Theirs is a love without name in “Bound in Heaven,” when the connection between Xia You (Ni Ni) and Xu Zitai (Zhou You) is so primal that neither bother to introduce themselves to one another until after spending a night together. Details like these can seem besides the point in Huo Xin’s torrid adaptation of Li […]

“Being a mother won’t save you from anything,” Mechi (Paulina Garcia) confides in Ana Maria (Jenny Navarrete) in “Beloved Tropic” during a rare moment of clarity, turning attention away from her own health as she is slowly succumbing to dementia. The two are brought together by the precarious immigration status of Ana Maria, Mechi’s pregant […]

In a film where no shot lasts beyond a handful of seconds, the world stops briefly to go over the origins of the black goo that gives “Ick” its title. But in the latest madness from director Joseph Kahn, no one in the small, suburban town of Eastbrook can be sure where it came from, […]

Aaryan (Himesh Patel) spends much of “The Assessment” fiddling with skin, having developed a tactile virtual simulation of an animal to replace the creatures that were sacrificed in a near-extinction level event some time prior. The flesh is too tough sometimes, too synthetic at others, but he’s certainly onto something and it’s hard not to […]

In the films and television shows he’s made as a writer-director, Edward Burns has never not made things personal, but retaining the same level of creative control that he had on his breakthrough “The Brothers McMullen” has often required working on modest budgets and with younger casts and crews, naturally making the work itself move […]

“Why is there snow if it’s a volcano?” Fedir (Fedir Pugachov) throws out a seemingly innocent question to his family while wandering around Mount Teide in Spain. But it’s one of many that has become far more difficult to answer for his father Roman (Roman Lutskyi) and stepmother Nastya (Anastasiia Karpienko,) as the Ukrainian family’s holiday in […]

“We run fast, we shoot fast and we don’t ever stop,” Heather (Jessica Matten) tells her players on the Chuska Warriors about the style of basketball she’d like to see them play in “Rez Ball.” That directive may take a while to set in with her high school squad, but is director Sydney Freeland’s modus […]

For as long as Danielle Deadwyler has had to wait to take the lead in an action film like “40 Acres,” it takes far less time for the “Till” star to demonstrate the full range of her strengths. Given the kind of introduction usually reserved for the likes of Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis as […]

Carlos Marqués-Marcet brings life to a grave situation in “They Will Be Dust,” realizing that when so many tiptoe around the subject of death, it might not be such a stretch to put an elderly couple in ballet shoes if they’re thinking it’s time to choose for themselves to shuffle off their mortal coil. The unconventional […]

A clip of the real “Press Your Luck” episode from 1984 that inspired “The Luckiest Man in America” accompanies the end credits, taken from the mid-show banter between contestant Michael Larson and Peter Tomarken. Larson has the kind of anecdotes that probably made a producer smile during a pre-interview, telling Tomarken about how he tried […]

In Alex Ross Perry’s exuberant tribute to Pavement, Tim Heidecker gives a succinct descriptor of what made the band a staple of college radio stations in the ‘90s: “For kids who thought everything was stupid and everything sucked, they were your band.” In an era when rock stars gave up hours doing big hair in […]

Even without the “Welcome to Marathon” flyer that greets Katerina (Angeliki Papoulia) and Yannis (Vangelis Mourikis) upon their arrival in “Arcadia,” it’s clear that they’ve entered one of Greece’s stranger corners: a resort town where they will look into the untimely death of a loved one. An unnerving and curious meditation on grief, Yorgos Zois’ […]