Debut Drama ‘Mabel’ Rejects the ‘Matilda’-Like Dream of Childhood
Nicholas Ma’s humorous, warm and sensitive directorial feature debut, Mabel, embraces the messy uncertainty of life, for children and adults.
Nicholas Ma’s humorous, warm and sensitive directorial feature debut, Mabel, embraces the messy uncertainty of life, for children and adults.
Fantasy, comedy, romance, reincarnation, animals and murder are ingredients for You Never Can Tell, a whimsical story with spoofs of film noir.
Rachel Lambert’s sensitive and observant comedy drama Sometimes I Think About Dying isn’t a film that will turn popcorn into projectiles.
The Jungian shadow looms over We Were Dangerous, a dramatic and rebellious drama about moral panic and juvenile and sexual delinquency in 1950s New Zealand.
Today’s discord and desperation over abortion in America has roots in Philip Dunne’s faded Blue Denim, one of the first Hollywood films to address the issue.
Alex Garland’s Civil War refuses righteousness. Instead, it takes a hard, unflinching look at the true costs of war for everybody and everything it touches.
The same lack of control and uncertainty that hounds Kafka’s Josef. K haunts the lost protagonist in Shannon Triplett’s sci-fi horror Desert Road.
Pablo Berger’s animated Robot Dreams is a near-perfect marvel of silent cinema nearly a century after talkies ended the silent era.
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Monster has striking moments, but casually skips over details, reducing its characters to incomplete fragments.
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.
Rose Glass drenches Love Lies Bleeding in sensation and texture, as if she dragged the film through pools of viscera on the floor of a Foley sound effects studio.
India Donaldson’s directorial debut Good One leans into gender distinctions, but goes beyond them to offer incisive and observant critique of human nature.