An ultra smooth sailing Steadicam roams the desolate streets of a seedy district in Mexico City judging not, or all, of its peculiar inhabitants in Bleak Street. Arturo Ripstein’s crime drama consists of much exposition, before the unintended, quietl …Read more

Is it possible to make a holocaust movie unlike any that came before? Laszlo Nemes achieves this with his first feature Son of Saul. The story is among the simplest: After spotting a dead body of a boy whom he takes to be his son, Hungarian prisoner …Read more

Foodies will rejoice at a chance to see the inner workings of multiple World’s Best Restaurant winner Noma, in Noma My Perfect Storm, but may come away a tad unsatisfied, finding something to be desired in the crawling 100 minutes of this documentary …Read more

In Bleeding Heart, Jessica Biel plays May, a yoga teacher whose orderly, zen-filled world is turned upside down when she meets her biological sister, Shiva (Zosia Mamet), a prostitute who suffers abuse at the hands of boyfriend and others. Under the …Read more

Paolo Sorrentino is a filmmaker maximalist who strings together grand images and fortifies them with powerhouse melodies. Youth, like The Great Beauty before it, tries to cash in on the big intangible ideals, sometimes captured by the old Italian mas …Read more

The suitably named Noel (Kentucker Audley) descends upon NYC every year to sell trees. His plaid jacket and colorful lights strung about the premises add a sprig of joy in an otherwise drab, mundane, and of course, cold environment: cement sidewalks …Read more

The idea that comedians are the unhappiest people on earth has never proved truer than in Rick Alverson’s fourth feature, Entertainment. Behold The Comedian, a middle-aged man who dons a ruffled shirt under an ill-fitting tux and oversize plastic gla …Read more

Miss You Already, a best-friends-forever cancer comedy directed by Catherine Hardwicke, is as bland and saccharine as its title. Positively a shame, too, for the excellent Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette, who are unafforded the chance to rise above …Read more

Exploring race, class, and sexuality, the seminal documentary Portrait of Jason (1966) still remains the only piece of essential cinema to prominently feature a gay black man. Starring Jason Holliday, a one of a kind, downtown hustler, the film becam …Read more

John Magary’s directorial debut follows two brothers as they kinetically drift in and out of concentric circles of resentment and failures with girlfriends in tow. Though laudable for its mood, feverish and electric, The Mend lacks narrative focus, m …Read more