April Wolfe

By telling this story through the children’s eyes with a magical-realism element, López makes the tragically unthinkable somehow more palatable.

The sheer number of artisans creating great work on this film does become a disappointment, though. Without a proper story or dialogue, what good is skin-deep beauty?

Every subject shares genuine enthusiasm after watching Guy-Blaché’s work, and as messy as “Be Natural” can be at times, with that frenetic pace of info delivery coming from all directions at once, it’s actually the natural tone and pace of a creator who’s excited by their subject matter.

Captain Marvel, the first Marvel adaptation both to star a woman and to be co-directed by a woman, is an obvious, crude, and transparent film. And it’s also quite enjoyable and evocative — most of the time.

What’s so grand about Ruben Brandt isn’t its story or the characters, which are both abstractions. It’s the animation—the detailed artwork, so dense that it warrants repeat viewings.

There is truth in this story, even if the ending becomes unwieldy.

Despite the film’s needlessly fractured structure and a relentlessly grim story, Kidman and Kusama seem to be speaking the same language, in quieter moments illuminating not just the faults of the protagonist but also the faults of every tragic hard-boiled detective in cinematic history.

Unfortunately, the film, written by Alan McDonald from a short by the late Viner Ryan McHenry, at times comes closer to a facsimile than a parody. When McPhail does hit the high notes, however, he really hits them.

The best I can say about Buster Scruggs is that it seems as though the Coens picked their favorite actors and wrote them a part specifically tailored to their abilities.

Simultaneously entertaining, overwhelming, compelling, and grating, Bodied raises its hand and talks until words mean nothing and everything.