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.
1992
- Excerpt: 1992 is a film everyone should see.
100 Yards
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a fascinating spectacle because the feud between An and Quan has the passion of a brawl while still maintaining the respect of competition. There’s something refreshing in that.
1980: The Unforgettable Day
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “1980: The Unforgettable Day” seems to have drawn much from Shin Sang-ok’s family comedy/dramas of the 60s, in a style that is hit or miss throughout the movie. However, the entertainment Kang offers here is plenty and the movie passes in leisure, in what is perhaps its biggest trait.
4 Kings 2
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: Overall, “4 Kings 2” is an utterly mainstream production that does impress with its technical aspects, but would definitely benefit from a more intense focus on the gang fighting that would also bring its duration down from the excessive 133 minutes.
The 4:30 Movie
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: We sense that every moment (good or bad) comes from a personal place. That earnestness does a lot of heavy lifting, making this a much more palatable experience compared to Smith’s other, less successful undertakings.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Seeing the Clerks director working in a sweeter mode is nice, which is why it’s disappointing that he doesn’t make a slam dunk.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Kudos to Smith for trying something different, but it’s just too insipid to truly stand apart as a unique coming-of-age tale or a canonical Kevin Smith production.
52-Hertz Whales
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: As such, in the end, “52-Hertz Whale” emerges as a mixed bag, since the story is definitely captivating, but its presentation problematic on a number of levels, with the whole thing emerging as more of a missed opportunity than anything else.
76 Days Adrift
- Excerpt: Imagine setting sail on a record-breaking cross-Atlantic solo trip in 1982, only to have your boat (Napoleon Solo, no less) soon scuppered then have to hang on for dear life in a 4×4 life raft with hopes of, somehow, riding the North Atlantic currents and, hopefully, reaching terra firma somewhere in the Caribbean.
90 Years Old – So What?
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “90 Years Old – So What?” stays true to its title, being funny, interesting and entertaining, while communicating its multi leveled comments nicely.
Abigail
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: the same hunted-in-a-locked-manor-house scenario as “Ready or Not,” this time with a supernatural element and the hunted the majority and while it eventually runs out of gas, its cast, especially young Alisha Weir, helps get us over the tedious bits.
- Excerpt: Aided by thorough performances, Abigail kicks our asses with style and a whole lot of spectacular action.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennis schwartz reviews
- Excerpt: A work of schlock art.
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Abigail’s big twist would be so much more unique and impactful if Abigail was a fully-fleshed heist story at the start.
Abigail
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: When it doesn’t skimp on the gore and is elevated by an unforgettable performance from Alisha Weir in the title role and a great cast, it’s not perfect, but it offers a solid horror film worth recommending.
About Dry Grasses
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Essentially, “About Dry Grasses” is a slow character study of self-alienation by a tremendous director and talented cinematographers.
Across the River and Into the Trees
- Excerpt: Infinite possibilities, narratively speaking
Ae Watan Mere Watan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Afire
Diego Salgado @ Sofilm [Spanish]
AfrAId
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: An intriguing premise of how AI disrupts a family’s life, but the narrative loses momentum with a rushed runtime and misses opportunities.
After: Poetry Destroys Silence
- Excerpt: A marvellous collage of real misery and hope, one line at a time
Agent of Happiness
- Excerpt: Agent of Happiness immerses us in a doc that’s partially invested in the day-to-day of a unique profession, partially enraptured by the beauty of Bhutan’s bright colors and vast vistas, and partially surprised to have found itself on a buddy-comedy road trip.
Agni
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Aisha
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Every choice in front of her is broached and the futility of fighting is constantly weighed against the necessity to survive. It seems circuitous because it is. What matters is whether its merry-go-round consumes Aisha’s spirit or makes her stronger.
- Excerpt: With immigration and border crossings all the rage in the workup to the US election, Berry’s chronicle of an asylum-seeking Nigerian in Ireland comes along at just the right time.
Aisha
- Excerpt: Aisha starring Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor is profoundly humanistic cinema.
Alienoid: The Return to the Future
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
All Happy Families
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Picking ALL HAPPY FAMILIES apart isn’t going to be difficult for those who wish to do so, but I also don’t think audiences should dismiss the underlying message of finding the time and space to reinvent yourself.
All Kinds of Love
- Excerpt: Barely getting along
All That We Love
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A frank experience, which manages to focus on a main character who feels real, like many of the mothers, aunts, sisters and women in general that we can meet in real life.
All We Carry
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: How the Jewish congregation helped the little family, how the family survived despite the US policy of prohibiting work permits, and how the asylum process operates, are parts of this important documentary. But also please note the activists in the credits, including executive producer America Ferrera, who believe that change has got to come.
All Your Faces
- Excerpt: All Your Faces is the most interesting film I’ve seen this year, and it’s a fine example of what may be a French specialty—scripted films based on real-life situations that play like documentaries that feel realer than real.
Am I OK?
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Am I OK? has the pitch and content typical of a straight-to-streaming film in the 2024 movie landscape, but its execution is sharper and more ambitious than most streamer fare.
Am I Racist?
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Am I Racist? has good moments of humor through people’s foolishness, but a little more focus on the people and less on Matt Walsh would make it a better project.
Amar Singh Chamkila
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
American Dreamer
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “American Dreamer” took a few years to get distributed, but it is worth a look, especially to see the charismatic MacLaine in action.
The American Question
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: It’s a must-watch for those frustrated with the great divide and some of the reasons why people vote as they do.
The American Society of Magical Negroes
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Harrison Martin @ Flixfrog
- Excerpt: The American Society of Magical Negroes fails to delve deep into the magical racism prevention that its title suggests and focuses more on its main character falling in love.
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: I’m convinced that debut writer-director Kobi Libii actually had two half-baked ideas for movies and merged them into one.
American Star
- Excerpt: American Star is a commendable self-reflection character study, bolstered by Ian McShane’s brilliantly contained performance, a thematically rich narrative, and a truly gorgeous location.
Anatema
Diego Salgado @ Sofilm [Spanish]
The Animal Kingdom
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The movie may refuse to unfurl its metaphor, but its moral is clear. ‘The Animal Kingdom’ is, ironically, humanistic.
Animale
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: In the end, Animale is about how far too many men see both animals and women as consumable for their entertainment and satisfaction.
Animalia
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Animalia’ is many things: a drama about a woman in peril, a critique of modern Moroccan society, a science fictional fantasia about the end of the world, a spiritual meditation. And yet, I think of it primarily as an existential story.
Animalia Paradoxa
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Atallah’s experimental mixed media piece is a lot more than its surface visuals, though, if you’re willing to dive in.
Anime Analysis: Delicious in Dungeon
- Excerpt: “Delicious in Dungeon” is definitely an excellent title, both in terms of context and artform. At the same time, though, for people who search more mature content in all levels, as in the case of this reviewer, the series has very little to offer.
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story
- Excerpt: “I’m gonna touch that part that you didn’t even know was there.”
Apartment 7A
Apocalypse in the Tropics
- Excerpt: That sense of inquiry and curiosity stops ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’ from veering into hyperbole without ever losing its harrowing urgency.
Apolonia, Apolonia
Nadine Whitney @ Loud and Clear Reviews
- Excerpt: Lea Glob’s documentary Apolonia, Apolonia, about artist Apolonia Sokol, is a soul stirring feminist odyssey which pays homage to the women who fight to be seen and heard.
Arcadian
Kat Hughes @ THN
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: It exists safely within the vast subgenre of postcollapse afterscapes, but it does what it does well, with nicely drawn characters, a sense of cultural mythmaking, and freakishly unsettling creatures.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Like many good horror films, Arcadian uses its otherworldly premise to examine human behavior.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It leads to some badass moments, but very little emotion. You could pretty much say that about the entire film […] because ARCADIAN is all set-up. [And] in that regard, the film works.
Armand
- Excerpt: A gripping psychological drama that teeters between tension and surrealism, anchored by powerful performances.
- Excerpt: Suffer the little children
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: An experience that invites the viewer to reflect—on the nature of truth, on the way we perceive people (both children and adults), and on how education at school complements that at home.
Armor
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Sebastian Zavala @ Loud and Clear Reviews [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A repetitive, tedious action “romp”, full of terrible digital effects and clichéd characterisations, and lacking in anything resembling excitement or tension. Armor is, unfortunately, a wasted opportunity.
Art College 1994
As We Speak
- Excerpt: A didactic discussion of the legal war waged against a single kind of (conspicuously Black) writing.
Asleep in My Palm
Asphalt City
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …Sauvaire’s lost his plot, the film’s original title, “Black Flies,” made audibly literal when it makes no sense. It’s a shame, as there is a good movie in here somewhere and Sean Penn’s performance is a welcome return.
Atlas
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: A massive misfire in almost every conceivable fashion.
Average Joe
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Average Joe, based on the Supreme Court case Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District, wants to avoid the trappings of a “Christian” film. It is unfortunate that, despite an interesting story and some good performances, what Average Joe thinks distinguish it end up hampering it.
Azrael
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It works thanks to its rich concept, the highly visual development of its story, the disgusting gore and moments of tension it delivers, and of course, a great performance by Samara Weaving, who should already be a Hollywood star.
Babes
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Director Pamela Adlon makes the leap to the big screen with a film that does for motherhood what “Bridesmaids” did for female wedding parties…justifies its ick factor with its warts-and-all approach to birthing babies.
- Excerpt: I love how this film is so capacious in its affection for its characters that it does not need to diminish any of them.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: A lot of [its] success is due to Buteau delivering an authentic and natural performance that’s as funny as it is resonant.
Backspot
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: While the result is uneven, there’s enough intrigue to draw us in and hold our attention.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: The film is best in its scenes of interpersonal relationships and training.
- Excerpt: Wonderfully shot, choreographed, scored, and acted, BACKSPOT is not only everything you could wish for in a sports film, but also everything you want in a queer coming of age story. Dark and light collide to create magic under neon and laser lights. D. W. Waterson will have you cheering for their energetic, affecting, and intelligent work. Elite level filmmaking.
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Badland Hunters
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
The Ballad of Davy Crockett
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This new rendition of the Crockett legend, “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” also reveals a similar Crockett with a gravitation toward doing what’s right, though this time with a keener focus on a looming dark time in the nation.
Banel & Adama
- Excerpt: What do you do when the love you need to survive appears to threaten the survival of everyone around you? Such is the spiritual question at the heart of Banel & Adama, the hauntingly beautiful directorial debut of French-Senegalese filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy.
Base Station
- Excerpt: “Base Station” is a gem of a film, another truly unique production by Park, who seems to continue the ‘ Korean Weird Wave’ all on his own at the moment.
The Beast
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [Bonello’s] is a bold idea and gives the great French actress Léa Seydoux the opportunity to really show some range as a married woman in 1910, a house sitting aspiring model/actress in 2014 L.A. and a worker facing an extreme choice in 2044.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Seydoux is fantastic throughout, but even her performance can’t help make that incel plotline feel as real or as dangerous as the [19th century Paris and present-day 2044 threads].
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: Unfortunately, the sum is not quite equal to the various parts. Plus, the heavy-handed symbolism throughout proves tedious.
The Beautiful Game
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A heartwarming journey to the Homeless World Cup that ultimately scores.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: It’s a movie that displays incredible generosity towards its characters, even when they misbehave. That’s the score, and it’s hard to beat.
Beloved Tropic
- Excerpt: Here’s a film that all of us (one way or another along the generational divide) will have to face at some point during our life on the planet.
Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in Four Parts
- Excerpt: “Ben and Suzanne” has its merits, and the relationship in its center is appealing to watch. However, it frequently feels as a film that was supposed to be shot in the US, just found itself in Sri Lanka without being able to realize the difference or what to do with the fact.
Benal et Adama
- Excerpt: Don’t mess with tradition
Bhakshak
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Bibi Files
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Bloom makes a powerful case against Israeli’s Prime Minister, not only for extending a war resulting in tens of thousands of civilian casualties in order to stay in power, but in his part in creating the circumstances which led to October 7 to begin with…a crucial work of non-fiction filmmaking.
The Big Bend
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Considering that many of its themes are quite serious, Wagner also throws in some laugh-out-loud moments while cinematographer Paul Atkins (“Voyage of Time”) evokes mysterious implications from the astounding natural landscape.
Bird
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Newcomer Adams appears genuine in all her interactions, exhibiting the nonchalance of a pre-teen determined to wage her own path… The characters are all very different, yet their relationship to Bailey is paramount
Black Box Diaries
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Using confessional phone video, a camera crew, security camera footage and television news, Itô weaves together a personal story with far reaching implications.
- Excerpt: Itô’s determination to tell her story as a journalist and survivor is the ineradicable truth that survives even the most devastating trauma.
- Excerpt: Because filmmaker Shiori Ito is both survivor and journalist, and recorded her own investigation into her assault in real time, the documentary becomes a thrilling testament to her exceptional, tenacious agency in the face of a hostile world.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: It’s a taut real-life thriller, bracingly told. The occasional narrative confusion notwithstanding—including some of the murky details of Yamaguchi’s countersuit—the effect is to shock and inspire in equal measure.
Black Eyed Susan
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: McCrae is pushing boundaries with BLACK EYED SUSAN. He’s forcing us to confront the limitations of our humanity through the unlimited potential of invention.
Blackwater Lane
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: A mediocre supernatural thriller.
Bleeding
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The allegory of vampirism as addiction isn’t new, but Bell uses it in his film to tell an important, haunting, ugly story about the deep darkness of addiction.
Bleeding Love
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: BLEEDING LOVE is thus about mistakes made. [It’s] at its best in the last twenty or so minutes once truths are revealed and façades (intentionally worn and not) fall.
- Excerpt: Bleeding Love is a calling card for debut director Emma Westenberg and Clara McGregor.
Bloody Ishq
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Blue Angels
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …cameras mounted in cockpits mainly focus on those 12 to 18 inch gaps separating the planes’ wings, oddly giving the impression of being suspended in air rather than the 400 mph the planes are moving at.
- Excerpt: The film crew not only got up close with the Blue Angels and the planes but also recorded in high-definition resolution that will blow your mind.
Blue Fiddle
- Excerpt: The Magic of Music
Blue Imagine
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Blue Period
- Excerpt: Although it rushes in moments here and there, in an effort to include as much of the original as possible, “Blue Period” manages to be something more than a great adaptation, an actual great movie.
Blue Sun Palace
- Excerpt: A striking debut that slowly meditates not just on the migrant experience in America but on the importance of connection and community throughout loss.
The Body Politic
- Excerpt: What’s a city to do?
Bolero
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Bone Lake
Kat Hughes @ THN
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: It delivers the necessary salacious entertainment as a throwback to the trashy 80s thrillers without becoming trashy.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: The script is a damning indictment of Christian nationalism, of the intertwining of religion and politics, of accepting a politician as a savior. While this is sure to outrage a portion of the religious right, the film’s rationalization for political violence, specifically assassination, is equally likely to appall the religious left.
- Excerpt: Safe, what is safe?
Bonus Track
- Excerpt: Truth Lies Open to All
The Book of Solutions
Bookworm
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Thankfully, both Wood and Fisher refuse to let the script’s wild swings get in the way of their charming and endearing performances. The two have a wonderful rapport in their role reversal.
Borderland: The Line Within
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: …one of the most efficient ways to understand the maze of difficulties related to the border is to see documentaries like “Borderland” in order to gain a greater perspective on just how much basic human rights are respected and what our tax dollars are paying for at the border and the ICE Detention Centers in communities throughout America.
Bound in Heaven
Diego Salgado @ Fipresci [Spanish]
The Boy in the Woods
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The forest is an isolating setting, but also a place the boys can play and let loose their imaginations.
Brats
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The documentary is ambitious in how it includes so many people, films, and conversations to help us better define what [The Brat Pack] means and its lasting effect on pop culture.
Candice Fred @ HuffPost
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: This documentary about the “Brat Pack” is earnest, but the pessimistic focus didn’t resonate with me.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: They form a fascinatingly reflective bunch, not only journeying down memory lane, but expressing genuine words of wisdom from which we could all benefit.
