Nick Rocco Scalia

Considering everything that MacKay and Hewlett attempt and successfully pull off, the minor imperfections of The Swearing Jar are particularly easy to overlook.

Rounding can be a tough film and one that puts its viewers through a lot, but the investment is well worth it.

Streetlight Harmonies manages to conjure up some compelling and highly evocative vignettes.

Respectable in both intentions and execution, this is the kind of film that sneaks up on you and leaves a lasting impression. Like our man himself, it shouldn’t be overlooked.

Try as I might, I can’t quite shake nor stop thinking about The Giant, and that makes me believe Raboy’s done something very, very right, here – even if you might have to squint a bit to see it.

Hammer has the mechanics of a hard-edged noir thriller, which work startlingly well, but it’s clear that Sparkes’s heart, and therefore the film’s, is centered on the distressed familial relationships.

The overall experience of The Grand Bizarre is, in a lot of ways, an extremely eye-opening one. It forces a viewer to consider how complicated and incredible every single stitch of a rug, or a scarf, or a dishtowel actually is, and how easily it is to overlook that fact.

For a while, the film’s elegant art-horror vibe is quite compelling, leaving the ancient secret societies and demonic entities that it hints at tantalizingly off-screen and just out of Rose’s grasp. Unfortunately, though, the film begins to stumble late in its second act, its well set-up mystery devolving into a contrived sort of video-game logic.

The directorial choices, from the minimal use of music for dramatic embellishment to the innovative split-screen technique used to blur the identities of individuals in courthouse footage, are spot-on throughout.

It’s not that Euphoria lacks good intentions or comes off as superficial in its treatment of death and dying. It’s just that there’s so much potential for grace or humor or despair or horror inherent in its premise. It’s sad to see so much of that thematic territory go so thoroughly, if politely, unexplored.