Fran Hoepfner

Despite its A-list cast, can’t escape its shoddy writing and worse filmmaking.

The sandbox of “The Seven Faces of Jane” might have been fun for these filmmakers to play in for a while, but the results are drab and uninteresting. If there’s a winner in this particular exquisite corpse game, it’s certainly not the audience.

At times Wildcat is a difficult watch, raw and unflinching.

It is an often nasty film, with little regard for anyone on screen, far more content to grasp for false depth rather than logic. It’s a shame there’s nothing to root for other than its dwindling runtime.

For the Christmas romcom devotee, it will provide a breath of fresh air in its competency of craft, though for those looking to dip a toe into the genre, Something From Tiffany’s is almost too grounded and complacent in its lack of drama.

At its core, this is a moving and thoughtful character study, and horror films of late have a dearth of this kind of development, otherwise caterwauling towards the blanket term of “trauma.” Here, we bear witness to all aspects of Aisha’s life, the good and the ugly, as she finds her center.

The documentary is so outwardly focused, so intended for Western audiences, that it barely transcends the nature of a Wikipedia page, afraid to push back or to show anything that might complicate the notion of what a female leader has to do either to get work done or to be respected (or ideally both).

At its best, Bad Axe is a family portrait, dynamic and curious and funny. It’s to Siev’s benefit that he belongs to one of the most charismatic families of all time, whose unending curiosity in each other and their respective wellbeing keeps the engine chugging along.

It would be one thing if the film was fully committed to its nastiness — a type of comedy we don’t see much of these days at all — but “The Estate” is too often hampered by its own self-awareness.

Things get a little overly explanatory, in general, as though the film assumes its audience is not familiar with these allegations or the bombshell nature of this story. But perhaps that is the issue that the film is addressing: that there are still huge swaths of indifference towards sexual harrassment and abuse thorughout the country.

It’s undoubted that the Gibbons twins were both original thinkers who were victimized by a system that did not recognize them as autonomous people, but it’s unfortunate that The Silent Twins is keen to do the same, reducing them to vehicles for aesthetic flexing and moral lecturing, rather than, as they themselves would have requested, simply letting them be.

If The Good Nurse is about anything, it’s about dedication and stoic compassion, rather than a headstrong sense of morality, and the film, like its protagonist, is all the better for that.

Harry Wootliff’s True Things is a raw and passionate look at the type of love that can be both all-encompassing and destructive, passionate and dangerous.

Girl Picture is a thoughtful, funny, and empathetic look at lives in flux.

Mack & Rita is silly, but it’s a strong, necessary kind of silly, a warm and embracing kind of silly. Keaton has rarely been so bubbling and bright, reminding us that regardless of age, being true to yourself is all that really counts in a person. The love will come no matter what.

There’s an inherent push and pull to Bodies Bodies Bodies, a movie that wants to be a send-up for a certain type of young person but also doesn’t want to be “about” much of anything. The horror genre has fallen victim to Big Important Theme–ism of late, and it’s a relief that “Bodies Bodies Bodies” doesn’t descend into a lecture (in fact, it descends into many funny, insincere ones instead). But it all doesn’t amount to very much at all.

Without a commitment to its tone, How To Please A Woman might help its titular woman, but it leaves its audience quite dissatisfied.

Luckily, and perhaps where it counts the most, the action in The Killer is, well, pretty killer. Jang is a confident, competent leading man, slick and entertaining to watch, as gruff as he may come off to his peers and adversaries.

Earl and Hayward developed these characters first as a live stand-up show and then in a short film, and natural chemistry and cheeky rapport make “Brian and Charles” a laugh-out-loud comedy.

Malmberg’s documentary is quick to gloss over rough patches in both Mickey and Disney’s shared histories.

For all its provocations, After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is rote and tedious. The body horror and gross-outs get repetitive, and none of it ever means much of anything.

Showing Up is perhaps Reichardt’s most grounded and least impressionistic film, but it is still more than thoughtful and enjoyable and beautiful.

Il Buco is riveting and bewitching, a wholly immersive film, led soulfully by Frammartino’s confidence in saying less.

Given how much of the new material on Monroe is audio-based, one is left wondering why a project like this wouldn’t work better as a podcast. There is little that’s visually compelling about Cooper’s work, the type of investigation perhaps best listened to in the background of another activity.

Though the first act of The Contractor is its lengthiest, the lazy pace does nothing to enrich the lives of the characters who we know are at stake. The action that follows is quick and cramped; sequences that should feel heart-pounding are, instead, dark and erratic.

The most frightening part of Umma is not the ghostly apparition of Amanda’s mother, but Amanda herself. Under Shim’s direction, Oh’s Amanda is haunted and taut, an unpredictable force of nature.

Full-hearted, albeit conventional ... That long first act feels, at times, punishing. ... The drama that plays out in the film’s second half is much more engaging, the script gaining momentum alongside Leslie.