Bread and Roses
The Breaking Ice
- Excerpt: “The Breaking Ice,” from writer/director Anthony Chen, is about three lost souls facing the frozen world outside and in.
The Bricklayer
- Excerpt: There’s a really good movie in The Bricklayer somewhere; trouble is, only half of it made it to the final cut.
Brief History of a Family
- Excerpt: “Brief History of a Family” is a masterful film, both cinematically and contextually, and a truly impressive debut from a filmmaker who seems to have the abilities of a seasoned veteran.
- Excerpt: Crafted with such delightful suspense that you can’t help but smile as you squirm, Brief History of a Family pulls from plenty of genre influences (its have/have-not friction and affluent apartment confines will be familiar to Parasite fans) to construct a tight dramatic metaphor encompassing Chinese parenting values and the end of a sociopolitical era.
Bring Them Down
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: The bleak drama might be a little too woolly for some.
The Brutalist
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: Epic art film on antisemitism.
Bushman
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an eye-opening work about race, justice and democracy in America while also offering a profound contrast between a native black culture and one uprooted and transplanted.
By the Stream
- Excerpt: Although not straying particularly from his trademark style, I feel that there is a bit more substance in “By the Stream” than usual, in terms of story and context, which perhaps could signify a turn towards more narrative-driven productions in the future. Whoever appreciates HHS style, though, will definitely appreciate this one too.
Cabrini
- Excerpt: In the case of Cabrini, it’s trying to do several things at once, and it hits some marks better than others, but above all it’s the kind of film where a potential viewer should be asking not “is it any good?” but “is it right for me?”
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s better than I anticipated even if it also proves to be exactly what I thought it would be from its trailer and pedigree.
- Excerpt: Begin the mission and the means will come
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A believable and emotional story about a woman who fought against people, gender roles, discrimination and her own illnesses, to do some good in this world.
Caddo Lake
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It makes for an extremely hopeful film despite the looming darkness brought on by past ghosts and present anger. By meeting these characters at their most jaded and closed off, there’s nowhere else to go but the clarity of healing.
- Excerpt: Held and George’s film twists and turns, but charting their narrative swamp is a simple and unrewarding exercise.
Caligula – Ultimate Cut
- Excerpt: So little has changed
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
- Excerpt: Negovan’s version of Caligula is not a masterpiece but it’s certainly a more interesting and less silly film than what Guccione originally released.
Carnage for Christmas
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: A lean, melodramatic tale of returning home to discover the people who thought they were better than you are the losers you always knew they were.
Carol Doda Topless at the Condor
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: The net result nevertheless holds our interest, and the information sticks. These bare truths very much still resonate today.
Cash Out
- Excerpt: Cash Out contains a high-powered cast but squanders their talents with every passing second.
Cat Call
C’è ancora domani
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Es paradójico ese abierto desprecio de tanto autor de cine por “la gente” y por los éxitos de taquilla, como si el fervor popular llevara atado el desprestigio. Y es paradójico porque esos mismos “creadores incomprendidos” suelen recitar su admiración por Hitchcock, por Wilder o por Fellini, olvidando convenientemente que tanto ellos como otros muchos, pensaban que la conexión con las audiencias era un mérito y no una tara.
Cellar Door
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I would have liked the film to delve into that psychological duality more, but I can’t deny the way it exploits it to enhance the theatrics isn’t effective.
A Century in Sound
- Excerpt: Before vinyl bars became the latest trend worldwide, Japan’s kissaten were quietly leading the charge, offering serene musical escapes for a century.
Cerrar los Ojos
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Cerrar los Ojos é, seguramente, um dos filmes deste ano. E de todos os anos. De repente, não me lembro de um filme capaz de abrir a porta do cinema de uma forma tão completa.
Checkpoint Zoo
- Excerpt: “There are smart decisions and there are right decisions”
Chicken for Linda!
- Excerpt: Chicken for Linda! is a unique animated film that offers up a different experience for kids by immersing them in French culture.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a wonderful message told with a bottomless wealth of entertainment and gorgeous animation. Add a couple songs making it a quasi-musical and CHICKEN FOR LINDA! proves a compact, lightning-paced and resonant lark.
The Children’s Train
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
La Chimera
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Alice Rohrwacher (“The Wonders,” “Le Pupille”) seems to pull her films from the very fabric of Italy – its earth, its people and its history…“La Chimera” is a dream scattered amidst the earth and the stars.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It is, to a large extent, a meditation on death; with tomb-raiding as a plot point, it would have to be… Arthur struggles with a death wish, which is something of an addiction for him, so perhaps it’s an ersatz cinematic take on Keats: ‘Ode on an Etruscan Urn.’
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point isn’t your typical holiday movie, instead an experience like someone else’s memories flooding one’s senses.
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is less a feature-length story than a collection of vignettes, all compiled to create a deep sense of nostalgia.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: If Robert Altman had made a Christmas film, it might be something like Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point – except that it would surely be a whole lot better.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [Earnest human connection] is what ultimately prevails considering there’s no real plot or desire to follow through on major conflict points with any resolution beyond begrudging acceptance.
Chronicles of a Wandering Saint
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is a very funny film. One that’s probably at its funniest when staging a death scene. It’s equal parts melancholic in its tale of rekindled love and absurdly fantastical in its bureaucratically pragmatic idea of the afterlife.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: What is surprising about “Chronicles” is that a man, Bustillo, is able to capture the essential dutiful, saintly nature of women.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: There is quiet wonder in both the laughter and tears.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: A first-time writer/director, Tomás Gómez Bustillo arrives on the scene with confidence and competence. Modestly budgeted, he keeps Chronicles‘ action within its limitations.
Chuck Chuck Baby
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Backed by an almost all female crew, writer/director Janis Pugh’s musical ode to female sisterhood is a flawed but uplifting embrace of celebrating love where you find it.
Cinequest ’24: The Island Between the Tides
The Clean Up Crew
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: There was obviously a lot of talented people working here, which makes the lackluster result such a headscratcher.
Close to You
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The film must exist in that space of spontaneity to be as potent as it is. Page’s performance is a big part of that too, but the real draw is the whole’s ability to deliver the highest of highs and lowest of lows without ever feeling fake.
- Excerpt: Show them your trust, not your anxiety
Close Your Eyes
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: shares many of the themes of his first two such as father-daughter relationships, memory and Erice’s love for cinema itself, something he declares with a magician’s misdirection in the opening moments of this one.
- Excerpt: Movies and mortality are linked throughout the engrossing three-hour drama.
Club Zero
- Excerpt: Starring Mia Wasikowska in a delightfully bizarre performance as a teacher introducing her privileged pupils to the concept of “conscious eating,” Club Zero focuses on a group of students full of youthful idealism and the desire to improve the world around them—a desire that is hijacked by Wasikowska’s character and transformed into something far more sinister.
Nadine Whitney @ InSession Film
- Excerpt: Heinrich von Kleist, the poet-philosopher from Jessica Hausner’s AMOUR FOU wrote it is “incomprehensible how a human being can live without a life plan.” Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) has a deadly life plan for the elite high school students who join her CLUB ZERO.
Cobweb
- Excerpt: Cobweb is a brilliant meta-fiction about the film industry and a marvellously inventive farce. It combines all the different tonal skills of Jee-woon Kim to create a work that both loves cinema but also knows how ludicrous the whole thing can be.
The Coffee Table
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With his protagonist clearly in a state of shock, we witness the man carrying the worst burden of guilt imaginable while he continues to delay the inevitable as more and more witnesses arrive for what will be a horrific reveal.
A Complete Unknown
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Con Job
- Excerpt: Comedies come in all shapes and sizes. In this case, director Ian Niles along with co-writer Guy Harry have concocted a “conedy” that may well have been entitled Death Do Reveal Us.
The Convert
- Excerpt: A very hollow victory indeed
Nadine Whitney @ InSession Film
Copa 71
- Excerpt: Despite the shocking sexism sometimes on display, however, the mood of Copa 71 remains mostly upbeat, as it should, because these women not only persisted but triumphed.
Coup de Chance
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The film is at once among Allen’s most economical works and one of his most free-spirited.
Samuel Castro @ www.elcolombiano.com [Spanish]
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Allen’s economical direction and puckish screenplay work in tandem and he leaves us with a great big ironic laugh of an ending.
Crakk
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Crew
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Tusshar Sasi @ Filmy Sasi
The Critic
- Excerpt: Only the greats are remembered
Cruise Boom
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: A PBS film, “Cruise Boom” investigates the many pros and cons besetting the Sitka residents. Whatever your point of view, directors Ellen Frankenstein and Atman Mehta have created a powerful film for you to ponder.
Crumb Catcher
- Excerpt: What’s a viewer to do with no one to like?
- Excerpt: Chris Skotchdopole’s bleak carnival ride of failure is an American nightmare and panic attack. You’ll never forget Crumb Catcher.
CTRL
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Daaaaaalí
- Excerpt: Ego on a brush
Daaaaaalí!
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is an entertaining journey into the artistic chaos of genius and the necessity of luck and coincidence to even begin hoping to herd the cats that are Dalí’s fractured visages of himself.
Daddy’s Head
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a modern day folk horror examination of grief and longing…despite its bizarre creature concept, it’s not very scary and ultimately unsatisfying.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: What we’re seeing is the catalyst for change without any of the change. It’s like a ninety-minute introduction to the real tough drama that skips past it for a quick, bow-tied conclusion instead.
Dahomey
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Mati Diop (“Atlantics”) takes a unique approach to her documentary on the return of stolen artifacts to Benin, imagining the interior life of a statue of King Ghézo…At only 68 minutes, “Dahomey” covers its subject from every angle.
- Excerpt: Dahomey is not merely a film about what to make of this particular example of restitution but also one about the impossibly diffuse legacy of colonialism writ large.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a powerful account of just how complex the concept of colonialism remains and how its hold on freed nations doesn’t automatically disappear via independence.
- Excerpt: Filmmaker Mati Diop follows 26 artifacts from the Kingdom of Dahomey (which some may recall from 2022’s The Woman King) as they are returned by France to Benin. Assessing this move from the perspective of the pieces themselves—including an elaborate carved throne, a towering statue of King Ghézo, and metallic markers of death—as well as the recipients of these revenants, Diop takes a brisk yet thoughtful look at whether even antiquities can go home again.
Damaged
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Damaged is more of a trick than an actual story.
- Excerpt: Damaged is too busy trying to keep us guessing instead of laying the foundation for a real game for us to be involved with and play.
Dancing Village: The Curse Begins
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Dancing with the Dead
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Dancing with the Dead” explains what is different about Bill and is interspersed with the poems he has translated. His translations are like a sacred prayer.
Dandelion
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Layne is fantastic. This is a journey of self-discovery and artistic craft as Dandelion’s sound, power, and compositions grow with each step forward.
Dario Argento: Panico
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …gives you exactly what you would expect from this kind of biodoc: choice clips, some behind-the-scenes stuff, and a bunch of talking heads saying nice things about its subject (while awkwardly trying to avoid talking much about his twenty-first century work).
Dark Feathers: Dance of the Geisha
- Excerpt: As such, whether someone enjoys “Dark Feathers: Dance of the Geisha” exclusively depends on the knack for enjoying this type of films, essentially low budget Tarantino-style ones. Those, however, will definitely have a lot of fun with this.
Daughters
- Excerpt: There are dozens of carefully observed and touching moments in “Daughters,” which won both the Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance. Watching the fathers change out of their orange prison uniforms into jackets and ties is extremely powerful.
Day of the Fight
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Jack Huston’s directorial debut may tip its hand at the outset, the down and out boxer trying for one more shot at the brass ring a well worn cliche, but the film is so well acted, has so much heart and has such a stylized look that it throws a knock out punch.
Daytime Revolution
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Erik Nelson takes us back over fifty years, beginning with a montage of newsreel footage…to remind us that a divided America was once being led by a corrupt president, while outspoken political idealists offered a different perspective.
Dead Dead Full Dead
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: DEAD DEAD FULL DEAD is a lark that doesn’t try to be more. We’re in it less to find the murderer’s identity than we are to see what wild event will occur next.
The Dead Don’t Hurt
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Mortensen’s sophomore filmmaking feature sets a modern romance within an old-fashioned western…Krieps continues an astonishing run of complex female characters whose inner thoughts she conveys with the subtlest of facial expressions.
The Dead Don’t Hurt
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This film is a tour de force in dramatization, headed up by charismatic Viggo Mortensen and inner strength phenome Vicky Krieps.
The Dead Don’t Hurt
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: Part-love story, part-revenge thriller, part-feminist Western revision, Viggo Mortensen’s sophomore feature (on the director’s seat) shows scrappy ambition, and gets flanked by two stellar performances
Dead Money
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Andy talks about math via voice-over, but this isn’t as much a poker movie as it is a darkly comic drama with poker in it. The suspense isn’t therefore built at the table, but by the guns being held to the temples of people off-screen.
Dead Teenagers
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Now this is what I was anticipating from Quinn Armstrong’s FRESH HELL trilogy after loving his previous project SURVIVAL SKILLS. It proves an ingenious thrill ride through the fourth walls of previously shattered fourth walls.
The Dead Thing
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an effective thriller that lets its themes exist beneath the surface so that those uninterested in delving deeper can simply enjoy the ghost story turned quasi-slasher on its own merits.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzmoviereviews
- Excerpt: A dark and tense horror pic about a toxic singles LA dating scene.
Los Delinquentes
Paulo Portugal @ www.esquerda.net [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Estreia esta quinta-feira a longa comédia ácida de Rodrigo Moreno, um dos realizadores da nova vaga do cinema argentino. É um filme precioso em que nos apetece ficar longamente à conversa depois de o ver.
The Deliverance
Candice Frederick @ HuffPost
Jacob Oller @ The A.V. Club
- Excerpt: With every over-the-top line of dialogue and tone-deaf gamble, The Deliverance inches closer to becoming a parody of itself.
Desire Lines
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Jacob Oller @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: Jules Rosskam’s hybrid film hides a trove of charming interviews with trans men, about their experiences making contact in a queer world still stacked against them, inside a grating drama.
Detained
- Excerpt: Too many plot twists spoil the broth
The Devil’s Bath
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: their best film to date…a historical drama with horrific elements rather than a straight-out horror film like their last two. Gschlacht’s contributions cannot be overstated, his prize winning work beautifully composed and painterly, his palette the colors of the forest.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Nothing is strictly horror per se, but the psychological and emotional toll definitely creates an air of anxious uncertainty. A good portion of that is also conjured through Plaschg’s performance.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Devil’s Bath is a story about the ways people in 1700s Upper Austria tried to survive a world that didn’t accept them, and what often happened to those who simply couldn’t survive such a cruel existence.
- Excerpt: The Devil made (allowed) me to do it
Devils Stay
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Devo
- Excerpt: A dynamic dive into DEVO’s avant-garde legacy, blending music, activism, and art with Chris Smith’s signature flair.
Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge
- Excerpt: How to embrace age
Didi
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Features a cast of primarily first-time actors from the Bay Area who bring these personalities to life with such truth.
Dìdi
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: “Dìdi,” feels a lot more genuine [than “Nai Nai & Wài Pó”], steeped in the complex issues of an adolescent son of Taiwanese immigrants in an all female household.
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: Writer-director Sean Wang delivers an accomplished and empathic jolt of coming-of-age anguish with Dìdi. The young ensemble cast is phenomenal and funny while the film grapples with the meaningful hardships – and total dickish tendencies – of male growing pains.
- Excerpt: Dìdi’s warm return to the late ’00s is an uncanny flashback for the right audience, but one that may leave you regretting your own pop culture-centric takeaways from the past.
- Excerpt: It’s hella hard being thirteen – Sean Wang’s Dìdi captures it all with honesty. One of the year’s best dramatic comedies.
