ESPY 

Barry Jenkins' masterpiece holds up as the story of a lifetime centered on the intersection of Blackness and gay identity.

Tran Quoc Bao succeeds in telling us a story about martial arts, human decay, and friendship. The originality shown by his filmmaking is admirable and brings fresh air to the classic Chinese martial arts genre.

The film may be a thriller, but I wasn’t thrilled by it. If anything, I was bored and annoyed.

Netflix’s new mystery thriller, The Marked Woman (released originally as La Desconocida), is confusing. More critically, though, it commits the worst mistake a movie can make: it’s boring. From Spanish director Gabe Ibáñez, the film squanders its premise at every turn, fills the story with unlikeable characters, and lacks emotional payoff.

Strangers in a crowd, exchanging glances, looking away, continually managing to run into each other then part ways, end up at the same diner, find they've rented the exact same vehicles, and are then made to travel together to learn once more whether they can both find genuine adoration and companionship again. This really does, in so many words, sum up the foundational gist of of this new feature film from writer Seth Reiss ("The Menu") and director Kogonada ("The Acolyte", "After Yang"). Yet, it's all only the set-up for the REAL wonder of everything that happens before, during, and in the aftermath of a magical, meaningful journey.

This year, in light of the pandemic and the inability to gather with our loved ones, a few of our staff members reviewed their favorite holiday films with the hope of recreating some of the sentimentality that reminds us of home.