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2.5/5
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Boston Strangler
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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The material deserves a more comprehensive treatment... which leads Ruskin’s film to feel unsatisfying for those expecting either a thriller, a character study, or an expose on misogyny tinted corruption.
Posted Mar 16, 2023
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3.5/5
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Are You Lonesome Tonight
(1992)
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Nicholas Bell
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Aided by Taiwan’s Eddie Peng at his most bedraggled and the ever-striking Sylvia Chang, theirs is a diametrically opposed attraction built on simple but highly effective motifs.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
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3.5/5
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Limbo
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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Sen’s ambience is captivating, and it’s a formidably crafted film in which he himself served as director, screenwriter, editor, composer, casting director, and cinematographer.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
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2.5/5
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The Survival of Kindness
(2022)
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Nicholas Bell
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If the point of the film is to generate repulsion, it certainly succeeds. Initially. But there’s a repetitiveness which eventually calcifies the pacing.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
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1/5
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Till the End of the Night
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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Somehow, Florian Plumeyer’s tediously inept script sabotages not only these themes but also what could have been a striking quartet of viciously unhappy but needy humans.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
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3.5/5
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Living Bad
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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While these films aren’t exactly love and marriage, as you can experience one quite effectively without the other, together they play like a dense novel of (mostly) unfortunate souls.
Posted Feb 23, 2023
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4/5
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Bad Living
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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For fans of Canijo... it’s a return to the acidity of his best traveled title, 2011’s Blood of My Blood.
Posted Feb 23, 2023
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3.5/5
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The Teachers’ Lounge
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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Compelling, especially in its ability to remain anxiety laden throughout the entirety of its running time, the film allows lead actor Leonie Benesch a breakout performance as a young educator both frustrating and refreshing to behold.
Posted Feb 23, 2023
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3.5/5
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Manodrome
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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An impressive Jesse Eisenberg courts our empathy and our rage as a wounded man broken down by confrontation with the one thing he cannot fathom -- kindness.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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3/5
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BlackBerry
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
|
Although ultimately less scandalous than it is a juicy saga on greed and the inevitable folly it formulates, the tone is in keeping with Johnson’s clandestine interests
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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3.5/5
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The Beast in the Jungle
(2019)
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Nicholas Bell
|
Chiha’s script, co-written by Jihane Chouaib and Axelle Ropert, retains the same sense of reticent ennui from the James’ text, but updates it with subversive fervor.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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2/5
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Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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The film’s biggest frustration is the absence of anything innately alarming. Shot by Armin Dierolf, the film is well stocked in beautiful visual palettes, but ultimately doesn’t have much to say.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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3.5/5
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She Came to Me
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
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The payoff is considerably pleasing in ways which bolster the strengths of its characters rather than crippling them at the finish line to satisfy unstated requirements for a happy ending.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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3/5
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20,000 Species of Bees
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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Touching and without being overly sentimental, Solaguren uses the titular diversity of bees to suggest our authentic roles all play an important part if we are to move beyond surviving to actually thriving.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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3/5
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Music
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
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A film inherently more interesting to discuss than it is to consume, especially considering her cast was arguably invited to abstain from conveying realistic emotions, its pleasures lie in the challenge of puzzling together these details and symbols.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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1/5
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The Plough
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
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This three-generational saga about a group of old school puppeteers is a shoddily assembled affair detached from any real semblance of reality.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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4/5
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Tótem
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Poignant but never sentimental, Tótem is a highly flavorful stew of characters whose various idiosyncrasies provide a loving, sometimes contentious tapestry.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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3.5/5
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The Shadowless Tower
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
Lightly humorous and not without some strident sentimentalism when it comes to the characterization of children, Lu’s latest is often enchanting and moreover meaningful in its lessons on settling with the past.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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1.5/5
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Ingeborg Bachmann - Journey into the Desert
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
For those unfamiliar with Bachmann, this isn’t a helpful entry point, dealing specifically, and through surprisingly superficial flourishes, never conjuring either the actual impetus of this relationship or a clear portrait of the artist herself.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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3.5/5
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Disco Boy
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Aided by some broody camerawork by the exceptional Hélène Louvart and original music from French electronic producer Vitalic, the end product is a visually striking, thematically eloquent piece of filmmaking.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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4/5
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Past Lives
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Neither melodramatic nor maudlin, Song’s poetic precision conveys experiences we may all be familiar with but are often the most difficult to express so astutely, if only because we are so inarticulate in the communication or processing of such emotions.
Posted Feb 22, 2023
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2.5/5
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Infinity Pool
(2023)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Beyond Goth, the whole cast seems somewhat adrift in these preposterous exchanges which feel primed for black comedy where the method of satirization is as solidified in cliche as the subjects themselves.
Posted Feb 01, 2023
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3/5
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When It Melts
(2023)
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Nicholas Bell
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Ultimately not as harrowing or powerful as it could be despite leading with the kind of miserabilism which succeeds in generating distress, it is a narrative which maintains an ultimately troubling reality.
Posted Jan 30, 2023
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3/5
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By Heart
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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A rare treat for fans of Huppert and Luchini, [By Heart] might not be anything more than a minor tribute to their talents, both of them inadvertently performing a version of themselves as actors.
Posted Jan 04, 2023
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2/5
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The Pale Blue Eye
(2022)
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Nicholas Bell
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Technically speaking, like all of Cooper’s films, The Pale Blue Eye is visually appealing, but is hobbled by a dependence on basic ideas and inspirations, which leads to nowhere but bland artistry.
