With its stationary long-shots of domestic life, “Family Time” is like the “Paranormal Activity” of dysfunctional-holiday-gathering movies: There’s a sense of spying on people who don’t realize they’re under a microscope. Of course, Tia Kouvo’s debut feature is duly scripted, directed and professionally acted. But her approach is so effectively low-key, you might occasionally forget […]

The well-acted, confidently crafted indie “Scrap” probes messy family dynamics with low-key but taut acuity, avoiding the usual poles of dysfunctional-clan comedy or high drama driven by yelling matches and shocking revelations. Since premiering at the 2022 Deauville Film Festival, American writer-director Vivian Kerr’s debut feature has been kicking around the festival circuit for more […]

Arguably one of the most insufferable protagonists in literature is the title figure in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” — a martyr to unrequited love who ultimately commits suicide. The author soon distanced himself from this early work, despite the fame it brought him. No doubt that was largely because the fuel […]

With “Lake George,” Jeffrey Reiner makes his first indie feature as writer-director since the 1990s, following a prolific quarter-century helming small-screen projects. The filmmaker has cited formative viewings of classic film noirs on television as an inspiration, but this twisty tale feels more like the melancholy genre fictions of the late Ross Macdonald — low-key, […]