Die Alone
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The location and timeline of the pandemic are deliberately vague, though hints are dropped throughout the picture. Consequently, the flesh-eating monsters serve more as a backdrop for a thriller that invites audiences to unpack the clues and discover the truth about Ethan’s past.
Director’s Cut
Disco Boy
- Excerpt: Disco Boy doesn’t quite work, though thanks to some quality craftsmanship and the always-fantastic Franz Rogowski, it does come close.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
- Excerpt: Radu Jude’s gonzo satire of post-Soviet Romania, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, hits a sweet spot between Luis Buñuel and Béla Tarr.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Romanian writer/director Radu Jude’s blackly comic multi-media collage of a film is a caustic commentary on our times… essential cinema for those who like their thoughts provoked. And it’s funny as hell.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Less about providing answers to fix things or stop this never-ending cycle of profiteering, however, [the film] is simply looking to expose these truths alongside the double-speak and bribes of those in power.
Do Patti
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
DogMan
- Excerpt: Awash in a sea of superficiality barely holding it together, Dogman flounders, kept afloat by a magnetic performance by Caleb Landry Jones.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …sloppy script and wavering tone aside, ‘DogMan’ has just enough crazy energy and gonzo passion to save itself from being a disaster. Any movie with Caleb Landry Jones as a wheelchair-bound, Shakespeare-quoting, asexual drag queen who communicates telepathically with dogs is likely to have at least a little oddball appeal.
Don’t Cry Butterfly
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Don’t Cry, Butterfly” has some issues, but I feel they mostly derive from the director’s inexperience in feature filmmaking rather than from lack of skill, and in general, it is easy to describe the movie as a rather hopeful debut.
The Draft!
Driving Madeleine
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a sentimental tale whose stars earn its sentiment.
Drowning Dry
Sebastian Zavala @ Loud and Clear Reviews [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Despite not being presented in chronological order, the film makes sense on an emotional level, and that’s all it needs for its story to work.
Duino
Eephus
- Excerpt: A heartfelt tribute to America’s pastime and communal experiences sure takes its sweet time — and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Elevation
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This is a well-made, edge-of-your-seat picture.
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
The End
- Excerpt: It’s a long sigh, an off-key parody song performed before humanity’s curtain call.
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Nadine Whitney @ The Curb
- Excerpt: The End – A World in Microcosm
Ennio
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is one of the great documentaries about movies, about music and about artistic creation in general, a loving tribute to an innate musical genius who composed over 500 movie scores.
Escape from Extinction: Rewilding
- Excerpt: Can we still win this war?
Eternal Playground
- Excerpt: Class reunion from beyond the grave
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Without being something tremendously ambitious, it becomes an emotionally honest experience, made from a personal perspective. Character construction is credible, and the nostalgic tone complements the narrative.
Eternal You
- Excerpt: Eternal You observes the burgeoning industry around techno-spiritualism with wry skepticism.
Eureka
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a contemplative piece that moves at a glacial pace to live in its anguished weariness. Alonso and company are simply holding up a mirror onto the burden carried upon the exasperated shoulders of the displaced and marginalized.
Evil Does Not Exist
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers Film
- Excerpt: The movie shapeshifts, similar to how a forest is so inviting in day, so haunting at night. It’s unpredictable and the only thing you’re absolutely sure about is its beauty.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While this movie is smaller in scope and shorter than his earlier films, [it] is easily recognizable as Hamaguchi with his spatial placement of his characters, shared meals and colleagues getting to know one another during a long driving commute.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The narrative concerns itself with its characters more than plot. [Hamaguchi] presents them as opposing forces with the potential for common ground against a wholly different entity: Mother Nature.
Evolution of the Black Quarterback
- Excerpt: History in the Making
Exhuma
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Taking it at face value – from the scares, shocks, and suspense building – it clicks on all cylinders.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Jang packs so much into his script that Western audiences may begin to lose patience in the film’s second half, but he has an ace up his sleeve with Choi Min-Sik, the actor’s charismatic performance keeping us rooting for him…
- Excerpt: Exhuma rises above the horror genre with heart, purpose… and some scares to fit the bill.
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It works more for how different it is than for any sense of horror it provokes. If you’re looking for a cliched horror movie, you won’t find it; it’s more interested in telling its story well, using novel metaphors and imagery.
The Exorcism of Saint Patrick
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The whole is thus better upon reflection than it might seem in the moment. I think that eventual clarity does ultimately redeem it from my initial indifference, but I understand if it won’t be enough for others.
Ezra
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cannavale puts it all on the line as Ezra’s dad, one of his best performances, his timing right on target as a stand-up comic, his anxiety screaming from his pores.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A father’s fierce love for his autistic son drives a heartfelt narrative about parental rights and state intervention.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: EZRA isn’t made as much to educate people on autism as it is to entertain audiences with more wins than losses. So, while what occurs on-screen is authentic, it can also seem too easy.
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Ezra is especially frustrating, as it gets so much right in authenticity and big-heartedness, but the plotting is so misguided.
The Fabublous Four
- Excerpt: This story told in comic style. But my feeling — a deeper smile.
The Fabulous Four
- Excerpt: Distinguished older actresses get cast in simple-minded comedies about old friends having silly adventures that make the lightest-weight beach read seem like Remembrance of Things Past. “The Fabulous Four” follows in the unfortunate tradition of the “Book Club” movies, “Summer Camp,” and “80 for Brady,” with an EGOT-full of brilliant talents mired in antics that “The Golden Girls” would consider too ridiculous.
Face Off 7: One Wish
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: All in all, although some issues do exist, mostly deriving from the intensely mainstream approach implemented here, “Face Off 7: One Wish” is a very entertaining, very rewarding, very well shot and acted movie, that will appeal to all fans of family dramas.
Facing the Wind
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This is an important, well-made film with high-profile executive producers.
Falling Stars
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a solid result with some compelling yet minimal world-building to help the conceit feel lived-in even if the moments providing it don’t have much bearing on the plot itself.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Falling Stars focuses on one family specifically and dives into how generational legacies continue to haunt entire bloodlines.
A Family Affair
Allen Almachar @ The MacGufifn
- Excerpt: This is a throwback picture for those that like their escapism light, fluffy, and charming.
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: A Family Affair is the embodiment of a time waster, the type of film of which it can be said that it robbed two hours out of the viewers’ lives that they will never get back.
- Excerpt: As mundane as its title, with characters whose color-by-numbers personalities and motivations shift randomly to fit a predictable storyline, “A Family Affair” is a low-wattage rom-com.
- Excerpt: Kidman always gives us a treat. And Efron as grown-up is neat!
Family Portrait
- Excerpt: Kerr’s depiction of a family hovering on the edge of an existential crisis is enigmatic almost to a fault; fortunately, the dreamlike visuals and swirling sounds of Family Portrait cast a spell on the viewer that only grows more powerful as the film grows more difficult to comprehend.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That so much of what’s said and done is hollow makes the notion that it will still be grieved after it’s gone more potent. In the end, these horrible days that feel more like work than vacation will be missed.
Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [It’s] very specifically focused on the victims’ experiences rather than the crime itself. That fact holds things back where the overall subject of celebrity and fandoms is concerned, but it makes the whole more personal and cathartic for those impacted.
Fancy Dance
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Erica Tremblay, quien además de dirigir la película es la autora del guion junto a Miciana Alise, consigue, a pesar del planteamiento inicial, que la historia no caiga en ese didactismo de enciclopedia, lleno de buenas intenciones, que abunda en las cintas que pretenden reivindicar a un pueblo oprimido o describir una injusticia.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …works best illustrating how cultural rituals help maintain family ties and how even tribal police fail to give priority to the epidemic of missing Native American women.
Farewell, Mister Haffmann
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: “Farewell, Mister Haffmann’s” filmmakers and cast will keep you guessing until the last in this unconventional WWII psychological thriller.
Farragut Forward
- Excerpt: This is a “getting the gang back together” adventure that you don’t want to miss out on.
Faye
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Federer: Twelve Final Days
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It doesn’t lean into the idolatry aspect to make it about celebrity or the tennis itself to make it about the sport. TWELVE FINAL DAYS is just a final press tour. [It’s] solely for the fans.
Feeling Randy
- Excerpt: Desperately in Search of a Finish
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Arnow structures the film as short vignettes stacked up. There’s an idiosyncratic rhythm as a result that augments both the dry humor and threat of tedium. I do think Arnow does a good job keeping things fun, though.
Femme
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping…impress with the complexity they bring to the issue of identity, gay bashing and the closeted individuals who engage in it… a strong, stylish and sexy debut that leaves us with a punch to the gut.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: In the end, it’s just about Jules taking his life back on his terms. Not by becoming that which he hates, but by turning the mirror of Preston’s projection onto himself.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Femme is a searing neo-noir thriller that walks the line between eroticism and danger better than any film in the past couple decades.
Ferrari
Diego Salgado @ SoFilm [Spanish]
Film Is Dead. Long Live Film!
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: made me nostalgic for the early days of Reeling when one of our crew members, a collector himself, would screen film prints in his dusty old basement, friends crammed together on old kitchen chairs amidst rusty tools and cans of paint.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: In the end, THE FIRE INSIDE is a sports biography with all the trappings you’d expect. It’s a solid debut for Morrison and a star-making turn for Destiny with a message for girls and boys to know their worth and never settle.
Fitting In
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It has the potential to help normalize topics that some may see as taboo.
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Writer-director Molly McGlynn’s sophomore feature doesn’t understate the impact or complexity such a realization carries for a young woman on the verge of broadening her sexual horizons… To this end, credit must be given to Ziegler’s outstanding performance as she navigates a rollercoaster of emotions and awkward conversations.
Flipside
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …like a more organic Errol Morris anthology documentary threaded together with life lessons…both entertaining and moving.
Flow
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: From the first frame of writer/director/cinematographer/editor Gints Zilbalodis’ stunning animation, that of our unnamed black cat looking at its reflection in water, a foreshadowing of its world to come, we know we are in for something special.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a beautifully animated and choreographed film with suspenseful life or death moments and effective action. I don’t think Flow is quite as captivating a story as Away, but you cannot deny that Zilbalodis has evolved his craft in all other aspects.
- Excerpt: The Latvian film is part brilliant experiment, part cutesy animal movie, but engrossing for all audiences—even if it might, like Fantasia, stick uncomfortably in the memories of the youngest in attendance.
Food, Inc. 2
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Change is going to come! Rich with exposure and documentation, “Food Inc. 2” continues its attacks and solutions to our food problems after the 2009 film “Food Inc.”
For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign
- Excerpt: The film carefully balances the most painful moments with glimmers of progress and hope and makes a powerful argument for looking at struggles so easily ignored.
Force of Nature: The Dry 2
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: FORCE OF NATURE might be a solid continuation of Falk’s mythology, but it’s also proof that the same franchise IP potential used to help sales can hinder a story’s ability to succeed on its own.
Founders Day
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cowriter/coeditor (with brother Carson)/director Erik Bloomquist crosses the holiday slasher with “Scream” then wraps it in political satire in a gory horror comedy elevated not only by a well thought out premise but by its cast and crew.
Frankie Freako
Freaky Tales
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: As is the case with most anthologies, Freaky Tales struggles to justify its existence as a whole. Though each individual portion is entertaining enough in itself, one is left a bit exhausted by the final product, and unclear on its artistic intent.
Free LSD
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …when [musicians] try their hands at this new medium, we hope for something that departs from the usual, but expect something that isn’t overly polished: something raw and ragged and maybe not wholly coherent that nonetheless sustains a level of exotic interest for adventurous viewers. That is exactly what we get with ‘Free LSD’.
Frewaka
Freydís and Gudrid
- Excerpt: Shot in glorious black and white (so appropriate for a story set in the early second century), very sad to report that his tale of Icelanders/Greenlanders—in operatic form no less—disappoints more than it succeeds.
Frida
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Using (Kahlo’s) own journal entries and artwork, Frida explores her life both external and internal.
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Frogman
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Director Anthony Cousins and co-writer John Karsko’s screenplay uses the so-called Lovecraftian aspects to give us a fresh horror film perspective on how true stories about horrifying events are commercialised, packaged, and sold as entertainment even when they have very real, lasting effects on victims/survivors.
The Front Room
Christopher Cross @ Asynchronous Media
The G
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s a fantastic premise that provides Dickey a perfect showcase to remind audiences why she’s such a sought-after commodity in Hollywood. How it all unfolds is sadly too often on-the-nose.
Ganymede
- Excerpt: Stereotypes ‘R’ Us
Gasoline Rainbow
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a paean to the joy of living life to its fullest and embracing what cannot be seen around the bend of the road.
- Excerpt: There is no exaggerated drama in Gasoline Rainbow; it’s a snapshot of what is. It’s what happens between the photos where we find solace in chaos.
Get Away
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Imagine ‘Midsommar’ played for laughs and you’re on the right track.
Ghostlight
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: about the therapeutic properties of art…The Kupferer father/daughter duo finds each acting to opposite extremes, Dan taciturn yet given to sudden outbursts, Daisy challenging and cursing at everything in her path. Mallen is the great stabilizing forc
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Captures the emotional journey of a family facing unresolved trauma through the magic of theater.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The line Dan walks is thin and you can feel that O’Sullivan wrote his trajectory through the character’s voice to discover which side he’ll fall at the same time he does.
Girl with the Needle
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film begins with an eerie, Lynchian image, that of a face morphing into others which we will meet along the way. The film overall is indebted to Lynch as well, recalling “The Elephant Man” in look, sound and theme, disfigurement featured in a freak show.
Girls State
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: To have [the inequality between girls and boys programs] swirling and still be able to focus on a few personalities is a great success for McBaine and Moss because these girls aren’t going to stay silent about what’s happening.
- Excerpt: A documentary that can struggle to tie its young politicos to the outside world, but thrives when tying them to each other.
Girls Will Be Girls
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Shuchi Talati’s feature debut is a coming of age tale for a daughter whose mother’s lack of one interferes with her own
- Excerpt: Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award as well as the Special Jury Award for Acting for lead actress Preeti Panigrahi, the film is a powerful examination of how the patriarchy has and continues to punish girls and women for pushing back against the narrow roles prescribed for them.
- Excerpt: In its lovingly observed, casually bold and uneasily tense coming-of-age drama exists familiar dynamics we’d rather not recognize.
The Goat Life
God & Country
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The movement is insidious and Partland’s documentary is a clarion call for American citizens to awaken to the danger of a very well funded effort to use our democratic system to impose a minority rule that is misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic, a perversion of the meaning of Christianity.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Welcome to the world of Christian nationalism, a long-simmering movement in the United States that is about as far from the teachings of the New Testament as one can be, currently worshipping a documented conman as its leader.
Godard Cinema
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The main selling point to Kino Lorber’s ‘Godard Cinema’ release may not be the documentary itself, but the supplement: ‘Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars,’ the auteur’s incomplete sketch for a final feature… It’s hard to imagine anyone but the most dedicated Godard scholar watching this ‘trailer’ more than once, but it is an interesting artifact, a peek into a master’s creative process, and therefore worth a gander.
Golden Kamuy
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: The dramatic parts could have been handled in better fashion as do the flashbacks, which are not exactly placed in ideal moments. As a whole, however, “Golden Kamuy” is definitely a film worth watching, both for the adaptation and the unique elements of the original.
Golden Years
- Excerpt: Golden Years sparkles with the effervescence of uncertainty and unpredictability; it goes against our expectations and maintains its steady composure without needing hysterical drama.
Good One
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an uncommonly insightful accumulation of small moments that build to a reckoning when the young woman maintaining the balance between two middle-aged men is failed by both. . This may be the most profound hike since Kelly Reichardt’s “Old Joy.”
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The thing that strikes me most about India Donaldson’s GOOD ONE is just how effective the script is at building towards its final act of rebellion. It’s a subtle yet powerful transition that recolors everything in the lead-up.
Goodbye, Farewell
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Goodrich
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Goodrich is not a terrible film. It is just not a good one.
