A wonderfully acted character study of three screwed-up sisters who await their father’s death just as we await a plot. Instead of a resolution, or even some character development, however unlikely, we are given a final scene that is either Magical Realism, a projection of someone’s inner thoughts or the director’s cop-out. With only one setting, one wonders if this could have been, or was, a play?

A remarkable, riveting portrait of New York City in the ’70s as a set for the young Donald Trump and his mentor, Roy Cohn. The acting by Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan was a step beyond perfect, and the way they portrayed the rise of Trump and fall of Cohn as intersecting axes was breathtaking. Some of the story, such as Cohn’s adoption of Trump and his bumbling business efforts, would have seemed implausible if we didn’t know they actually happened. The seeds of Trump today were all planted in director Ali Abbasi’s young Trump, but it wasn’t the scary foreshadowing that made the movie or remained in the mind’s eye. It was the face of Jeremy Strong.

A culturally rich police procedural that gives a glimpse of everything you might want to know, or not know, about India for the common man. Director Sandhya Suri  comes from documentaries and it shows in the realism of the people, places and events. The story plays like one of the better TV series we watch–e.g., The Tower– but it’s India, with constant reminders of caste, misogyny, poverty and disregard for human life.

Less a documentary than an Impressionist, or more accurately Cubist, study of colonialism, with the (Belgian) Congo as its subject and American racism in the wings. Snippets of Black jazz greats, bold headlines and memorable archival footage, especially of the U.N., paint a rather condemnatory portrait of  big power politics, business interests and Cold War frenzy trampling any concern for rights or humanity. Even accepting the obvious political viewpoint, there are too many problems with the film to list, but chief among them are a disregard for narrative arc, a failure to sufficiently connect the jazz interludes with the events in Africa and a meandering length that led me to walk out about five minutes from the end.