoff.
- Excerpt: Leave the World Behind intricately intertwines Sam Esmail’s directorial finesse with Rumaan Alam’s thought-provoking source material, delivering a compelling exploration of familial dynamics, societal issues, and the impact of fear and uncertainty on human behavior.
Leda
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s definitely not the sort of thing you’d want to walk into blind off the street, but those already interested in Greek mythology and poetically abstract films should at least appreciate the effort if not the whole package.
Legions
Las Leonas
- Excerpt: Directed by Isabel Achaval and Chiara Bondi and produced by acclaimed filmmaker Nanni Moretti, the documentary Las Leonas depicts how a shared love of soccer has brought together a group of immigrant women living on the outskirts of Rome and given their lives a healthy dose of excitement, friendship, and hope.
The Lesson
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: It’s a testament to the cast and filmmakers that The Lesson’s mysteries are worth unraveling.
- Excerpt: Richard E. Grant is an inspired choice for J.M.—his offbeat looks, haughty air, and ability to give the impression that he’s rotting from the inside out are the perfect match for a character who’s lost the thread but won’t admit it.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: If there is a flaw here, it is that the writing is more diffuse than it should be for this to be as riveting as it could have been. Still, it is a subtle but powerful film full of unexpected intrigues and ruthless violence that is no less destructive for being virtual.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Despite the filmmakers’ intent to surprise us, little that happens in “The Lesson” cannot be anticipated. The chief pleasures to be found here are in the beautiful Hamburg estate…and the performance of rising star McCormack.
Let It Be Morning
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film features many striking moments, a standout watching Mira dance to The Dead Weather’s ‘I Cut Like a Buffalo’… may not enjoy the success of the crowd pleasing “Band’s Visit,” but it is the more thought-provoking film.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Could it be more biting? Sure. A bit more anger would have done it well. You still cannot deny its effectiveness as is, though—especially if that restraint helps earn the eyeballs of those who need to watch it.
Lie With Me
- Excerpt: Done that, been there
- Excerpt: Done that, been there
A Life on the Farm
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: while Harding tries to grab our attention at the onset with some of ‘Farm’s’ more lurid aspects, his documentary shifts into a more compassionate view of someone truly special.
Life Upside Down
- Excerpt: Even with a very strong cast, “Life Upside Down” is a lesser entry in this category due to a weak screenplay from director Cecilia Miniucchi that relies on tepid dialogue and awkward and distracting workarounds. Even with a very strong cast, “Life Upside Down” is a lesser entry in this category due to a weak screenplay from director Cecilia Miniucchi that relies on tepid dialogue and awkward and distracting workarounds.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: There’s a greater chance of experiencing PTSD from reliving that sense of isolation than finding any real emotional value.
Line of Fire
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I can’t personally separate its entertainment from its messaging—unwitting or not. I just can’t. All the power to you if you can, though, because LINE OF FIRE is entertaining.
Linoleum
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Colin West performs several sleights of hand with his sophomore feature, a movie about failed dreams and dysfunctional families that keeps bending time and space, evolving into a parallel universe love story.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a thrilling, sometimes heavy, drama about love, identity, and individuality that takes you to the ever-expanding universe of us.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: On the plus side, ‘Linoleum’ has a gentle, Gaffiganesque charm and a resolution that tugs on susceptible heartstrings. So although it falls short of a general recommendation, if you are looking for the unusual combination of a puzzle movie with a tearjerking element, I’ll understand if you value this film highly.
Little Dixie
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: It carries out a routine formula slightly better than normal, yet not well enough to be worth spending two hours on.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: You chose this particular genre flick with a desire to watch Frank Grillo casually take out a high number of nameless antagonists while pursuing mostly justified (if immoral) acts of violence. It’s what he does and what Swab and company deliver.
Little Richard: I Am Everything
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Cliffod @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cortes’s impressive work culminates in a montage of all the musicians Richard influenced, a knockout punch of a final argument.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: As a collection of new interviews and archival footage, Cortes isn’t reinventing the wheel where structure or aesthetic are concerned. But she does a phenomenal job weaving everything together for optimal coherence and emotional impact.
A Little White Lie
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Maren and Belden take us to some weird places for the gag. Shannon and Hudson are very good, though. Both trying their best to tether the surrounding chaos to the ground.
Locked In
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Lola
- Excerpt: Lofty in ambition yet flawed in realization, LOLA is nonetheless an intriguing experiment in lo-fi science-fiction—not to mention, a cautionary tale of the kind of artistic expression we can expect under fascism.
Lord of Misrule
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Much could have been done with all this material, but “Lord of Misrule” ends up doing very little, resulting in an occasionally interesting experience, but one generally lacking in ambition and atmosphere.
Lost
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Lost Weekend: A Love Story
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Anyone who regards Pang as a footnote in Beatles history as his companion during drunken carousing in L.A. with Harry Nilsson is in for a surprise.
A Lot of Nothing
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an entertaining if overstuffed ride that pulls no punches. Because these conversations only seem to ever end worse than they’ve begun since the only person we truly listen to today is ourselves.
Love Again
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Love Life
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Jealousy isn’t what Fukada is interested in pursuing. He’s focusing upon forgiveness instead. Not for the other’s transgressions or unspoken feelings, but for themselves.
Love to Love You, Donna Summer
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A documentary that offers a fresh perspective of the singer from those closest to her.
Lovely, Dark, and Deep
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result might not tread new territory insofar as aesthetic or thrills, but it does present an intriguing choice of which Campbell does well to expose its difficult psychological conundrum. Because in the end, we are trespassing.
Lust Stories 2
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Luther: The Fallen Sun
Lynch/Oz
- Excerpt: Philippe’s essay film is both dead-serious about its subjects and playfully exploratory.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Dividing this documentary into six chapters with distinctly different analytical styles makes “Lynch/Oz” feel like an anthology film and, like most anthology films, it is uneven.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …although the movie expects the viewer to have a working knowledge of Lynch and Oz, the topic is broad enough to serve as a jumping-off point for reflections about movies, American culture, and the artistic process itself… ‘Lynch/Oz’ is about the influence of one on the other, but it’s also about all sorts of creative cross-pollinations and new perspectives.
Mad Cats
- Excerpt: Reiki Tsuno’s action-comedy provides a few pretty good chuckles, but never takes full advantage of its zany premise.
Madeleine Collins
- Excerpt: As Judith, Efira is reminiscent of the iconic Hitchcock blondes of yesteryear; her enigmatic and sensual performance calls to mind everything from Kim Novak’s dual roles in Vertigo to Tippi Hedren’s psychosexual secrets in Marnie. Yet while Madeleine Collins clearly aspires to the label of Hitchcockian, the film doesn’t measure up to the high bar set by the Master of Suspense.
Magazine Dreams
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Elijah Bynum’s MAGAZINE DREAMS is a case where there are so many great things happening that are ultimately let down by execution.
Maggie Moore(s)
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: A nifty neo-noir that deftly plumbs the seeping corruption underlying the dull quotidian of a small southwestern city, trading the usual stark contrast between light and shadow for an oppressive sort of omnipresent sunlight that shows everything but reveals nothing.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: If not for the first two-thirds of the romance and last third of the mystery, I’d say the whole enterprise was a dismal failure and waste of quality talent. Because of them, MAGGIE MOORE(S) scrapes by to merely prove a disappointingly forgettable lark.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: While there is therefore little mystery, the easygoing charm and occasional thrills are often enough.
The Magician’s Elephant
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s not that this film does anything wrong – it’s that it doesn’t really do much of anything at all.
- Excerpt: From the encounter with the fortune teller, who gently guides Peter to make sure he shapes his one question to get the most helpful response to the lessons he learns about accepting help, about learning from failure, about “what if?” as a path to re-framing the question, and, most of all, about factoring in the needs of others, we see all of the elements that go into finding solutions, even if they are not the solution you thought you were aiming for.
The Maiden
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers Film
Make Me Famous
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: It’s a great mix of voices, allowing the narrative to truly come alive.
Mal Viver
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Mal Viver Mal: é este o enigma inexorável que nos aguarda ao combinar ambos os títulos dos filmes do díptico que o cineasta português João Canijo leva ao festival de Berlim (ver entrevista). Com a particularidade de ambos os filmes serem exibidos em duas secções competitivas diferentes — Mal Viver na competição oficial, e Viver Mal, nos Encontros.
Mal Viver / Viver Mal
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Mal Viver Mal: é este o enigma inexorável que nos aguarda ao combinar ambos os títulos dos filmes do díptico que o cineasta português João Canijo leva ao festival de Berlim. Com a particularidade de ambos os filmes serem exibidos em duas secções competitivas diferentes — Mal Viver na competição oficial, e Viver Mal, nos Encontros.
Mamacruz
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Mandoob
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers Film
- Excerpt: A compelling character piece with a refreshing dose of comedy that has the added benefit of letting Western viewers see Saudi Arabia on its own terms.
Manodrome
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The film is impressive for how it holds its protagonist’s view of the world separate from its own.
Margot
Paulo Portugal @ esquerda.net [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Catarina Alves Costa conta a história da etnomusicóloga alemã Margot Dias que troca a sua vida burguesa na Alemanha, no final dos anos 50, pela cultura e expressão artística da minoria étnica moçambicana Maconde.
