Much like last week’s “How It Ends,” “Ride the Eagle” demonstrates that it is indeed possible to make a feature film under strict COVID-19 protocols, but doesn’t seem to have much of an idea of how to make a good one under those circumstances. “Ride the Eagle” feels like everyone involved was more interested in…

No force is more powerful, and easier to use against someone, than faith. In this case, “Pray Away” focuses on a slew of Christian messengers who used to preach and embody gay conversion therapy ideals, leading various organizations with their destructive, heteronormative idea of family, faith, and freedom. Hundreds of thousands of people have embraced…

“The Evening Hour,” directed by Braden King, based on a novel by Carter Sickels, takes place in a small Kentucky town, where the mine has closed, leaving its population adrift, forgotten, and ravaged by poverty and the opioid epidemic. There are no social services, and the drug dealers, profiting on the sickness of nearly every member…

Sonia Kennebeck’s “Enemies of the State” spirals and swirls in a way that’s meant to enhance the “isn’t this crazy” aspect of its true story, but its filmmaking tricks have become cliched in the era of True Crime obsession. In the end, what’s true and what’s not about the case of Matt DeHart gets hazier with…

There is so much earth-shattering bravery on display in the miraculous “Sabaya” that you wonder how the Swedish-Kurdish director Hogir Hirori managed to pull off a documentary that avoids showy, predictable notes of brouhaha throughout. Rounding off a non-fiction trilogy of sorts after 2016’s “The Girl Who Saved My Life” and 2017’s “The Deminer”—all concerning…

If you didn’t know that “Nine Days” was the feature debut of director Edson Oda, you would assume Oda had many films under his belt. He presents his bold vision with confidence (he also wrote the script), and he’s courageous enough to have at the center of his first film the eternal issues of the…