The Grab
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: may alert some to the dangers of foreign investment, but those country’s needs must also be addressed and if they rely on Westerners cutting back on over consumption, the future does not look bright.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Cowperthwaite and Halverson lay it all out. It’s now on us to force our politicians to adjust … if voters still have the ability to do such things anymore.
Grand Tour
Paulo Portugal @ insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: O cinema é uma viagem. Uma viagem do cinema. Que se faz no tempo e no espaço. É a partir do virtuosismo cinematográfico de Miguel Gomes que se constrói a refinada exploração artística que faz de Grand Tour o seu mais fascinante exercício de cinema.
Grave Torture
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
The Great Escaper
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Tendríamos que poder expulsar de la sala del cine a aquellos que usen el celular durante las funciones de esta historia. O al menos poder poner un aviso que dijera: “Más respeto, que estás viendo la última película de Michael Caine”.
Greedy People
Kat Hughes @ THN
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: A minor crime film, with a dark humor and some laughs.
Green Border
Samuel Castro @ www.elcolombiano.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: La tienen más difícil Agniezka Holland y las realizadoras que también hicieron trabajo de dirección, Kamila Tarabura y Katarzyna Warzecha, para conmover al posible público latinoamericano de “Frontera verde”, a pesar de las buenas maneras que demuestran en esta película ganadora de la Espiga de Oro en la Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film is all the more haunting for director of photography Tomek Naumiuk’s digital b&w documentary style shooting stylized with the gothic horror of tree branches reaching toward the sky like twisted fingers and swamps waiting to swallow the defenseless.
- Excerpt: Green Border should raise international awareness of what’s happening to these refugees on the European border; for that alone, it’s an important bit of filmmaking. But importance doesn’t automatically confer greatness, and all of the film festival ovations in the world don’t necessarily equal change.
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Excruciatingly frustrating and heartbreaking, famed Polish director Agnieszka Holland has created a courageously accurate drama based on true events that I am calling The Film of the Decade.
Griffin in Summer
- Excerpt: The play within the film
Group Therapy
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Without many ambitions, the film manages to connect on an emotional level with the viewer, showing them that even the most successful or happy or fun people have their own struggles, but that they can use their problems to move on.
Handling the Undead
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Hvistendahl makes her feature directorial debut with a joint screenplay adaptation with the novel’s author…and a highly stylized production, its designer and cinematographer utilizing gradients of one or two colors within starkly composed shots.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The experience of watching the movie was one of tedium, followed by being made to feel sick to my stomach.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That’s where the real unsettling nature comes in. Not just from the ways in which these corpses are reanimated as silent approximations of their former selves, but also in the sense that the audience knows what this scenario ultimately births.
Hangdog
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …one of the best feature filmmaking debuts of the year. This thoroughly charming film features an extraordinary ensemble cast, all the people Walt meets during his multi-day adventure…making indelible impressions.
He Never Left
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Morris’s film really could’ve been a solid addition to the slasher canon had it been tighter and kept its focus in the right(/bloody) places.
Head South
- Excerpt: A semi-autobiographical journey through late 1970s New Zealand, capturing the angst and music of a transformative era.
Heart of an Oak
- Excerpt: …you’re getting not just some random encounters of woodland creatures that happened to be captured on film, but the Platonic ideal of those encounters, perfectly photographed and edited for your viewing pleasure.
Hell Hole
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cowriter (with daughter Lulu)/directors John Adams and Toby Poser (“Where the Devil Roams”) take a more light-hearted approach to their latest, a creature feature with plenty of gore and tongue-in-cheek homage to B movies that have come before.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Arguing] to keep the specimen alive inside an unwilling host perfectly parallels the ongoing abortion issue. It’s a fantastic layer of subtext that gives what is ultimately a low-budget creature feature a lot more merit beyond cheap thrills.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It’s not horrible because it’s offensively incompetent, but rather because it had an intriguing concept, a good source and a solid cast, and it used it all to develop a tedious, at times incoherent and disappointing experience.
Here
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: With Here taking an ambitious approach to the slice-of-life perspective, Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation doesn’t always translate perfectly when it feels too corny for its own good and not getting the best out of its actors.
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: What makes the film distinctive is the format in which the stories are told. The only term I can come up with is a “collage montage”.
Here After
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Here After has a finale that’s emotional, beautiful, and spiritual. Unfortunately, you have to slog through 75 dull minutes to get to it.
His Three Daughters
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …Jacobs has been an astute observer of family dynamics. His latest is one of, if not his very best, a portrait of a blended family where three sisters cohabitating in tight quarters…learn that their perceptions of each other are all off the mark
- Excerpt: Three of the finest actresses in movies play three grieving sisters in the very moving “His Three Daughters.”
History of Evil
Hitpig!
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This isn’t one of those classic animated films that will enchant parents. It’s made for kids who won’t notice the plot holes, charm deficit, or Jason Sudeikis’ inability to give Hitpig some heart.
Hoard
Hold Your Breath
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: In spite of the very different settings, this aspect of the film is reminiscent of The Babadook, which also features a mother battling a storybook monster. Consequently, Margaret’s mental health is certainly in question, making this an even more frightening narrative since the real threat may be coming from the children’s only defender.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: HOLD YOUR BREATH proves a beautifully shot and slow yet purposeful psychological thriller with a precisely measured shift from clarity to confusion. Every little detail becomes a knock at the door of Margaret’s mind.
The Honorable Shyne
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: It makes sense this account would succeed on TV, given its episodic structure. However, the prospect of three more chapters of this tedious saga is not appealing.
Hot Frosty
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: Plot hole after plot hole crop up during this film: in fact, there are so many holes in this tale you could play mini-golf with the script.
House of Spoils
- Excerpt: In their second film together, writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy serve up a clashing menu featuring both pulpy campfire-tale marshmallows and the Michelin-chasing dishes of a spiraling, hubristic chef.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: It never gets into the delicious weird story it threatens us with in its appetizing premise.
Housekeeping for Beginners
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With his third film, Macedonian writer/director/editor Goran Stolevski proves to be one of the most interesting new voices in cinema, his queer aesthetic an empathetic embrace of humanity with all its quirks and foibles.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: A real slice of life drama, HOUSEKEEPING FOR BEGINNERS proves a steady stream of unfortunate events caused by an escalating sense of being trapped despite their “prison” being the one place that actually gives them freedom.
- Excerpt: Housekeeping For Beginners is queer joy, human heartbreak, and all the definitions of love.
Housewife of the Year
- Excerpt: Exploitation 101
How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer
- Excerpt: How to Come Alive does a remarkable job capturing Mailer’s anarchic spirit….
Humane
- Excerpt: While Humane doesn’t feel like a cinematic game-changer in the same way films like Videodrome and Possessor did—the messaging is a bit too heavy-handed and the style not nearly visceral or memorable enough—it’s still a solid contribution to the horror genre from another member of Canada’s freakiest filmmaking family.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It manages to mix black humour with some violence and a lot of teenage drama, to give us a very different experience from what we usually have with other horror or suspense productions.
Hummingbirds
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Maybe the camera’s presence therefore inherently infers upon their “performances,” but neither the candor nor the fun is ever compromised. And it looks great too.
I Am: Celine Dion
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: I Am: Celine Dion takes us into her private world, one shaken by a very rare disease that may cripple her body but not her spirit.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: The struggle of the singer’s fight with a rare neurological disorder, set against the backdrop of massive superstardom.
I Like Movies
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Yes, the period specific nature of working in a video store circa 2002 is on point, but [Levack’s] film isn’t about fandom or obsession. It’s about the masks we wear to hide the pain we feel.
I Used To Be Funny
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Ally Pankiw (TV’s ‘The Great’) makes her feature filmmaking debut with a mystery buffeted by a dual tale of trauma.
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: An emotionally powerful experience that tells us a lot about the nature of comedy, interpersonal relationships, post-traumatic stress, the difficulties of the transition from childhood to adolescence, and even sexual harassment.
The Idea of You
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Mark Hobin @
- Excerpt: Features a clichéd rom-com narrative, but the chemistry between Hathaway and Galitzine might captivate some viewers.
Igualada
- Excerpt: Igualada hints at an insider look at an amazing story, but all its access goes towards a surprisingly anonymous film.
I’ll Be Right There
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: If at first Wanda appears to be a doormat, guess again as “I’ll Be Right There” has something refreshingly different to say, albeit with sitcom style execution.
Imaginary
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: This horror film isn’t very scary; it manages to build some tension during its first act, but it falls incredibly flat during the second and especially the third, and it unfortunately wastes a premise with potential.
The Imaginary
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: An animated fantasy that engages youngsters and adults alike with a friendship tale and the danger of evil forces.
In Flames
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That’s where IN FLAMES is most potent. The blurred line between morality and self-preservation. If you’re trapped in a system that treats you like the enemy, you must resign yourself to the fact that no one else will save you.
In the land of Brothers
- Excerpt: A brutal, beautiful depiction of life persevering against bigotry, filmed with a painterly eye and a compassionate heart.
In the Land of Saints and Sinners
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Features a performance by Liam Neeson that is considered, measured, and infinitely eloquent in a story that eschews politics as it finely observes the consequences of choices, good and bad. But Kerry Condon will haunt your nightmares.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is thus much quieter than you might have been told by the marketing. Don’t therefore be surprised to find IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS at its best in its character-driven moments.
In the Rearview
- Excerpt: Most of the time, the camera is focused on the passengers, who talk to each other and directly to the camera about their experiences, where they are going, and what they are leaving behind. Their remarks mix the catastrophic and the prosaic, and seldom does anyone lose their composure, no matter how harrowing the experiences they are relating.
In the Room Where He Waits
- Excerpt: In the Room Where He Waits is as complex as it is brilliant. Not only one of the best queer Australian films of the year it is also one of the best Australian debut features. Haunting, deeply affecting, and resonant.
In the Summers
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Latin rapper René “Residente” Pérez Joglar is phenomenal in his acting debut…there is no denying the power of the carefully layered incidents which form the portrayal of a flawed man who nonetheless gave his daughters everything he could.
Infested
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: What makes Vanicek’s Infested so smart is that in amongst the creepy arachnid terror lies a broader, heavier theme concerning social problems in France stemming from the country’s violent colonial history.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: We emerge with the sensation of thousands of feet crawling all over us, an infestation of the cinematic soul that’s not so easy to shake.
Infinite Summer
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While INFINITE SUMMER might be the best looking Llansó film of the three I’ve seen, it’s also the most confounding at face value. But that’s also part of the appeal.
The Inheritance
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: The intriguing premise never reaches its potential.
Inshallah a Boy
- Excerpt: …the film’s real focus is on Nawal and how, despite being greeted by new obstacles at every turn, she remains determined to claim a life for herself and her daughter.
- Excerpt: The debut feature from director Amjad Al Rasheed and the first Jordanian film to ever screen at the Cannes Film Festival, Inshallah A Boy is a compelling, character-driven drama chronicling a young widow’s fight to secure what is rightfully hers in a society that bestows more rights upon an unborn boy than a living woman.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Amjad Al Rasheed’s debut feature INSHALLAH A BOY is very good. Unfortunately, however, it also falls prey to a desire to not take its issues to their true (possibly nightmarish) ends [while] playing both sides as if nothing is actually wrong.
Rene Sanchez @ Cine Sin Fronteras [Spanish]
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With a run time of three hours, An Pham’s film definitely qualifies as slow cinema, but his long, deliberate takes are mesmerizing and reinforce his themes of faith, family and nature.
Paulo Portugal @ www.Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Há filmes para os quais não estamos preparados. Poderá ser o caso desta primeira obra vietnamita, vencedora da câmara de ouro, o ano passado em Cannes, e que agora estreia nas salas.
The Instigators
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …while crowd scenes lack authenticity, Boston flavor is genuine and [Liman’s] staged a rambunctious and geographically correct car chase from the Back Bay into the streets of Cambridge, even bringing his movie to a climax in Boston’s City Hall.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s all about a heist, but the biggest thing they stole was my time.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: No one will be saying it’s good, but THE INSTIGATORS is fun if you think what it delivers is fun. Would I watch it again? Probably not. But I don’t regret watching it the first time.
Intermedium
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: INTERMEDIUM is exactly what you think it will be with its indie roots and hokey plot progressions as well as proof that those things don’t preclude a film from possessing an ample amount of heart.
It’s What’s Inside
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Just watched the body-swapping thriller and now I wish I could swap bodies with someone who didn’t.
It’s Not Me
Sebastian Zavala @ Loud and Clear Reviews [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Some will perceive It’s Not Me as pretentious. Some will get bored by it, others will find it fascinating and thought-provoking. Me? I’m pretty much in the middle, although I did enjoy it overall.
It’s What’s Inside
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: Greg Jardin’s ‘It’s What’s Inside’ is a hilarious, mind-bending puzzle box comedy-thriller. Crafted with incredible precision and featuring an electrifying ensemble cast, this eruptive debut is destined to be one of the buzziest movies of 2024.
Janet Planet
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Annie Baker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, makes her feature filmmaking debut from the unique perspective of a lonely little girl jostling for her mother’s attention when that mother attracts lovers like bees to honey
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Baker leans into the leisurely pace of warm afternoons that blend the one into the other, heightening the blurred sense of pace through elliptical editing.
- Excerpt: Alice Baker’s debut directorial delivers layers and contemplative performances from Nicholson and Ziegler but Janet Planet‘s slowness and isolated nature ultimately suffocate its poignancy, leaving its protagonists wandering for closure.
Jeanne du Barry
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Hay historias tan grandes que exceden las habilidades de quien quiere narrarlas. Piensen en películas biográficas fallidas como “Blonde”, en la que Andrew Dominik castigaba sin piedad a la pobre Marilyn Monroe, o en aquel esperpento de Oliver Stone, “Alexander”, en el que poner a Angelina Jolie como Olimpia, la madre de Alejandro Magno, no era la peor decisión que se tomaba en la película.
Jim Henson: Idea Man
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Samuel Castro @ www.elcolombiano.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A los genios hay que celebrarlos y recordarlos. Sobre todo cuando su genialidad trajo felicidad y alegría a este mundo. Ron Howard, que ha dedicado buena parte de su trabajo profesional a contar las vidas de personas sobresalientes tanto en ficciones como “Cinderella man” o “A beautiful mind”, en documentales como “Pavarotti” o en la serie “Genius”, que creó y produce, decide esta vez presentarnos a uno de los creadores más importantes de la cultura popular del siglo XX. Y lo hace con lujo de detalles y con un gran respeto por su obra.
- Excerpt: Jim Henson’s joyful artistry lives on for all of us to see.
Joy
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: Joy combines two of my favorite movie types – “issue” films and historical productions. It’s an excellent example of both and will appeal to mature viewers who want a movie that will make them think and then cheer out loud.
- Excerpt: Sometimes we just need a nice, cozy movie featuring a heartwarming true story and actors with British accents. And if Bill Nighy is one of them, well, that’s just a bonus.
July Rhapsody
- Excerpt: Revisiting July Rhapsody is a reminder that Ann Hui is one of the most empathetic and important filmmakers of the Hong Kong New Wave.
June Zero
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s therefore tough to watch this well-crafted film without also engaging with the context that it is being released while Israel itself commits war crimes and genocide against Palestinians.
Juror #2
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: (Juror #2) is a well-crafted, well-acted, well-directed piece of filmmaking that is probably the best film of 2024.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Why Warner Brothers is limiting the release of Eastwood’s 34th film to 50 theaters is a mystery, but if you take the time to seek it out, you will be rewarded with a morally twisty courtroom thriller led by a great cast.
Diego Salgado @ [Spanish]
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: A tense courtroom drama.
Just Getting By
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “Just Getting By” aptly points out that we only weaken ourselves when we don’t take care of our own foundational needs.
