‘Spelling the Dream’: Film Review

Also Read: What to Watch on Juneteenth: A TV Viewing Guide (Photos)Dreams don’t come easily in “Miss Juneteenth,” and first-time feature director Peoples rarely overplays her hand or slips into melodrama.

Also Read: 'Da 5 Bloods' Film Review: Spike Lee's Vietnam Epic Finds an Apocalypse Then and NowThe Samuel Goldwyn film, which is released on digital June 19 and on VOD July 3, oddly opens on George Orwell writing “Animal Farm,” something he did in the mid-1940s, a decade after the events depicted in “Mr.

Also Read: 'The Trip to Greece' Film Review: Fourth Time's Still a Charm for Steve Coogan-Rob Brydon TalkfestIn “Sometimes Always Never” — which is not to be confused with Eliza Hittman’s recent “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” — two-letter terms, mainly from the Greek alphabet, have secured many a Scrabble victory for Alan. It’s a brainy pastime he dominates with aggressive competitiveness.

Words abound in Sam Rega’s “Spelling the Dream,” which follows the winning streak of Indian-Americans at the National Spelling Bee. The Netflix documentary celebrates a group of young contestants who have dedicated their lives to outsmarting the dictionary, and nearly succeed.

Early in “Judy & Punch,” a wife who’s just helped her husband perform a vigorously slap-happy puppet show in a desultory corner of 17th century England poses the question, “Do you think the show really needs to be that punchy?”

More than a PSA or cinematic call to arms, this indie documentary is a compassionate, sincere manifesto on suicide prevention.

A hijacked drug deal's messy aftermath ensnares an entire family in Christian Sparkes' effective if overloaded crime drama.

Pushed over a metaphorical cliff, the two nonconformists in Josephine Decker’s “Shirley” — her follow-up to the mind-bending “Madeline’s Madeline” — bond over the maddening submissiveness expected of them, which they both come to furiously abhor. Their strange alliance makes for a psychologically layered portrait of unapologetic womanhood that’s dangerously sensual and sumptuously rebellious.

[Note: In the wake ofthe Hot Docs festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select entries that elected to premiere digitally.] In 1970 New York City, a series of ground-shifting, life-saving events took place in relatively quick succession. It's astounding that they aren't more widely known.

A film about a L.A. black lesbian strip club is smart, intimate and eye-popping — a documentary that both PornHub and the Criterion Channel could get behind.

The latest film from iconoclastic Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald proves at least one thing: The only thing better than Stephen McHattie in a movie is two Stephen McHatties. Playing both a heroin-addicted jazz trumpet player and a hitman who develops a conscience, the veteran character actor — you'll immediately recognize his face even if his name doesn't ring any bells — grounds Dreamland in emotional depths it otherwise strains to achieve.

A riotous, rule-ignoring Ugandan romp in which giddy exuberance obliterates amateurish filmmaking and a threadbare child-kidnapping plot.

Sharon Liese's documentary follows the contrasting trajectories of four transgender children in Kansas City with engrossing, sometimes surprising results.

This year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, which was scheduled to take place last week, was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 may well have been the only force capable of preventing an Indian American competitor from winning the contest for the 13th year in a row.

Murderous escaped cons are no match for the wrath of a 13-year-old girl in this over-the-top yet effectively taut thriller.

This time it’s personal as Lynn Chen puts Asian actresses front and center in her winning conclusion to the 'Surrogate Valentine' trilogy.

It's too little too late in this tedious biopic of Anglo-Irish modernist designer Eileen Gray and her antagonist Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

A young New York homeless woman is the focus of Andrew Wonder's confident, intriguing narrative debut feature.

A portrait of a struggling New Yorker who bites every hand that tries to feed her, Andrew Wonder's Feral follows a homeless woman (Annapurna Sriram) who splits her time between the streets and the filthy nest she has made for herself deep within the city's subway tunnels.

You’ve seen Kevin James play a Queens delivery man, a mall cop, a retired cop, a biology teacher turned MMA fighter, a zookeeper (in Zookeeper), the president of the United States, an animated Frankenstein, and a straight firefighter pretending that he’s gay. But it’s fairly certain that you’ve never quite seen him as he is in Becky, a stylish and very gory home-invasion thriller from the directing duo of Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott.