In The Promise, Oscar Isaac plays a young Armenian man, Mikael Pogosian, who leaves his small village to go to medical school in Constantinople. The titular promise refers to his pledge to return and marry a village girl (Angela Sarafyan), whose dowr …Read more

Joseph Cedar’s first English-language film centers around the eponymous hero, Norman Oppenheimer. He is introduced as an amusingly grating New York schmoozer of limited success. Richard Gere, as Norman, is always ruddy-cheeked, trawling midtown, a pe …Read more

The Lost City of Z is James Grey’s entry into the cinematic tradition of obsessive adventurer movies. Based on the real-life expeditionist of the early 20th century, Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), Grey’s approach is characteristically subtle. This i …Read more

Trying to write about girlhood is hard because you find yourself using words like, “gauzy”, “liminal”, “delicate”, “fleeting”. These cheesy things we say about growing up are true after all, but figuring out how to say it again convincingly is the ch …Read more

It is 1919, and a distraught young Frenchman visits the grave of a German soldier. That scenario could mean many things, but in Frantz, the family of the titular departed take it he is an old friend of their deceased. The soldier’s mother and fiancée …Read more

Documentary shorts are not for the faint of heart. Where feature documentaries have enough space to temper their message with a story, characters, and not infrequently plot twists as well, such palliatives are rare in shorts. But short form isn’t exa …Read more

Bitter Harvest opens with the rippling wheat fields of Ukraine. Our hero, Yuri, narrates a childhood which doubles as a visual mainline of Ukrainian tradition, imagery, and cultural nostalgia. Yuri grows into a lovelorn artist played by Max Irons who …Read more

20th Century Women asks the question, “how do you raise a good man?” But its title also suggests it is asking a lot more about women. The three female leads, played by Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning are each presented with specific bi …Read more

The Brand New Testament is an aggressively quirky outing from Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael. Our heroine Ea is stuck in an apartment with her brutish father and meek, abused mother. As it turns out, said father is God, who engineers the world wi …Read more

On August 1st, 1966, a sniper, positioned on an observation tower of the University of Texas, Austin, fired down onto the campus for approximately 90 minutes. Forty-nine people were hit, and sixteen died. Tower, directed by Keith Maitland, is a docum …Read more