Christian Zilko

Ryuya Suzuki’s masterful anime, which spans the century-long life of a J-Pop star, makes it impossible to ignore how little it shows you.

The film isn’t so bold as to suggest that it’s never too late to find fortune and fame in the entertainment industry. But it replaces those fantasies of overnight success with something richer, and its conviction in the power of songwriting as something that doesn’t have to be connected to record sales and stadium shows makes it a charming entry in a filmography that has never tried to be anything it’s not.

The film strikes an elegant balance between providing context for his innovations and letting the work do the talking, resulting in one of the more entertaining art documentaries that this critic has ever seen.

The internet is the closest thing these teenage cyberthieves have to a real life, and Corrigan’s dopamine onslaught of a film is an authentic portrait of the most alive they’ve ever been.

The tightly crafted story ensures that everyone is running a different race as the characters sprint to the finish line, leading to a deliberately unsatisfying ending that reflects those divergent goals.

Steal This Story, Please! is the kind of film that has no problem sacrificing artistic merit if it means inspiring a few more people to get out and protest.

Roommates has a real chance at being a formative experience for someone, which is more than a lot of movies can say. But those of us who have already been sufficiently formed? We can find better things to stream this weekend.

Indie films about indie filmmaking are a tired trope for a reason, but it brings me pleasure to say that The Travel Companion is one of the better ones in recent years.

But aside from calling for some bland common sense regulations that should be uncontroversial to any sane person, Roher doesn’t attempt to make anyone agree with him. After all of the information is presented, the film is much more interested in exploring the human story of how each of us has to wrap our own mind around an impossibly large topic.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is best understood as a basket of jokes and non sequiturs that simply need some kind of framework to keep things semi-coherent. That’s a compliment, of course, as these are very, very funny jokes.