Scrapper movie review: girlhood interrupted
A singular portrait of a girl full of verve and personality. An astonishing feature debut from Charlotte Regan, with a film as cheeky and imaginative, as pleasantly messy and chaotic, as its heroine.
Sundance Film Festival
Navalny documentary review: celebrating the biggest pain in Putin’s ass
Spectacularly entertaining. As gripping, as suspenseful as a finely wrought fictional thriller; a sheer delight as a portrait of the man himself. Films don’t get much more daring or crucial than this.
Flee documentary review: home is when you don’t have to run away
Impossibly, heartbreakingly poignant, rooted in tough emotion and hard realities. A deeply humane movie that makes an unspoken, effortless plea for compassion for refugees’ distress and desperation.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening documentary review: a flow of time and hope
Slice-of-life and stream-of-consciousness, this is unlike any documentary before about what it’s like to be poor and black in America. RaMell Ross is an important new voice in American cinema.
Science Fair documentary review: these kids today, with their changing the world…
Meet some of the most brilliant teenagers alive, high-school students from all over the world competing at the World Cup of genius geekery. Funny, sobering, and inspiring.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post movie review: just as she is
Like a black comedy from a dystopia, except the dystopia is real and we are living in it. Chloë Grace Moretz is better than ever as a teen who discovers she may not be able to pray her gay away.
Sweet Country movie review: an essential confrontation with the ugly not-so-past past
As harshly beautiful as its landscape, this is a stark corrective to the American western it echoes, and a pragmatic confrontation with the deep, tenacious roots of modern racism.
Icarus documentary review: on athletes’ compromised wings
Perfectly illustrative of the serendipitous nature of documentary filmmaking as it pivots from a personal investigation of doping in sports into a thriller with global geopolitical ramifications.
Strad Style documentary review: a heart full of violins (Slamdance 2017)
Wonderful; so funny and strange and human. An amazing portrait of a fascinating character, beautifully told with enormous suspense and tenderness.
Weiner documentary review: the unchecked narcissism of politics
Hugely watchable cautionary tale of Shakespearean proportions about 21st-century politics. Beautifully, nastily perfect in its ironies and twists.