Posted Dec 22, 2022
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4/5
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Babylon
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Owing much of its internal navigations to Stanley Donen, it’s a film which simultaneously feels like too much and yet not enough, but is, at times, so frenzied, it reaches a sense of zealous cinematic perfection.
Posted Dec 19, 2022
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2/5
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Peaceful
(2021)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Through it all, there is Deneuve, and even though she’s reduced to being presented as somewhat of a self-consumed nag to her son, she’s the only appropriate and consistent emotional wavelength the rest of Peaceful can’t quite land on.
Posted Oct 27, 2022
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4/5
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World War III
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Both sharply conceived and agonizingly performed, Seyyedi... presents a hot blast of social issue semantics defined by a direct conduit with a criminal underbelly often downplayed significantly in modern Iranian cinema.
Posted Oct 11, 2022
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4/5
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Mr. Klein
(1976)
|
Nicholas Bell
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The icy gaze of Alain Delon suggests a predator on the verge of extinction, a primordial hierarchy blinding him to his own mortality, and the actor’s inherent coldness furthers the sense of distaste framing the characterization.
Posted Oct 05, 2022
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3/5
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Winter Boy
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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It’s an empathetic portrait of a youth’s epiphany through heartache, learning anger over mortality cannot sustain one’s pursuits for meaning or pleasure.
Posted Sep 26, 2022
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3/5
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The Fabelmans
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Perhaps a bit vainglorious, it is Spielberg pared down to his most intimate underpinnings, and thus one of the more emotionally persuasive offerings from the late period of his filmography.
Posted Sep 12, 2022
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2/5
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Our Ties
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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An utterly banal and ultimately inconsequential journey ends up in the bourgeois bin of forgettable storytelling.
Posted Sep 09, 2022
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1/5
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Chiara
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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While the subject matter lends itself to a necessary rigidity, Nicchiarelli only accomplishes in conveying a sense of the interminable in this ponderous exercise, attempting to enliven the production with musical numbers both distracting and cringeworthy.
Posted Sep 09, 2022
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3/5
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No Bears
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Per usual with Panahi, it takes some time to orient oneself in the happenings of No Bears, arguably one of the director's more complex endeavors.
Posted Sep 09, 2022
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3.5/5
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The Listener
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
It’s a hypnotic exercise predicated by moments of suggested violence, trenchant melancholy and often poetic rumination on human resilience despite the odds.
Posted Sep 09, 2022
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3.5/5
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The Damned Don't Cry
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
It’s a sorrowful film about surviving in a world more interested in failure than success for the nonconforming, but it’s also filled with a respect and grace for characters stubbornly choosing the road less traveled.
Posted Sep 08, 2022
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1/5
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Beyond the Wall
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Beyond the Wall is beyond the pale of any kind of enjoyable storytelling finesse, which is surprising considering the accomplished hand apparent in Jalilvand’s past work.
Posted Sep 08, 2022
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4/5
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Blonde
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
It’s a difficult saga of victimization and self sabotage, and more importantly a portrait of our shared cultural complicity in dragging what’s wild and beautiful into iron cages for eventual eradication.
Posted Sep 08, 2022
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4/5
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Saint Omer
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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At its core, this is a stunning fly-on-the-wall melodrama... but complex layers and an outsider’s perspective enhances a universal scope on the psychological warfare motherhood employs.
Posted Sep 07, 2022
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2.5/5
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The Son
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Zeller’s astute ear for dialogue hasn’t translated as seamlessly for his sophomore film, despite some sterling work from his seasoned cast members, and a hollow tone of contrivance nags this emotional tragedy.
Posted Sep 07, 2022
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3.5/5
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The Eternal Daughter
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
Though a much smaller scale than her Souvenir films, The Eternal Daughter has the makings of a cult arthouse film while simultaneously serving as a rather poignant homage to motherhood and a remembrance of things past.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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2.5/5
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The Lord of the Ants
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
A rather standard, if overall serviceable exercise, feeling as if it dabbles too lightly across all its various elements as tragic romance, political period piece and courtroom melodrama.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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3/5
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Casa Susanna
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
Gentle, but overall absorbing, Lifshitz adds another chapter to his own varied, priceless scrapbook of queer and trans realities his energies and investments have saved from the continual erasure of ignorance and hatred.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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3.5/5
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Blue Jean
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
While Blue Jean isn’t re-writing the formula of these tropes, whether it’s the coming-of-age for Lois or the embracing of self for Jean, we’re led to the human resonance which makes these kinds of narratives so potent and necessary.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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3/5
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The Sitting Duck
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Huppert elevates what could have easily been a pat courtroom procedural about the dangers and small salvations to be won from speaking truth to power.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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4/5
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All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a moving portrait of our innate need for love, acceptance, and respect. And, hopefully, an example proving that, if these necessities aren’t available to you, it’s a call to seek them out.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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3.5/5
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Monica
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
Rejecting any semblance of melodramatic outburst, it’s both a film and a character profoundly lodged in a reticence almost harder to withstand than the violence or aggression which allows us more easily to judge and dismiss.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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4/5
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Master Gardener
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
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Master Gardener is ripe with subtexts, including how we’re all the fruit of the soil we’ve been nourished by, inheriting the sins of the father, etc. And like plants, can be regenerated when decimated or trampled.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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3.5/5
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The Banshees of Inisherin
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
A startlingly intriguing group of island denizens bring McDonagh’s morbid tale to vibrant life, an aching portrait of the ravages of isolation and discontent.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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3.5/5
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Love Life
(2022)
|
Nicholas Bell
|
Fukada has a particular knack for examining pulp scenarios and mining the aching human frailties which underlie our often innate penchant for self sabotage, this time in a fluctuating melodrama.
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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