Train to Busan
Train to Busan is a harrowing zombie horror-thriller that follows a group of terrified passengers fighting their way through a countrywide viral outbreak while trapped on a suspicion-filled, blood-drenched bullet train ride to Busan, a southern resort city that has managed to hold off the zombie hordes… or so everyone hopes.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG BLOODY VIOLENCE, AND LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“We can all look forward to Hollywood completely dropping the ball with its inevitable remake, but until then, Train to Busan is the year’s best genre offering by a zombie mile.” – Adam Lowes, Cinevue
“Often chaotic but never disorienting, the movie’s spirited set pieces — like a wriggling ribbon of undead clinging doggedly to the last compartment — owe much to Lee Hyung-deok’s wonderfully agile cinematography.” – Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times
“Train to Busan pulses with relentless locomotive momentum. As an allegory of class rebellion and moral polarization, it proves just as biting as Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi dystopia Snowpiercer, while delivering even more unpretentious fun.” – Maggie Lee, Variety
The Desperate Hour
Recently widowed mother Amy Carr (Naomi Watts) is doing her best to restore normalcy to the lives of her young daughter and teenage son in their small town. As she’s on a jog in the woods, she finds her town thrown into chaos as a shooting takes place at her son’s school. Miles away on foot in the dense forest, Amy desperately races against time to save her son.
RATED PG-13 FOR THEMATIC CONTENT, AND SOME STRONG LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“The filmmaking works in and of itself, but that [The Desperate Hour] feels so emotionally in tune with its lead actress is a feat all on its own.” – Siddhant Adlakha, Observer
“Directed with brisk efficiency by Philip Noyce, the mix of adrenaline-rush emotion, manipulative melodrama and moralising is surprisingly entertaining in the moment.” – Allan Hunter, Screen Daily
“Watts is fantastic in the film. She excels at desperation and confusion, and she knows how to show naked, raw fragility while disclosing an iron inner strength that’s almost frightening. The film depends on these qualities completely.” – Oli Welsh, Polygon
Food Club
Marie recently found herself abandoned on Christmas Eve by her husband and has been falling apart ever since. Berling has been the eternal “bacherlorette” who outwardly denies her age and lives the sweet life, all seems perfect until we find out about her complicated relationship with her daughter. Vanja is still living in the past and has never been able to move on from her late husband. The three life long girlfriends decides to travel to Italy together to attend a cooking course in Puglia and here they each find the opportunity to redefine themselves and acknowledge that the most important thing in life is their friendship and that it’s never too late to live a more fulfilling life.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS THEMATIC MATERIAL AND LANGUAGE.
Description provided by Rotten Tomatoes.
“The cast has a wonderful rapport, and it feels good to see a film featuring women over 70 who are portrayed as living their best lives. It’s inspiring, actually.” – Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots
“With a light touch, Food Club treats women in this final third of life as people with history, complexity and wisdom. It gives its characters agency, and the notion that no matter how the culture seeks to erase you, there are new chapters ahead.” – Karen Gordon, Original Cin
“There are some Hallmark moments, and an overuse of the Italian song ‘Funiculi, Funicula’, but the performances are strong and deep down this movie is about something that matters. Plus the scenery in Puglia is beautiful.” – Stephen Romei, The Australian
Certain Women
This look at three women striving to forge their own paths amidst the wide-open plains of the American Northwest follows a lawyer (Laura Dern) who finds herself contending with both office sexism and a hostage situation; a wife and mother (Michelle Williams) whose determination to build her dream home puts her at odds with the men in her life; and a young law student (Kristen Stewart) who forms an ambiguous bond with a lonely ranch hand (Lily Gladstone). As their stories intersect in subtle but powerful ways, a portrait emerges of flawed, but strong-willed individuals in the process of defining themselves.
RATED R FOR LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“You know a filmmaker is in supreme command of her medium when what she creates feels less like a movie than a candid glimpse of ongoing lives that will continue to play out long after the lights have come on.” – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
“Certain Women is a kind, loving, and deeply moving portrait of bighearted small-town people.” – April Wolfe, Village Voice
“Reichardt has crafted another deeply felt and beautifully ambiguous meditation on contemporary life in the far corners of the American heartland.” – Anthony Kaufman, Screen Daily
John Lewis: Good Trouble
Using interviews and rare archival footage, John Lewis: Good Trouble chronicles Lewis’ 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health-care reform and immigration. Using present-day interviews with Lewis, now 79 years old, Porter explores his childhood experiences, his inspiring family and his fateful meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957. In addition to her interviews with Lewis and his family, Porter’s primarily cinéma verité film also includes interviews with political leaders, Congressional colleagues, and other people who figure prominently in his life.
