Glenn Heath Jr.

Traditions don’t disappear overnight. They slip away slowly over decades, as elders die off and younger generations experience shifts in priority, social norms, and cultural pride. Few films have been able to capture this kind of ebb and flow like Achal Mishra’s Gamak Ghar, a quietly beautiful drama primarily set in the rural compound where one Indian clan gathers for major life events.

Chess of the Wind is a shining example of how familiar genres and tones can meld together to form something that feels brand new.

This mammoth final effort by Ôbayashi, an artist who so often destroyed the conventional boundaries of cinematic space in works like 1977’s Hausu, is a completely humbling viewing experience.

Clunky and cranky in the most charming of ways, the film always moves in sync with its 91-year-old star, lingering on moments of solitude for long periods while brushing past more traditional plot points with ease.

The Works and Days is by no means an easy thing to endure, but doing so brings you closer to understanding what it might mean to finally be at peace.

When Papushado’s film finds the right tonal balance, meshing noir bleakness with pops of art deco color, there are fireworks to behold.

Enough coincidence and happenstance exists in this film to fill a dozen studio love stories, but that doesn’t mean any of it is unearned. There’s no safety net here, making Tsuji and Ukiyo’s epic tale of unrequited love, absence, and yearning the ultimate leap of faith.

For those curious and willing, this is a beautiful reminder of what it’s like to be properly throttled by an unexpected cinematic jolt.

The film would almost certainly benefit from more brawling and less speechifying since Jordan in particular is very good at the former. The actor’s bottled up intensity, convincingly unleashed in Black Panther and Creed, is this film’s greatest asset.

While many will call małni an “experimental” documentary, that seems like a limiting description. This is a thriving non-fiction film that’s trying to reconnect with what it means to be present, to watch and listen, to step outside yourself and explore.

Maybe the most surprising thing about Godzilla vs. Kong is Wingard’s uninspired directorial choices.

Unquestionably one of this year’s great films, The Inheritance seeks to position them both on equal planes of historical and individual experience, one invariably informing the other.

Coming 2 America takes too long a road to get to a simplistic lesson: be kind to the person who threatens you the most and everything will work out. Only in Hollywoodland (and their version of Zamunda) does this feel remotely possible.

What the film does have is Andra Day, whose blisteringly raw central performance as the heroin-addicted musician brings a dynamic charge to nearly every scene.

Taking the title into consideration, Test Pattern remains clearly focused on the circumstances outside of our control that force adjustments in perspective.

The film gives seasoned actors like Foster and Cumberbatch just enough room to flex some scene-chomping muscle, while relegating poor Shailene Woodley to the background in nearly every scene as Hollander’s dopey inexperienced associate. Rahim, on the other hand, knows this is his film even when Macdonald doesn’t. As with his star-making turn in A Prophet, there’s something burning inside that always threatens to boil over.

Set in a remote Sudanese village where religion and prophecy are valuable currencies, You Will Die at Twenty beautifully examines misguided notions of faith.

All in all, Cowperthwaite (who directed the documentary Blackfish and made her narrative debut with Megan Leavey) has a difficult time giving the film any sense of style. Montages pop up exactly where one would expect, and nasty arguments are given the classic hand-held touch.

At the center of it all is Hanks, our moral compass, our trembling hand, who has amazingly never headlined a Western in his four-decade career. Only his bearded, weary face could have brought such empathy and grace to a brutal portrait of rotting Manifest Destiny forever stuck in the mud.

Can’t decide if it wants to be a countryside farce, magical realist parable, or eccentric romantic comedy. So it tries to be all three at once.

Through its meticulous recreation of historical circumstance both personal and collective, Dear Comrades! beautifully counters these natural feelings of indifference through a blisteringly precise style of dramatic filmmaking that never shies away from revealing the fascism propping up all the propagandistic bluster.

Often charming in the most confrontational way possible, Straight Up pays due respect to the endlessly creative ways people delude themselves into avoiding difficult realities. It may talk (and talk) a good game, but it’s in the quieter moments of silence when it speaks volumes about the perils of modern alienation.

Gomes contemplates the many human dimensions wavering under the surface of this town, whether it’s the mythologies crowding a town’s gossip session or the tall tales flooding rants at a local bar. This is a collective voice of character rather than a dry document of reality.

This insane masterpiece shows the self-destructive properties of myth making and how they overlap with the downfall of a community damned from the beginning of time.

The women of the film certainly deserve better, as they're often relegated to the role of victim, harmed or murdered simply to propel the plot along.

A heartfelt retro flashback littered with pop-culture iconography and much slang, it focuses on the importance of friendship and loyalty rather than social standing.

The film is ripe with powerful subtext, specifically how greed, celebrity, and technology help to form a misguided sense of opportunity that keeps the working class downtrodden.

Amy Seimetz's intoxicating slice of genre revisionism earns its "neo" prefix, envisioning a brightly sinister world where desperation is the new normal.