Just the Two of Us
- Excerpt: Valérie Donzelli directs and, with Audrey Diwan, adapts the novel “L’amour et les forêts.” Starring Virginie Efira in twin roles, Just the Two of Us flirts with heightened genre flourishes but pulls back to reveal a simple chilling reality: domestic abuse.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One
- Excerpt: If you’re a fan of the Tomorrowverse, or any of the DC animated movies then Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One might be something you want to watch. This is the beginning of the end after all.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three
- Excerpt: In the end, the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Trilogy should have been cut down into one long movie instead of a 3-part cash grab.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three
- Excerpt: In the end, the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Trilogy should have been cut down into one long movie instead of a 3-part cash grab.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two
- Excerpt: If you’re a fan of the Tomorrowverse or any of the DC animated movies then Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two might be something you want to watch. This is the middle of the end after all.
Kakuda
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: El título en español también se presta para equívocos. La mala traducción convirtió el original italiano, “Rapito” (Secuestrado) en “El secuestro del Papa”. Y como cada vez más personas no tienen ni idea de qué van a ver cuando visitan una sala de cine, no faltará el que crea que asistirá a una película histórica sobre alguien que quiso secuestrar al Papa, cuando es todo lo contrario.
- Excerpt: Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara by Marco Bellocchio is a psychodrama and satirical tragedy where the mind of a child is emblematic of the splintered states around the period of Italian Unification.
Kill
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Kat Hughes @ THN
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @
- Excerpt: Not much more to say, if you want to see a genuine ultra violent actioner without any kind of straying away for contextual pretense, “Kill” is definitely the film for you.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Kill has more knife fights than Mamma Mia! had ABBA songs.
The Killer
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: No, this isn’t going to end up being an action classic like its predecessor, but it does offer a lot for those willing to give it a chance.
Killer’s Game
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: The over-the-top film left me feeling a bit dizzy and not feeling any emotional depth.
Kim’s Video
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While the true story about the Kim’s Video collection is both weird and distressing, it could have been told a lot more effectively as a straightforward short…there is a whole lot of manufactured drama going on as the film progresses
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The twists and turns are often jaw-dropping while the back-patting and glad-handing always proves a bit suspicious. It’s a joke gone too far mixed with an exorbitant amount of luck to correct a wrong few (if any) even remembered.
Kingdom: Return of the General
- Excerpt: “Kingdom: Return of the General” continues in the same, rather high quality of the previous movies, while has enough elements, particularly regarding the permeating drama, to make it stand out.
The Kitchen
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While “The Kitchen” doesn’t break new ground, it is a well directed political thriller grounded by its father son story. Tavares and Kaluuya are a team to keep an eye on.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is slow moving and perhaps a bit repetitive, but there’s a lot to like too from performances to soundtrack to production design mixing LED and neon with digital interfaces and drones.
Kneecap
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Kneecap,” a riotous act of punk rebellion, has a real “Trainspotting” vibe going on.
Chris Feil @ The Daily Beast
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Yes, the history of KNEECAP is entertaining, but it’s also important in the context of its power—intentional or not—to give voice to the voiceless.
- Excerpt: The most impressive thing about Kneecap, the quasi-biopic fictionalizing the Belfast trio’s formation, is how it draws implied parallels between the oppression facing Irish republicans and the systemic abuses that’ve long left Black musicians telling their listeners, in one form or another, to fight the power. But writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s film has a harder time connecting its stylish music video silliness with drama that meanders and a political message that repeats like it’s stuck on a cheap turntable.
Knox Goes Away
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Contains plenty of good performances trapped in a narrative that never shifts out of first gear.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Is [the main plot emotionally] convenient? Yes. Of course. But Keaton and Poirier do enough to render those conveniences into backdrop. What John does to outrun them is what matters.
Krazy House
Kung Fu Panda 4
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This one is full of action, a bar brawl at the Happy Bunny Tavern a highlight as the building itself teeters atop a cliff, its owner, Granny Boar (voice of Lori Tan Chinn), an homage to “Kung Fu Hustle’s” Landlady.
Luiz Santiago @ [Portuguese]
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It is a digestible, entertaining sequel, with a fast pace and clear motivations. Its central theme—how one must cope with change—should resonate with both children and adults.
Laapataa Ladies
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Ladies Coffee
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Ladies Coffee” is an intriguing short that presents its comments in intricate fashion. The horror part, though, could have been handled better, in a short that would definitely benefit from some additional duration.
Lake George
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
Land of Bad
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: At least it has an honest title.
Laroy, Texas
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The film might not get as dark as it potentially should after a very effective prologue, but the bleak nature of the finale’s “justice” does what it can to provide closure for the characters and the tone.
Last Night at Terrace Lanes
- Excerpt: This throwback to cult and survival horror may not be the most polished or slick, but it has an admirable spirit that makes up for its rough-hewn nature.
Last Party
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
The Last Showgirl
- Excerpt: The Last Showgirl – Pamela Anderson is Beautiful That Way
The Last Stop in Yuma County
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Just when you think you know where it’s going, Galluppi pulls the rug out from under you, and he does it with panache as well, cinematographer Mac Fisken showcasing the cast and location with various camera angles and techniques…one crafty little indie.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a fantastic cast of actors lending some humor, anxiety, and calm to the proceedings. You never know what will happen when someone takes a wrong step and a gun gets fired.
Last Summer
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Catherine Breillat’s (“Fat Girl,” “The Last Mistress”) first film in ten years is a remake of the Danish submission for the 2020 International Oscar, “Queen of Hearts,” and yet is in keeping with her predilection for pushing beyond sexual norms.
Layla
Leap of Faith
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: Leap of Faith features stunning cinematography (shot by four different camera people). Even the interiors showcase beautiful compositions and lighting.
Libertad
- Excerpt: Libertad is structured like Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years in that it spends most of its running time building up a picture of fairly ordinary lives, then delivers a real kicker at the very end, the import of which is told on the face of one of the characters rather than through direct exposition.
Lift
- Excerpt: Lift quickly becomes a forgettable heist flick, contradicting its initial promise of intrigue, excitement, and a pretty engaging opening sequence.
The Light for the Rest of the Walk
- Excerpt: “The Light for the Rest of the Walk” could have been an interesting, realistic family drama, but the effort to include the issue of drugs was definitely not a successful one, with the whole presentation being cliched and occasionally even naive. Nareshkumar Hegde Dodmari seems to have talent, particularly in a style the moves towards the docudrama, but needs to make some decisions regarding his narrative, improve his writing and work more on the sound if he is to move forward.
Limbo
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: This is an arresting performance, that, like the film itself, is sculpted from what is not said and what is not done, revealing the essence of the story with inference and innuendo.
- Excerpt: Like a pickaxe chipping off sandstone, Limbo is a flinty Outback noir that revels in smashing its hard-edged characters against one another.
The Listener
Nadine Whitney @ InSession Film
Little Death
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Too much of LITTLE DEATH feels like having your cake and eating it too, leaving all the good aspects to be canceled by the bad ones so the audience is left with nothing but a shallow promise and wasted potential.
Longing
- Excerpt: “Longing” is a manifestation of how grief makes emotions overtake reason and the inherent resilience that sometimes requires you to come back to reality. That reality will be diminished but somehow make you whole.
Look Back
- Excerpt: Granted, the impact of the movie would probably be bigger if it ended in the first part, but the quality of the art here and the comments deriving from the story definitely compensate, in an overall excellent title.
Look into My Eyes
- Excerpt: Lana Wilson’s soulful, patient, appropriately skeptical documentary takes psychics at their word but also peers behind the curtain in revealing ways.
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Poignant, mysterious, and thoroughly engrossing, LOOK INTO MY EYES is a wistful, and sometimes surprising, meditation on the need for connection.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Wilson asks us to look at psychics not as circus performers or charlatans, but as people who provide a service by listening…
- Excerpt: Look Into My Eyes, the new documentary from Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Lana Wilson (After Tiller, Miss Americana), looks at another way many people seek connection: appointments with psychic mediums. Shot by Stephen Maing in a straightforward way that avoids leaning into supernatural tropes, this deeply empathetic and refreshingly non-judgmental film introduces us to a small group of New York City-based psychics who, through their readings, attempt to provide healing moments for their clients while also finding some healing themselves along the way.
Lost Nation
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Prepared to be enlightened.
Lost on a Mountain in Maine
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This is a story about courage, persistence, and grit. It’s a reminder of the incredible power of family bonds; of how those relationships can be a source of strength even when we are separated from those we love.
Love and Work
- Excerpt: Filmmaker Pete Ohs’ follow-up to his horror satire Jethica is another delightfully lo-fi genre film, one that takes place in an alternative timeline—“the past of a different future,” according to the film’s narrator—where having a job is illegal and humans spend their days perfecting hobbies instead of producing goods.
Love Lies
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Love Machina
- Excerpt: Love Machina may want to take a peek behind its own curtain every once in a while for a reality check.
Love Me
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Sam and Andy Zuchero’s film suggests a Pixar film by way of Stanley Kubrick.
Loveable
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: A compelling emotional drama about the angst over a marriage separation and the problems that arise from a second marriage coming apart.
Lovely, Dark, And Deep
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
Lover, Stalker, Killer
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A must-watch for true-crime documentary fans.
LSD 2: Love, Sex aur Dhokha 2
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Luv Ki Arrange Marriage
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Mad About the Boy
- Excerpt: Coward’s public persona figures large in Barnaby Thompson’s documentary Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story, a choice which saves it from becoming a mere collection of celebratory clips and quotes (although that could also be fun).
- Excerpt: Well-groomed, witty and decadent
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
- Excerpt: [Made in England] introduces key films and provides technical and historical analysis from the point of view of a director who freely shares his love for the films discussed in a way that is positively infectious.
- Excerpt: Directed by David Hinton and presented on screen by an irresistably effusive Scorsese, the new documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger is essentially a cinematic love letter from Scorsese to these two men.
Made in Ingland: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Martin Scorsese senta-se na cadeira para apresentar a sua história com o cinema de Powell e Pressburger: desde a descoberta destes filmes, ainda na televisão, ao processo de restauro e redescoberta de que hoje são alvo.
MadS
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: No matter how much fun I had with the aesthetic and fresh take on a familiar horror trope, MADS cannot help but drag. It’s therefore great as far as the ride goes. There just isn’t much below the surface.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The scariest part is that while MadS is a fictional story, its fears eerily mirror what scares so many of us at the moment in reality while we’re forced to watch a world out of our control lurch into a tailspin of violence, spurred on by those in power, that seems to never end.
Magpie
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: 2024 has been the year Daisy Ridley has stepped up and shown her breadth as an actor in three thoroughly different roles and her performance here as an overlooked wife and mother seemingly losing it is what keeps us in the film’s grip.
Kat Hughes @ THN
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Ridley and Latif play their parts in this pulpy thriller’s machinations to perfection, so don’t be embarrassed if you end up standing to cheer the satisfying result.
Sebastian Zavala @ LoudAndClearReviews.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It is a movie about a failing marriage and the difficulties of raising kids, but told from a fresh point of view, emphasising the role of a toxic, selfish and self-absorbed man in the destruction of a seemingly idyllic family.
Maharaj
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Malta
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Podría llamarse Jauja. O Nunca Jamás. Porque Malta para Mariana, la protagonista de la segunda película de Natalia Santa, es en realidad un reino imaginario, una tierra donde corren ríos de leche y miel, una puerta de escape a esta vida gris, cansada y sin esperanza de brillo, en la que se siente pagando una condena.
Man and Witch
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Talking animals, castles, hobbit-like scenery, wizards, witches and popular music are all in “Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps,” a delightful fairytale for the 21st century.
Manga d’Terra
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Basil da Cunha é dos cineastas lusos mais interessantes da atualidade, com presença nas principais montras de festivais, como Cannes (Nuvem, Os Vivos Também Choram, Até Ver a Luz) ou Locarno (O Fim do Mundo), entre muitos outros. Manga d’Terra eleva-nos com o seu poder e ritmo musical feminino.
Maria
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The glossiness and shine of its surfaces cannot be denied, it is a sight to behold. But for some reason, I couldn’t connect with its heart.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: given the flights of fancy Knight has embellished her final days with, it is Jolie’s and Favino’s performances that will be remembered far longer than the film itself.
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The whole is imbued with similar flourishes as Larraín’s other English-language heightened biographies, Jackie and Spencer, to find its narrative thrust landing somewhere between the former’s poetic realism and latter’s evocative fantasy.
Mary
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This isn’t a movie that will fill you with peace and joy; it’s more likely to leave you with feelings of dread and doom.
Matched
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Matched” is not high art, and the story will probably alienate the fans of ‘true crime’. However, as a fairy tale whose main purpose is to shock and entertain it definitely succeeds
Matt and Mara
Christopher Cross @ Asynchronous Media
Lee Jutton @ Film Inquiry
- Excerpt: The film centers on a young writing professor and the instability she invites into her painfully stable life by reconnecting with an old friend; sparks fly in both directions, but both shy away from letting them truly catch fire.
McVeigh
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews.com
- Excerpt: A tense minimalist drama on the dangers of violence from domestic terrorists.
Me, Myself & the Void
Meanwhile on Earth
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Meanwhile on Earth is, in many ways, very similar to Clapin’s previous work I Lost My Body. Elsa is the dismembered hand trying to reclaim the past when it’s the future that she should be focusing on.
Memory
Diego Salgado @ Sofilm [Spanish]
Merchant Ivory
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a solid, if somewhat unbalanced, overview of one of the most important art house filmmaking teams in cinema history, perhaps most surprising in how financially scrappy the duo had to be.
Nadine Whitney @ Loud and Clear Reviews
- Excerpt: Simon Soucy’s Merchant Ivory documentary gifts film lovers with an elegant and intimate look into one of the most important award winning partnerships in cinema.
Merchant Ivory: The Documentary
- Excerpt: In a word, their films were classy, bringing a taste of high-brow culture to the movie screen and thus to towns all over America.
Merry Christmas
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Midas Man
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: An uneven but nicely packaged biopic on the Beatle manager Brian Epstein.
Miller’s Girl
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare took a true story and turned it into something so outlandish and cartoonish that it makes one doubt that it is remotely based on a true story. Even that could be forgiven if it were fun and exciting.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Henry Cavill leads a charismatic cast in this thrilling blend of action and comedy.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: An action thriller supposedly based on true events, which makes up for most of its shortcomings with plenty of style, clever dialogue, and extremely talented actors who are clearly having fun.
Misericordia
A Mistake
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: A medical drama about accountability that’s serious, bleak and powerful.
Molli and Max in the Future
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Mamet and Athari are as charming as the production design and fully on-board with each chapter’s new metaphor for our current social and political chaos or philosophical punch-line.
The Monk and the Gun
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Puzzling, surprising, and delightfully incongruous, it encourages us to see things with new eyes, open hearts, and good humor.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The result is a smart, witty, and insightful piece of international cinema that works immensely well for a western audience. There’s so much light and heart and hope that you can’t help but find yourself with a smile on your face throughout.
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: Graced with the gorgeous landscapes of the region’s mountains, the film is careful to use these tools for narrative complexity, rather than coasting on their visual charm.
The Moogai
- Excerpt: The Moogai is a scare-free blunt instrument, imprecise and uninterested in its own genre beyond its potential for metaphor.
Motel Destino
Anne Hoyt @ La Cronica [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Mucho sexo y poco amor
A Mother Apart
- Excerpt: “What happened to me was not my own fault.”
Mother of the Bride
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzeviews
- Excerpt: A shallow escapist pic that I couldn’t escape from until it ended.
Mother, Couch
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [Larsson] wants us to fill in the blanks. How does this story relate to our life? Its power demands our participation.
Mountains
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …issues of gentrification, the disconnect between immigrants and their American born children, the American Dream, racism and the importance of culture within ethnic communities all embedded within an intimate family drama.
Mourning in Lod
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: This artful microcosm of history, portrayed in both “Mourning in Lod” and “Lyd” helps explain the struggle, the tragedy, and the truth of the 1948 creation of Israel, its Zionist exclusivity, and its resultant unsolvable impasse.