RATED PG FOR THEMATIC MATERIAL INCLUDING SOME RACIAL EPITHETS / VIOLENCE, AND FOR SMOKING.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Director Porter has done an excellent job assembling archival footage and interviews to tell Lewis’ story; she has the markings of a great storyteller.” – Steve Davis, Austin Chronicle
“Director Dawn Porter’s film is an intimate homage to both the legend and the man, as spry and lively as Lewis himself.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com
“A rambling documentary that freely moves back and forth through time but maintains interest and cohesion by virtue of its subject. The more you watch Lewis, the more fascinating he gets.” – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
Ride the Eagle
When Leif’s (Jake Johnson) estranged mother Honey (Susan Sarandon) dies she leaves him a ‘conditional inheritance’. Before he can move into her picturesque Yosemite cabin, he has to complete her elaborate, and sometimes dubious, to-do list. Leif and Nora, his canine BFF, step into Honey’s wild world as she tries to make amends from beyond the grave.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT, SEXUAL REFERENCES, DRUG USE, AND BLOODY IMAGES.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“At first glance, the feature, which Johnson co-wrote and co-produced, may seem like yet another granola indie about a middle-aged man reassessing his life. And it is. But there’s magic to it.” – Alex Saveliev, Film Threat
“The movie’s seriocomic consideration of how messy familial, sexual and professional relationships can be should have a well-nigh universal resonance.” – Joe Leydon, Variety
“[A] funny, sweet, insightful, low-key charmer of a story that’s all about making human connections, reconciling broken relationships and finding solace in the companionship of another fellow traveler on this planet…” – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
Supercool
Neil and Gilbert’s lifelong friendship is tested when Neil makes a magical wish that transforms him into a supercool version of himself for one night only. With the assistance of Neil’s charismatic neighbor, Jimmy, the two are swept into a series of car chases, robberies and wild parties.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT, VIOLENCE, NUDITY, AND SEXUAL CONTENT.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“This energetic spin through high school antics redolent of everything since Ferris Bueller is colorful and amusing enough to entertain viewers looking for a familiar mix of bad-taste gags in a squeaky-clean suburban setting.” – Dennis Harvey, Variety
“The heart of the story is there in its themes of friendship, identity, and self-confidence.” – Alan Ng, Film Threat
“Through expressive humor, the makers of this teen comedy exaggerate everyday situations to help revamp the narrative of a teen becoming cool to get what he wants in life. This technique works well.” – Beverly Kwakye, Black Girl Nerds
Sibyl
Sibyl follows a psychotherapist (Virginie Efira) who decides to quit her practice and return to writing instead. As Sibyl starts dropping patients, she begins to struggle with excess time and a lack of inspiration–until she gets a call from Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a young actress wrapped up in a dramatic affair with her costar, Igor (Gaspard Ulliel), who happens to be married to the film’s director (Sandra Hüller). Becoming further enmeshed in Margot’s life, Sibyl starts to blur past and present, fiction with reality, and the personal with the professional as she begins to use Margot’s life as source material for her novel.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT, NUDITY, AND LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“There are visually stunning scenes throughout, but the acting and writing are the pièce de résistance of Sibyl and should be exactly why you put this film on your radar as one to watch from 2019. It’s certainly going on my end of year favorite list.” – Lorry Kikta, Film Threat
“A smart and absorbing new French comedy that initially unfolds like a series of psychotherapy sessions and eventually brings its story to a suitably mythic climax not far from a sputtering volcano.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
“Triet’s chic, blackly comic psychodrama piles up bad decisions like so many profiteroles in a croquembouche, admiring the teetering spectacle of its chaos as it goes.” – Guy Lodge, Variety
The Belko Experiment
In a twisted social experiment, a group of 80 Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogata, Colombia and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company’s intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed.
