Michael Snydel

Scorsese and his production team have created an incredible document of one of the 20th century’s most complicated personalities, and one that feels close to being a great film.

Presented as multiple chapters that cloak a structure of two discrete halves, the problem is less the film’s fiendish compulsion to shock its audience with sudden body horror or its corkscrewing narrative than its design being seemingly reverse engineered to complete that purpose.

History has validated the view of these people as one of the major causes of modern ills, but Vice is so concerned with wallowing in the past that it has no idea how to say anything new.

Unfortunately, Pilon’s performance is by far the most engaging part of the film, a restless but ultimately familiar crossbreeding of coming-out experience, after school special, and sports achievement story.

In nearly everything other than its visuals, Early Man feels as ancient as its time period, a forgotten relic hibernating in development until its belated release. But coming from a studio and director who’ve repeatedly found new ways to reinvent the wheel, it’s extra disappointing to see them release something so primitive.

There’s a great documentary in Quest, but this is a case of a film that’s trying to cover too many things, and thus only muddles its own intentions.

This is less an examination of a singular person than a look at the torturous and sublime experience of his creative process as it relates to the most important people in his life.

Kill Me Please is remarkably accomplished for a debut feature despite feeling a little bit muddled in terms of rhythms and especially its ending, which tips its hat a little bit too hard to art-horror ponderousness. Still, it’s a vibrant debut that demonstrates that Silveira has a strong talent for depicting adolescence and its attendant horrors.

It insists on being on the right side of history, but is so concerned with portraying the extent of the violence that it forgets about victims in the process.

James’ depiction of the trial is methodical, juxtaposing testimonies from the Sung family, employees, jurors, and lawyers – including Vance. But the film is foremost empathetic to the experiences of the Sung family.

Fences is a reasonably strong adaptation and further evidence that Washington has an assured hand with both actors and the camera, but it feels stuck between its reverence to the source material and its desire for a more distinctive vision.

Peck has made one of this year’s finest documentaries. At once pulsing with anger and yearning for compassion, it’s an examination of past and present America as a cycle where the backdrop has changed and particulars have remained the same.

It finds a poetically understated ending, but the drama, especially near the end, borders on being too repetitive. Still, it’s a worthwhile showcase for excellent performances, assured direction, and a twist on the sports story that prioritizes character before history.

By the end, there’s a strange sense that the film has been both elongated and rushed in the way that it ends a few arcs, but it’s also an unusually sensitive romance that doubles as a showcase of three of our most talented modern comedic actors.

Tipping is a fresh voice who has already established a great sense of atmosphere, and more importantly, he’s shown that he can tell stories about a more stereotypically black experience with nuance.

Fatima inevitably falls into a catch-22: every time it presents an insightful new cultural situation, it starts to feel less like a film, and more like a series of richly detailed sketches.

Morgan struggles to make even a single fight between two people not look like it was edited with a shredder.

While the first half meditates on the inconsistency of intimacy and the ways that small things (e.g. close ex-girlfriends) grow to be daggers, the second half adopts a psychological severity that makes My King feel imbalanced.

Simultaneously pretentious, mind-numbingly tedious, and dizzyingly incoherent from scene to scene, Jason Bourne is the definition of diminishing returns.

It’s another well-made, culturally specific zombie film, but it could have been something much more filling.

Microbe and Gasoline reaffirms that Gondry has a talent for visually dynamic work about the losses of growing up. Like a faint childhood memory, the film feels formative, but inconsequential.

After an hour of slow burn simmer, Three culminates in a six-minute set piece that’s among the most memorable action scenes of the year.

It’s a film that’s feels nearly otherworldly in its isolation.

A stylish exercise in dread, teasing out its slow-drip horrors with precision, and building a deliriously evil presence that hovers along the fringes.

Jacquot’s Diary of a Chambermaid ultimately feels beholden to art-house dictates, especially with an ending that’s less confounding than poorly articulated.

In a Valley of Violence feigns to be a revisionist western, but it’s frustratingly stuck in a place of inevitability in the last half. It’s an excellently-made imitation, but coming from a director whose made a career of tilting the familiar, it’s a disappointing detour.

There’s an appealing sense of cyclical healing in watching these people go about their daily rituals; in the end, however, Pervert Park feels like an incomplete portrait of this tight-knit community.

Even as it pushes into the cozy familiarity of slow-motion party montage, Neighbors 2 can’t help but feel refreshingly new in its vision of the college movie as something unashamed, vibrant, and urgent.