Mars One
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Gabriel Martins…gives us something old and something new with Brazil’s submission for the 2023 International Oscar, a straightforward family drama full of heart with a suggestive sprinkling of magical realism.
The Marsh King’s Daughter
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Marsh King’s Daughter is a powerful story about the psychological hold one person can have on another.
Martin Roumagnac
- Excerpt: To watch Dietrich and Gabin together in Martin Roumagnac is to watch two movie stars that, while perhaps no longer quite at the height of their powers, were still more than capable of capturing the imagination of the viewer.
Mavka: The Forest Song
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Traditional folk music and beautifully animated mythic motifs may be rightfully validating for homegrown Ukrainian audiences, but there’s little else beyond that novelty to capture others’ imagination.
Maybe I Do
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: While Jacobs may not plumb the inner depths of marriage or the soul, “Maybe I Do” guarantees laughter with its fabulously talented cast.
- Excerpt: Sarandon, Keaton, Macy, Gere. What a fine cast you will find here!
Medusa Deluxe
Meg 2: The Trench
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It tries way too hard to win us over – as though it were begging us to like it. It takes a familiar formula and botches it, resulting in one of the more forgettable movie going experiences in recent memory.
Megalomaniac
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With “Megalomaniac,” Ouelhaj not only has actual ideas about the perpetuity of evil, but has crafted an artistically arresting horror film
Memory
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Chastain is excellent as a paranoid but empathetic abuse victim, displaying the edginess that comes of having one’s reality questioned.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Its value is less about plot than the characters and how their respective brokenness has positioned them to be exactly who the other needs to break free from the psychological and/or physical prisons in which they find themselves.
- Excerpt: Memory is a poignant exploration of identity and relationships, anchored by mesmerizing performances from Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard.
Men of Deeds
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Menu-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Don’t expect to see a meal prepared from start to finish as Wiseman isn’t trying to make a cooking show here, instead up to his usual agenda of documenting the workings of an establishment from soup to nuts and it’s mighty satisfying indeed.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I do not see the appeal to ever eat at an establishment like this, but I do totally respect the Troisgros clan as artists and their restaurants as their gallery.
Menus-plaisirs – Les Troisgros
Merchant Ivory
- Excerpt: No serious film lover should miss this documentary.
Mickey Hardaway
- Excerpt: Art is a waste of time
Millennium Mambo
- Excerpt: Director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 2001 film Millennium Mambo is a dizzying, dreamlike depiction of the life and loves of one young woman in Taipei at the turn of the twenty-first century.
A Million Miles Away
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: the biography of José M. Hernández, a man who reached for the stars–literally.
The Miracle Club
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: This “miracle club” is very much in need of its own cinematic, if not actually divine, intervention.
Miranda’s Victim
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: I’m hoping “Miranda’s Victim” resurfaces during awards season, not only so that it might win some awards, but so that it might garner the attention of so many of us who just never knew the origin of the Miranda Rights and the importance of saying them.
- Excerpt: Miranda’s Victim is not easy to watch. But like other Michelle Danner films this unflinching offering is a movie that matters. .
The Mission
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The filmmakers will analyze how the yearning to go native mixed with Evangelical fervor led to death…a thoughtful and well laid out analysis of a preventable tragedy.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “The Mission” is an extraordinary study from National Geographic about the psychology of the extreme adventurer. With interviews from writers and missionaries, it studies questions we also ask the great Mt. Everest climbers who have risked their lives. Why?
Mission Majnu
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Mister Organ
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s the kind of story that might need a trigger warning for viewers who have fallen victim to manipulators like Organ. And it’s a journey that can’t help but draw you into its web of deceit—coercive and fatigued alike.
Mogoado
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Thankfully, regardless of my mind drifting throughout, the cinematography always brought me back. Shot with a vertical aspect ratio, Sainz captures some unforgettable images.
Mon Crime
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Monica
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Both Clarkson and Lysette are great at saying so much with so little. Pallaoro lets each moment speak for itself so the inherent emotion of their performances never gets undercut by redundant dialogue.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An insightful film about how Bhutanese villagers respond to changes coming through the influence of the West.
The Monkey King
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Netflix has given us such good animated films in the last few years that we all know they can do better than this.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film is so relentlessly paced it could have used a few more rest points, but kung fu action is painstakingly choreographed, the animation is vibrant, and its humor is both visual and character driven.
Moon Garden
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: So, while visually gorgeous in its commendable, if incomplete, message about the power of “healing”, the smiles at the end feel more like resignation to me.
The Mother
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Actress Jennifer Lopez plays one bad mother– (Shut your mouth). But I’m talking about the mother (Then we can dig it)
Mother, May I?
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Because the scariest part of what’s happening isn’t that they might lose themselves to that dread. It’s that they will recognize who it is they are becoming is who they actually need to be.
Motion Detected
Movie Madness Episode 404: May We Have Another Classic On Blu-Ray?
Erik Childress @ Now Playing Network
- Excerpt: This week in physical media brings some classics to the 4K universe along with other must-owns for your collection. Peter Sobczynski joins Erik Childress to go over new collections spotlighting Walter Hill, Sidney J. Furie and Gene Hackman. One of Disney’s greatest animated titles gets the 4K upgrade as does classics with James Dean and John Wayne.
Moving On
- Excerpt: On the one hand, it undeniably has its moments of insight. On the other, it settles far too often for first-choice plot turns and gags so familiar you can pretty much call them out in advance…
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With “Moving On” Weitz gets from A to B by careening around J, M and Q but Fonda, Tomlin and Roundtree maintain rooting interest in this odd little film.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Watching these two screen legends get even is way more fun than watching them go to the Super Bowl.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Fonda is fantastic in the lead role, reliving horrors and exorcising demons. Tomlin is just as good, stealing so many scenes with an unmatched delivery and timing.
Mr. Jimmy
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: It is an incredible story and one marvels at the level of detail Sakurai goes to, learning about the ‘texture’ solder in an amp gives to the music or how the wear on a pickup guard might influence things.
Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway
Mrs Undercover
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Mushka
- Excerpt: How to raise a tiger
Mutt
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz, himself trans, has made a deeply affecting, personal film about the trans experience, one of the very best LGBTQ movies, and just movies In general, of the year.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That these characters can exist in that murky area of confused feelings without having to lose themselves in easy vilification is a testament to the empathy with which Lungulov-Klotz utilizes throughout his story.
Mutzenbacher
My Animal
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A mysterious, mournful film about proscribed teenaged-girlhood and feral female sexuality. Theres nothing entirely original here, but what it has to say, it says with enormous confidence and panache.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: The film uses a lycanthropic framework and mythology to tell the story of jilted first love, finding oneself amid all the noise of growing up, and coming to terms with who and where we are. What could possibly be more human than that?
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
My Happy Ending
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Put their eclectic backstories together and you have a perfectly quirky trio of voices to put Julia on the correct path to recovery via humor and tough love. If only life were so neat and tidy.
My Love Affair with Marriage
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a heady, wildly entertaining personal exploration of the chemical nature of romance.
My Name is Alfred Hitchcock
Victoria Luxford @ City AM
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: The Master of Suspense guides you through his work in Mark Cousins’s illuminating new documentary
My Sailor My Love
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Touching story about a father and daughter dealing with the challenges of both giving and receiving care.
My Sailor, My Love
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Nick Kush @
- Excerpt: Klaus Härö’s tear-jerker mostly earns its emotional appeals, thanks to a script that skirts passed the worst tropes with additional levels of psychological depth.
Nação Valente
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Na semana de comemoração do resgate da liberdade em Portugal, chega às nossas salas Nação Valente, a segunda longa metragem de Carlos Conceição. Por aqui se encena uma consistente e muito atual parábola sobre o vazio da guerra, a soberba imperial, ao mesmo tempo que se acenam os perigos e a vigilância do antigo regime, pelos sinais do recrudescimento da extrema direita
Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose
- Excerpt: …if you aren’t charmed into entering into the spirit of this movie, you’ll probably find it both preposterous and interminable, an experience analogous to being trapped between garrulous bores on an airplane flight.
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: This is an unusual tale, but at a tight 96 minutes, it’s difficult to find a lot to complain about in this peculiar little comedy.
Napoleon
Neeyat
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Nefarious
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Never Too Late for Love
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This is Italy’s version of man versus all that makes the establishment: the government and the church.
New Life
- Excerpt: John Rosman’s debut patiently and excitingly doles out narrative threads to unfurl into a gripping thriller.
New Religion
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Kondo’s curious concoction will mesmerize and enthrall many art-horror fans. Others will find the deliberate pacing more of a chore—while still being intermittently mesmerized and enthralled.
The Night of the 12th
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an unconventional police procedural, one in which an unsolved crime haunts its investigators… emotional callousness begins an array of the violent tendencies of too many men toward women which will weigh upon Yohan.
- Excerpt: Winner of six César Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, the film is unflinching in its depiction of sexual jealousy, the violent acts committed because of it, and the rampant misogyny at the root of it all.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This police procedural isn’t therefore about justice or heroism or even violence. At least not any one isolated from the others. It’s a look at the human condition and its tragic flirtation with futility.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Nightsiren
No Bears
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: There is a sense of urgency that underlines the film, as though Panahi – and the audience – are on borrowed time.
