Sophie Monks Kaufman

This intimate and psychologically astute portrait of the human cost of U.S. imperial violence draws a precise focus from what cinema is built for: putting us in a character’s skin.

It’s hard to identify when the emotional circuit board underlying “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” switches on and a low-key multi-character yarn coheres into a humanist light show, only that after that certain point it achieves the enduring power of a folk ballad.

Grisebach’s understated approach to character works evocatively at the start when it is a question of blending them into this very specific place (filmed with consistent majesty by cinematographer Bernhard Keller) and teeing up the mystery of the past. However it falters when it comes to paying off that mystery and exorcising the ghosts that Veska is reckoning with.

The gratification of experiencing all the narrative threads coming together is only eclipsed by an awe at the underlying emotional continuity.

There is life in this film, even if it is buried under a very woolly coat.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a meta horror-comedy and a whip-smart entertainment industry satire. Still, on a deeper level, in a hole at the bottom of its lake, is a hard-won sexual awakening.

There are no easy answers in this raw but deeply empathetic film.

If Lady is more successful as a series of interconnected vignettes, than as one fluid narrative, it has a moving ending up its sleeve. After presenting a morass of rich themes, Nwosu teases out a small, surprising finale that transcends the blinkered concerns driving her protagonist.

It is ironic that Richard Linklater has chosen to homage a film carved out of spontaneous new techniques with one so mired in contrivances that it is impossible for it to breathe.

Poitras questions him on the less glorious moments of his career, too, so that he emerges as a flawed human rather than a bastion of perfect judgement. This is not a perfect documentary either, with the breathless dash through his post My Lai journalism sometimes feeling overwhelming. Yet perfection is not the point when something impossible has been bottled: it’s something called the truth.