RATED R FOR STRONG BLOODY VIOLENCE THROUGHOUT, LANGAUGE INCLUDING SEXUAL REFERENCES, AND SOME DRUG USE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Belko is an appropriately disreputable, gleefully disturbing movie.” – Darren Franich, Entertainment Weekly
“The Belko Experiment rides a gushing wave of carnage through the elevators of an unsuspecting office building, gleefully making wolves out of sheep.” – Matt Donato, We Got This Covered
“As a parable about the inherently dehumanizing aspects of the rat race, it’s bloody good fun.” – Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
Collective
Collective follows a heroic team of journalists as they uncover shocking, widespread corruption. After a deadly nightclub fire, the mysterious death of the owner of a powerful pharmaceutical firm, and the quiet resignation of a health minister—seemingly unrelated events, all within weeks of each other—the team of intrepid reporters exposes a much larger, much more explosive political scandal. Collective is a fast-paced, real-time detective story about truth, accountability, and the value of an independent press in partisan times.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT, VIOLENT IMAGES, THEMATIC MATERIAL, AND BRIEF NUDITY.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Collective is a brilliant documentary in its own right, but in this time of pandemic, scandal and democratic upheaval it is also the year’s most important.” – Christopher Machell, Cinevue
“From its opening moments to the devastating finale, Collective plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of Spotlight with the paranoid uncertainty of The Manchurian Candidate as it explores the national fallout of a tragedy that won’t let up.” – Eric Kohn, IndieWire
“The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice. But as Collective lays out with anguished detail and a profound, moving sense of decency, it takes stubborn, angry people — journalists, politicians, artists, activists — to hammer at that arc until it starts bending, maybe, in the right direction.” – Manohla Dargis, New York Times
Together
A husband and wife are forced to re-evaluate themselves and their relationship through the reality of the COVID-19 lockdown.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“For his part, director Stephen Daldry synthesizes the predominant beats of his film work, which has vacillated between feel-good awards bait (Billy Elliot) and feel-bad awards bait (The Hours, The Reader). Feel-good/feel-bad is Together to a T. It feels wonderful.” – Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle
“Exploring the suffocating complexities of domestic life in the social isolation of quarantine, this volatile couple explores the shifting values of their relationship, from sex to politics (including the possibility of — God forbid — marriage!), with an insight that is never less than a candid talisman to learn from and live by in troubled times.” – Rex Reed, Observer
“Even within the stagy confines of the movie’s Scenes From a Marriage setup, Horgan and McAvoy manage to tease out the more subtle and enduring bits in their characters’ unravelings.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
This Game’s Called Murder
A modern, dark-humored tale of greed, romance, and lost innocence in a consumer-crazed, alienated society that functions as a harsh critique of society today without taking itself too seriously.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND GRAPHIC VIOLENCE THROUGHOUT, NUDITY, SEXUAL CONTENT, THEMATIC MATERIAL, AND DRUG USE.
Description provided by IMDb.
“[An] over-the-top horror film bursting with licentious décor, set dressing, costume, speech, and acts of violence… as odd as it is engaging… This Game’s Called Murder has a fantastical visual appeal above a regular ultra-violent horror film. The characters are unusual, but somehow, its disjointed story does figure into a type of game even if it’s hard to follow.” – Sabina Dana Plasse, Film Threat
“…rolling in camp and ultra-violence… Ron Perlman delights…” – Chris Carter, Backlot
“…wild… feels like a cult movie in waiting… The film’s twists and turns are often eccentrically entertaining…” – Richard Crouse, CTV News
Little Joe
Alice (Emily Beecham) is a single mother and dedicated senior plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species. She has engineered a special crimson flower, remarkable not only for its beauty but also for its therapeutic value: if kept at the ideal temperature, fed properly and spoken to regularly, this plant makes its owner happy. Against company policy, Alice takes one home as a gift for her teenage son, Joe. They christen it ‘Little Joe.’ But as their plant grows, so too does Alice’s suspicion that her new creation may not be as harmless as its nickname suggests.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Visually, it’s a total feast for the eyes, contrasting art-deco pinks and mint greens against sterile, symmetrically framed expanses of white, vaguely evoking the aesthetic of some lost sci-fi film of the ’70s.” – A.A. Dowd, A.V. Club
“Read as a loose adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Little Joe is a gripping and visually striking satire of essentialist maternal instinct and the contemporary anxiety of wellbeing.” – Christopher Machell, Cinevue
“Boldly synthetic in its approach, in everything from colour palette to performance style, this film won’t be for everyone. And the fact that it defies easy categorisation might present a marketing challenge. But for those who engage with it, this oddly off-kilter piece of storytelling should exert a pull every bit as mesmerising as any genetically modified mood-enhancing shrub.” – Wendy Ide, Screen Daily
The Land of Owls
In the Catskill Mountains, a relationship retreat pushes two Brooklyn couples out of their comfort zones. Removed from city life and engaging in honest communication, they have the chance to save their relationships – or leave them behind.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE, THEMATIC MATERIAL, AND SEXUAL CONTENT.
Description provided by IMDb.
