Jen Graves highly recommends The Garden:

It starts slow, like it might tell the story of how a community garden is nice. "I'm just a South Central farmer," an old (wise Latino) man says. The sun splinters through high crops. But quickly The Garden cuts to the riots that broke out the day the four cops who clobbered Rodney King were acquitted in 1992. Those riots killed 53 people and decimated the neighborhood. Part of the post-riot "mitigation" effort was this community garden: 14 acres in the middle of downtown, the largest community garden in the United States.

Charles Mudede loves The Cove with an exclamation point:

I love this documentary! But I do not think dolphins are that smart. Fishermen easily trick the poor things into their nets of captivity and death. If dolphins were really smart, they would avoid visiting Taiji in September. In fact, they would avoid Japan altogether. There are so many places on earth that have humans who do not care to turn their flesh into sushi. How can we humans communicate this important piece of information to them? Who is their leader?

Eric Grandy ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaates Ex Drummer:

The film is bleak, gory, and violent. But more than that, it's just brutally, unrelentingly misogynistic (so much so that its casual homophobia and racism seem almost insignificant by comparison). The band's lisping singer beats, rapes, and murders women; their deaf junkie guitarist neglects his wife and, fatally, his daughter; the bassist's arm locked stiff one day because his mother caught him masturbating (although his homosexuality is suggested as a more significant handicap). Dries names the band the Feminists, reasoning that "four handicapped men are as good as four feminist bitches."

I really did like Paper Heart, despite its silliness:

Now, [Charlyne] Yi has made a movie. In Paper Heart, she claims to not believe in love—at least, she herself has never felt it, and worries that she might never feel it, and, on top of that, worries that she kind of doesn't care that she might never feel it. The film—which is half documentary, half narrative fiction, with also some puppets—follows shy, goofy, tomboyish Yi around the country as she tries to get to the bottom of this whole messy love business.

And Bethany Jean Clement only half-enjoyed Julie & Julia:

Streep as Child is sexy: When she looks down into Stanley Tucci's eyes and pulls down his suspenders in a scene that stops just before their daily Paris nooner: Oh! (Tucci, as short, shiny-domed, bespectacled Paul Child, is inarguably the new hot.) Streep as Child is moving: Her weeping is so piteous, so true. Every scene with her in it is endlessly engrossing. She opens an envelope on a porch, glancing slightly wildly over her shoulder, and it is magic.

In Limited Runs:

Central Cinema has The Dark Crystal; midnight at the Egyptian is Spirited Away; Northwest Film Forum has The Speculative Frontier, Viva VHS!, and Bela-Fleck-banjoing-through-Africa doc Throw Down Your Heart (Eric Grandy: "Fleck comes off as a genial dork, like a Rick Steves of the banjo, and a few scenes mine either chuckles or sentimentality from his sometimes awkward but earnest ambassadorship"); and the Grand Illusion late night is Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

Find all our reviews and showtimes on our Movie Page, HERE.