Mudbound
In Mudbound, the searing second feature by director and cowriter Dee Rees (Pariah), you feel the Mississippi Delta’s damp dirt between your toes from the first frame. A powerful cast led by Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, and Mary J. Blige draws you into a Southern Gothic drama about the return of two World War II soldiers—one white, one black. They’ve changed; Mississippi has not.
The Meyerowitz Stories
Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, as brothers Danny and Matthew, and Grace van Patten, as Danny’s daughter, particularly shine in writer-director Noah Baumbach’s latest, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), a family dramedy in which the children of a noted artist (Dustin Hoffman, with Emma Thompson as his current wife) strive to make peace with his huge ego before he passes on.
The Light of the Moon
Director Jessica M. Thompson’s first film, The Light of the Moon, avoids sentimentality, sanctimony, or sensationalism in portraying the quietly desperate struggle of a young Brooklyn architect (Stephanie Beatriz) to cope with the aftermath of being violently raped and its effect on her relationship with her sterling but bewildered live-in beau (Michael Stahl-David).