“…a well-shot, superbly acted little indie that invites us to understand what couples therapy is…” – Eddie Harrison, film-authority.com
“At their best, independent movies transport you to a real place you’ve never been before and provide you with an experience that seems uncanny yet wonderful. Seek this film out as it’s very good.” – Benjamin Franz, Film Threat
“There’s a relaxed and almost hushed quality to this insightful, engaging drama, which is strikingly well shot in a beautiful location.” – Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall
Eternal Winter
Christmas 1944. Soviet soldiers invade Hungary and drag every young woman with German origins away from a small village and transport them to a Soviet labor camp where they are forced to work in the coal mines under inhuman conditions. This is where Irén, one of the Hungarian women, meets Rajmund who decides to teach her how to survive. While she is determined to return home to her little daughter and family, history and fate have a different plan: Irén and Rajmund fall in love.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS THEMATIC MATERIAL, VIOLENCE, LANGUAGE, AND NUDITY.
Description provided by IMDb.
“[An] unflinching look at a frozen hell, where survival may depend on completely abandoning our humanity… Its power resides in the performances of its stellar cast, Viktória Horváth and Zsolt Nánássy’s production design, and the amazing work by the makeup department… a severely effective gut-punch of emotion, struggle, and loss.” – Matthew Roe, Film Threat
“Eternal Winter illuminates a tragic little-known history of Soviet Europe in the war and post-war years… a moving story of human resistance in terrible circumstances. It is beautifully directed, scripted and represented.” – Carlos Lima, Grupo Vírtua
Not Going Quietly
Ady Barkan’s life is upended when he is diagnosed with ALS, but a confrontation with a powerful Senator catapults him to national fame and ignites a once-in-a-generation political movement.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Barkan proves a highly engaging man, impassioned but funnier than a terminally ill man should be. Intimate scenes with his young family are essential to the appeal of a film whose big issues remain as pressing now as they were during filming in 2018.” – John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter
“Not Going Quietly lets us see a fierce, and dying, advocate for health care show us what John Lewis meant by ‘Good trouble.'” – Roger Moore, Movie Nation
“The movie makes its points in grand, emotional gestures more than policy nuances, but what it lacks in sophistication it makes up in immediacy. The drama acts as a visceral of ode to the nature of activism under dire circumstances.” – Eric Kohn, IndieWire
Home
Marvin Hacks (40) is skateboarding home after more than 17 years in prison in the same Adidas tracksuit he was wearing when he was arrested as a teenager. He quickly finds out that, even after two decades, his small hometown has not forgotten the atrocity he committed, but Marvin is prepared to accept the repercussions of his past, whatever the cost…
NOT RATED. CONTAINS VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT, NUDITY, LANGUAGE AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description provided by Rotten Tomatoes.
“In the end, it’s a feel-good movie in a time when stories of redemption and forgiveness are needed more than ever.” – Alan Ng, Film Threat
“The lack of soapy histrionics serves the film well – this is a story told quietly, calmly and with dignity…” – Wendy Ide, Screen International
“The set-up teeters on the edge of cliche, but Potente and the fine cast keep it from toppling over by restraining the emotional torque of the material.” – Leslie Felperin, The Guardian
Cosmic Dawn
After witnessing the abduction of her mother as a child, Aurora joins the UFO cult The Cosmic Dawn. Aurora experiences many revelations at the cult’s compound, but the leader is not who she seems.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description provided by Rotten Tomatoes.
“Cosmic Dawn makes good use of its low budget, and is boosted by some nice performances by its cast members.” – Rachel Ho, Exclaim!