No One Will Save You
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: No dialogue except for two words uttered at the very end. The movie works, but it still feels like a gimmick.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: A solid formal exercise with a mesmerizing central performance steeped in fear by Kaitlyn Dever. [But the script] ultimately has nowhere to go but a slapdash TWILIGHT ZONE-esque ending more wink-and-nod than profound.
- Excerpt: No One Will Save You is a straight-up masterpiece – an explosive, tightly wound film, relentless and merciless in using every bit of its power to thrill.
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: The film’s later shift into quasi-psychedelia doesn’t quite fit with the intimate sci-fi/thriller blend Duffield had carefully built. But there’s an admirable creative spirit here.
The Nun II
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: An effort that is not a complete waste of time. It is a superbly shot film, and directed with a certain understated flair by Michael Chaves, who, along with Taissa Farmiga, gets about as much as can be extracted from an anemic script. The result is decidedly underwhelming, verging on dull despite all the ickiness.
Oasis of Now
Bavner Donaldo @ CInejour [Indonesian]
Of an Age
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Elias Anton, with his bedroom eyes and self-conscious grin, conveys both the unformed boy and confident man we meet ten years later…an artfully crafted emotional wrecking ball, a film that perfectly captures the intensity of first love.
The Offering
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The Old Oak
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Aos 87 anos, o cineasta Ken Loach permanece fiel e consistente a um cinema de pendor realista e humano. E o seu mais recente trabalho, O Pub Old Oak – apresentado em estreia mundial na competição de Cannes, exibido em antestreia no LEFFEST, e em estreia esta semana às salas -, é um valioso acrescento a essa obra notável, feita de combate contra a injustiça e defesa dos oprimidos.
The Old Way
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This Walmart ‘Unforgiven’ is thoroughly color-by-numbers in its plotting.
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Betty Jo Tucker @ AuthorsDen
- Excerpt: youngster Ryan Kiera Armstrong impressed me the most in this new Western. Her thoughtful performance brings realism to her every scene. .
OMG 2
Omoiyari: A Song Film by Kishi Bashi
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Maybe the whole proves a bit niche in the end, but its surprisingly robust education on EO 9066 and its aftereffects really ensures that its look at Bashi’s life resonates as an example of what it means to be a minority in the US.
Once Upon a Time in Uganda
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: “Once Upon a Time in Uganda” works best illustrating the workings of this madcap bunch of filmmakers and their resulting work, clips of which are shown masked with a matte of a 70’s era tube TV
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …serves as a perfect appetizer for those considering pigging out on a Wakaliwood banquet, or as a treasure trove of context for those who already have a seat at the trough.
Once Within a Time
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …a surreal, continually morphing journey, one which resembles a German expressionistic, Orwellian ‘Alice in Wonderland’ as imagined by David Lynch and filmed by Guy Maddin, Philip Glass’s score adding a futuristic element.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Simultaneously ancient and hyper-modern, ‘Once Within a Time’ is as an apocalyptic dispatch from the far reaches of reality… It is uncommercial, personal, specialized, and fated to be underseen, but nevertheless a major cinema event in 2023.
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: Matched with the baroque, almost Cirque du Soleil-like performances throughout and Philip Glass’s haunting score, Once Within a Time is, at times, a mesmerizing curio that is an echo of Reggio’s earlier masterpieces.
One Day as a Lion
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The fun factor cannot be undervalued [regardless of any issues inherent to genre or budget]. It leads to a lot of comical verbal pissing contests and, perhaps surprisingly, a lot of heart.
One Fine Morning
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Mia Hansen-Løve has created a story with such intelligence, warmth, and insight that any person from any walk of life can see themselves in it.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: An understated portrait of a woman balancing the various demands of her life.
Operation Fryday
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Origin of Evil
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It leads to an inevitable conclusion that grows darker and murkier than expected via the blur between reality and psychosis, but its familiar and obvious choices always seem fresh.
Orlando: My Political Biography
- Excerpt: “Praise God I’m a woman”
The Other Fellow
Sarah E Boslaugh @ The Arts STL
- Excerpt: I’d never claim that The Other Fellow is a consequential film, and it could certainly use tighter editing, but it’s pleasant enough if you’re in the mood.
Other People’s Children
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: The ending may at first seem bleak, but then Zlotowski keeps it going long enough to mellow the misery (the Gallified sounds of Antônio Carlos Jobim certainly help). Rachel is ultimately a woman proud to stand on her own two feet, a life filled with accomplishments behind her.
Our Father, The Devil
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The film does not unfold predictably as Marie grapples with the person she was, the person she thought she’d become and the concept of forgiveness, struggling with whom she must forgive and debating if it’s warranted.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Out and About
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Now here is a little movie that deserves a big audience. This winner of three regional U.S. film festivals takes the simple premise of a walk in real time and turns it into a rumination on life…a must see gem.
Out of Exile
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: There’s ambition in Out of Exile, and it has something on its mind, which is admirable. But ultimately the lo-fi, no-frills DTV-style crime thriller (it presents as an action movie, but even in the heist scenes, the action remains minimal) has big ideas hampered by threadbare execution, and there’s unfortunately not much to recommend.
The Outwaters
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a creative take on a descent into madness, but some judicious editing would have made for a better film.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an escalation in attempts to induce fear and discomfort that seems to go on endlessly with flashes of brilliance being left to languish amidst the mundane and/or indecipherable.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Outwaters is not just cosmic horror, it’s a gruesome existential journey that catapults Robbie and his friends through the ugly historical fabric of America encompassed in the Mojave Desert.
Pacifiction
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a character study within a political thriller more intent on mood than answers…a mesmerizing immersion into natural splendor and foreign chicanery.
Padre Pio
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s as though Ferrara has shoved two disparate films together wherein only those who are already keenly aware of the history of both can easily comprehend the overlap.
Pain Hustlers
Palm Trees and Power Lines
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Dack’s film may be the best of its kind since Joyce Chopra’s 1985 “Smooth Talk” and in many ways is the more dramatic side of Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket.”
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Nunca Chove na Califórnia, a premiada primeira longa de Jamie Dack, acaba de chegar à plataforma de streaming Filmin. E com o acompanhamento do hype de ter conquistado o prémio de realização em Sundance. Algo que haveria de empurrar o filme para um generoso percurso internacional.
Pamela: A Love Story
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
The Park
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Passages
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Ira Sachs’s (“Keep the Lights On,” “Frankie”) unconventional love triangle is a portrait of a self-involved emotional manipulator which is emotionally true but dramatically predictable.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: PASSAGES works so well and feels so refreshing because it flips the usual redemption formula. Instead of teaching Tomas the error of his insidiously domineering way, it opens the eyes of his victims (and ours).
Serena Seghedoni @ Loud and Clear Reviews
- Excerpt: Like a theatre play, Ira Sachs’ Passages draws you in with irresistible character dynamics, played to perfection by Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw.
The Passenger
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Smith’s film is a horrific look at how the capitalist workforce trains people to be submissive, to be abused, and also how the family can often act as the breeding ground to prepare kids to grow into submissive adults.
Passengers of the Night
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is but one chapter in their lives. A passage of upheaval and rebirth to discover that pursuing happiness on their terms is enough to know it will eventually be found.
Passion
- Excerpt: Passion, which Hamaguchi made as his thesis film while earning his M.A. at the Tokyo University School of the Arts, shows the director already displaying a keen sense of empathy and understanding for all of the complexities inherent in modern relationships.
Pathaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Peasants
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Besides the gorgeous time-lapse transitions between the seasons, the whole simply looks like a rotoscope pass of an already shot live-action movie. What does that layer of paint therefore add?
Peeping Tom
- Excerpt: Now screening in a brand-new 4K restoration from The Film Foundation and BFI National Archive in association with STUDIOCANAL—with Powell apostle Martin Scorsese and Powell widow Thelma Schoonmaker serving as consultants—Peeping Tom is a thrilling examination of the dangers inherent in making and watching moving pictures. Initially dismissed by critics and audiences alike, it is now known as a cult classic that paved the way for so many films to follow.
Periodical
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Whether you feel pretty in the know or that you have some holes in your knowledge, this is a must-see film that answers questions you may not have realized you needed to ask.
Perpetrator
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Although the story barely holds together and the world building leaves a lot to be desired, it’s hard to ignore Jennifer Reeder’s talent in terms of craftsmanship.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Persian Lessons
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Zofin’s screenplay feels over-embellished in a Hollywood kind of way, but he’s crafted an extremely satisfying double-barreled ending and Biscayart and especially Lars Eidinger…build such a compelling relationship that it works emotionally.
The Persian Version
- Excerpt: a fine cast and creative storytelling ensure this is a journey that people from all walks of life can latch on to.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: All the way around, it’s a winner.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is entertaining and not without its dramatic reveals. [But,] while a good time was had, I can’t shake the sense that there was potential for so much more.
Peter & the Wolf
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While the whole feels familiar in many regards, the real intrigue lies in the superimposition of Bono’s zigzag-toothed wolf upon the figure itself as a sort of mask manifested by Peter’s fear.
Petite Fleur
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: O cinema do argentino Santiago Mitre tem andado nos olhos do mundo. É, aliás, o que se pode chamar um ‘valor seguro’ na consistente estrutura de cinema do seu país. Ainda que esta incursão em modo de co-produção, mais para consumo francófono, se satisfaça plenamente com um pincelada ligeira com tonalidades de alguma violência estética.