Moving
- Excerpt: The culmination of a singular career, Moving is an epitaph not just for a broken family but also for Somai, who passed away in 2001 at the age of only 53. Fortunately, he lives on through his work and the vibrant way in which it portrays all of the ups and downs of life.
Munjya
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Murder Is Easy
- Excerpt: Ah! Nothing like a fresh whodunit to cleanse the cinematic palette after such a wide-ranging awards season.
Murder Mubarak
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Murdering the Devil
- Excerpt: Murdering the Devil is a delightful feminist satire that renders an unholy battle of the sexes in incredible, eye-catching color. From the moment the playful opening credits—spelled out in colorful blocks—kick in to the tune of a woman crooning that she’d rather have the Abominable Snowman than no man at all, you know you’re in for a cinematic treat.
Music
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …Schanelec’s mostly dialogue free film is simply too nebulous to get a narrative grip on, instead a series of long, slow takes with very somber people where very little happens.
Music by John Williams
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Made with clear love and affection. And yet, that veneration also makes the documentary a little too light and fluffy.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: You won’t find many criticisms, details about his professional or personal problems, or awkward moments in this film. That’s not its goal, but rather to show how important Williams has been to the American film industry.
Musica
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Though shallow as a narrative and confused about its genre, it’s still a fun film to watch as a clever quasi-musical with terrific editing.
My Favourite Cake
My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Chapter Two, Desire, begins by pointing out the lesbian allusions to the two roommates of “The Pleasure Garden,” and indeed, one of this films greater pleasures is its emphasis on Hitchcock’s lesser scene silent films.
My Spy: Eternal City
- Excerpt: Bautista looks tired, and the script doesn’t help, getting him beat up over and over. This sequel is a superfluous and unnecessary IP extender, which might be okay if it wasn’t creating a problem for parents who have to explain to eight-year-olds why they should not see it.
My Sunshine
- Excerpt: A nostalgic coming-of-age tale that gracefully explores identity and resilience against the backdrop of a wintry Hokkaido town.
My Sweet Land
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Yes, the story itself seems familiar to those paying attention to the many instances of violent displacement and ethnic cleansing occurring all over Asia, but familiarity doesn’t negate the importance of providing Artsakh a platform to be heard.
National Anthem
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cowriter/director Luke Gilford expands on his 2020 photography book ‘National Anthem: America’s Queer Rodeo’ with a joyous celebration of queer life and the freedom to find oneself on one’s own terms.
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: Luke Gilford’s debut feature shows us what queer expression without restraint truly looks like, against the masculine backdrop of the Old West
Never Let Go
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
Never Look Away
- Excerpt: Directed by Lucy Lawless in her debut, Never Look Away documents the life and career of the spitfire with the same relentless energy as its adrenaline-junkie subject—and gives us a sense of what kind of person was putting themselves in danger to bring us the news.
Nickel Boys
Kenji Fujishima @ Slant Magazine
Night Is Not Eternal
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Night Is Not Eternal proves a fascinating look at the troubles and struggles we all face in a flattening world ruled by opportunists of greed rather than stewards of protection.
Nightwatch: Demons are Forever
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [This one is about revenge and] therefore works best as a character study of burden and entitlement while the mystery (Who is the murderer?) becomes a secondary concern—a good thing since it’s not too difficult to figure out.
No Other Land
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The thing about injustice is that those with the means to expose it must do so regardless of whether anyone is currently paying attention. Like Basel says, “You need patience.”
No Way Up
- Excerpt: No Way Out has its film chills. Though low budget, it grabbed me all the way to the end. .
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Most performances are good, the visual effects are surprisingly decent, and the entire experience is digested in just over an hour and a half, which is increasingly rare these days.
Nocturnes
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Who would have thought that a movie on a scientist’s project studying hawk moths would be such a symphony for the senses?
Not Not Jazz
- Excerpt: You can always go deeper
Nowhere Special
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Deeply moving, quiet, and told in a straightforward way, Nowhere Special is a beautiful film.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: it is Norton’s quiet perseverance that both propels the film and keeps it from becoming maudlin.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Beautiful and heartbreaking. A beguiling portrait of love, grief, and the pragmatism that unites them, built up via tender moments of the most ordinary sort. James Norton’s performance is revelatory.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Norton is wonderful in the role, lending it a vulnerability that shines through the stoic nature of a man doing his best to show no fear.
Oh, Canada
Anne Hoyt @ Desistfilm [Spanish]
The Old Oak
- Excerpt: The performances of Turner and Mari carry the film, with the performances of the many supporting roles existing on a continuum from fairly well-round rounded to outright caricature.
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Cuando se llega a los 88 años, como Ken Loach —dos veces ganador de la Palma de Oro en Cannes y director de “El último bar”, estrenada el jueves pasado en Colombia—, se tiene bastante claro qué tanta fe se puede tener en la humanidad. Sobre todo si uno ha tenido, como él, una conciencia social que terminó convirtiéndose en su estilo, en su marca de autor.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a fitting capper to Loach’s career…Turner is perfectly cast as the man with empathy…a savvily crafted protagonist whose listening gift as a bartender allows the audience an understanding of the less-than-welcoming locals.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “The Old Oak” is a grand constructive film of remedy and redemption. It’s a masterpiece of subtle reflection.
Omni Loop
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a much deeper role than you might initially assume, and Parker excels at delivering that complexity at the perfect moments. Edebiri, Harris Yulin, and the rest of the cast provide wonderful support, but this is Parker’s film.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews.com
- Excerpt: The pic is more about getting the emotional responses right when facing death than having its time-travel story add up.
Onde fica Esta Rua? ou Sem Antes nem Depois
Paulo Portugal @ Insider [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Rever Os Verdes Anos para perguntar Onde Fica Esta Rua? Sim, o tempo fez o seu feitiço, com Isabel Ruth a cantar num maravilhoso showcase no Cinema Ideal.
Operation Undead
- Excerpt: Despite the fact that it definitely goes a bit too strong on the melodrama, “Operation Undead” is an excellent zombie movie, both for the action and horror, but also for its anti-war and historic comments that definitely deem it a stand out in the category.
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It left me saturated, confused and disgusted. Saturated with so much death, confused by the redundant way in which it decided to deal with its themes, and disgusted by the visual treatment of the gore.
The Order
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: They’ve changed the name of real-life F.B.I. agent Wayne Manis to Terry Husk and given Husk fictional family issues which really only distract from the otherwise lean and suspenseful narrative.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A harrowing exploration of how hate groups operate
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Their story unfolds linearly and without much flourish, but that’s to its drama’s benefit by keeping things lean while still ramping up the stakes. I was invested from the opening prologue of backwoods murder straight through to its fiery finale.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: It’s a well-crafted, suspenseful, action-packed film that hits all the right spots.
Orion and the Dark
- Excerpt: Orion and the Dark preserves the essence and messages of the original tale about understanding and accepting our fears as something that characterizes us as human beings.
The Other Laurens
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Plot [eventually] steals the wheel away from any and all character development [until] the film’s idiosyncrasies become the real intrigue. It’s much funnier than you might expect from the subject matter and a lot darker as a result too.
Out
Out of My Mind
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: One of the greatest benefits of books and movies is that they allow us to see the world from someone else’s perspective. And letting kids see things through Melody’s eyes will always be a win.
Sebastian Zavala @ Loud and Clear Reviews [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It is a peek through a window few people can have access to, and it results in a story that, while a tad predictable and at times saccharine, has a lot to say about the way the American education system treats disabled people and minorities in general.
The Outlaws
- Excerpt: This year’s western resurgence offers plenty of options, but this film’s simple premise and gamey gimmicks miss the mark.
Ozma
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Ozma is musical, original and inventive: it’s not just the same old tired story about an insomniac toting a telepathic jellyfish around London.
Paradise
- Excerpt: In the end, “Paradise” emerges as film that shows that Son has some interesting ideas, but his command of the medium is not yet to a level that he can adequately present them on screen.
The Paragon
Parthenope
Anne Hoyt @ La Cronica [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Bella pero vacía, como su protagonista
Parvulos
Párvulos
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: PÁRVULOS gets extremely dark as a result. The descent to all-out carnage is unrelenting as the body count increases and the tone turns from hopeful delusion to bittersweet grief.
Patna Shuklla
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Perfect Days
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers FIlm
- Excerpt: This isn’t to say that, with Perfect Days, Wenders is treating slow cinema as therapy, but there is a therapeutic effect to watching this lovely film. The story of Hirayama demonstrates a possible way forward for people overwhelmed by the lack of meaning in the busy routines of their lives.
Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Piano Lesson
Candice Frederick @ HuffPost
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I really like Fisher here, but it’s Washington and Deadwyler who take command from frame one. We must only pray that their passion doesn’t end up feeding the instrument more blood.
- Excerpt: In The Piano Lesson, the ghosts are as tangible as they’ve ever been, and the film barely containing them is as weathered and tense as any family in need of a séance.
Pictures of Ghosts
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: We can see the ghosts of Filho’s own past pervading his prior films, including this revelatory look into the mother and city which helped shape him.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an essay film about his life and career as much as a document of a city. It’s an ode to art, ephemera, and metamorphosis.
Piece by Piece
Candice Frederick @ HuffPost
Harrison Martin @ Flixfrog
- Excerpt: Piece by Piece is a brilliant and bold entry in the Lego Movie franchise. Every scene brought a smile to my face. I didn’t realize how funny Pharrell is.
Pig That Survived Foot-and-Mouth Disease
- Excerpt: Although there is an overall rawness here, both in technique and in narrative, and Hur does go a bit too far with his story, “Pig That Survived Foot-and-Mouth Disease” emerges as an excellent movie, particularly due to its contextual richness, and as another testament to the progress of Korean animation.
Pitch People
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The goofy-90s-cheese factor is high in this look at home-shopping TV hucksters, but any nostalgia is small and cheap. The chipper vibe is distasteful in a way it perhaps wasn’t in the booming 1990s.
Place of Bones
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Most of the appeal lies with Graham and Nemec. They’re an effective pair that gives the otherwise straightforward plot intrigue even if the whole progresses pretty much exactly as it must.
Players
Jeremy Kibler @ GuyAtTheMovies.com
- Excerpt: When taken as a lightly entertaining heist movie, it actually gets away with us not hating these players, even if their games are borderline-sociopathic.
Porcelain War
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …not only an uplifting look at artists waging an unorthodox battle in Ukraine, but a whimsical look at art as Anya’s paintings come to life as miniature animations on the body of a porcelain snail.
- Excerpt: A battlefield art documentary that faces its violent dissonance head-on until resonance emerges.
The Prank
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
The Present
- Excerpt: The Present is a heartwarming, moving take on time travel and using it to keep a family together.
Primeira Obra
Paulo Portugal @ [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Rui Simões está de parabéns. Não só pela estreia, nas salas de cinema, de Primeira Obra, mas também por esta ocorrer precisamente no dia dos 50 anos sobre o 25 de Abril (e um mês depois de celebrar 80 anos).
Primitive
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Primitive” has its issues, and at times it feels as if the director was not exactly sure what he wanted to do or maybe more precisely, how to do it. At the same time though, the movie is definitely well-shot, well-acted, funny and interesting in its context, which seem to be the reasons it found its way to Moscow International Film Festival.
The Promised Land
Kat Hughes @ THN
Rene Sanchez @ Cine Sin Fronteras [Spanish]
Property
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Property doesn’t pull many punches. It hits far, far harder, and probes much deeper, than any Marxist-leaning story you’ve caught onscreen in recent memory.
Propriedade
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: In ‘Propriedade,’ those without property show how the wages of greed can often boomerang back on the affluent.
Pure O
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: Told with a cinema-verité style that juxtaposes the naturalism of la vie quotidian with the all-consuming inner conflict at work, it follows Cooper’s struggles with a steady, unsentimental eye. It makes his breakthrough moments exhilarating, while the vulnerability of absolute honesty with those he loves most takes on an emotional intimacy that is almost too much to bear.
Queendom
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …although her act is drag-inspired and drag-adjacent, that term hardly describes Marvin’s bizarre performance art… her costumes are so otherworldly and alien that they don’t meet a strict definition of cross-dressing.
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: Queendom is a fascinating and often heartbreaking look at an artist using her creativity to push boundaries, even at the expense of her own health and safety.
- Excerpt: In our current era of “just be white and hetero like me” (many of whom are lying to themselves out of fear of the truth), this film is a must-see for the millions amongst us who need to better understand, empathize and celebrate all of those who have the courage of their convictions.
Queens
Sebastian Zavala @ Loud and Clear Reviews [Spanish]
- Excerpt: By sometimes focusing on the perspective of a teenager and her little sister, it manages to be both entertaining and thought-provoking; deceptively light, and dramatically affecting.
Queer
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Working with an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ last published novel by his “Challengers'” scribe Justin Kuritzkes, director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Name”) has elicited a powerhouse performance from Daniel Craig that is romantic desire personified.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: Craig’s performance is crazy good.
Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island
- Excerpt: Hutner’s film offers an alternative history of the meltdown at Three Mile Island, with a focus not on the cause of the accident or the official reports on what happened (although they are quoted from time to time) but the effects on the people who lived nearby.
The Radleys
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The beats are there—they just keep getting hit in precise order without the nuance necessary for organic emotional attachment. That clinical nature ensures it works, but only superficially so in the moment.
Razing Liberty Square
- Excerpt: …thanks to global warming, rising sea levels and increasingly violent tropical storms pose a threat to beachfront properties, making Liberty Square (elevation: 12 feet above sea level) attractive to commercial developers. Calling their plans “neighborhood revitalization” is not sufficient to allay the fears of residents, who suspect the real plan is to force them to move elsewhere so richer people can move in.
Reagan
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Respectful without being too reverential, Reagan is a positive though placid look at one of the most consequential Presidents in living memory.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisshwartzreviews
- Excerpt: It will likely be cherished by those who care less about film than they do about Reagan.
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: There is no joy here. Everyone we’re meant to empathize with comes with a bag of dreariness.
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: All the flaws from the first part are here, more annoying than ever: a non-existent story, characters with zero charisma, a self-parodic excess of slow motion, and a style of cinematography that I would kindly describe as “ugly.”
Red Island
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Campillo’s goal was to tell this tale from a child’s eyes rather than document the events themselves. In many instances the filmmaker is trying to have it both ways only to end up smoothing down the edges.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It is easier to admire “Red Island” than to connect with it, but that, happily, does not mean that it makes sense to disparage it or minimize its considerable strengths.
Red Rooms
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Pascal Plante explores that phenomenon [serial killer movies] from a unique perspective – that of the female groupies who fawn over these depraved murders – and his psychological thriller keeps us guessing until the very end.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s a stunning tightrope walk that expertly weaves together a taut script, sensory overload (via very intentional and effective cinematography and score), and an enigmatic performance from Gariépy.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Benjamin Ree not only recreates a life after death, he makes a strong case for digital connection in a film he keeps visually interesting…with animated recreations of Mats’ World of Warfare sessions culled from a 42,000 page gaming archive.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN is thus as much of an eye-opening journey for Mats’ parents post-mortem as it is evidence of the one he took for himself.
The Remnant
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Rest in Peace
Dennis Schwartz @ dennis schwartz reviews
- Excerpt: Its anti-climactic and incoherent conclusion failed to enthrall me, as things seemed real until they didn’t.
Retake
- Excerpt: All in all, there is a certain level of amateurism, low-budget and one-man-show sense here, that deems “Retake” a film not exactly for everyone. However, for those who manage to look beyond the movie’s shortcomings, Nakano’s intelligence and the particularly smart meta approach definitely impresses in a rather hopeful debut.
Reverse the Curse
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: REVERSE THE CURSE proves two very different films jammed together with seemingly no interest in softening the jarring shift halfway through. Thankfully, both halves are enjoyable.
Ricardo e a Pintura
Paulo Portugal @ [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Ricardo e a Pintura é um filme avassalador sobre o impulso criador. Não só da pintura, mas da arte em geral. Além de possuir uma forte analogia com o cinema. O filme que foi apresentado, em estreia mundial, no festival de Locarno, na Suíça, em 2023, fora de competição, chega esta semana às salas de cinema.
