Jason Gorber

“Closing Night” is terrific, a work free from cynicism, unafraid to show the drama of real life, how the struggles of the past continue to affect the present, and how in the moment of most diminishment and the most tragic of choices, one can still find a way to connect without simply erasing all that has come before.

While the sense of zaniness and bone-crunching spectacle is fully intact in The Stunt Driver’s boisterous telling, it’s these other, more profound elements that elevate both the storyline and the impact of Carter and his legacy.

Emotionally rich, narratively confident, and visually compelling, this is one of the better films of this year’s competitive selection, one that just happens to be so carefully drawn and crafted as to require the modality of animation to make its point.

It’s hard to see Groundswell in anything other than superficial terms. For one, it’s a pretty dull affair, needlessly repetitive, and feels much more like a corporate presentation than a cinematic event. Secondly, its mix of sullen seriousness and winking wryness makes for a tonally bizarre watch, lingering needlessly on given moments while brushing aside real questions of scalability given the global drive for food from an ever-exploding population.

Flawed and forgettable, Colony fails to build toward anything substantial, resulting in a film filled with swarms of zombie-like denizens lacking any real stylistic or narrative bite.

There’s still evidence of his sardonic wit and stylistic flourishes but, save for brief blasts of cool brilliance, the film is for the most part a dud, as floaty and ephemeral as the fading mist that passes for one of the film’s central menaces.

The Balloonists is a wild ride, and a captivating journey through this world of adventure. It’s also a deeply human story, one where hubris and courage mix like the gasses aboard the vessel, sometimes making things rise to implausible heights, sometimes crashing to the ground.

It’s a film that’s emotional, exhilarating, and essential.

Certain to energize longtime fans and generate new ones for generations to come, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is a masterwork of montage. It’s a definitive doc that gives the sense of how the artist changed popular music, but also about how at his core he was a man with a powerful voice and a zealous need to entertain.

Anchored by another admirable performance by Fiennes, it mines its milieu effectively enough. Even if the end result doesn’t quite live up to the majesty of Elgar’s opera, or even the truly transformative societal shifts that the Great War wrought on this land, there’s enough to admire about what takes place on screen in this telling to recommend it.