Ryan Swen

Whatever the tepidly constructed dramatic scenes and shallow character motivations, A Complete Unknown does provide the opportunity to hear a number of the greatest songs of the 20th century performed loud and, yes, competently.

One of Who by Fire’s greatest assets is Philippe Lesage’s willingness to shift the tenor of the film to fit the wildly divergent narrative concerns of any given sequence.

Throughout his trilogy, Wang Bing’s modus operandi has been expansion through repetition, a recursive exploration of similar spaces that nevertheless exhibits differing emotions, concerns, and personalities.

Red Island is at once lackadaisical and urgent, relaxed but with a clear eye for how swiftly everything will end for the characters at its center.

It is unabashedly sentimental, even risking a certain ideological simplicity in its groundswell of former troops fighting a new, potentially more worthy conflict on their own terms. But its journey towards this destination is hard-fought, willing to stay in the quiet anguish for uncomfortable lengths of time so that the ultimate release is all the sweeter.

The film is best in moments when the bond between two outcasts is made corporeal and fully present.

The film recalls nothing less than Inherent Vice in its use of a threadbare detective narrative to explore both human interactions and grander ideas about the American society of its time.

When the very ground on which people live becomes uncertain, the necessity of passion—in love, in combat—becomes all the more apparent, and Spielberg’s fidelity to that sentiment, and to his own decisions, bears the vitality of this alternate take aloft.

Hoffman and Haim are quite natural and relaxed in the way they carry themselves, the former filled with an awkward confidence and the latter a forthright radiance, and by film’s close it is apparent their roads are inextricably intertwined, no matter the obstacles life throws their way.

What most strikes in Feast of the Epiphany is a sense of conviction and fidelity, a willingness to document things as they are: unvarnished and imperfect.