Richard Lawson

Watching Unabomber, one longs for a smarter, more sophisticated, more probing version of this same double-act. A better film about what might have radicalized Ted Kaczynski that also delineates how he was eventually captured could be startling and revealing, complicating the public idea of Kaczynski as mere renegade madman. But this film serves up only the most basic, obvious version of that.

The film is instead a discouraging slog, a mess of cheap shocks and painful lyrics. It seems inspired by some mix of Sweeney Todd and the dreadful true-crime case of the German guys who set up a date so one of them could eat the other. It’s an icky musical, but one that endeavors to find the sweetness — the romance, even — in the muck. To admit to some bias, that particular genre has never really been my cup of tea. But Stuffed serves up an especially acrid brew, plodding along unmelodiously until its foregone conclusion.

Company is by no means a total wash; it’s nice to look at and eventually (though, it’s a long wait) the plot does take on a compelling momentum.

By the end of the picture, we really do feel that we’ve traveled somewhere, that all of the film’s relentless motion and noise has given us some kind of full-bodied experience.

The film is an effectively dark portrait of open wounds left by Nazi occupation, the past terribly coming to bear on what is meant to be a time of great relief and celebration. It is also a sharp, despondent look at the many compromises women of the past — and no doubt the present — have had to make in order to keep their heads above water.

If only Being Heumann held its cool, rebellious pose for a bit longer, the spirit of the movement might have been truly conjured up. Instead, things deflate into a competent recitation of facts, into a sturdy but plain message delivery system.

Schrader has matters of change and expiation on his mind, and so he has written a blunt, unflinching story of exactly those things, with an ending that is quite shocking in its refusal to let us look away from the film’s direst suggestions.

The Other Side works hard to combat or paste over the heavy moral questions it provokes, uplifting ending and all. But I left the theater feeling angry and bitter, suddenly put off by the whole project of mountaineering.

Don’t Look Back in Anger reminds us of the potential wonder and connection of doing things IRL.

Jim Queen is a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp through a heap of stereotypes about gay life in Paris. It’s teeming with jokes about prostate orgasms, about tops and bottoms, about fetishes and bodily fluids and G’d out party bois. It comes as a welcome shock to the system here at this august, black-tie film festival. I just wish the movie was funnier and fresher than it is.