Critic's Notebook

Starlight Express

Tribeca Festival

MOVIE REVIEW

They're Here (2024)

By TIM HAYES

Those in search of understanding and knowledge in a difficult world can look inward, or outward, or if they're so inclined look upward to the stars in search of alien visitors. "They're Here" profiles a group of upstate New Yorkers on that third path, people who have seen unidentified flying objects or met the U.F.O.s' passengers; events that led them to rethink their place in the world and perhaps who they themselves are as well. This process takes different forms. They seek reassurance from academics that the data does support their experience, or allow hypnotists to root around in their memories, or just seek other people in the same boat who won't stare at them skeptically. Daniel Claridge and Pacho Velez's calm, compassionate, perhaps too restrained documentary is about individuals with a variety of differences but at least one common trait: the wary and weary expression of people whose stable frames of reference were bumped six inches sideways and took them with it.

Trans Mission

Mubi

MOVIE REVIEW

Crossing (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

A movie that revolves around two Georgians in Istanbul, Turkey, looking for someone they know, “Crossing” is very reminiscent of “Central Station.” Ain’t nothing wrong with that! The Walter Salles film is a masterpiece that others should aspire to emulate. It also sets the bar impossibly high.

She's Out of His League

Tribeca Festival

MOVIE REVIEW

Winter Spring Summer or Fall (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

The story of an average Joe being in love with a woman way out of his league is nothing new. It’s like every Woody Allen movie ever. Or Adam Sandler. Or Judd Apatow. And so on. This is a trope, or maybe an entire genre, in Bollywood and its adjacent film industries – the impossible intercaste relationship dynamic – and yet somehow it never seems to get old over there because they’ve discovered the formula for making viewers’ cheeks blush and hearts flutter. “Winter Spring Summer or Fall,” which has its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, gives this premise the Y.A. treatment.

Asking a Lot

Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the few European directors from non-English-speaking countries (in his case, Greece) in recent years to successfully pivot to full-time filmmaking in America. Unlike, say, Lars von Trier or Nicolas Winding Refn, Mr. Lanthimos has been recognized by the Academy with multiple nominations. He’s also lucky that he’s never had to placate Harvey Weinstein.

Fiddling While Rome Burns

Caesar Films

MOVIE REVIEW

Megalopolis (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

The kindest way to describe “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s latest grasp at relevance, is that it is somewhat late-career Felliniesque, with its Art Deco production designs, costumes that range from ancient Greek to prerevolution French and the decadent life-as-circus motif. But let’s face it. Late-career Coppola gonna late-career Coppola. The film is bloated, unfocused and self-indulgent.

Fury Road to Nowhere

Jasin Boland/Warner Brothers Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

Reviving the “Mad Max” franchise in 2015 after a three-decade gap turned out to be a very good idea for George Miller. So instead of another “Babe” or even “Happy Feet,” we’re getting a Furiosa origin story. Well, there’s apparently a sequel planned for “Mad Max: Fury Road” as well, but that’s a whole other conversation for another time.

Night for Day

Diaphana Distribution

MOVIE REVIEW

The Second Act (2024)

By MARTIN TSAI

Quentin Dupieux’s “The Second Act,” which opened the 77th Cannes Film Festival, is a somewhat interesting, if half-baked, objet de curiosité about the blurred line between fiction and reality. It’s the classic film-within-a-film, except that realities of the film set and behind-the-scenes drama pretty much hijack and drown the threadbare plot of the fictional project herein.

Set for Life

Peter Marley/Cohen Media Group

MOVIE REVIEW

Nowhere Special (2021)

By SARAH MANVEL

It’s always a little sad when a child is given up for adoption, because it means that something, somehow, has gone wrong. But to acknowledge that you’ll be unable to raise your child and choose a better family for them is an extraordinary act of love. It’s the quiet sadness of “Nowhere Special” that gives that exceptional love its full power, especially as, for a movie about death and dying, it makes the unusual choice to be utterly focused on the future.

Queen It Over

Courtesy photo

MOVIE REVIEW

Seize Them! (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

This perfectly silly attempt to tell a feminist story set in the Dark Ages is marred by an unusually spiteful attitude to violence. Early on a man is stabbed through the head and delivers a punchline before dropping dead. Later there’s an extended sequence about how difficult it is to throw a body off a cliff in a way which the body’s face is destroyed. It’s this sour tone which lingers despite the cast being a remarkable combination of British comic talent, making “Seize Them!” a misfire.

Left to His Own Devices

BFI London Film Festival

MOVIE REVIEW

If Only I Could Hibernate (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

This was the first ever Mongolian movie to play in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, but would have been accepted from any nation. It's an assured and reassuring movie about the importance of education, while also being a fresh entry into the genre of movies about children being forced to raise themselves. Normally such movies are incredibly bleak no matter where in the world they're set, but despite the worrisome title this is not the case here. “If Only I Could Hibernate” is a remarkable testament to the power of the human spirit and the dogged ability of children to create a better life for themselves, if only they have a little help.