Daniel Schindel

It’s always frustrating when a documentary is so intent on one story that it plainly misses a more interesting one that’s, just… right there.

The Cleaners ably raises questions around the issue without following through on tying them together, often seeming like it’s simply bouncing around to cover all the relevant topics until it’s time to wrap up. That’s a letdown, but it gives us some noteworthy moments along its way.

Of Fathers and Sons is a vital addition to the cultural picture of the Syrian conflict.

When it works, the movie strongly evokes the feeling of sorting through a loved one’s possessions after their death.

Structurally, Hale County This Morning, This Evening does not do much to distinguish itself from other contemporary vérité documentaries which focus on quotidian details within a certain milieu. But even so, it still finds value in the unique incidents it captures.

The Oslo Accords represent one of the most frustrating missed opportunities in recent world politics, though The Oslo Diaries is more frustrating for how it both simplifies the political complexities of the situation and dilutes the drama of the story.

Bisbee ’17 collapses past and present into one another, and in doing so achieves a singularly strange and unsettling vision of apparently intractable American hatreds.

It’s an energetic, frequently hilarious, always visually riveting ride.

Where it could do more to work inside its characters’ heads, it pulls back.

Come Sunday makes an admirable effort to delve into religious conviction and changes in faith, but comes up feeling too normal and disconnected from those matters.

Once again, Spike Lee has found an innovative theatrical production and brought it to blistering cinematic life.

The scenes of millions of things happening at once are skillfully made, to be sure, but they’re still visually busy to the point of numbness instead of energization. The action has verve but no soul.

Pacific Rim Uprising is a mess, but when it gets to the business of robots beating up monsters (or sometimes other robots), it’s a blast.

The film can easily coast on sentimentality and nostalgia for emotion, and does so frequently and unabashed. Which is frustrating, since there are glimpses of a more complex human being throughout the film, one who would have made for a much better subject.

Over two shapeless hours, it walks through sequences that announce their emotional gravitas while only sporadically earning it.

The 15:17 to Paris is a long stretch of boredom culminating in one jolt of interest.

Greenfield’s earlier documentaries, such as Thin and The Queen of Versailles, serve as better explorations of the topics this somewhat shapeless movie presents.

Beirut has zero character as a setting, reduced to a generic backdrop of rubble and sand. It’s not a real place with a distinct culture in a time and political situation which any writer worth their salt could cull mountains of rich material from – it’s Scarymuslimabad, capital of Clicheistan.

Taylor-Joy and Cooke have a weird, comedic dynamic that could have put them in the canon of cinematic duos if the movie had been braver in pushing their relationship to darker territory. Ultimately, Thoroughbreds is a lot of potential with an anticlimactic payoff.

The more you interrogate the premises underlying The Post’s themes, the more they disintegrate. The daunting fact is that only mass movements truly change society for the better. But that’s a messy process with a lot of depressing history built in, and not ideal for narratives catering to prim liberal sensibilities.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower is safe, containing no assertion of Ponoc as an artistic force beyond its overall technical accomplishment.

Blade Runner 2049 marries its ideas to its narrative in a way that blockbusters too often fail to these days. More importantly, it puts these ideas to a poignant end, bringing its characters to tragic or bittersweet reckonings in a manner that would do any of the old sci-fi masters proud.

Vivid and mordant, Thirst Street imperfectly defines its lead, but makes her journey distinct.

The filmmakers behind Leap! seemingly can’t picture a children’s movie without a cavalcade of unnecessary action scenes and fart jokes—and not good fart jokes at that. The result is a movie allegedly about ballet with weirdly few scenes featuring actual dancing.

Against the backdrop of a coming-of-age ritual, The Wound finds its greatest insights in contrasts between tradition and modernity.

Despite these sharp moments, there’s a frustrating looseness to Lafosse’s narrative, feeling as though many of After Love’s scenes could be rearranged without changing the film’s flow. In turn, a slackness undercuts the tension the film is otherwise trying to build.

This is electric material for a story, but Fogel just gets shocked instead of channeling it into something great.

Despite the intriguing subject matter, this documentary can’t stay in the air.