'Sweat': Film Review

If Michael Tubbs were a fictional character, the details of his life until 2016 — the year he became the mayor of Stockton, California, at age 26 — might be too by-the-book inspirational to feel believable. Born to a teenage mother and a criminal father who has spent most of his son's life behind bars, Tubbs excelled in school and won a full scholarship to Stanford, where a friendship with future Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel would play an outsized role in his political career.

Richard Kuipers “A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad’s an Alcoholic” casts a damning eye on the pernicious role alcohol plays in the working careers and social lives of Japanese men. Narrated by the innermost thoughts of a daughter during the 25 years she spends watching her father drink himself to death, Kenji Katagari’s second feature cleverly plays like a quirky little TV sitcom about an ordinary middle-class family before moving into darker territory.

To the LGBTQ visitors that flock to Cape Cod every summer, Provincetown, Massachusetts is an enchanted mecca of acceptance, a place for hedonistic partying or chill relaxation, catering to all tastes. Mischa Richter glimpses that world only obliquely through dimly lit windows onto the main drag, Commercial Street, in his contemplative first documentary feature, I Am a Town.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticStuck together in close quarters, usually at a remote house somewhere, a small group of people tell truths, play mind games, and watch their relationships (and lives) gradually unravel.

Hulme said a 'rave' took place on a park last night - but police have insisted it was a 'small gathering'.

Jessica Kiang “I’ve never been to Lebanon,” Lebanese-American high-schooler Marjoun (Veracity Butcher) tells us in voiceover. “Just here: Arkansas.” There’s the slightest uninflected irony in her delivery of that last word, suggesting that her story will archly observe the conundrum of many a second-generation immigrant: belonging to a place that often fails to recognize you as one of its own.

Maggie Lee Chief Asia Film CriticImagine a Japanese version of “Pygmalion” in which the sculptor continues to caress slabs of marble even after Galatea has come to life. That is the unusual premise of “Romance Doll,” a marital drama in which a sex doll maker’s rapt obssession with his new prototype, leads to rejection of his human muse.

A Kentucky drug dealer (Emilia Clarke) sees an FBI agent (Jack Huston) as her romantic gateway out of a dead-end life in Phillip Noyce's Above Suspicion, an adaptation of Joe Sharkey's account of true events in 1988-89. Completed in 2017, the film could have been released at the height of Clarke's Game of Thrones popularity.

Guy Lodge Film CriticThe 1989 murder of Susan Smith is a despairingly grim Southern Gothic story, shot through with reckless sex, institutional corruption and Kentucky-fried local scandal: prime material for the kind of forensic, heavily extended true-crime podcasts (or Netflix-style documentary series) that garner such widespread public fascination these days.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn “White Noise,” Daniel Lombroso’s lively and disturbing documentary portrait of three alt-right influencers, there’s a riveting scene in which Richard Spencer, a rock star of white nationalism who talks like a noodgy corporate assistant and has meticulous gelled hair that’s supposed to be his designer version of a Hitler fade (though Hitler didn’t have James Garner’s sideburns), is getting ready to give a speech at Michigan State University.

Also Read: 'First Cow' Director Kelly Reichardt Wins $50,000 Spirit Awards Filmmaker GrantAfter a brief, contemporary prologue that haunts every frame to follow, we find ourselves in the Oregon Territory around 1820.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticA cigar is never just a cigar where Sigmund Freud is concerned.

Lisa Kennedy Four Vietnam vets reunite for a mission, one that will lean on their wartime exploits but also expose more than a few old tensions.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticSnarled loops of time travel have proved a surprisingly versatile and rewarding fantasy-cinema trope in recent years, from the big-budget likes of “Edge of Tomorrow” to such enterprising indies as “Predestination,” not to mention comedies (“Palm Springs”), horror (“Happy Death Day”), romance (“Before I Fall”) and more.

For a debut feature, writer-director Charlène Favier’s powerful coming-of-age sports drama Slalom couldn't come at a more timely moment.

truth and beauty, too, it’s safe to say that “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” finds a bit of both of those things.Also Read: 'Palm Springs' Film Review: Andy Samberg Puts an Indie Rom-Com Spin on 'Groundhog Day'The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, went to the Berlin and True/False Film Festivals and had a series of virtual screenings on July 8 to celebrate National Dive Bar Day, with a virtual rollout scheduled for July 10.

Guy Lodge Film CriticIn “Archive,” an isolated scientist methodically pursues an artificial-intelligence ideal, developing a sequence of human-android beings and recycling their various parts until the ultimate prototype is achieved.

"They say that when you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I wish it were that simple," says James, the main character, in his voiceover narration at the beginning of Volition.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen you look at the face of Danny Trejo, you see the creases and hollows and pockmarks, the eye pouches like saddlebags, the badges of a life so well-worn that, at first, that’s just about all you see. Yet the more you look, the more you notice a paradox.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticBeing released during an epidemic lends additional if unintended frisson to “The Beach House,” a cryptic yet reasonably involving thriller in which vacationers find themselves under threat. The nature of that threat remains ambiguous, but in its partially-airborne inescapability, it definitely hits a note of creepy relevance.