Piaffe
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It can be very slow and is always weird in the absurdness of the sensorial fetishes that result, but you cannot deny its singular passion to provoke, arouse, and entertain.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Oren’s film is all about letting our real selves grow, giving ourselves space for the growing pains of identity, and recognising that the power lies within us, as individuals, to determine our own identity.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: This trans-adjacent film traffics in an uncomfortable blurring of sexual boundaries: between male and female, consensual and non-consensual, human and animal. There are meaningful connections and memorable scenes, and yet it often feels like an overstretched premise rather than a story.
Pianoforte
- Excerpt: Mixing the stories the way Piatek does serves another purpose: it emphasizes how much these young and very talented musicians have in common, despite their different national origins and cultures.
The Picture Taker
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Bertelsen constructs his film as a resource for context without passing any judgment. [We] absorb what’s said, weigh the scales between good and evil, and bask in the artistry that stands up to both. Hero or villain, no one can deny [Withers’] talent.
Pilgrims
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is a film about the psychological scars of places, objects, and people. And it doesn’t shy away from the complexity of those scars extending beyond just the victims’ loved ones.
Pipes
- Excerpt: Grin and bear/bare it
Pippa
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Plan 75
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a well-acted and structured journey towards oblivion that retains a glimmer of hope thanks to characters caught within. [Its] criticism and commentary are objectively drawn to both question the idea’s legitimacy and execution.
Plane
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Entertainingly ridiculous? Or ridiculously entertaining? The slick of wild nonsense slapped over an uninspired undercoat is enjoyable enough while you’re onboard, and then it’s instantly forgettable.
- Excerpt: Gerard Butler cements his status as king of the Big Dumb Action Movie
Plastic Earth
- Excerpt: Some things are designed to last forever: music, art, literature—hopefully—relationships. But garbage—notably plastics, worse still: microplastics—threaten to end the world as we think we enjoy it, one water bottle at a time.
Playing with Fire
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: The entire documentary is itself a work of art. Allan Miller, the director, writer, and executive producer has choreographed an informative, gloriously beautiful account of Sorrell’s incredible talent.
Please Baby Please
- Excerpt: This is a film that’s queer in every sense of the word, and it’s one wild ride indeed.
Pleasure
João Pinto @ [Portuguese]
The Portable Door
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s just twisty enough to keep adults invested while remaining silly enough to hold the attention of any children too.
Praying for Armageddon
- Excerpt: Praying for Armageddon is an eye opening thriller. It never makes its point quietly, but why should it?
Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Nell Minow @ rogerebert.com
- Excerpt: Long before Kris Jenner coined, trademarked, and monetized the term “momager,” but after the term “co-dependent” was first used by Alcoholics Anonymous, we see in the two-part documentary “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” Teri Shields insisted on control over every detail of her daughter’s life.
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields manages to present its subject as a whole person. By the end of the film, we feel we’ve seen Ms. Shields from every angle of her personality.
The Price We Pay
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: We care enough to see where things go, but them ending up dead or alive is inconsequential since the gore is the star. I would have liked a story.
Project Z
The Promised Land
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an old fashioned epic spiked with modern ideas about racism and class, its hero made a better man by witnessing the evil perpetrated by his villainous foe.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While that is what the plot provides for a majority of the runtime, the narrative proves so much bigger. Not in external scope, but in the internal growth of a man beholden to unjust rules.
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A thrilling historical drama that works on a visceral, intellectual and emotional level, and that immerses us in a world that feels very foreign, but that in several aspects, unfortunately, is still very similar to ours.
The Properties of Metals
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Pruning
- Excerpt: How free are any of us?
Pure O
- Excerpt: I highly recommend Dillon Tucker’s Pure O to experience for yourself the feelings of empathy which can be derived from a work as authentic and vulnerable as this one is.
Quasi
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: So, while I enjoyed myself, I didn’t really laugh. It’s safe. Obvious. And that’s the last thing I never thought I’d say about Broken Lizard.
Quicksand
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The rest is noise regardless of how serious or dangerous it proves. This is a world where trauma doesn’t exist, so there’s no use sweating the small stuff like murder, car theft, or bodily injury.
The Quiet Migration
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Quiz Lady
Katie Smith-Wong @ Digital Spy
- Excerpt: While certain parts need fine-tuning, Quiz Lady offers bouts of laughs and heartfelt moments with some winning performances.
R.M.N.
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Mungiu holds a mirror at modern society, showing how tribalism and hive-mind thinking brings out the worst in people. While his film does not offer any answers, it takes the important step of admitting that there is a problem.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With “R.M.N.,” which refers to the process of scanning the human brain, Mungiu examines all of human society’s ills within the confines of one Transylvanian village climaxing with one extraordinary 17 minute single take…
- Excerpt: Cristian Mungiu’s thriller paints a painstaking picture of a fatally flawed system tearing a small Romanian village apart.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a tense affair that ultimately puts Matthias in the middle to finally pick a side, culminating in an unforgettable night-time conclusion that brings everything full circle to reveal the thing we truly fear is us.
A Radiant Girl
- Excerpt: deeply personal film for Kiberlain, partly inspired by her own family history, it is a haunting depiction of everyday life under fascism and a timely reminder that the echoes of the past can still be heard today — and we would do well to listen.
Radical
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Eugenio Derbez is extraordinary.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Radical is an inspiring film to watch and reiterates the educational importance of self-image and belief in the human potential.
Radical Wolfe
- Excerpt: Richard Dewey’s Tom Wolfe Doc Celebrates His Journalistic Bravery But Doesn’t Emulate It.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A spiffy documentary on the life and work of Tom Wolfe, who pioneered disruptive journalism and exposed American obsessions.
Rapture
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Rapture” is a film distinctly addressed to festivals, which does highlight, however a number of interesting comments through an approach that is particularly intriguing if messy, especially due to the impressive visuals.
Rare Objects
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: It’s overstuffed and often jarring. But it’s also honest and unassuming, never insipid or sentimental, with a rough power, a generous spirit, and performances that are warm, wise, and perceptive.
Reality
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Interesting docudrama with a compelling performance from actress Sydney Sweeney.
- Excerpt: Sydney Sweeney shines in this no-frills docu-thriller about whistleblower Reality Winner.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: How much of that subterfuge is real and how much is inferred by Satter remains unknown, but that fact only adds to the intrigue. Everything is filtered through a prism of bias.
Rebel
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: With long-takes and stunningly choreographed music video-esque interludes, the filmmakers are using every cinematic trick in the book to overwhelm us [emotionally] into investing in the Wasakis’ plight.
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Despite a wide scope and plenty of spectacle, the weaknesses in story and character make the narrative feel thin.
Red, White & Royal Blue
Tusshar Sasi @ Filmy Sasi
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: The movie is a fun, whimsical rom-com fantasy that soars on the chemistry of its two leads, even as the uninspired direction and visual style leave much to be desired.
Refuge
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: But the example of Clarkston, a diverse Georgia city full of refugees, is worth the price you may pay to see this insightful, inspiring film. It’s just what you might expect from something executive produced by Katie Couric and her media company.
Reggie
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Remembering Every Night
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: If the experience can occasionally feel a little too aimless, know that the reward is primarily in the watching, no matter how oblique the cinematic pattern. From beneath the calm of a warm summer day, powerful emotions surface.
Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: An extravaganza of set design, videos, dancers, and choreography.
Reptile
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s handsomely made with strong, committed performances, but it plays so closely to the blueprint that it never establishes an identity of its own.
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Restore Point
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It may feel by-the-numbers in scope, but its execution more than makes up the difference. A testament to everyone involved that it proves a worthy return to the genre [for the Czechia].
- Excerpt: Restore point is a very good-looking, thought-provoking film, unafraid to go where it needs to, even if we may be uncomfortable with the truth.
Return to the Theatre of Terror
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The special effects throughout are quite good and the acting always gets the job done. If I were to criticize one thing about the whole it would be the runtime because two-and-a-half hours is a large commitment it cannot sustain.
Revoir Paris
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an ode to the innocent in the City of Lights.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A deeply humane, delicately constructed journey through trauma and recovery that cuts like a knife and soothes like a hug, somehow, miraculously, managing both bundles of feeling at the same time.
- Excerpt: How do you resume normal life after an earth-shattering event? That is the question that drives Revoir Paris (Paris Memories), the story of a woman struggling to piece together missing memories from the night she survived a mass shooting at a Parisian bistro.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: Winocour—whose own brother, Jérémie (to whom she dedicates the film), survived the real-world attacks—is never concerned with the why and how of what happened. Her cinematic eye is squarely on the way in which damaged souls mend their broken hearts and minds. It’s a marvelous study of a vital topic, anchored by a brilliant actress.
Rhino
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a graphic drama that supplies a continual string of death and destruction, but none of it occurs without its impact being felt in full. That also means none of it is left unpunished either.
Ride On
River
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While the journey doesn’t utilize a single-take device like BEYOND, its frenetic pace and potential for extreme emotions demands a similar level of investment that you’ll be more than willing to provide due to its infectious sense of entertainment.
