The Film Stage

If nothing else, it’s a welcome sign that Johnson can retain his signature voice while dropping some elements of his style and finding interest in a topic he might not care all that much about.

He’s a director who has successfully made us face up to unimaginable darkness, but here seems to evade exploring it himself. It’s an unsatisfying misfire.

A quirky, offbeat road trip and kidnapping dramedy, Carolina Cavalli’s The Kidnapping of Arabella moves through a variety of tones and genres in its relatively short runtime. Absurd, funny, and almost deadly serious with its moral implications, it’s a film that never fully synthesizes disparate tones while still managing an interesting little lark.

If everything is amazing, then nothing is; and if everything conveys the grandeur of IMAX 70mm, then little shall.

The Bend in the River sneaks up on you. It’s all so modest and slight until it’s something far more poignant. That well-placed juxtaposition of young, free twenty-somethings against stressed-out forty-somethings against resigned, regretful-yet-resilient seventy-somethings hits like a sledgehammer.

Exhilarating, tense, personal, and enigmatic, Barrio Triste is a compelling look at a lost generation in search of salvation, and among this year’s best first features.

In exquisite, excruciating detail, Remake captures all the beauty and the pain.

It’s a huge step forward for Fast after the promise of their debut Honeycomb. I don’t think the budget here is that much larger, regardless of that previous work being done with friends on the cheap, but Camp looks like it was thanks to Sprungman’s eye and Fast’s increased confidence. They’re willing to take huge swings with the potential to alienate the audience, but it’s worth the risk because of their impact on those willing to truly absorb the film.

Best and Last works as a celebration, an introduction, and an encore.

Chiarella has a skill for creating scares beyond the obvious, but Leviticus (which takes its name from the biblical verse often used against homosexuality) gains a massive jolt from a near-perfect melding of theme and concept.