“The overall vibe here is eeriness rather than flat-out terror. Audiences will be set just a little on edge by the tale.” – Chris Knight, National Post
“Although Cosmic Dawn starts as a seemingly predictable sci-fi thriller, it lands with wondrous energy that’s beaming with gorgeous imagery.” – Cass Clarke, CBR
Fabian: Going to the Dogs
Berlin, 1931. Jakob Fabian works in the advertising department of a cigarette factory by day and drifts through bars, brothels and artist studios with his wealthy and debauched friend Labude by night. When Fabian meets the beautiful and confident Cornelia, he manages to shed his pessimistic attitude for a brief moment and falls in love. Not long after, he falls victim to the great wave of layoffs sweeping the city, plunging him back into a depression, while Cornelia’s career as an actress is taking off thanks to her wealthy boss and admirer – an arrangement that Fabian finds difficult to accept. But it’s not just his world that is falling apart; all of Germany is about to self-destruct.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS NUDITY, VIOLENT IMAGES, LANGUAGE, THEMATIC CONTENT, AND SMOKING.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Its characters are suffused with a paradoxical kind of fear that can only happen in a dream, the dread before an immense catastrophe that’s unavoidable because it’s already happened.” – Pat Brown, Slant
“Fabian: Going to the Dogs is poetic, ugly, romantic, tragic, and side-splitting. Some sequences approach the edge of sanity, take a glimpse into the abyss, then the plot reassembles itself – but the threat of derailing remains, and it’s quite exhilarating.” – Alex Saveliev, Film Threat
“Graf makes Going to the Dogs an unpredictable visual experience, bracingly experimental for a 68-year-old filmmaker who hasn’t run out of gas.” – Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire
Zappa
With unfettered access to the Zappa family trust and all archival footage, Zappa explores the private life behind the mammoth musical career that never shied away from the political turbulence of its time. Alex Winter’s assembly features appearances by Frank’s widow Gail Zappa and several of Frank’s musical collaborators including Mike Keneally, Ian Underwood, Steve Vai, Pamela Des Barres, Bunk Gardner, David Harrington, Scott Thunes, Ruth Underwood, Ray White and others.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT, SEXUAL CONTENT, THEMATIC MATERIAL, BRIEF NUDITY, AND MILD VIOLENCE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“In Zappa, this legendary artist’s uncompromising nature is bracing, bold and utterly refreshing.” – Katie Walsh, Chicago Tribune
“Key to the success of the film is the editing, a pinballing assault of free association, claymation and gleeful profanity, which goes some way towards recreating what it must have been like to spend time inside Zappa’s head.” – Wendy Ide, The Observer
“As Zappa makes clear, Frank Zappa spent his whole career keeping himself unique, often to his credit and occasionally to his detriment. Winter’s movie does the same, in a way that does justice to a guy who’s not easy to do justice to.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap
Out Stealing Horses
November 1999: 67-year-old Trond (Stellan Skarsgård), lives in self-imposed isolation and looks forward to welcoming in the new millennium alone. As winter arrives he meets one of his few neighbors, Lars (Bjørn Floberg), and realizes he knew him back in the summer of 1948. 1948 – the year Trond turned 15. The summer Trond grew up.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT, AND MILD VIOLENCE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“This is a film with a mature, heartbroken understanding of how we hold onto things.” – Guy Lodge, Variety
“An extraordinary feeling for nature and the seasons of life pervades Out Stealing Horses, an ambitious reflection on our responsibility to others from Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland.” – Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter
“Lushly visual and much of its cinematic power arises from the seductively dreadful space and starkness of the Norwegian landscape in winter. And in the way Mr. Moland and his cinematographer, Rasmus Videbæk, use their delicately detailed, even painterly depictions of the flora and fauna surrounding the film’s very complicated people to put the latter in their cosmic place.” – John Anderson, Wall Street Journal
Cielo
Cielo is a cinematic reverie on the crazy beauty of the night sky, as experienced in the Atacama Desert, Chile, one of the best places on our planet to explore and contemplate its splendor. Director Alison McAlpine’s sublime nonfiction film drifts between science and spirituality, the arid land, desert shores and lush galaxies, expanding the limits of our earthling imaginations. Planet Hunters in the Atacama’s astronomical observatories and the desert dwellers who work the land and sea share their evocative visions of the stars and planets, their mythic stories and existential queries with remarkable openness and a contagious sense of wonder. A love poem for the night sky, Cielo transports us to a space, quiet and calm, within which we can ponder the infinite and unknown.
NOT RATED.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Affording viewers a trip to the Chilean desert to gaze up at the crystal-clear sky, Cielo is a rapturous act of cinematic contemplation.” – Nick Schager, Variety
“City-dwellers may go their entire lives without realizing that the greatest movie screen of all is above their heads, telling billions of stories.” – Jim Slotek, Original Cin
“A serene, existential experience from the Canadian filmmaker Alison McAlpine, who takes to Chile’s Atacama Desert to look both skyward and inward.” – Brad Wheeler, The Globe and Mail
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
Three friends decide to turn their fantasy vacation into reality after one of their friends gets engaged.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS MILD LANGUAGE, SEXUAL CONTENT, AND MILD COMIC VIOLENCE.
Description provided by IMDb.
“Everything about this film just clicks, sucking you into the lives of its characters and their relationships, fears, and desires.” – Kanishk Devgan, Film Companion
“Rest assured, you’re in for a merry ride, with loads of thrills, emotional banter, romance and camaraderie between a host of characters who seem to be having as much fun as you.” – Nikhat Kazmi, Times of India
“This is defiantly old-fashioned, high-value entertainment with a glamorous, talented cast. You used to see this sort of thing all the time from Hollywood.” – Burl Burlingame, Honolulu Star-Advertiser