Riddle of Fire
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is an acquired taste and will only adhere to those willing to go along with its quirkiness.
- Excerpt: Shot through with the warm amber hue of nostalgia—and not just because it was captured on Kodak 16mm film, with all of the rich color and texture that entails—Riddle of Fire is a giddy romp through the woods of rural Wyoming that harkens back to the best kid-focused fantasy flicks of yesteryear, the kinds of original movies that modern Hollywood has largely abandoned in favor of bloated blockbusters based on established intellectual property.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I personally would have liked it to go even further [stylistically], but I can’t deny its cult-status appeal or its brilliant use of young performers who are rarely afforded the opportunity to shine quite like this.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …plays out like one of those kid-centered live-action Disney movies of the 70s, if the tykes were foul-mouthed (but still endearing) thieves, and the director was a drugged-out hippie… full of stylistic and cultural references, but somehow still feels largely sui generis.
Road House
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: This is a glossy B-level movie that is over the top, bloody, and a bit of a mess. Sometimes, that’s all we want.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: In this remake of the 1980s cult classic, Jake Gyllenhaal packs a punch, but the plot falls flat.
- Excerpt: There’s not much to say about Road House (2024), but I can say that it’s a fun action movie and Jake Gyllenhaal is a star!
Role Play
Manuel São Bento @ Firstshowing
- Excerpt: As a few other issues emerge, these are somewhat compensated by the filmmaker’s commitment to providing a light-hearted, fun, entertaining movie that aims to offer families a good time without much seriousness.
The Room Next Door
Katie Smith-Wong @ Movie Marker
- Excerpt: Moore and Swinton is the on-screen partnership that 2024 didn’t expect but seeing them together in Almodóvar’s first English-language feature feels like a dream collaboration. Although the filmmaker doesn’t tread too far from familiar ground, The Room Next Door feels like a steady return to form that may spell a new era in Almodóvar’s filmography.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The Room Next Door is a slight disappointment. Its story—based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez—is intriguing and at times unpredictable, but it is presented here coldly and logically, leaving aside its emotional aspect.
The Roundup: Punishment
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This one might be the tamest so far (I still haven’t seen THE OUTLAWS), but it’s still a lot of fun. Park Ji-hwan steals the show. Kim Mu-yeol is brutally menacing. And Don Lee is having a blast.
Row To Rob A Bank
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: One of the better true story bank robbery films.
Rowdy Girl
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: I loved this documentary. How Renee interacts with her rescued animals, how she talks in their language, and how she and her husband nurture each animal (they are all named) is inspiring.
Ru
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Director Charles-Olivier Michaud’s adaptation of Kim Thúy’s award-winning novel takes liberties in portraying the narrative, but maintains the emotions expressed on the page. And even though it focuses on one family several decades earlier, it’s a universal immigrant story that will resonate with audiences.
The Rule of Jenny Pen
Rule of Two Walls
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This film is as much a window into Ukraine as it is an object itself—a manifestation of Ukraine’s soul. The result is a captivating piece that provides a different look at a familiar topic.
Sacramento
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: An indie character-driven comedy about self-discovery.
The Sacrifice
- Excerpt: Shot in exile from his native Soviet Union on the Swedish island of Gotland, Tarkovsky teamed up with many of Ingmar Bergman’s longtime collaborators—including actor Erland Josephson and cinematographer Sven Nykvist—to tell the hauntingly beautiful tale of an aging intellectual who embraces both Christianity and paganism in an attempt to stave off the apocalypse.
- Excerpt: Remastered version of 1986 original
Salem’s Lot
- Excerpt: Salem’s Lot rises after years in the dark, a vampire tale with no heart and no stakes.
Saturn Return
- Excerpt: Saturn Return – imagining Los Planetas
Scared Shitless
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: SCARED SHITLESS lives up to its promise. It’s funny, gross, and extremely Canadian. It’s a love letter to 1980s creature features with a game cast.
Séance
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Kerr simply has a knack for making sure their duplicitous natures are sympathetic enough to accept their plight before finally pulling the rug to show one’s actions are truly unforgivable.
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: Engaging Mystery story
Searching for Amani
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: Murder, climate change and hope all play a big part in a bereaved young Kenyan’s search for the truth
- Excerpt: A tale of two climates
Sebastian
- Excerpt: Sebastian plays like a rejected article from The Cut, where a tired-eyed twink rejects all self-awareness in pursuit of literary glory.
- Excerpt: Portrait of the writer/sex worker as a changed young man
The Secret Art of Human Flight
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Mendoza does a nice job making the film look better than its budget constraints and Orenshein’s script gets to the heart of love and loss in both its goofy and sad moments.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Directed by the wild H.P. Mendoza, “The Secret Art of Human Flight” transfers off the script into a fabulously rich internal journey. Coupled with cinematography expert Markus Mentzer’s genius and Mendoza’s music, Orenshein’s screenplay shines with an uncommon depth on grief and loss.
- Excerpt: Conventions exist to be defied
Secret: A Hidden Score
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: In the end, “Secret: A Hidden Score” is a mixed bag of a film that draws the viewer in with the charisma and beauty of its protagonists and a story that seems intriguing in the beginning, only to disappoint in the end. Probably fans of romantic TV dramas will be the ones that will enjoy the film.
Sector 36
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Seeking Mavis Beacon
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That complexity is what drives this detective story away from the search for Renée and towards an introspective look at the changing landscape of representation, deep fakes, and truth.
Sempre
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Ao pensar no significado da palavra ‘Sempre’, deveria surgir quase como seu corolário a repetição da palavra de ordem ‘25 de Abril Sempre!’ Bem andou a investigadora e realizadora italiana Luciana Fina ao isolar essa palavra, debruçando-se (ela e nós!) nos seus múltiplos significados.
September 5
The Settlers
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: El chileno Felipe Gálvez firma con “Los colonos”, ganadora del premio de la crítica de la sección “Una cierta mirada” en el Festival de Cannes del año pasado y recién estrenada en MUBI, una película bellísima en lo formal y muy inteligente en su contenido, que usa muchas de las herramientas del western (los encuadres amplios, las conversaciones íntimas y francas entre hombres, la música con sonoridades de guerra y orquestaciones brillantes) para contarnos con los recursos de la ficción, la desgraciada forma en que José Menéndez despojó al pueblo selknam de sus terrenos en la isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, utilizando la crueldad y la matanza, que ejercía a través de las acciones ejecutadas por Alexander MacLennan, su administrador.
Rene Sanchez @ Cine Sin Fronteras [Spanish]
Sew Torn
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: A crafty midnight movie about the choices we make inevitably leading to doom, ‘Sew Torn’ is a ripping calling card for director Freddy Macdonald and his future storytelling prowess.
Shaitaan
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Shakedown
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: A bonkers black comedy that celebrates family values with a body count.
The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It should be immensely entertaining, especially for those looking for dark humor, confusion, violence and a premise that is practically impossible to waste.
Sharmajee Ki Beti
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Shayda
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: “Holy Spider’s” Zar Amir Ebrahimi gives a performance that is alternately anxiety-ridden and joyful while also giving us the Iranian woman’s point of view missing from 1991’s “Not Without My Daughter”
- Excerpt: Inspired by Niasari’s childhood, complete with a dedication “for my mother and the brave women of Iran” and home movie footage over the end credits, Shayda is a remarkable portrait of feminine resilience and a fitting tribute to the fight for basic freedoms that Iranian women continue to wage today.
She Is Conann
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: In his ‘incoherent’ manner, Mandico discombobulates the viewer between masculine and feminine, monochrome and color, melodrama and farce, art and trash… invigorating.
Shirley
Candice Fre @ HuffPost
Betty Jo Tucker @ AuthorsDen
- Excerpt: Regina King transformed herself into Shirley Chisholm in this compelling docudrama.
The Shrouds
Anne Hoyt @ La Cronica [Spanish]
- Excerpt: El arte que Nace junto a la Tumba
Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Sin
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: The truth is that in terms of story, Ha loses his sense of measure somewhat, as too many elements are included in the script which make the whole thing convoluted and far-fetched by its finale. The narrative approach, however, particularly the combination of horror, drama and arthouse, as much as the way the movie was shot are definitely enough to move beyond any shortcomings, with the whole thing working quite well throughout, additionally boasting a very appealing originality.
Sisi & I
- Excerpt: Starring Sandra Hüller as Irma, with Susanne Wolff assuming Sisi’s crown, Sisi & I provides an intriguing look at female rebellion and unrequited love during an era when pushing back against feminine stereotypes practically amounted to a death sentence.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: A fantastic character study that does well to spend time on the masks these women wear as well as the lives trapped beneath. Helped by a surprisingly anachronistic soundtrack of pop songs that invigorates the subject matter from stuffy to timeless.
Six in Paris
- Excerpt: Six in Paris—now available on Blu-ray in a new 2K restoration from Icarus Films—provides an intriguing time capsule of a city and a cinematic movement, even as it occasionally suffers from repetitiveness in tone and perspective.
The Six Triple Eight
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: I heartily recommend this film for families with teens, but I’d wait for its streaming date. The movie is fascinating but flawed: the acting is a bit stiff at the beginning, some of the dialogue feels a bit off, and the battlefield special effects are more suited to TV than a big screen.
Nadine Whitney @ InSession Film
- Excerpt: The Six Triple Eight – an object lesson in how not to make a prestige war drama
Sleep
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/director Jason Yu (assistant director, “Okja”) makes his feature directorial debut with a K-Horror that is at once familiar in its themes yet gives us an eerie new threat in a loving spouse.
Kat Hughes @ THN
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Yu understands that a potentially mentally unstable Soo-jin will match the violence of a potentially possessed Hyun-su. That’s the true horror: that humanity can be just as terrifying as any malevolent spirit.
- Excerpt: Jason Yu’s ghost story Sleep relies on the considerable strength of his direction and script, not to mention two solid and powerful lead performances.
Smiling Georgia
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: No laughing matter: The lengths some politicians are willing to go in order to retain power can leave voters toothless
Snack Shack
Kat Hughes @ THN
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While SNACK SHACK has its moments of sentimentality and familiarity, it never falls prey to bringing its conventions to life conventionally.
Dan Stalcup @ The Goods: Film Reviews
- Excerpt: What unfolds over the next several scenes is a caffeinated sort of hangout movie — too much momentum and high-wire energy to really replicate the languid lazy-summer vibes of the film’s forbears, but inviting in its own way.
The Snow Sister
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
- Excerpt: This isn’t a typical Hollywood Christmas film; it comes from Norway and those Scandinavians know how to go dark.
Some Rain Must Fall
- Excerpt: “What am I doing here?”
Sometimes I Think About Dying
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Although the narrative goes in some fanciful directions, there was never a moment where it didn’t touch on some elemental truth. This is just a lovely movie.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film’s final minutes celebrate human connection in the most touching way… like a Pacific Northwest Sundance take on an Aki Kaurismaki film with Dabney Morris’ music adding a dab of nostalgic Americana.
Sorry, Not Sorry
- Excerpt: It’s no joke
Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A beautiful, spiritual movie that left me a little choked up at the end.
Spaceman
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The oddity of the premise combined with the strength of the performances make this worth exploring, even if some consider it too restrained for its own good.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a character study of a man who must psychoanalyze his rationale for continually leaving that which he loves the most. And if he does so with the aid of a giant spider…rest assured that Sandler and Dano make this a singular cinematic relationship
Spacked Out
- Excerpt: Among the sea of coming-of-age films out there, Spacked Out is refreshing in its focus on rough-and-tumble working-class girls and all of the real issues they face; the film doesn’t judge them for their indiscretions, but treats them with empathy and understanding.
Spermworld
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: Inspired by a New York Times article by Nellie Bowles – for which Oppenheim contributed reporting – titled “The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand,” Spermworld is a perplexing, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes uplifting look at a subculture thriving on the margins of society.
Spy x Family Code: White
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: SPY X FAMILY excels both in the familial comedy and thrilling suspense. It definitely feels episodic in nature with a desire to make more installments, so don’t expect anything crazy in terms of narrative besides a nice mix of exposition and adventure.
Starve Acre
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Smith and Clark are so good because they understand this necessity [wherein their characters act not] because they believe in [what’s happening] or want it. But because it’s what allows everything to make sense.
Steppenwolf
Kat Hughes @ THN
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I laughed out loud a few times during STEPPENWOLF and I’m certain Yerzhanov intended for me to do so [despite its brutality]. That’s how unhinged Aitzhanov’s character and performance are.
Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The whole is still entertaining and informative, though. It delivers enough to be worthwhile even if—like many of Apple’s documentaries—it’s really just a glorified puff piece trying to be as inoffensive and congratulatory as possible.
Stolen Time
- Excerpt: Who’s to blame?
Stopmotion
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Morgan uses his experience with stop motion to great effect here, his puppets’ eeriness amplified by sound design and a score by Lola de la Mata that sounds like a squeaky playground swing combined with someone banging slack piano strings.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Unusually psychologically astute and utterly unnerving as it digs into the enigmas and anxieties of artistic creation. Style is substance in this challenge to the very concept of an “animated movie.”
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Stopmotion is a mix of body and psychological horror that digs into the very human habit of codependency, though it specifically focuses on the codependent relationship that can and does develop between a child and a parent who takes them for granted.
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: “…as a psychological horror, ‘Stopmotion’ delivers on horror, while coming up a bit short on the psychology… It’s admittedly style over substance, but the surplus of style makes up for a shortfall in substance.”
A Storm Foretold
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Even more disturbing is how entertaining all this can be, Stone often appearing humorously genial…The film is unsettling in more ways than one.
Strange Darling
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: It causes us to re-examine its characters almost from scene to scene, as well as how we watch and react to movies as a whole.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film is elevated by Fitzgerald and Gallner’s evolving performances and unique dynamic, but also, most surprisingly, by the color coded cinematography by Giovanni Ribisi, the actor moving up to features after having shot several music videos.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s not that Mollner is manipulating his characters to hide the truth. He’s manipulating our preconceptions to heighten it.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Using an atypical structure and mixing well-developed social commentary with scenes of blood and violence, and of course, top-notch acting, this film ends up feeling like an anomaly.
Strange Darling
Strange Harvest – Occult Murder in the Inland Empire
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Remove the cosmic aspects and you do feel like you’re on this bloody ride of murder as captured by [cameras]. It’s just impossible to do so when the film leans into its “Lovecraftian” appeal so hard that the marketing push uses it as a selling point.
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire
The Strangers: Chapter 1
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This is a lean, efficient horror flick that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but does manufacture a sturdy one.
Stree 2
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Street Trash
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: One thing this version of Street Trash does even better than the original is take a direct, very deliberate stand on the side of the oppressed against those who all too often violently oppress them.
Stress Positions
Dennis Schwartz @ dennis schwartz reviews
- Excerpt: It makes Woody Allen’s neurotic New Yorker look like an out-of-towner.
Studio One Forever
- Excerpt: A landmark in time
Subservience
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Megan Fox forced into another one-dimensional “hot girl” role that offers zero opportunity to prove her talents.
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: S.K. Dale’s latest film explores the damage that artificial intelligence can cause when it begins to cross undesirable boundaries. With a rather poor development, the story falls short of what was initially set out.
Sugarcane
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The atrocities perpetuated upon Canada’s indigenous is yet another stain on a Catholic Church which has covered up the sexual crimes of priests around the world and allowed the abuse and deaths of single women in Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries.
- Excerpt: From subject/director Julian Brave NoiseCat and director/journalist Emily Kassie, the documentary gives faces, names and histories to those affected by the residential schools—and looks, bracingly, towards a future where healing is possible.
