A24
MOVIE REVIEW
Skin (2019)
Guy Nattiv made a live-action short film called “Skin” that went on to win an Academy Award despite its reprehensible take on white supremacy and racial injustice. Then after pouting with his wife-producer Jamie Ray Newman at the press call backstage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Mr. Nattiv went on to make a feature, also titled “Skin,” which deals with the same subject matter. Fortunately, that is where most of the similarities end.
Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques/2019 Tribeca Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
White as Snow (2019)
Anne Fontaine gives “Snow White” a contemporary makeover by recasting the evil stepmother as a hotel owner (played by Isabelle Huppert, bien sur) and the seven dwarfs as men hopelessly charmed by stepdaughter Claire (Lou de Laâge) during her exile in their bucolic village. It may sound inspired, but by what exactly is not clear. In fact, it’s not apparent that Ms. Fontaine necessarily has anything in particular to say about either the timelessness of the Brothers Grimm tale or the times that we live in.
Ian Cook/Netflix
MOVIE REVIEW
American Factory (2019)
When General Motors’s Moraine Assembly operations in Ohio shuttered in December 2008 after 27 years of operation, there were few prospects for its 2,400 workers. When Chinese-owned Fuyao Glass set up shop there in 2014, economically depressed local residents greeted it as if it were the Second Coming. But before the honeymoon even got underway, Senator Sherrod Brown party-pooped in a speech at the factory’s opening ceremony by urging the workers to organize.
Sabrina Lantos/2018 Tribeca Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
State Like Sleep (2019)
Writer-director Meredith Danluck attempts to put a feminine spin on the tired noir genre with “State Like Sleep,” with Katherine Waterston’s character, Katherine, obsessing over the mysterious death of her celebrity ex husband (Michael Huisman) and getting tangled in a dangerous web of secrets.
Tayarisha Poe/2018 Tribeca Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
We the Animals (2018)
Based on Justin Torres’s eponymous novel, “We the Animals” recounts the coming-of-age of a Puerto Rican child amid his parents’ turbulent relationship and his own budding (homo)sexuality.
Haut et Court
MOVIE REVIEW
The Night Eats the World (2018)
Based on a novel by Martin Page under the nom de plume Pit Agarmen, “The Night Eats the World” imagines a zombiepocalypse as akin to one hundred days of solitude.
Hillary Spera/2018 Tribeca Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
Duck Butter (2018)
In some ways, “Duck Butter” feels like the lesbian take on “Chuck & Buck.” The fact that Miguel Arteta directed both notwithstanding, each seems to revolve around the warped sense of love and romance and the arrested emotional development shared by some members of the LGBTQ community – perhaps for being sheltered through puberty.
Focus Features
MOVIE REVIEW
Tully (2018)
Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman's third collaboration (and their second with an ostensibly unglamorous Charlize Theron), "Tully" continues charting the messy womanhood for which the duo's heroines are always woefully unprepared. Ms. Theron plays Marlo, who has her hands full tending to the screaming fits of three tykes while her genial husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), occupies himself with work and video games. Marlo's enviably well-to-do brother, Craig (Mark Duplass), offers to hire a night nanny to help lighten her load. Though initially too haughty to accept, Marlo soon surrenders to his goodwill. The eponymous nanny, played by Mackenzie Davis, turns out too good to be true.
Strand Releasing
MOVIE REVIEW
Zama (2017)
Adapted from Antonio di Benedetto's acclaimed 1956 novel, "Zama" is Lucrecia Martel's first period piece. The film concerns the eponymous 18th-century Spanish officer, played by Daniel Giménez Cacho, stationed in a middle-of-nowhere colony (Paraguay per the novel) away from wife and child, repeatedly kowtowing to successive superiors in a desperate and futile bid for a recall or transfer.
Marc Schmidt/A24
MOVIE REVIEW
The Florida Project (2017)
"The Florida Project" depicts the impoverished lives of people who take up seemingly unending residence in a low-rent highway-side motel, tackily wrapped in lavender paint, and seen through the eyes of 6-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince). Moonee's cohort passes the time by getting into such mischief as spitting from the balcony at cars parked below, panhandling in front of an ice cream stand and setting abandoned homes ablaze.
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