In the best of the year’s many broken-family dramas, Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) surgically probes the invasive lure of cheating and corruption—and the cost of integrity—in a crooked culture. Outwardly, Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) seems to be prospering, Read More …
An intimate portrait of the tortured soul of an artist, interspersed with several of her most famous works, Terence Davies’s unusual biopic covers the life of Emily Dickinson from her school days to her death, highlighting her tempestuous but compassionate relationships with her father, sister, Read More …
Dee Rees’s Mudbound plants itself firmly in Mississippi circa WWII, winding its way through the lives of a black family with deep, world-weary roots as they live and work as sharecroppers on the farm of a (once affluent) white family. Nakedly ambitious, Mudbound is a rural epic, chronicling the Read More …
We typically understand “Beauty and the Beast” stories as those in which a man who is cursed draws a beautiful woman into an unlikely romance that saves him from a burden of suffering and her from loveless conformity. Columbus offers us a different take: Beauty emanates from Read More …
From Garden of Eden references in π to the Tree of Life in The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky’s ilms have often riffed on biblical (and specifically Genesis-based) ideas, and mother!—his first film since the controversial Noah—is no exception. Like his last film, his new one is a story of Creation, Read More …
How far do the bonds of family extend, and what responsibilities do those bonds entail? When three sisters learn of their father’s death, their answer to those questions is to adopt their half-sister Suzu (Suzu Hirose) whom their father sired after abandoning their family. As Read More …
There were several movies about Jesus in 2016, each of which tapped into a different genre—the detective work of Risen, the family road trip of The Young Messiah, the spiritual drama of Last Days in the Desert, the epic action of the Ben-Hur remake—but the first and arguably most interesting Read More …
Claims that modern-day systems are rigged against the average guy have replaced “the Devil made me do it” as the go-to justification for why someone should not be held responsible for bending or even breaking the rules. Toby and Tanner Howard may not be wrong Read More …
Jeff Nichols’ Loving tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose story led to the 1967 Supreme Court decision invalidating state laws against interracial marriage. While this story could have been played as a pulse-quickening beat-by-beat historical drama, Nichols decides instead to paint a picture of Read More …
Empowering movies about women don’t have to tell stories about women overcoming circumstances, oppression, or violence; the most empowering narrative is often about overcoming ourselves. Queen of Katwe was one of the most effective feminist films of the year, recounting the true story of Phiona Mutesi, a Read More …