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America's Burning is a provocative, timely and slickly-edited documentary about how divided America has become and it's at risk of losing its democracy. Director David Smick includes talking-head interviews with experts like James Carvillage, archival footage, and voice-over narration by Michael Douglas. He covers a lot of ground, but each segment could be the main topic of a separate documentary, i.e. how the upper class flaunt their wealth unlike in the old days before social media platforms like Instagram with "influencers" enabled that kind of behavior. America's Burning makes valid points, though, regarding the increase of economic and political division in America, the rise of hatred, the concept of the "American dream", and capitalism. The opposite of hatred, according to one of the experts interviewed, is empathy. That, along with finding common ground, is the film's solution to the issues. The solution sounds hopeful and optimistic, but oversimplified and not very practical. If Smick were to have interviewed Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, it would've added more insights and different perspectives on both the issue and the solution. Moreover, he neglects to ask the experts basic questions that has different answers: "What is democracy?", "What is a functional democracy?" and "How do you feel about the fact that economics textbooks teach students that the higher a country's GDP is, the better? Is it not better if a country's GDP rises with the poor?" At a running time of 1 hour and 23 minutes, America's Burning opens at Angelika Film Center via Abramorama.  
In Dandelion, Dandelion (KiKi Layne), an aspiring singer-songwriter living with her mother, Jean (Melanie Nicholls-King), heads from Cincinnati to a music competition at a bike rally in South Dakota where she meets and begins to romance Casey (Thomas Doherty), another musician. Little does she know at first that he's actually married. The screenplay by writer/director Nicole Riegel tries to be an inspirational story about self-discovery, but it doesn't quite stick the landing. Like Muriel from Muriel's Wedding, Dandelion is stuck in a rut and feels insecure while living at home where she's unhappy taking care of her sick mother. She has yet to focus more on herself and finding her individuality. She has the opportunity to experience that when she embarks on a journey to South Dakota and falls in love with Casey who awakens something in her. The film's systemic issue comes from its cheesy and contrived romantic plot that sidelines Dandelion's personal growth. She and Casey collaborate on their music together and he inspires her to speak from her heart. However, the screenplay fails to provide enough of a window into Dandelion's heart, mind or soul. It has a few sweet and tender moments, but without being unflinching or profound. Moreover, Dandelion's character arc doesn't feel believable, so the ending doesn't quite earn its uplift. The cinematography is superb, though, with some breathtaking cinematography that adds visual poetry. At a running time of 1 hour and 53 minutes, Dandelion is well-shot and poetic with a genuinely heartfelt performance by KiKi Layne, but it's too sugar-coated and ultimately fails to pack an emotional punch. It opens in select theaters nationwide via IFC Films.  
Eno is a bold, insightful and stylish documentary biopic on Brian Eno, an unconventional musician, songwriter and visual artist who worked with David Bowie and with bands like U2, Coldplay and Talking Heads. He's known for coining the term "generative music" that always changes with the help of AI. Director Gary Hustwit follows Eno's footsteps by making a generative documentary that will always be different depending on what clips the AI program chooses and in what order. That's like saying that, although the film's human editors are Maya Tippett and Marley McDonald, there's a third editor: an AI program. To say that Eno is a refreshingly unconventional and unprecedented documentary would be an understatement. In terms of its content, it's a fine introduction to the work of Brian Eno, his thought process as an artist, and his collaborations with legends like David Bowie. There's little to no focus on his love life or childhood, so this is fundamentally about his work; it's not a thorough documentary biopic. Perhaps other versions will include more about his life beyond his work. What the film does accomplish quite impressively, though, is in allowiing Eno to shine with his warmth, intelligence, emotional maturity and, occasionally, his wit. He's perceptive, passionate and, much like this documentary, unafraid to break the mold. There could easily be a separate documentary debating the pros and cons of AI in filmmaking. At a running time of 1 hour and 30 minutes, Eno opens at Film Forum.  
