101 Best Releases Rated NR (Page 4)

Adam Leon's foggy mood piece is as endearingly formless as its amnesiac protagonist, a moody reflection on creativity and youth. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. There's no explicit explanation given for why Alina Reynolds (Vanessa Kirby), a short story writer of some recent renown, finds herself aimlessly wandering the streets of New York City sans memory in Adam Leon's hypnotic Italian Studies. But if anyone was to thrive in the Big Apple in such a remarkable fugue state, it'd be someone so preternaturally attuned to listening and observing as Alina. And that she does for the vast majority of Italian Studies' runtime, creating a listless yet engrossing fever dream about the unexpected gifts of curiosity. Continue Reading →

Delmar Washington's well-intentioned sci-fi parable about racial profiling gets tripped up in the constraints of its budget. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Ever since Get Out popularized the notion of exploring the struggles and tensions of Blackness in America through a genre lens, it's been difficult to extricate its influence from many of its successors. This brings us to No Running, the feature film debut of Delmar Washington, which strains against what's most assuredly a modest budget to explore a mild sci-fi spin on the phenomenon of racial profiling. Continue Reading →

Sean King O'Grady directs a claustrophobic horror film that has a lot of potential, but just misses the mark. We Need to Do Something, the debut feature from Sean King O’Grady, is a horror film that can easily be read on two different levels, though your mileage with it will vary depending on which one you choose to follow. As a straightforward horror yarn, albeit with moments of grotesque black humor thrown in from time to time, it contains a few interesting elements but never finds a way to pull them together into a completely satisfying whole. On the other hand, if one regards the whole enterprise on a more overtly symbolic level, it gains a little more in terms of power and effectiveness. Yet, even then it also tends to lose its way especially once the fairly potent central metaphor gives way to less interesting instances of bloodshed. In either case, it ends on such a clunky and ineffective note that viewers may get the sense that O’Grady and screenwriter Max Booth III have just been screwing with them, a feeling enhanced by the all-too-apt choice for a key musical cue towards the end. Continue Reading →

No Man of God, Amber Sealey's Ted Bundy picture, is well made but does not successfully distinguish itself from its fellow study-of-a-serial-killer films. In the days leading up to the Tribeca premiere of No Man of God, there was a brief dustup in the media when its director, Amber Sealey, did interviews in which she appeared to be taking potshots at recent films that had also been centered on notorious serial killer Ted Bundy for utilizing approaches that she suggested glorified him by depicting him as this brilliant and wildly charismatic character. This didn’t sit well with fellow filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who made Bundy the subject of his Netflix documentary series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) and the dramatic film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019), in which Bundy was portrayed by no less a figure than one-time teen heartthrob Zac Efron. He responded in kind by suggesting that Sealey was deliberately misrepresenting his work in order to pump up interest in her own film.Both Sealey and Berlinger have their points, I suppose. But as it turns out, this controversy may ultimately prove to be the most interesting thing about No Man of God in the end. Continue Reading →

Over the past decade, writer-director Christian Petzold has delivered three near-perfect features-- 2012’s Barbara, 2014’s Phoenix, and 2018’s Transit. His work isn't showy, but what he pulls off is challenging - making artfully crafted, sumptuously romantic stories focusing on lonely, easy-going characters finding connection with one another. His latest, Undine, follows in that tradition, and it’s one of his best. Continue Reading →

In theory, Kapel Furman and Armando Fonseca’s second feature, Skull: The Mask, should satisfy the fans of the traditional horror and slasher genre. After all, it’s a movie drenched in lots of blood, filled with guts and body parts, and shot in a manner that evokes the phantasmagoric insanity found in Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy. But its convoluted narrative and sloppy execution, unfortunately, take away all the gory fun, resulting in the movie ending up playing itself too safely instead of embracing the gonzo nature of the genre. Continue Reading →

So there’s this fabulous sequence about three quarters of the way through Bram Stoker’s Dracula where nearly all the characters left alive are speeding to Transylvania and Dracula’s castle for the film's climax. On one side of the race are Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) , barrister Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves), his fiancée Mina Murray (Winona Ryder), and three adventurers/friends. Continue Reading →

The Pogues song about drunken hooligans causing mayhem, “Boys From The County Hell”, doesn’t have much in common with this short and nasty Irish vampire film besides the title. That’s until you get to the eyebrow raising lyric, “We'll eat your frigging entrails and we won't give a damn.” Ditto for this movie.  Continue Reading →

The second The Mitchells vs. the Machines gets started, it’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s a colorful explosion on screen, and for all Disney and Pixar’s charms, it’s simply a joy to see an animated film that looks nothing like theirs. Though perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising considering it was produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the duo behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, the most interesting and original animated film from a big studio in years. Continue Reading →

“Does Danielle want to go to law school or grad school?” An almost casual question to her mother, the truth is, Danielle (Rachel Sennott) has no idea where she’s going – so she joins her family for a shiva. “Abby,” her “uncle’s second wife’s sister” has passed; Danielle takes a break from Manhattan and her final college finals to see her parents and their suburban Jewish community. Confined to the unending funeral service, Shiva Baby understands how just how terrifying the question “what are you doing next?” can ring in one’s ears.  Continue Reading →

