Slant Magazine

Verity is a slightly twisted yet ultimately muted romance containing neither thrills nor passion.

It’s difficult to imagine another film in this subgenre so thoroughly disinterested in the substance of the materials at its center.

One of Mike Leigh’s preoccupations in Tender Loving Care is with what is and isn’t shown on screen, and by extension with which moments of life are really worth focusing on.

Paweł Pawlikowski’s lates introduces itself in an emotional texture that its gracefully somber companion films hardly touched: an ironic and bitter humor.

Digger is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s purported cri de coeur against our wealth-and-resources-hoovering overlords, but somehow it still manages to be a shameless Tom Cruise ego stroke.

Problematic as this new conservative kaiju era may be, and messier as Godzilla Minus Zero’s themes and ensemble may be than Godzilla Minus One, it’s hard not to admire the sheer human honesty of a big-budget fantasy film appealing to taboo bloodthirst and social conscience in the same haggard breath—certainly not when it sounds and looks this good.

The film’s positivity feels like a balm and is, in toto, more than earned.

The film subversively interrogates what it means for a Black Muslim man in contemporary America to embody a cultural figure who helps the country sort out its conflicting views on power, violence, and individualism.

Forgotten Island suggests an isekai-anime-flavored remake of The Hangover, and there’s a lot going on visually and comedically at any given moment: an unrelenting barrage of hyperactive visual gags, over-the-top slapstick, and weird creatures. Yet it’s never incoherent.

Despite being set a hundred years ago, The Girl with the Needle is a topical film that becomes all the more chilling when you realize, unsurprisingly, that it’s inspired by true events.