Fly Me to the Moon, directed by Greg Berlanti, is a tonally uneven, overlong and meandering mess. Is it a comedy? A satire? A thriller? A drama? A romance? The screenplay by Rose Gilroy blends each of those genres together into a film that's less than the sum of its parts. The basic plot, set in 1969, centers on Kelly (Scarlett Johansson), an advertising executive who meets Moe (Woody Harrelson), a mysterious man who works for Richard Nixon. He first gives her the task using her skills to boost NASA public image through advertisements. He later hires her for a more complicated task: to help stage a fake moon landing of NASA's latest mission, Apollo 11, without Cole (Channing Tatum), NASA's flight director, finding out about it. Soon enough, she and Cole begin a romance with each other. Fly Me to the Moon is the second film after A Quiet Place: Day One to feature a cat that steals the show from its human co-stars. In this case, it's a black cat that serves a more important role in the third act. Unfortunately, Scarlett Johannson and Channing Tatum have barely any chemistry together, and their performances are mediocre. Johannson has poor comedic timing here, but, to be fair, she's not given very strong material. Fly Me to the Moon is the kind of film that Barry Levinson, Christopher Guest or another other filmmakers who know how to make smart, witty and funny comedies would know how to take to far greater comedic heights. The "It's not lying; it's selling." joke at the beginning pales when compared to the funnier quip in David Mamet's satire State and Main: "It's not a lie. It's a gift for fiction." Jim Rash plays Lance, a caricature of a director who's tasked with filming the fake moon landing. Lance's schtick gets annoying, repetitive and less funny as the film progresses. The costume design is distractingly stylish and there are pacing issues, especially during the dull and corny scenes with Cole and Kelly. Moreover, there are at least two false endings and a dragged-out ending that can be seen from a mile away. It's never good when you can feel the weight of a film's running time. At a mind-boggling 2 hour and 12 minutes, Fly Me to the Moon opens nationwide via Columbia Pictures. In a double feature with State and Main or Wag the Dog, it would be the inferior B-movie.  
In Longlegs, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), an FBI agent with psychic abilities, joins Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), to investigate serial killings that are linked to a mysterious killer who goes by the name of Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). Meanwhile, she deals with her emotionally abusive mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt), who's very religious. The less you know about the plot of Longlegs beforehand, the better, because it's best watching it going in cold so that the beats land more strongly during its twists and turns. If you haven't watched the trailer yet, don't. It gives too much away. Writer/director Oz Perkins does an impeccable job of maintaining suspense and intrigue from the very first scene, a brief prologue that flashes back to Lee's childhood. It's a scene that sets the film's foreboding tone without giving away too much. Perkins should also be commended for knowing how and when to incorporate exposition while allowing the audience to be on the same page as Lee. Is there something supernatural going on? What's Longleg's motive? Could someone be helping him? Those are among the provocative questions that you'll ponder along with Lee. She's an interesting character because she's intelligent and brave, yet vulnerable and flawed. Maika Monroe gives a heartfelt and raw performance. It's the best performance of her career. Nicolas Cage is barely recognizable behind a lot of prosthetics and makeup that, along with Cage's wild performance, makes Longlegs look effectively creepy and unhinged. The cinematography offers plenty of style in terms of the camera work, lighting, and use of color which, together with the sound design and production design, becomes an integral part of the film's substance concurrently. A seemingly simple scene like Lee sitting in a room with a red carpet brims with visual poetry while contributing to the eerie atmosphere. There are some very grisly images and violent scenes, but some of the graphic violence actually remains off-screen. The third act, refreshingly, doesn't tie everything up neatly in a bow and leaves room for interpretation. So, kudos to writer/director Oz Perkins for trusting the audience's intelligence. At a running time of 1 hour and 41 minutes, Longlegs is a spellbinding, taut and intriguing psychological horror thriller. It opens nationwide via NEON.  