The Road Dance
- Excerpt: …committed acting performances, particularly by the primary trio of Corfield, Morven Christie, and Ali Fumiko Whitney (the latter as Kirsty’s mother and sister), elevate this film far beyond what the rather mundane scripting gives them to work with.
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Rodeo
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s about finding a purpose beyond the status quo and the existential crisis born from being a part of a family that only fosters equality amongst those who are forced to serve. And there isn’t a single inauthentic moment.
Róise & Frank
- Excerpt: Peter Robertson’s cinematography includes judicious aerial shots to complement the more intimate images of the village, giving us a perspective that just could be heaven along with modest, lived-in settings. The exceptionally evocative score from Colm Mac Con Iomaire gently expands the storyline, with just a couple of simple ascending notes shifting the tone at the first significant encounter between the title characters.
Rose
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A road trip during which we meet a schizophrenic character and learn to see beyond stigma.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A road trip during which we meet a schizophrenic character and learn to see beyond stigma.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: ROSE does a wonderful job ensuring [Inger’s humanity] stays in the spotlight whether through drama or comedy. Because, despite the pitfalls of the subject matter, this is a very funny movie.
Rotting in the Sun
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: When ROTTING IN THE SUN is funny, though, it’s very funny. Its pieces might overshadow the whole, but some of them are so good that sitting through the rest becomes a necessity.
The Roundup: No Way Out
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: As consistently entertaining and engrossing as the previous chapter, it’s easy to see why the filmmakers are making a go at producing these sequels so quickly. Strike while the iron is hot.
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
Run Rabbit Run
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: ts repetitiveness and lack of narrative momentum keeps things stuck in neutral.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Director Daina Reid does a great job visualizing this lifting of the veil with figures hiding in shadows while young LaTorre steals scenes opposite an unraveling Snook with uncanny ease.
- Excerpt: RUN RABBIT RUN is not for all. But actors answer horror’s call.
Sakra
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Regardless of that chaotic drama, however, the real draw is the action and fight choreography. Because the wirework and special effects paired with the speed at which everyone on-screen is operating makes the dizzying battle scenes exhilarating.
Sam Now
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: The real magic of this film is done through the editing by Darren Lund and Jason Reid. They weave a spotlight on Sam, the youngest of Jois’s sons, who was just starting his freshman year of high school when his mom went AWOL.
- Excerpt: A poignant and beautiful exploration that balances loss and hope in equal measure.
Sanctuary
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: ‘Sanctuary’ is the pitch-perfect blend of an erotic thriller and a romantic comedy
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: It isn’t until the very final scene that we realize that what director Zachary Wigon and writer Micah Bloomberg have crafted is a perverse romcom, a feature of a film which continually keeps us guessing.
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: anctuary’, a kinky dark romantic comedy, transcends its overtly sexually-charged trappings to become a provocative exploration of power, control, and trust. With an unforgettable performance from Margaret Qualley, it’s a wildly unpredictable ride that’ll leaves an indelible mark on the more risqué viewer’s psyche.
Satan Wants You
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: It’s somewhat unfortunate the link between the book and Satanic Panic isn’t explored more deeply, but the efforts to shine a light on Smith and Pazder’s inadvertent role in its rise is eye-opening nonetheless.
Satanic Hispanics
“Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Hispanic Satanics,” while uneven, is more entertaining than most, surprisingly effective when its horror becomes comedic and a great showcase for Latino talent – as the marketing states, this movie is Latino ‘AF.’
”
Saturn Bowling
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: A horror film as cold-blooded as the serial killer it depicts on a rampage through Calvados, France, and as cold-hearted as the father whose sins are visited in abundance upon two brothers.
Satyaprem Ki Katha
Satyaprem Ki Katha
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Tusshar Sasi @ Filmy Sasi
Saw X
- Excerpt: The 3rd Annual JanuScary Special continues with Saw X! A middling midquel that doesn’t feel necessary. That being said, I’ll be back for Saw XI.
- Excerpt: https://flickdirect.com/4k-review/2986/saw-x/4k.ashx
Scarygirl
Nadine Whitney @ Loud and Clear Reviews
- Excerpt: Scarygirl is entertaining overall but lacks a certain zest to distinguish itself from other family centric children’s animated features. Positive messaging aside, Scarygirl is competent but slight.
Scrap
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an important message told with a wealth of empathy that never disappears even as Beth spirals deeper and deeper into depression and denial. It’s also an honest portrayal of desperation.
Scrapper
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Charlotte Regan…won the 2023 Sundance Grand Jury World Cinema prize with her feature film debut, which in many ways is like the joyous, equally inventive counterpart to Charlotte Wells’ more melancholy debut “Aftersun.”
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A singular portrait of a girl full of verve and personality. An astonishing feature debut from Charlotte Regan, with a film as cheeky and imaginative, as pleasantly messy and chaotic, as its heroine.
The Seeding
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I’m not therefore sure there’s much in the way of depth considering the theme itself is so overtly drawn. THE SEEDING’s success is thus dictated by how well you believe Wyndham’s defiance works in the face of Alina’s compliance.
Seire
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Park Kang makes his feature debut with the creepiest fear of fatherhood movie since David Lynch’s “Eraserhead.”
The Settlers
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Credit Sam Spruell’s memorably monstrous performance, but also Haberle and co-writer Antonia Girardi for seemingly acknowledging that they cannot simply tread that well-worn path of tragedy.
The Seven Faces of Jane
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The pieces probably work better than the whole, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing considering how purposefully segregated their productions were.
Seven Winters in Tehran
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: This is a compelling true crime narrative that unfolds nearly 10,000 km away, using the facts of the case to call attention to the disparaging state of the country’s women’s rights.
Share?
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: SHARE? might have worked as a short film, but even at just 80 minutes, this becomes repetitive and simply goes on too slowly.
Sharper
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It’s like watching a magic act unfold – it’s entertaining as long as we don’t pay attention to what’s going on behind the curtain.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I must admit I was satisfied by the experience. But you’d have to be willfully ignorant not to understand why others wouldn’t since the plot brings nothing new to the table with a progression that rarely holds real stakes.
She Came from the Woods
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It leans into its 80s setting to get away with some extremely poor taste jokes and plays fast and loose with characters as long as they serve the plot, but the action never drags and [the kills] keep us invested for the duration.
She Came To Me
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: I’ve never been much of a fan of writer/director Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity,” “The Ballad of Jack and Rose”) films, so her latest is a refreshing surprise, a thoroughly balmy (in a good way) romantic comedy
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Say hello to the most unappreciated film of 2023.
- Excerpt: Writer/director Rebecca Miller somehow manages to make heightened characters feel authentic in “She Came to Me,” continuing to show her increasing comfort with warmth and humor.
She Is Love
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: SHE IS LOVE is never better than when past and present collide to show us everything Patricia and Idris have learned during their time apart is perhaps the result of suppressing who they were together and who they are at their core.
Sheroes
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Everyone involved in this movie should be embarrassed.
The Shift
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Works better as a faith-based film than as a sci-fi adventure.
Shotgun Wedding
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The film knows it’s pure fluff and embraces that fact with full conviction.
Travis Burgess @ The Sacred Wall
- Excerpt: Jennifer Lopez leads a game ensemble in the predictable, but cute action-rom-com ‘Shotgun Wedding’
- Excerpt: Shotgun Wedding manages to ring a bell on comic and romantic moments while concentrating on its exciting action sequences.
Showing Up
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A thoughtful drama about the importance of the practice of attention in an artist’s life.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an examination of all the ways everyday life, and to some degree self-sabotage, impinges on the pursuit of artistic creation…Michelle Williams and Hong Chau make for a marvelous pairing, working together like a Newton’s cradle.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a quiet comedy surrounding a high-strung introvert trying to be martyr and savior at once.
Sick
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Clocking in at less than ninety minutes, it comes in, does what it needs to do, and checks out before overstaying its welcome. Frankly, more movies should adopt that approach.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Sick rises above a lot of other modern slasher horror by pulling many of our real lives throughout the pandemic into the foreground.
Sick of Myself
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It has enough to say about mankind’s obsession with celebrity and capitalist greed’s manipulation of the disadvantaged for profit to give the whole value beyond just the satirical nature of its narrative, but [it works on that level] too.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Signe’s psychotic narcissism and the body horror she experiences as a result are the satirical end result of an online economy of validation that rewards the most unhealthy behaviours and lifestyles with fame.
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: It’s an intriguing concept made to work flawlessly so viewers may not even be aware of it for most of the picture. However, there are sections that drag, noticeably slowing the film’s pace and testing the effectiveness of the approach.
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Allison Rose @ FlickDirect.com
- Excerpt: John Woo, known for his signature filmmaking style, subtly alters course in Silent Night, diverging from his usual techniques.
- Excerpt: Silent Night is John Woo stealing from himself in an audacious, messy, tightly choreographed actioner.
Simo
- Excerpt: Sibling rivalry
Simulant
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: [T]he film doesn’t try to simplify the intricacies of the treatment of simulants, leaving it to audiences to decide which side, if either, is more valid.
Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Sitting in Bars with Cake
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The film does have its qualities, and for that I’m giving a recommendation. I just have this nagging suspicion that there is a deeper, more insightful movie hidden here.
The Sixth Reel
- Excerpt: Busch, a well-known drag performer, has a sharp feel for the ridiculous and a well-practiced talent for embodying the essence of classic movie divas.
Sloane: A Jazz Singer
- Excerpt: “She didn’t get her due”
Sly
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It never pushes the envelope to discover the humanity beneath the stardom. Whatever depths there are to be explored is done so sparingly.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Everyone and everything come together to make of “Sly” a compelling portrait. If it veers into hagiography at times, well, that’s the hero’s journey for you.
- Excerpt: SLY documentary pleased me for openness and honesty. Sylvester Stallone, what a guy! I’m happy he’s not a bit shy.
The Smell of Money
- Excerpt: The Smell of Money lays bare a specific example of the tangled mess of economic and racial privilege which explains so much about why things happen the way they do in the United States. It gives ample time to the direct experience of people negatively affected by hog farming but also includes voices like Senator Cory Booker and epidemiologist Steve Wing who place the issues in larger perspective.
- Excerpt: No one is protecting us
- Excerpt: No one is protecting us
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Nell Minow @ rogerebert.com
- Excerpt: The small miracle of the Estonian film “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” is that it does more than show us a blissfully safe space; it invites us inside.
- Excerpt: With its traditions captured in delicate, sweaty vignettes by filmmaker Anna Hints, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’s anecdotes fill your lungs and engulf you, until its women’s secrets drip down your body.
Smoking Causes Coughing
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Despite a thin story, it’s often hysterically funny.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Dupieux writes his characters as vessels to tell wild tales, each one an excuse to create an anthology of bloody laughs that we assume didn’t quite have the legs to become full-fledged features themselves.
Snow Leopard
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers Film
- Excerpt: Snow Leopard is a mysterious, quiet drama with an intoxicating visual style that makes the Tibetan plateau seem like a magical realm pitched above the world—which it kind of is.
Solutions
- Excerpt: There’s lots of good ideas in this movie, but one thing you shouldn’t come looking for is diversity.
Sombras Brancas
Paulo Portugal @ comunidade de cultura e arte [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Em Sombras Brancas, de Fernando Vendrell nasce de um período ligado à memória de um povo que viveu meio século de uma ditadura e soube revoltar-se. Isto foi há quase meio século. Há que recuperar esse espírito.
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Em Sombras Brancas, reconhece-se em Vendrell o gosto pela evocação histórica, em particular, a personalidade autoral. É assim que cinco anos depois de Aparição, focado na vida e criação de Vergílio Ferreira, o produtor e cineasta se lança a um período, e obra particular, de José Cardoso Pires
Somebody I Used to Know
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is not only about the hijinks of a rom com – it is also a story about self-worth and personal identity. While not all the elements work cohesively, the ambition to explore those areas is notable.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s that willingness to call out characters that got me to start sitting straighter in my seat throughout. These are all complicated people trying to find their footing in the murky space between past and future. It’s time to finally live in the present.
Sometimes I Think About Dying
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The dry humor of [Fran and Robert’s] insecurities is entertaining enough to endure the pacing, but it’s the supporting cast like Garrett and especially Marcia DeBonis’ Carol that truly resonates.
Sound of Freedom
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Sound of Freedom is a sincere, well-acted film about an underreported subject.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A compelling action thriller that relies on traditional storytelling techniques.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Sound of Freedom has an effective mix of anger and compassion.
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: All of that burden of discourse is on the shoulders of a film that’s awfully generic.
Sound of Silence
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: If the story surrounding that atmospheric tension was better than a reductive exposition dump, this would be quite the gem. As is, it’s merely a calling card showcasing obvious talent in need of substance.
Space Oddity
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a cute dramedy with effective performances. And what the film lacks in narrative surprises, it more than compensates with heart.
Split at the Root
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- Excerpt: Director Linda Goldstein Knowlton uses talking-head interviews, file footage of ICE arrests, reenactments, and animation to tell the story of two of the thousands of families caught in the legal labyrinth and physical dangers immigrants have faced for more than 100 years of failed immigration policy in the United States.
Spoonful of Sugar
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan has fun with rotting flora and fauna and her perverse sex triangle while highlighting themes of motherhood in all their extreme variations, but she never pulls everything together into a satisfactory whole.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: There are definitely some intriguing moments and worthwhile commentary about double-standards and how abused people abuse others, but so much of it arrives as shock value without depth.
Squaring the Circle
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This isn’t a documentary on album design. Corbijn’s assignment was Powell and Thorgerson’s partnership. So, rather than gain insight into the industry, the film’s worth is in its captivating stories about the phenomenon that was these two men.
Stan Lee
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: While the documentary doesn’t reveal any insights that hasn’t already been part of public knowledge, its sweet and earnest mood makes the whole experience go down smoothly.
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Static Codes
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Has a good heart.
A Still Small Voice
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A portrait of radical empathy practiced by chaplains in the pastoral care department of a New York hospital.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A portrait of radical empathy practiced by chaplains in the pastoral care department of a New York hospital.
The Storms of Jeremy Thomas
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: it is Tilda Swinton, who starred in Thomas’ “Young Adam,” who proffers the film’s most trenchant observations, calling Thomas ‘rock ‘n roll’ and discussing his ‘very English qualify of transgression.’
Story Ave
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a riveting narrative with authentically drawn mirrors to show Kadir that he’s not alone. Whereas that truth can supply him a window towards a brighter future, it can also reveal a perpetual struggle.
Strange Way of Life
Wesley Lovell @ Cinema Sight
Serena Seghedoni @ Loud and Clear Reviews
- Excerpt: Almodóvar subverts the genre while also paying homage to it, and the result is the definition of a modern western: a film that reminds us of Sergio Leone’s classics but, at the same time, feels like it could be set in our day and age.
The Strangler
- Excerpt: The Strangler focuses on a young man who is so deeply affected by lonely women (not to mention, a very distinct moment of childhood trauma) that he targets them in what he believes are mercy killings. Hot on his tail is an unlikely trio: a police detective, a young woman who thinks she may be one of the next victims, and a petty thief who robs the dead as soon as the strangler has left the scene of the crime.
The Strays
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Nathaniel Martello-White has announced himself with a very strong debut. If this is his starting point, I can only imagine what heights he’ll take us next.
Streetwise
- Excerpt: Set in the Sichuan Province city of Zhenwu in the early 2000s — a place full of eerily empty streets that have been abandoned for those in bigger and better cities — Streetwise makes up for its lack of a truly compelling story with a spellbinding aesthetic that should hold your attention regardless.
Subject
- Excerpt: Subject hands the mic back to some of the people made famous by Hoop Dreams, The Staircase, The Square, The Wolfpack and Capturing the Friedmans. It allows them to return to the parts of their lives that were melted down, poured into molds and shaped forever in the public eye by these documentaries.
Suitable Flesh
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: To its credit, the film is not afraid to be kinky and have sex be the driving force of its weird story.
Sulam
- Excerpt: Pathetic family values
Summoning Sylvia
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: Summoning Sylvia is an enjoyable time with a captivating crop of characters; just don’t expect any of it to scare you.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: By allowing preconceptions and lies to dictate these situations rather than open conversation, the friction builds out of control in a self-perpetuating cycle of perceived bigotry. Looks can be deceiving.
Super Natural
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Jorge Jácome deslumbra-nos com um cinema sensorial, que é (e não é, ao mesmo tempo) deste mundo. São os reflexos de vida existente entre o natural e o virtual.
Superpower
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Penn is an inspired narrator who has a message for the U.S. and the entire world. His heart has been won by the determination of the Ukrainians and their Superpower.
Surprised by Oxford
- Excerpt: Oxford itself, the town, the buildings, and the institution is one of the movie’s most significant characters. Almost every shot of the film is filled with its grandeur, dignity, splendor, and traditions.
Surrounded
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I was enthralled throughout by the effectiveness of the plotting, but also Wright’s performance. Bell is fantastic, but it’s Wright who carries the drama
Suzhou River
- Excerpt: Originally released in 2000, Suzhou River is now available in a new 4K restoration that fortunately preserves all of the visual roughness that makes its depiction of life amidst the grit and grime of this polluted river so strangely enchanting.
Suzume
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a gorgeous and emotionally heavy tale of longing and understanding. The humor of a talking chair and heartache of trauma combine to entertain and enlighten en route to a climax as personal to Suzume as it is universal to mankind.
Swallowed
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I was really vibing with the film for the first half of its runtime. It’s tense and mysterious [before ultimately becoming] a prolonged survival film as [the Boss] and Benjamin play cat and mouse to familiar ends.
Sweet Dreams
- Excerpt: Ena Sendijarevic’s satire is efficient, cruel, and unbearably true. It might appear to be a cat and mouse story about one family and their dysfunctional machinations, but Sweet Dreams is about the act of colonialism and the malevolence that accompanies taking a land, a culture, and a people and subjugating them for profit. A carnivalesque piece of cinema that spares no one.
The Taking
Tarla
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music
- Excerpt: The documentary of Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music is arriving when it’s most needed.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: I am more Swift-curious than Swiftie, but I am singing the praises of this concert film. Taylor, Look what you made me do.
The Teachers’ Lounge
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: Portrait of a school in crisis that mirrors clashes in the larger society between authorities in power and those accused of wrongdoing.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Çatak ratchets up the tension masterfully by plunging us into a sketchy situation where it is all too easy to side with the protagonist before nudging her off a very slippery slope.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a tense and heartbreaking journey as the ripple effects of what occurs threatens to destroy futures. And, to make matters more complex, truth should become secondary to the most important aspect of the whole: the safety of children.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: At rock bottom, “The Teachers’ Lounge” is a scintillating microcosm of modern Western life. Promoted as “a study in power dynamics, with themes of truth, justice, racism, respect, and children’s rights,” it’s a raw picture of life with its ironic recent erosion of truth and demand for protective rights.
Teacher’s Lounge
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The Teacher’s Lounge doesn’t exceed its remit by turning the story into a referendum on society.
Ten Little Mistresses
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Thank You for Coming
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Tusshar Sasi @ Filmy Sasi
Theater Camp
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: the filmmakers both poke fun at the eccentrically committed staff and ground their film with emotional resonance and truly talented kids
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Quite simply one of the funniest movies of 2023.
- Excerpt: “Theater Camp” is a true labor of love from people who are former theater kids. They love the children who somehow know from birth that they were born to be performers, and seem to bypass the world of Raffi, JoJo, pop, and rock but know all of the songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Stephen Sondheim by the time when they’re still collecting from the tooth fairy.
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: Fueled by a script that absolutely sings and the thespian talent and improvisational ingenuity to back it up, ‘Theater Camp’ is a hysterical and delightful trip to mockumentary perfection that stands as one of the best comedy films in recent memory. More Molly Gordon in everything please.
Therapy Dogs
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: That’s why Therapy Dogs is undeniably authentic regardless of whether some sequences are staged. It’s a kinetic, hopeful snapshot of today’s generation finding itself on its own terms.
There Goes the Neighborhood
- Excerpt: There Goes the Neighborhood is most eloquent it lets these advocates speak about themselves and their neighborhoods.
There’s Something Wrong with the Children
- Excerpt: The 2nd Annual JanuScary Special continues with There’s Something Wrong with the Children! A horror film that is not only bad, but also not scary.
There’s Something Wrong with the Children
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Children are creepy. The woods are creepy. Children in the woods? Creepy.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The ending can feel repetitive and convenient at times, but it’s not because the filmmakers couldn’t decide how to finish things. It’s precisely because their messaging deals with subjects that cannot be finished. Its programming is ingrained in our DNA.
They Cloned Tyrone
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: In his debut, Taylor has established himself as an inventive cinematic voice. I look forward to watching how well his skill set develops with each new project.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a racial take on John Carpenter’s “They Live” that is smart and funny while also boasting a fabulous cast and craft.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: . A promising start doesn’t take an interesting idea to a satisfying conclusion.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Just because it proves more of an entertaining romp than political satire, though, doesn’t mean the latter won’t resonate. Think a grounded SORRY TO BOTHER.
They Shot the Piano Player
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The animation is great. The music is better. And the story is fascinating if only to ensure this revered yet unknown artist outside of the memories of legends doesn’t become completely lost to time.
The Thief Collector
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is an utterly transfixing story told with an infectious tone, but it’s about 80% speculation. And while that speculation is fun, the whole can feel like spinning wheels for long passages.
The Three Musketeers – Part 1 – D’Artagnan
- Excerpt: The Three Musketeers – Part I: D’Artagnan is a real old-fashioned swashbuckler, full of sword fights, handsome men and pretty ladies, improbably accurate gunplay (with smoothbore weapons!), stunning locations, candlelit interiors, wild stunts, a cast of thousands outfitted in amazing costumes, and a thoroughly enjoyable soundtrack.
Three of Us
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Thunder
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: By the end, even if Elisabeth and her playmates run smack against the intractability of tradition, we’ve experienced the joy of watching them attempt to find heaven on earth. That’s always a worthy goal.
Tiger 3
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Tiger Within
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Zielinksi has taken Gina Wendkos’s somewhat quirky script and made it into a majesty. He has captured an inspiring end of life journey.
Tiku Weds Sheru
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Time of Roses
- Excerpt: How much can the remnants of one individual’s life tell us about the world in which they lived? This is the question at the heart of Time of Roses, an uber-stylish sci-fi thriller from Finnish director Risto Jarva soon to be available in a new restoration from Deaf Crocodile Films and the Risto Jarva Association.
To Catch a Killer
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: There’s nothing here that we haven’t seen executed with more creativity and style in other productions. What we get is a cover performance that knows the lyrics but lacks the soul.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The juxtaposition [of the filmmakers’ ideas with police procedural plotting] isn’t perfect, but their ability to let their characters be flawed and complex does allow our normal preconceptions born from Hollywood copaganda to get pushed aside.
To Kill a Tiger
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: La pobreza produce casi siempre las mismas imágenes. Ve uno los primeros minutos de “Matar a un tigre”, documental indio que estuvo nominado este año al Óscar en su categoría y que subieron esta semana a Netflix y piensa de inmediato que esos parajes del nororiente de la India se ven igualitos a los de decenas de pueblos colombianos, con sus casas desvencijadas, sus carreteras polvorientas y sus habitantes de mirada escrutadora.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: We know that rape and violence towards women is not just an issue in India. It is a world issue that has occurred through time in all societies and social strata. Whether in war or peace, women and girls are vulnerable. Nisha Pahuja’s delicate but powerful film brings it back to men, showing what a father can do with support from an activist group.
Tokyo Pop
- Excerpt: Now being re-released by Kino Lorber in a new 35th anniversary 4K restoration by Indie Collect (funded in part by Burnett and Dolly Parton), Tokyo Pop is a song-filled ray of sunshine that is more than worthy of being rediscovered by modern audiences.
Tommy Guns
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The resulting experiment feels weighty and worthwhile, but, unfortunately, not always engaging.
Tomorrow Is a Long Time
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a beautiful message rendered with gorgeous cinematography and two memorably potent performances, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit of a slog built upon convenient plot points.
Tori and Lokita
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: this is one of [the Dardennes brothers’] best, a heartbreaking and, hopefully, galvanizing film about the horrific exploitation of immigrants … they have surpassed themselves with the performances they have coaxed from young Pablo Schils…and Joely Mbundu
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: All I felt was a constant sense of dread—knowing how things were destined to play out and biding my time in the hopes it wouldn’t suddenly turn graphic too. At least [the Dardennes] refuse to showcase the abuse they put these characters through on-screen.
Total Trust
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Total Trust” was obviously made at risk to the Chinese citizens participating in this film. It is a precious and important documentary examining the cost of safety and order as well as “happiness and fulfillment.”
Totally Killer
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is a romp that is fully aware of the absurdity existing in it. It celebrates the good, the bad, and the goofy with equal consideration.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A welcome addition to an awkward genre that combines the slasher movie with outright comedy.
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Scott Phillips @ Forbes.com
Trader
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: It is a shame he couldn’t procure more robust backing for this…as his slick, twisty script and Murray’s compelling lead performance are undermined by increasingly annoying visual tricks meant to distract from its single, dismal location.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: What follows is a one-woman show of the highs and lows of luck, skill, and ruthless exploitation. Murray [puts] everything she has into the role. You love to despise her. You want her to win even as you realize the steep price being paid by us.
Trenque Lauquen
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: will envelop you in its many mysteries and delight you with its mischievous spirit. Have you ever fallen in love with a movie? This one might just do the trick.
- Excerpt: A sprawling tale that crosses multiple genres, including science-fiction, romance, and noir-tinged thriller, Trenque Lauquen is at its heart about a woman trying to find herself.
Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Twilight
Unicorn Wars
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s also an unforgettable R-rated animated experience that metaphorically tells mankind’s own mythological tales under the guise of cutesy characters to truly get to the heart of how absurd our generations of hostility and bloodshed have always been.
Unidentified Objects
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Unidentified Objects’ fits firmly within the road movie genre, with a couple of twists: it focuses on one of its two travelers much more than the other, and it’s spiked with hallucinatory sci-fi interludes.
The Unknown Country
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Maltz skillfully evolves her movie’s tone, melancholy becoming fearful uncertainty before embracing a love of life. She is particularly adept at evoking that feeling of restorative embrace family reunions can provide those who’ve been apart.
Sarah Marrs @ LaineyGossip.com
- Excerpt: The Unknown Country is an intimate film in the cinema verité style about life along the unseen passages that crisscross America, featuring yet another monumental performance from Lily Gladstone.
Unknown: Cave of Bones
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers Film
- Excerpt: The success of Cave of Bones ultimately depends on the answer to the question I began with: are you ever moved by the sight of human bones? If yes, then you might find questions worth pondering in this accessible, if limited, Netflix documentary.
Unrest
- Excerpt: Taking its name from the crucial piece at the heart of the watches its characters spend their days laboring over, as well as the burgeoning feeling that these workers all deserve better than what they’ve got, Unrest is startlingly quiet and contemplative for a film concerning such revolutionary topics, shot in long, static takes that further emphasize its focus on the passage and usage of one’s time.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: First things first: Cyril Schäublin’s UNREST is a gorgeous film. Pyotr and Josephine are really just two of the many faces we meet on-screen. And that’s fine since the film works best as a period-specific vibe.
Unwelcome
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The filmmakers are so intent on pushing Maya and Jamie’s backs against the wall of sanity and decency that they kind of forget just how silly their climax proves by comparison. Thankfully, that imbalance doesn’t ruin the experience.
