Cha Cha Real Smooth
Though supposedly the characters are messy and flawed, the film’s second half feels like a disguised PSA for behaving nice and having functional conversations.
Film-Forward
The Innocents
Childhood is a time when boundaries are set and tested. As such, the line between kindness and cruelty can be especially hazy. René Clément’s Forbidden Games (1952) dramatizes two children’s fascination with death, which leads them to kill an animal; Richard Hughes’s brilliant novel A High Wind in Jamaica (1929) views a group of children […]
The Tale of King Crab
A film that hearkens back to folkloric storytelling.
Nitram
Director Justin Kurzel envisions the days leading up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre from the killer’s point of view. The emphasis here is on understanding the context that led to the tragedy, without excusing either the killer or the crime.
The Outfit
The well-paced thriller hums along at such a quick clip that it’s easy to hold reservations until after the credits have rolled.
Great Freedom
Watching the ways the prison-bound relationships vary in their complications, compromises, and resolutions is one of the more moving aspects of director Sebastian Meise’s film.
Fabian: Going to the Dogs
Welcome to Weimar–era Berlin, a world of economic instability, wild partying, cabaret performers, rampant sexuality, and where Nazis are beginning to march the streets.