Candice Frederick

As a kind of twisted social commentary, it doesn’t make much sense on paper, but don’t worry: It won’t make much sense on the screen, either, but Mosquito State manages to get under your skin and also to find moments of disquieting beauty.

Blue Story doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to films about turf wars, but its personal, humanizing themes about friendship, love, youth, and black masculinity keeps you riveted, Onwubolu’s lyrical respites aside.

Fanning and Bardem deliver two utterly devastating performances that show the power of despair met with unyielding love.

There are really two contending films inside Swallow that, if given the opportunity and the space to do so, could have been fascinating as separate entities.

Lost in America isn’t exactly a cinematic masterpiece, and sometimes its prosaic filmmaking does it no favors, but the film’s ability to move the conversation forward merits attention.

Premature captures that unexpected, earth-shattering moment in life when you realize adulthood, real adulthood, is not so simple and cute. It’s difficult, it’s scary, and it’s heartbreaking at times. That’s what Howard’s beautiful performance conveys.

Though it’s an intoxicating blend of modern and vintage romance, The Photograph, while flawed, is most intriguing when it peels back the layers between a mother and daughter who never really knew each other in life, but whose stories eventually intertwine in ways they could have never imagined.

Come As You Are is best when it’s not trying so hard to be the next great sex comedy and actually focuses on building the relationships among the male friends and their own existential crises, which gives the film so much pathos as it explores their vulnerabilities and frustrations.

It does what so little of the dialogue has managed to do: implore audiences to embrace black female survivors and to understand the cultural and painful dilemmas they continue to endure along their avid fight to heal the wounds of the entire black race. Though it’s at times a gutting watch, it’s ultimately about hope and sisterhood.

It’s understandable that The 40-Year-Old Version is intentionally scattered, because it is about a woman grasping at straws in order to find her place in this very rigid space, both professionally and personally. But the film lacks the finesse to tell that story more cinematically, even running way longer than it should, as it roams towards a satisfying conclusion.