From the moment that it debuted in 1961, following months of negative headlines surrounding its schedule and cost overruns that all but sealed its fate long before it ever hit theaters, a debate has raged over One-Eyed Jacks, the jumbo-sized Western that proved to be the Heaven’s Gate of its day. It also marked the beginning and the ending of the directorial career of renowned actor Marlon Brando. Was it, as some people even back then noted, a one-of-a-kind masterpiece that dared to inject overt artistry and psychology into what was normally one of the most straightforward of screen genres? Or, as others suggested, was it a pretentious and bloated misfire that did nothing but underscore the dangers of letting an actor with overweening creative ambitions take charge of a project without any sort of controls? Continue Reading →

The remaining festival offerings in horror are satisfyingly gory, but some fall short in plot & characterization. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) After a strong beginning, South by Southwest’s “Midnighters” category wraps up with more ecohorror, an animated fantasy epic, and yet more small town folks acting weird. Gorehounds will be pleased to know that over the top violence seems to be making a comeback in horror, if some of the films featured here are any indication. Regrettably, in some cases it’s at the cost of a cohesive, fleshed out plot. Continue Reading →

In Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels, we follow two parallel narratives. One tells the story of a contract killer (Leon Lai) trying to get out of the game and his agent (Michelle Reis) who is infatuated with him. The other follows a chaotic and mute man, He Zhwiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who falls in love with a woman called Charlie (Charlie Yeung) whom he keeps running into. There’s a lot to like here, from the moodiness of Hong Kong to the music, to Wong Kar-wai’s signature stunning lighting. One specific thing which is really fascinating here is how few moments of dialogue are present here, and how that makes this film so effective.  Continue Reading →

Watching any Wong Kar-wai movie in 2021 hits differently than it might have in almost any other year. He’s a director known for exploring loneliness and to watch it at a time when all of us without question are among the loneliest we’ve ever been is a striking experience. We’re now a year into a pandemic and despite the vaccinations on the horizon, it feels like it has no end. We’re counting the time since we last hugged or kissed our loved ones in months and even years at this point instead of hours. Continue Reading →

Radu Jude's latest is as unsubtle as it is gripping, a strange tryptich about sex, justice, and communal madness. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) In Radu Jude’s Golden Bear-winning tenth feature, the zanily titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, there is no subtlety. The message is loud and clear from start to finish: The world is a sick place and not a lot of people are capable of empathy. For Emi (Katia Pascariu), a teacher, not having empathy from others means she could her job for a ridiculous reason: An amateur sex tape featuring Emi and her husband is circulating all around the internet, and when the parents of Emi’s students find about this, they demand the school to fire Emi. Jude, however, doesn’t address this plot point right away. Instead, he toys around first, dividing the movie into three equally bizarre parts. Continue Reading →

Danis Goulet's sci-fi adventure intriguingly explores the systematic eradication of indigenous peoples through a Hunger Games lens, but falters when it leans too close to the conventions of that already-creaky genre. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) Night Raiders is yet another story involving grim dystopian futures and a seemingly ordinary kid who gradually discovers that she possesses extraordinary powers that might help change things at last. In an effort to keep it from coming across as nothing but a clone of The Hunger Games, Divergent and the rest, writer-director Danis Goulet has constructed the story to also serve as a parable for the systematic eradication of the indigenous people of North America throughout history.  Continue Reading →

Director Quentin Dupieux understands that the surreal blooms in a short period of time. Like Dupieux’ Deerskin (Le daim), Keep An Eye Out (Au poste) slowly pulls back thin leaves of logic before chaos springs out. Masterfully (and perhaps mercifully) just as we realize and appreciate the world’s full confusing splendor, the film ends.  Continue Reading →

Dasha Nekrasova leaps out of the gate with an audacious, out-there horror debut as creepy as it is transgressive. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) Once upon a time, when a horror film was described as being “transgressive,” it indicated that it dealt with material that went far beyond the social mores of the time. Even fans of the genre were startled by what they were seeing in films like Psycho (1960), Night of the Living Dead (1968), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Nowadays, when a horror film is described that way, it's just code for being super violent and nothing else.  Continue Reading →

Based on an Aja Gabel short story and directed by Chad Hartigan, Little Fish follows a married couple as they try to hold onto what they love in a world ravaged by a pandemic. In a lot of ways, there are eerie similarities with our present reality, but the main difference is that the virus in this film slowly takes away memories – functioning very similarly to Alzheimer’s. In the midst of a flurry of pandemic-themed media coming out which tries to reflect the situation which the world is presently in, Little Fish manages to distinguish itself from the crowd with its brilliant leads and emotional resonance. Continue Reading →

Even before COVID drove us all to become perpetually cloistered, it seems technology was driving our work and personal lives to the digital realm. Even as the need for physical connection was driven down, Millennials and Gen Z still flock to large cities with sky-high rents. In this increasingly digital and expensive existence, writer, director, and cameraman Ben Hozie (The Lion's Den) gives us PVT CHAT -- a drama that ponders the treachery of online obsession, and our transactional existence in late-stage capitalism.  Continue Reading →