handcrafted by maryann johanson (human) | 100% free of AIs and algorithms
This uninvolving coming-of-age crime drama tries to dazzle with visual tricksiness, but it cannot make up for its teen protagonist who is mere metaphorical symbol, and a bystander in her own story.
Actor Jessica Hynes makes an astonishing directorial debut with this disconcerting little movie about women’s everyday anger and resentment, and the absolute battle just to get through the day.
My pick: Vincent Lambe’s controversial and profoundly harrowing “Detainment,” a dramatization of the real-life police interrogations of the 10-year-old boys who killed a toddler in England in 1993.
My pick: Marshall Curry’s “A Night at the Garden,” presenting footage from a 1939 “pro-America” rally in New York City, a chilling reminder of the unpleasant cycles of American history.
My pick: The animated short of the year surely must be Domee Shi’s “Bao,” a bittersweet reverie on motherhood that features one of the most hilariously shocking moments onscreen this year.
Genuinely heartwarming, totally cheerworthy, bursting with warm and generous performances, and just a whole damn lotta fun. (And I hate professional wrestling.) Florence Pugh absolutely rocks it.
A beautiful story about ugliness, about dignity in the face of hatred, told via delicate yet steely performances that imbue it with a power at once tender and infuriating. Totally enrapturing.
Overlong and underwritten, tepid and dreary, this would-be sexual melodrama isn’t lurid enough to qualify as soft-core porn, but never finds any true emotion among its triangle of lovers, either.
Nicole Kidman’s pitiless performance completely upends genre expectations in Karyn Kusama’s tense, grim crime noir. Uncompromising and subtly challenging, like a cerebral itch you can’t quite scratch.
A poignant, sensitive portrait of desperation, love, and survival in a beautiful place, one that is intimately Cuban, but with much wider relevance, too, in the midst of the global refugee crisis.
sample sponsored post (sponsored) - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce quis risus odio.
