9
The assembled teenage tragedies that populate River's Edge aren't suffering in their nihilistic angst to provide a lesson, however, so much as they are there to exist and envelop you into their dead-end state of mind, living as they do in presumably hazardous proximity to an industrial district that is polluting the rivers that run behind the school from which they frequently skip.
6
The Blood of Wolves is a studied, committed throwback to the blood-soaked, abrasive Yakuza films in the vain of Kinji Fukasaku
6
There exists good intentions behind Harada's want to focus on the plight of Edo women and the disproportionate favoritism of the institution of marriage at the time, but lacking the follow-through and giving into broad populist appeals to entertainment makes these intents inherently shallow.
7
Kore-eda remains staunchly pragmatic in laying out this case as to make sure the “correct” lesson is taken away, and that makes the whole exercise falter significantly.
7.5
When it is knee-deep in prowling the ins and outs of the porn industry, the film shines as provocatively as Boogie Nights, but peering past this fun surface confronts you with little to no depth for the avatar doing the prowling.
7
Like most No Wave films, it is not necessarily what is on screen that will make you invested but the all-too-clear production details lingering just beneath the poor dramatizations that elevate the film to something more than its means.
5.5
Sadly Pressing On isn't so much interested in the technology's history or mechanics as much as the people who have propped up the letterpress community as this all-important subculture, nor does it translate as well as it thinks it does.
6.5
As a walls-closing-in-type espionage thriller, the originality of his idea sours to serve the need of some weak action scenes and a script that believes it is more snappy and fluid than it is.
4
211 proves itself to be of the lesser-spiralling Cage films that think his presence alone can elevate unremarkable, paint-by-numbers thrillers to cult-approved schlock.
6.5
The epitome of what was an Allan Carr production/endeavor, no matter the media or year it was witnessed by the public, was the cross-section between inherent extravagance and a longing for a mythic past of Hollywood's invention.
6
A lone man pushes a wheelchair through the vast, unforgiving expanse of 20 uncharted miles of Death Valley back to civilization. Far from the psychedelic runoff of an uncontained Lynchian experiment, director Dominic Gill is documenting the final symbolic journey of motocross rider Aaron Baker, who in 1999 broke his neck and severely damaged his spinal cord, resulting in paralysis and significant mobility reduction with little hope of recovering.
4
There are few things more dependable in cinema than Bruce LaBruce's transgressive sexual politics and his aesthetic fixation with that enticing grey area between independent cinema and hardcore gay pornography.
8.5
AVA is completely composed of these static, penetrating shots into space that give off the air of stringent rules and authority in all the ways Ava finds herself decentralized in these compositions.
1
Never thought I would say this in a review, but you could honestly find better examples of cinema on PornHub than with the lowly Who's Jenna...?
3
Perhaps, with its priorities reorganized, the effort Kingsley puts into the role could not have been so thoroughly wasted; but as it stands, it seems An Ordinary Man is the lesser of the four films he appeared in last year.
5.5
From After Louie's conceptual standpoint there exists the foundation for a highly intriguing character study about this human artifact from the AIDS crisis coming to terms with the his generational succession by his community.