The Summer with Carmen
- Excerpt: Movie script 101
Suncoast
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: I’m sure Laura Chinn’s heart was in the right place, and I have no doubt that much of what we witness came from real life. But the final product does not gel cohesively – the pieces work separately rather than as one.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: These are people trying their best to navigate an impossible ordeal while falling prey to the momentary satisfaction of transferring their pain onto each other. And it unfolds beautifully thanks to Chinn’s words and Linney and Parker’s performances.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story will move the viewer and give us insight into an actor who played the Man of Steel but who became a greater symbol for truth, justice and the American way.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: What transcends is not just the actor’s determination to live but the unwavering devotion of his wife, Dana. Together, they exemplified how love can transform misfortune into hope.
- Excerpt: It’s a cathartic cry, interspersed with equal amounts of joy at what life can offer even in the midst of hardship.
- Excerpt: Through this heartfelt and deeply personal documentary, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story pays tribute to the man behind Superman.
The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat
- Excerpt: Life has a tendency to be melodramatic, and a story like “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can Eat” told in an unabashedly heartfelt fashion with a screenplay by (under a pseudonym) Gina Prince-Bythewood and director Tina Mabry, putting the melodrama in the context of enduring, unconditional friendship over the decades.
The Surfer
Kat Hughes @ THN
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: This is a role Cage can do in his sleep and I can watch in my sleep.
Suze
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: The performances of Watkins and Gillespie are what make this picture sweet rather than an awkward May-December drama.
Swede Caroline
- Excerpt: Swede Caroline is one of the most low-key hilarious films in recent history, where the mundane is gloriously elevated into high comedy.
Sweet Dreams
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Although it breaks no new ground, Sweet Dreams is an amiable movie that celebrates the power of recovery to turn a person’s life around.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: The cause and effect at play on-screen is never quite what the characters anticipate or hope for when they willingly allow themselves to be put into exploitative situations that they believe they can turn the tables on.
Sweethearts
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Yes, following [Hearon’s Palmer] takes us away from the “main plot,” but I’d argue his path is both more interesting and makes [the leads’ plot] better through the act of “ruining” it.
The Taste of Things
Tell That to the Winter Sea
- Excerpt: Tell That to the Winter Sea dives into the complex, ever-evolving humanity of the joy and pain of friendship and love.
The Tenants
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [A memorable finale] is where the true horror begins because all the frustrations he’s laughed off to this point force him to wonder if he’s been the [pariah] this whole time.
Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Thank You for Banking With Us
- Excerpt: Overall, Thank You for Banking With Us brings a confident, emotive yet provocative caper that sees two unlikely women take a stand against patriarchal social norms.
That Christmas
- Excerpt: Schmaltz-heavy and wishlist-thin, That Christmas offers very little and doesn’t even have the self-awareness to include the receipt.
The Thicket
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: Lewis and Dinklage provide the star power, while the ensemble cast are fine in supporting roles.
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It combines clichés with a well-crafted atmosphere and outstanding performances, especially from Juliette Lewis. Although the plot is not innovative, its execution and visual style make the film feel unique and effective.
Things Will Be Different
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Felker has created a hermetically sealed puzzle box to force his characters into confronting the choices and mistakes they’ve made. And once they voluntarily travel inside, that seal guarantees they reckon with those actions.
This Closeness
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: There’s a lot to like in this journey of two horrible people reminding a third that, despite his insecurities making him believe he’s destined for loneliness, at least he isn’t as desperate to trick himself into thinking the opposite as them.
This Is Me…Now
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: If J-Lo wants to dance in the rain like Gene Kelly, who are we to stop her?
This Is Not a War Story
- Excerpt: Two lost souls
This Man
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: Tomojiro Amano definitely had some good ideas, but in the end “This Man” emerges as overly ambitious, a film that would definitely benefit from some constraint in all levels, apart from the budget.
Tiger Stripes
Kat Hughes @
Nadine Whitney @ InSession
- Excerpt: A thrilling addition to the empowered rebel and feral girl canon.
The Tiger’s Apprentice
Manuel São Bento @ Talking Films
- Excerpt: The Tiger’s Apprentice certainly holds the potential for a genuinely engaging, memorable animated flick. The narrative formulas, though prevalent, could have been transcended with better execution and a slightly longer runtime, which would have led to the possibility of characters and themes being more fleshed out.
- Excerpt: “People are inherently good”
The Time Masters
Tokyo Cowboy
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
Touch
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Cowriter (with the novel’s author, Olaf Olafsson)/director Baltasar Kormákur casts his ensemble over multiple decades in three different locations to tell a touching love story interrupted by a little known, tragic social stigma.
- Excerpt: “Touch,” from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, is vast in scope, stretching over decades, languages, continents, and cultures, with themes of memory, aging, loss, and love. But its sensibility is as exquisitely tender as the flutter of a butterfly wing.
- Excerpt: Even as the possibility of WW III looms large, it’s encouraging to have a film that celebrates life in the devastation of death (in this case, the utter destruction of Hiroshima).
Treasure
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Diego Salgado @ Sofilm [Spanish]
Trigger Warning
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: There is a fine line between awesome and awkward, but the film doesn’t manage to locate it.
Trunk: Locked In
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Works better as a visceral experience rather than a logical one.
Tuesday
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Pusic takes a well worn genre and totally transforms it with wit and imagination. It’s a bit weird, but a true original.
- Excerpt: Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives a performance of breathtaking vulnerability as the mother of a dying teenager in “Tuesday,” a film that tells the story of the most shattering loss of all without melodrama or a score filled with syrupy strings.
Turtles All The Way Down
Dennis Schwartz @ dennis schwartz reviews
- Excerpt: More ludicrous than perceptive.
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: Once more, after “Limbo”, Soi Cheang manages to stay away from all the blights of political correctness and present a great action film that fans of the great HK actioners of the past will definitely enjoy.
- Excerpt: Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In feels like a throwback to the classic 1980s Hong Kong action cinema. The immaculate fight scenes are among some of the best you will see this year.
Two Hearted Tale
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: As pleasant as sitting in a fishing boat with a cold beer, A Two Hearted Tale is the sort of localised story you sense won’t be available to directors in the years to come.
Two Tickets to Greece
- Excerpt: An escapist story of friendship
Uglies
- Excerpt: All of Uglies feels like a rush job where its creators had the instruction manual but lost the proper parts.
The Umbrella Fairy
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: In the end, despite the aforementioned issues, “The Umbrella Fairy” carries enough audiovisual flair and intricacy to be worth a watch just for this, in an animation that definitely deserves to be watched on the big screen.
The Underdoggs
- Excerpt: The chemistry between the kids is definitely fun and charming to witness, but the non-stop profanity, a crazy alcohol-stimulated sequence, and so many other terrible messages for young audiences make this movie one to avoid.
Unfrosted
Aren Bergstrom @ 3 Brothers Film
The Universal Theory
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Whereas most [multiverse] examples focus on a single vantage with which to designate superiority (a “true” timeline), Kröger leans into the chaotic nature inherent to the collective ignorance of believing ourselves to be the protagonist.
Unstoppable
- Excerpt: Anthony is as good at upending expectations as he is at upending opponents on the mat. If this movie would rather meet our expectations, it does so with sincerity that makes it a slim win on points.
Upgraded
- Excerpt: Upgraded could have been an inoffensively formulaic, forgettable rom-com that borrows from hundreds of other similar movies, but the frustratingly simplistic conclusion with terrible messaging – basically conveying the idea that lying has no negative consequences, quite the opposite – ruins the hopes of a recommendation for fans of the genre.
Uproar
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The ambition to tackle heavy themes make this an engaging and heartfelt viewing experience.
V/H/S/Beyond
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Fans of the franchise will probably get a kick out of this, while newcomers may not understand the need to have one of these come out every single year.
Kat Hughes @ THN
Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
- Excerpt: The rocking and rolling V/H/S/Beyond proves there are plenty more stories to tell.
Veni Vidi Vici
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The film’s humor is a clenched-fist assault on runaway greed and systemic corruption.
Verdade ou Consequência
Paulo Portugal @ Insider.pt [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: A estreia de Verdade ou Consequência, de Sofia Marques, integra a comemoração dos 10 anos de atividade do Cinema Ideal, entre os dias 29 de Agosto e 4 de Setembro, com diversos filmes com Luís Miguel Cintra.
A Very Royal Scandal
- Excerpt: You live with the consequences of your actions, sir.
Via Norte
Paulo Portugal @ [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Paulo Carneiro abandona Trás-os-Montes, onde filmou Bostofrio, em 2019, para captar a opinião de emigrantes portugueses fãs do tuning, na Suíça, em Via Norte. O filme, finalmente, estreia em Portugal.
Video Review: Pierce
Viet and Nam
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: In the end, though, Minh Qyu Truong handles all the different elements of the movie rather well, resulting in an intriguing spectacle, that may be chiefly addressed to arthouse fans and festival goers, but definitely has enough elements to be appreciated by a wider audience.
Vijay 69
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
The Vourdalak
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Adrien Beau exhibits a skillful ability to balance tone in his feature directorial debut…At times absurdist, surreal and playful before turning tragic and horrific, this French folk tale posits that love blinds us to danger.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While the somber tone mixed with dark humor is great and the ending proves sufficiently bittersweet and damning, that slurping of bloody cotton is still what sticks with me most. What a horrific sense memory to be burned onto my brain.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Vourdalak is more than a gimmick—the eponymous creature is a life-sized puppet voiced by director and co-writer Adrien Beau—it’s a dark, and at times darkly funny, exploration of how love can be a real horror, akin to an infection such as vampirism.
Waiting for Dali
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: …surprisingly light and frothy, like carrot mousse, and sunny like the Catalonian shore, a celebration of creativity that shines even in the darkest days.
War Game
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The film suggests Dungeons & Dragons for political science and national security nerds.
- Excerpt: It is chilling. And then, when we find out who he really is and what he’s really planning, it gets downright terrifying.
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: “War Game” is must-viewing for Americans as we approach a razor-sharp November election. We’ve already been warned by one challenger that if he doesn’t win there will be a “bloodbath.”
The Wasp
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: if Malcolm and Morales inadvertently reveal too much in early goings, they still surprise with one hell of a devious ending, one which will have the audience reconsidering just who embodies that tarantula wasp.
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A pleasant surprise; a British thriller (by a Spanish director) that I knew little or nothing about, but that I ended up loving thanks to its efficient script, excellent acting, constant surprises, and intriguing themes.
Watchmen Chapter I
- Excerpt: Watchmen Chapter I is exactly what you think it is and nothing more.
The Way We Speak
- Excerpt: How timely indeed that this literal debate film arrives during real life clashes between right wing Christians and freedom-wanting people of all persuasions.
We Grown Now
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an elegy for a lost community while celebrating the people who carry it with them.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: As [two friends] arrive at an age where they can no longer ignore the injustices done to them while the city escalates the reach of its systemic racism, they must choose to either let the nihilism take hold or continue to dream.
We Were Dangerous
- Excerpt: A powerful exploration of colonialism’s impact on New Zealand’s First Nations through a compelling and disarmingly hopeful narrative.
Weekend in Taipei
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Weekend in Taipei is slick and glossy, yet otherwise kind of generic.
What Happened to Dorothy Bell?
What Happens Later
Diego Salgado @ Sofilm [Spanish]
While You Were Sleeping
Panos Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “While You Were Sleeping” had the potential of becoming an excellent drama/thriller but some issues with the direction and the script prevented the project from reaching its true potential. It still deserves a watch though, particularly for the twist and Choo Ja-hyun’s presence.
The Whip
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: . If Presswell falters with scenes of tender sentiment, he is precise in evoking the crushing sense of helpless rage that a bottom-line based bureaucracy engenders. The dissection of absurdities great and small is flawless, and the dialogue is stinging as it slices with surgical precision.
White Bird
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A well-meaning but rudimentary introduction to the Holocaust for younger viewers.
Widow Clicquot
Samuel Castro @ El Colombiano [Spanish]
- Excerpt: A la viuda de Clicquot la encarna Haley Bennett, una actriz estadounidense cuyo reconocimiento popular no está todavía a la altura de su enorme talento. Bennett consigue que las frases que pronuncia en off y que son más poéticas que narrativas, pues van haciendo comparaciones entre su alma y las condiciones de las uvas en el terreno, sean las puntadas que unen los dos tiempos en los que se narra la película.
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With “Holy Motors” cinematographer Caroline Champetier alternating between dark, shadowy interiors and magic hour vineyard scenes, director Thomas Napper has turned the whole into a historical feminist romantic triangle that satisfies on several levels.
- Excerpt: A defining moment is when she explains that she wants to rotate the crops because the vines need to struggle. That moment and her literal final word tell us that one of the world’s most delicate and cherished drinks is the result of struggle, one that all who embraced considered worth it.
Wild Diamond
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: Malou Khebizi aces her role.
Wild Wild Punjab
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Wildcat
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Ethan Hawke has weighted the film in favor of O’Connor’s stories, leaving their writer still something of a mystery…but if the Hawkes’ goal was to engage the public with Flannery O’Connor’s writing, they succeeded.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: [Hawke is] using the art as a means to understand the artist [delivering] an intriguing dance between “fact” and fiction that plays with the idea that each influences the other in myriad ways.
Wildcat: A Prickly and Uncompromising Biopic, Just Like Flannery O’Connor Herself
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The O’Connor of Wildcat is a contentious outsider who seems ill at ease in her own skin.
Will & Harper
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
Winner
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Wherever you land on what Winner did, the depiction of a single individual creating so much chaos is entertaining.
Witches
- Excerpt: The personal is political has been not just a slogan but a rallying cry for feminist activism since the 1960s. “Witches,” written and directed by documentarian Elizabeth Sankey, is deeply personal and passionately political.
With Love and a Major Organ
Wizards Beyond Waverly Place
Allison Rose @ FlickDirect.com
- Excerpt: Henrie is the same goofy, dorky, lovable older brother we remember from the original Wizards of Waverly Plac
Woh Bhi Din The
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Wolves Against the World
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: I myself cannot say that I didn’t enjoy the ride. Armstrong’s aesthetic choices alone are worth admission. It just never grabbed me beyond that level of superficiality.
Woman of the Hour
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: If this is where Kendrick’s directorial career starts off, I can only imagine the heights she will go.
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Succeeds in depicting a culture that objectifies women, but it doesn’t dive into the procedural errors that made Rodney Alcala’s murder spree possible.
- Excerpt: Anna Kendrick’s solid directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, is a tough, uncomfortable examination of patriarchal misogyny and sexism.
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: If ever there were a movie that exemplifies the recent viral social media phenomenon known as “Man or Bear,” in which women are asked if they would prefer to be alone in the woods with a man or a bear, it’s Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour.
Sebastian Zavala @ MeGustaElCine.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It ends up being a mesmerising thriller, through which Kendrick demonstrates a keen eye for image composition, blocking, and camera movements. It’s a fictionalised true story that ends up feeling depressingly relevant.
You Are Not Me
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer/directors Marisa Crespo & Moisés Romera use the paranoid fundamentals of “Rosemary’s Baby” for a very disorienting and disturbing Christmas homecoming tale.
- Excerpt: Going willingly into You Are Not Me is to jump straight into a basket of tension that never empties.
You Can’t Run Forever
- Excerpt: There’s too much going on with too little power behind it – definitely not enough to make any of it stick.
You’ll Never Find Me
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With dueling unreliable narrators cycling through brief periods of camaraderie alternating with distrust, the film creates great tension, allowing it to slacken then clenching us in its grip again.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: So, even if the first instance of closure satisfies, it’s not the last. And the more ends we receive, the less impactful the whole becomes.
The Young Wife
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an exhilarating experience that presents the tug-of-war we all must endure to maintain a level of self within the communal “us” that’s born from the relationships we cultivate.
Your Monster
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: This anti rom-com defies easy classification, but it’s an exhilarating and unpredictable experience.
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Sure, the humor may be bitter, the horror may be audacious, and the overriding genre may be “anti-romance.” But this hugely original, grimly delightful howl of feminine rage is actually kinda sweet.
- Excerpt: Caroline Lindy’s Your Monster is a Sweet Trilled High Note Curdling into a Scream of Feminine Rage
