'Clover': Film Review

Showing how much punch can be put in an unconventional indie, Los Conductos by Colombian director, writer and editor Camilo Restrepo strings together simple visuals to follow a runaway from a religious cult of “the chosen.” Hiding out in empty warehouses, the young man reviews the events that led up to his life in a group from which there is no escape, and his disillusionment with its charismatic but criminal leader.

Out of the vast universe of nature documentaries, I don’t think I’m alone in finding films about life under the sea to occupy a special place. The very fact that they exist, of course, is amazing — though when you watch one, part of the wonder is that you’re not thinking about how aquamarine filmmakers actually hovered in the ocean depths to shoot this stuff.

In Dubrovnik, as everywhere, the wealthy do not live near the airport — so much noise, so much traffic, so many planes overhead stealing sections of cloudless blue sky.

[Note: In the wake of SXSW's cancellation this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] One of the timeliest stories of 2020, it turns out, is how the Cambodian refugee community took over the Southern California donut industry from the 1980s on.

A different point of view on the First World War told with the chilling truth of someone who has lived through combat and its shocking aftermath, Blizzard of Souls(Dveselu Putenis) derives its power from its strong, simple depiction of war seen through the eyes of an innocent 17-year-old soldier. In this it may be compared to Sam Mendes’ 1917, which was also based on eyewitness accounts of the war.

With the exception of Flipper from 1960s television, or maybe the talking Fa and Bea from Mike Nichols' 1973 movie The Day of the Dolphin, few cinematic dolphins have displayed quite as much personality as Echo, the main character in Dolphin Reef, Disneynature's new documentary premiering on Disney+, narrated by Natalie Portman.

[Note: In the wake of SXSW's cancellation this year, The Hollywood Reporter is reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] A few years ago, SXSW presented a film called Thank You Del, which introduced newbies to the tremendously influential improv teacher Del Close via an annual tribute hosted by the Upright Citizens Brigade.

[Note: In the wake of SXSW's cancellation this year, The Hollywood Reporter is reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] Hearing the term "Wakaliwood," most cinephiles will think of Bollywood, Nollywood and other portmanteaus used to designate a large region of cinematic production — often one viewed with some condescension (if seen at all) by the more entrenched parts of the film industry.

Of all the members of the animal kingdom we think of as akin to humans — chimps, dolphins, whales, perhaps (if we’re being honest about it) our dogs — elephants may be the most movingly and preternaturally aware. Because you can see how intelligent they are.

[Note: In the wake ofSXSW's cancellation this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] From its forbidden beginnings to its decades-long staying power, onstage and off, the love story of Johnny Cash and June Carter has had a mythic hold on the pop-culture imagination.

Best known for the unexpectedly soul-shattering San Francisco suicide doc “The Bridge,” indie filmmaker Eric Steel came out and came of age in 1980s New York at a moment just before AIDS devastated the city’s gay community. Such timing must have been surreal, to assume something so liberating about one’s own identity, only to watch in fear and uncertainty as this fraternity of newfound freedom collapsed around him.

Escaping human society is one thing, human nature quite another in “The Decline.” The Canadian thriller, available exclusively through Netflix, offers a modicum of timeliness for U.S. viewers who’ve coped with the coronavirus crisis by patronizing gun stores en masse: This fiction offers a sort of “how not to” in terms of locked ’n’ loaded response to civilization’s potential meltdown, as a group of survivalists discover they’ll be lucky to survive each other.

Time tugs strangely on the sleeve of “Sweet Thing,” a heartfelt, hopeful yet slightly hollow black-and-white coming-of-ager from American indie stalwart Alexandre Rockwell (“In the Soup,” “Pete Smalls Is Dead”). A lively, bittersweet meditation on an impoverished childhood that is still rich in innocence and imagination, it feels old-fashioned in a way that does not quite gel with its bid for contemporary grit.

A riveting and radical act of empathy, with actress Deragh Campbell’s unforgettably embodied portrayal of mental instability as the eye of its storm, Canadian director Kazik Radwanski’s astonishing third feature (after “How Heavy This Hammer” and “Tower”) is a brief, bracing burst of microbudget indie filmmaking at its most powerful.

You might think that someone raised deep within a barbecue dynasty would have his nose so tuned to smoke that he wouldn't have a palate for much beyond that. Not so in Uncorked, Prentice Penny's story of a son (Mamoudou Athie) whose passion for fine wine carries him away from the BBQ joint his father (Courtney B.

[Note: In the wake ofSXSW's cancellation this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] Just weeks after arriving in the United States, a 26-year-old visiting scholar from a small city in southern China disappeared from her Illinois campus. Two years later, in the summer of 2019, her suspected kidnapper went on trial.

Filmmaker Rob Beemer is smart enough to know that an esoteric subject demands the presence of celebrities to garner attention. Thus, his documentary chronicling the rise of mindfulness and meditation over the last few decades opens with footage of such familiar faces as Anderson Cooper, Oprah Winfrey and actor Patrick Dempsey.

Like the revelation that the dowdy French-cuisine evangelist Julia Child worked for American intelligence operations during World War II, there's something quaint and almost comic about the historical nugget upon which Jonathan Jakubowicz's Resistance is based: Before he became the most famous mime artist in history, Marcel Marceau worked in the French Resistance, forging passports and smuggling Jewish children across borders to save them from Nazi exterminators.

“Tape,” a guerrilla indie drama that confronts some of the ways sexual harassment has been embedded in the entertainment industry, begins with Rosa (Annarosa Mudd) getting ready to go undercover — but really, she’s dressing for battle. After rigging herself up with a hidden camera, she mutilates her body in homage to Lavinia in “Titus Andronicus,” piercing her own tongue and using a razor blade to carve a bracelet of blood around her wrist.

[Note: In the wake of SXSW's cancellation this year, The Hollywood Reporter is reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally.] Movies about boys in high school and college spill over with reckless partiers, nerdy loners and aggrieved misfits eager to show the world what they're made of.