Hou Hsiao-hsien by way of Miguel Gomes, a work that cements its formal mastery largely through subverting it, pulling off audacious long takes that use handheld verisimilitude and sheer duration to conjure novelistic density and a surreal disruption of time. Past and future collide to make yet more baffling the present. The camera has a strangle wobble effect that undermines its POV roamings, instead highlighting the hyperreal textures and colors of the digital cinematography until this tactile film becomes a…

Coogler's Creed is one of the best films of its kind, a work that confronted and gently but pointedly revised the racist underpinnings of the Rocky franchise and then happened to make the best movie in the whole series by its own rules. Black Panther, by contrast, is the latest reminder, after a few wilder, looser entries in the MCU, that when it comes to Marvel, the house always wins. Glacially paced and burdened with action so busy yet clumsy…

It's easy, if one only ever has to suffer a few times a year the no-budget, no-talent indies dumped on one-week NY runs and burned onto screener discs, to have a charmed view of what constitutes a bad film. Truth be told, with the number of films produced domestically exploding in recent years thanks to mass proliferation of acceptable-quality, cheap DV, it's a good bet that the vast majority of American movies made each year now consist of films made…