Upon Entry
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: From my perspective, despite a few awards and acclamations, “Upon Entry” just didn’t provide a believable scenario.
Uproar
- Excerpt: Uproar is a story set in the past that continues to push Maori stories forward – a funny, kind, warm, and bittersweet story about acceptance and rebellion. Uproar is a triumph for Aotearoa New Zealand cinema.
Users
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: … for those who gravitate to meditative, thought-provoking documentaries sans story or characterization, this may the best of the genre in 2023.
V/H/S/85
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: one very strong entry, a good one, a solid piece of filmmaking that outstays its welcome and two outright duds…Mike P. Nelson’s (2021’s “Wrong Turn” reboot) ‘No Wake / Ambrosia’ is the absolute cream of this crop
Victim/Suspect
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Continuing the searing, cinematic examination of sexual assault that she began with her 2018 feature documentary Roll Red Roll, director Nancy Schwartzman now trains her lens on the way that the police all too often incarcerate victims, rather than perpetrators. You would be forgiven for scratching your head in disbelief at that last phrase, but in Victim/Suspect, the unthinkable happens with alarming frequency.
Vincent Must Die
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That’s where the fun and intrigue lie since this isn’t some high concept gore-fest of carnage like MAYHEM or THE SADNESS. Castang has crafted a quiet drama out of the scenario instead.
Waikiki
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Some of what results can be confusing, but all of it is dramatically potent. And it’s mostly due to a wonderful performance from Zalopany.
Waitress: The Musical
- Excerpt: The show is smoothly staged before an appreciative audience, with well-chosen theatrical touches.
Waitress: The Musical
- Excerpt: …if you like musicals and have an open mind as to how you consume them, this is a movie you’ll want to see, because it combines the feeling of being in a Broadway audience with the advantages of a filmed performance that is preserved for posterity and can be viewed without buying a plane ticket to New York.
Waking Karma
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Alexander and Shetler get a few really strong moments together to allow the grounded nature of the whole to resonate, but it’s not enough to mask the superficiality of the vessel.
War Pony
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While the film takes a while to find its groove, its tragicomedic interweaving stories never feel less than authentic…
We Are Guardians
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: The Amazon Rainforest becomes a battleground for the planet, in this thoughtful American-Brazilian doc about the true cost of deforestation
We Have a Ghost
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: WE HAVE A GHOST is a family-friendly (PG-13) horror comedy about a family that moves into a house with a ghost who tries to be scary, but is actually totally lost.
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
Betty Jo Tucker @ AuthorsDen
- Excerpt: Too bad this film runs way too long. Editing needed — and real strong.
Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer serves as a good introduction to this most fascinating of filmmakers.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: A creative portrait of a lover of Mystery.
WHAM!
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: More than a captivating documentary about the pop music duo. It’s an uplifting portrait of a great friendship.
What Happens Later
Candice Frederick @ HuffPost
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Anyone who comes to it expecting the next When Harry Met Sally… or Sleepless in Seattle is bound to be disappointed.
When Evil Lurks
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The visceral meatiness of this demonic-possession–infectious-zombie combo hits like a blow. The social and political context for the grotesquerie is even more appalling, and so very pertinent.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Rugna utilizes the usual demonic possession tropes, but in unique ways to ensure his mythology captivates on a purely visceral and aesthetic level.
When Will It Be Again Like It Never Was Before
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Heiss handles these tonal shifts very well with an excellent cast of young actors bolstered by commanding, emotionally complex turns from Striesow and especially Tonke.
When You Finish Saving the World
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: There’s a difference between good characters that have weaknesses and those that are simply obnoxious.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Raw in aspect, but refined in approach, WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD has compassion for its characters that they might not afford even themselves. This is a small but mighty story told with subtle tensions rather than overt melodrama. It is a far more effective and affecting work for it, full of discomfort, humor, and astute perception.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: There are a few chuckles to be had along the way, Eisenberg proving particularly adept with the visual gag, but “When You Finish Saving the World” eventually becomes as myopic as its lead characters.
Where the Devil Roams
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The filmmaking collaborative known as The Adams Family…has become a real indie powerhouse in the art horror genre. This isn’t just one of the best horror films of the year, but a true American original.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS is thus more a curiosity than story. More vibe-driven than thematically-charged.
White Balls on Walls
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: This is a surprisingly candid portrayal of an organization striving to be better and recognizing that embracing their discomfort is the only way to move forward.
Who We Are
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: I turned on “Who We Are” and we forgot about our timing. When Jeffery Robinson said he thought he knew it all after graduating from Marquette and Harvard Law School, and then he bothered to learn more, and began to tell that more, we were caught up.
Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: … this is the movie to see and this is a cause to care about.
- Excerpt: We need the tonic of wildness
Wild Life
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is not only an incredible story of environmental activism, but one of scrappy, rugged individuals not only scaling physical heights but succeeding against all odds in the business world. And it’s a love story.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: My biggest takeaway from the whole is optics. This is a feelgood story with some effectively heartfelt and honorable machinations, but it’s also a mostly superficial puff piece that can’t quite shake its public relations air of artifice.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Absolutely non-political and filled with beauty and harmony, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraphy Hill” is a soothing reminder that another path, another way of life, may be possible if you seek it.
Wildcat
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers Film
- Excerpt: It’s unlikely Wildcat will become adored down the line to the level of O’Connor’s writing, but it’s a film that is serious about art, which is something of a rarity in contemporary cinema.
Wildflower
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: She’s a witty young woman, and tells her tale with humour and adept self-awareness.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The script [is] cavalier at times with its subject matter, but that shouldn’t be surprising since effect being positioned above cause is its modus operandi. Its first goal is to entertain and that inherently undercuts its dramatic potency.
Will-o’-the-Wisp
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: ubtlety isn’t always a virtue, but with a project as wispy as this—even at 67 minutes, its plot feels stretched-out—a little could have gone a long way.
With Love and a Major Organ
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a gruesome yet beautiful concept that Albright and Lederer manifest through unforgettable visual metaphor [along this] humorously poignant journey towards understanding that our love can inflict pain onto others just as easily as it can onto ourselves.
A Woman Kills
Michael Barrett @ PopMatters
Lee Jutton @ Film Inquiry
- Excerpt: Written and directed by Jean-Denis Bonan, A Woman Kills is a serial killer thriller with an undercurrent of protest running just beneath its surface.
Woman of the Hour
Women in the Front Seat
- Excerpt: The women featured in Women in the Front Seat are all ages and ethnicities and types. This diversity reinforces the message that there’s no specific class of people entitled to ride, and the sexism of male riders and society at large is no match for the sisterhood they will find among their fellow female riders.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An adaptation of a Ronald Dahl story about changing your life and doing the impossible.
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Nick Kush @
- Excerpt: Wes Anderson’s short is at once extremely faithful to Roald Dahl’s story and yet radically something of his own making.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The effect might be termed ‘whimsically Brechtian.'”
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
João Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
The World is Blue as an Orange
- Excerpt: Tsilyk’s film conveys a sense of what it’s like to live in a war zone in a way that news reports simply can’t, and that’s doing the world a service, above and beyond the creative approach to storytelling and expert cinematography that characterize this film.
The Worst Ones
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, former casting directors who worked with children, won the 2022 Cannes Un Certain Regard prize for their clever film-within-a-film which raises numerous ethical questions about exactly what they are doing here.
A Year in a Field
- Excerpt: For all the majesty of big budget nature documentaries, spending A Year In A Field has yielded wonders for this modest but moving documentary that makes its point without slapping you round the face with messages.
The Yellow Ceiling
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The women display incredible strength as they detail their experiences, reflecting on how it made them feel then and what they’ve realized in hindsight.
Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story
- Excerpt: His own words reveal Weiland to be thoughtful and even a bit philosophical, someone who took seriously the obligation to accomplish something with his life and his talents, but who also took great delight in his friends and liked to have a good time.
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: A fun and entertaining tale of a person wanting to grow up and realizing what that entails.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A poignant coming-of-age tale about a teen girl produced by Adam Sandler. I know, I’m surprised too.
- Excerpt: The film is a love letter to the agonies and messiness of the kids on the brink of maturity. And it is a love letter from Adam Sandler to his family.
You Can Live Forever
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Watts and Slutsky do a very good job balancing their themes since this isn’t your usual coming-of-age film. They must treat the Jehovah community, homosexuality, and Marike’s tug-of-war to find a way through both with equal respect.
You Hurt My Feelings
Cecilia Barroso @ Cenas de Cinema [Portuguese]
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The film deals forthrightly with the question of purpose and whether it can be found in a career.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: n insightful comedy about the epidemic of lying and the lack of trust afoot on all levels of society.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Keeping a little mess involved isn’t always a bad thing and I do believe YOU HURT MY FEELINGS could have benefited from more. The film can therefore feel a bit too perfect in its cause and effect, but the comedy sells itself.
Youth (Spring)
- Excerpt: Youth (Spring) is not an expose of garment factory conditions so much as a collective portrait of the people who work in them.
The YouTube Effect
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: An expansive look at how damaging technological growth on an unprecedented scale proves when put in the hands of cutthroat opportunists left to police themselves so a largely apathetic government can willingly reap the benefits of letting them.
