Jourdain Searles

Our Land is an urgent film with a bleeding heart that deserves to be seen by everyone around the world. Martel has made an essential work.

Writer-director David Lowery sets the stage for Mother Mary, but it’s Coel—playing the jilted, acidic fashion designer Sam Anselm—who steps out center stage. Coel dominates the screen, keeping all our senses at attention; though she has been in films before, Mother Mary feels like her grand entrance.

Zendaya delivers one of her best performances, externalizing the film’s racial politics by being a perfectly normal, loving partner marginalized by the narrative constructed around her.

Like many genre films this decade, “Heel” feels glaringly incomplete.

At 93 minutes, Lady could stand to be longer. The conversations between the women could go further. Nwosu is digging around in fertile ground, but there’s always a sense that things could go deeper. As it is, the film excels at depicting the complexity of female friendship within a devastating and isolating economic landscape.

The beauty of the film is that it doesn’t judge viewers for what they do and don’t know, but rather encourages us to open our minds to history and see the connections between then and now.

Come See Me in the Good Light is relentlessly emotional and intentionally uplifting, with an intimate quality that makes it feel like a home movie.

If You See Something is a flawed film that nevertheless reminds us of the selective cruelty that leaves so many struggling to survive.

By expanding the play’s world, Gaines opens himself up to new scrutiny. Beetz does the best she can with a thinly drawn character, but it’s hard not to wonder what The Dutchman would look like if Gaines showed any real interest in her.

Mumenthaler doesn’t want to give us the answers––she just wants us to wade through it and find our own way to shore.