Morgan Freeman     Juliette Binoche     Cameron Monaghan     Hala Finley     Frank Grillo             This is a crime drama as thrilling as any you would want to see, with the best of writing and directing by Anna Gutto and a cast containing the illustrious Juliette Binoche in a completely divergent role from her past and the inimitable Morgan Freeman being in his quintessential role of the quiet, irritating upsetter.  Close behind them is you ..read more

 Ryan Gosling     Chris Evans     Ana de Armas     Rege-Jean Page     Billy Bob Thornton              How to get the attending audience not to see your movie.  Make scenes so dark viewers can’t tell what’s going on or who the characters are, especially in the fight scenes.  Make it so loud that dialog can’t be heard above the din of sound effects.  Include characters that are so sadistic it’s unbearable to watch (e.g., p ..read more

 Lesley Manville     Isabelle Huppert     Lucas Bravo     Ellen Thomas Jason Isaacs     Anna Chancellor     Alba Baptista     Rose Williams             This is a feel-good movie through and through, although rather pie-in-the sky.  I gather the point of the story is that kindness begets kindness from a London dance hall to the House of Dior in Paris…except when it doesn’t.     ..read more

 Daisy Edgar Jones     Taylor John Smith     David Strathairn Michael Hyatt     Sterling Macer, Jr.     Harris Dickinson             A beautifully rendered film about a remarkable child abandoned by her family and growing up alone in a shack in the marshland of North Carolina.  Isolated from most of the town of Barkley Cove, she is called “the marsh girl” by townspeople who make up all kinds of negative stories about her.    &n ..read more

            The story of a revolution told by artists is so different from the same story told by political scientists or historians—not that I’m discounting the latter.  What strikes me, though, is that artists have a way of conveying the social/emotional and individualized experiences of what actual people go through during a revolution such as the uprising in Syria.  Documentarian David Henry Gerson features nine artists originally from Syria who were active in demonstrations against the Assad regime and had to leave for other countri ..read more

 David Earl     Chris Hayward             Brian (Earl) is an inventive soul whose house in Wales looks like a laboratory made from whatever he can find and bring home.  He’s even made a cuckoo clock that can fly so the townspeople can check out the time in the sky wherever they are.  Then one day he decides to make a robot to help him around the house,             Finding most of what he needs on hand or searching through trashes, where he has found ..read more

 Chris Pratt     Bryce Dallas Howard     Isabella Sermon     Laura Dern     Sam Neill Jeff Goldblum     DeWanda Wise     Mamoudou Athie     Campbell Scott     Omar Sy     BD Wong             There are plenty of thrills and chills in this production, and if you like chases of one kind or another (cars, motorcycles, dinosaurs), yo ..read more

 Emma Thompson     Daryl McCormack             This is a fun and surprising movie about sex work that comes across as genuine in ways one wouldn’t expect.  Yes, it has a lot of laugh-out-loud humor—which is good, since many encounters are clearly awkward.  But the underlying truths and the transformation of both characters elevate the story above the purely entertaining.               I’m not sure how younger people will view the story.&nb ..read more

 Cheryl Isheja     Bertrand Ninteretse     Eliane Umuhire     Elvis Ngabo     Dorcy Rugamba           Multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams and Rwandan filmmaker Anisia Uzeyman have produced a sci-fi musical—an exotic, poetic collage—detailing the miners’ struggles in Rwanda in the early 1990’s.  The time period is after the civil war when the miners formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to resist the cruel Rwandan Armed Forces who had taken ..read more

 Peter Capaldi     Tom Blyth     Jack Lowden Simon Russell Beale     Ben Daniels     Gemma Jones          This is not your usual war story.  It starts out in London in 1914 with a poem about war written by Siegfried Sassoon (played by Jack Lowden as the younger and Peter Capaldi as the older), the protagonist whose life is chronicled beginning with his years as a young man when he and his brother are going off to WWI.  We see him three yea ..read more