After his girlfriend, Tatiana (Eleanor Williams), suddenly disappears in a beam of light during a party at their mansion, Alex (Rupert Lazarus) suspects that she's been abducted by aliens. He and his friends, Patricia (Sidney Nicole Rogers), George (Ken Lawson), and Delilah (Andrea Tivadar), head to Morocco to investigate. There, they meet Thom (Eric Roberts), a mysterious recluse who happens to know a lot about alien abductions and has worked on a top-secret government program. Lumina is an asinine, undercooked and unintentionally funny sci-fi thriller. Writer/director Gino McKoy has a poor handle on exposition from the very first scene that spoils the surprises before flashing back in time to Tatiana and Alex at his beautiful mansion. The screenplay throws basic logic and reason out the window, which is fine, if it were to compensate for those deficiencies with imagination or at least some internal logic. Unfortunately, Lumina even lacks that essential ingredient. If it were a sci-fi spoof like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra or The American Astronaut, or the cult classic Mars Attacks!, that would be forgivable, but, it's not. The film takes itself seriously, yet even fumbles its dramatic scenes involving a cheesy and contrived love triangle between Alex, Tatiana and Delilah, who has a crush on him. The dialogue often sounds stilted and lacks wit. Moreover, the characters all remain underwritten and poorly introduced, especially Thom who's merely there as a plot device. The CGI effects are mediocre without adding anything visually dazzling. The editing feels choppy at times, the performances are dull, and by the time the end credits roll, there are as many holes in the plot as there are in Swiss cheese. At just under 2 hours, Lumina opens nationwide via Goldove Entertainment. It's one of the worst sci-fi movies since Madame Web, and a prime candidate for a MST3K soundtrack.  
Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger, directed by David Hinton, is a well-edited and illuminating documentary about the career and films of filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The main talking head is Martin Scorcese who provides his perspectives on their films, many of which he loves and was inspired by. There are a few amusing anecdotes like how Pressburger sent him a letter which included a criticism about Mean Streets that he used too much of the color red in it. Scorcese quips that Powell & Pressburger used plenty of red in The Red Shoes. This documentary begins as a hagiographic introduction to the filmography of Powell & Pressburger with many clips from their classic films. You'll learn how they formed their production company, The Archers. A few archival interviews with Powell & Pressburger give you a sense of their personalities and sense of humor. They struggled to maintain their artistic freedom throughout their career. The documentary finally stops being hagiographic when it delves into their films that weren't well received at the box office or by critics, i.e. Peeping Tom. Powell & Pressburger soon found it harder and harder to raise money for their films, and they stopped making movies together in the late 1950s. More focus on their life after the demise of The Archers or even a small glimpse of what their lives were like beyond their film careers, i.e. their childhood, family, etc, would've been great. As long as you don't expect a biopic of Powell & Pressburger to have anything very revealing or surprising about them, you'll be able to enjoy the documentary and be compelled to rewatch their films from a new perspective with more appreciation or to watch them for the first time. At a running time 2 hours and 11 minutes, Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger opens at Quad Cinema via Cohen Media Group. It would be a great double feature with the documentary Merchant Ivory.  National Anthem 
 
Cars pile up on a foggy bridge that leads to the airport in Project Silence. The screenplay by writer/director Kim Tae-gon and co-writers, Park Joo-Suk and Kim Yong-hwa, goes beyond that, though, by adding even more tension because the bridge starts to collapse and, coincidentally, a truck with killer dogs experimented on from the military's "Project Silence" happen to be on bridge, too, and escape the trucks. Dr Yang (Kim Hee-Won) leads the experiments. Jo Park (Ju Ji-Hoon), a tow truck driver, Jung-Won (Lee Sun-Kyun), a government official, and his daughter, Kyung-Min (Kim Su-An), are among those stranded on the bridge. Unfortunately, Project Silence has too many subplots, too many characters and not much in terms of palpable thrills, imagination, or suspense. The film tries to ground all of the spectacle with poignancy by including Jun-Won's struggles to deal with his rocky relationship with his daughter. Both of them are in the process of coping with some trauma from their past. That's a subplot that could have easily been the main plot in a separate film. Here, it just feels tacked-on and clunky while overstuffing the plot at the same time. The CGI effects are mediocre at best without any sequences that stand out. Sometimes, even a shallow film can be entertaining as a guilty pleasure despite a weak screenplay, but that's not the case here. On a positive note, the pace moves briskly and the running isn't too long, so the film doesn't overstay its welcome. At 1 hour and 41 minutes, Project Silence is an exhausting, undercooked, clunky and tonally uneven misfire. It opens at AMC Empire via Capelight Pictures.  
Colman Domingo, one of the best actors of our time, gives yet another Oscar-worthy performance in Sing Sing. He portrays Divine G., an innocent man who's wrongfully imprisoned in Sing Sing Correctional Facility. While repeatedly trying to appeal his conviction, he joins a theater group where he writes plays and stars with his fellow inmates. The theater group is part of a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA). Writer/director Greg Kwedar and co-writer Clint Bentley have created a genuinely engrossing, understated and inspirational emotional journey with just the right amount of poignancy and levity while avoiding clunkiness and an uneven tone. Much of the film will make you feel like you're watching a documentary because the camera merely follows Diving G. and his theater group with little to no music score. The raw, convincingly moving and nuanced performances and the natural dialogue help to further ground the film in authenticity. Not a single scene feels contrived, maudlin or heavy-handed. Most of the inmates in the theater group are actually played by the real-life members of the group who were formerly incarcerated. Paul Raci rounds out the cast as Brent, who serves as the programs advisor/director. Interestingly, Sing Sing doesn't spend too much time on what led to Divine G.'s wrongful imprisonment or on his struggles to prove his innocence. There are no flashbacks and very little exposition about his past, but just enough to humanize him. Much of the film's emotional resonance come from Colman Domingo's bravura performance. He manages to find the emotional truth of his role and to open the window into Divine G.'s heart, mind and soul from start to finish. At a running time of 1 hour and 45 minutes, Sing Sing, based on a true story, opens at Angelika Film Center and AMC Lincoln Square via A24 before expanding to more theaters. It would be a great double feature with Ghostlight.  
Sisi & I, is a moderately engaging and exquisitely shot, but often dull and clunky biopic on Empress Elisabeth of Austria, a.k.a Sisi (Susanne Wolff). Sandra Hüller plays Countess Irma (Sandra Huller), Sisi's lady-in-waiting, who falls in love with her while spending time with her in Corfu, but their relationship gets complicated. The screenplay by writer/director Frauke Finsterwalder and co-writer Christian Kracht lacks the wit and poignancy found in The Favourite and in a more engrossing biopic of Sisi, Corsage. The attempts at humor fall flat more often than not, and the same can be said about the bond between Sisi and Irma because the audience barely gets the chance to get to know either of them. Sisi is the more interesting character because she's deeply flawed and exhibits signs of narcissism. Irma, by contrast, isn't as interesting which means that Sandra Hüller has the burden of trying to breathe life into her. She somewhat succeeds, yet she's nonetheless undermined by the bland and vapid screenplay. The anachronistic music feels distracting, unintentionally funny and awkward while nearly turning Sisi & I into a parody of Sisi's life and derailing the narrative momentum. That said, the costumes are gorgeous, and the cinematography and lighting add both style and much-needed substance that the screenplay sorely lacks. At a bloated running time of 2 hours and 12 minutes, Sisi & I opens at Quad Cinema via Film Movement.  
Sorry/Not Sorry is a mildly engaging, but somewhat shallow, undercooked and myopic documentary about the sex scandals that caused stand-up comedian Louis C.K. to get cancelled, how it affected his victims, the reactions of his colleagues, and his attempt to make a comeback and to apologize. Co-directors Cara Mones and Caroline Suh do an adequate job of getting a wide variety of perspectives on whether or not Louis C.K.'s apology was genuine. Some think that his comeback was too soon and that he didn't actually learn any lessons. The film's highlight, though, is an interview with Jen Kirkman, one of his victims, who candidly discusses his inappropriate sexual behavior that she experienced around him, how it affected her emotionally and psychologically, and the aftermath of her speaking out about it. Unfortunately, Sorry/Not Sorry doesn't offer any new or surprising insights about the sex scandal nor about cancel culture in general. It's too limited in scope while barely scratching the surface of its timely issues and biting off much more than it could chew. At a running time of 1 hour and 30 minutes, Sorry/Not Sorry opens at IFC Center via Greenwich Entertainment.
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