Gleefully violent and hyper-stylish but ultimately empty and overlong, The Harder They Fall ultimately manages only to trade in well-worn tropes and clichés. The Harder…
Ida Red is wholly derivative and overstuffed with subplots, but also delivers a lot of grimy, gonzo actioner fun. Writer-director John Swab has a few C-level…
Like so many pastiches before it, the thematically unfocused Dead & Beautiful succumbs to its own vacuous sheen. In the metropolitan center of Taipei, five young…
The Deep House is a claustrophobic, otherworldly bit of throwback horror that welcomingly pivots away from modern, flattened genre sensibilities. Forget indie insufferability: it seems vogue…
The Beta Test is a bold advancement for Jim Cummings as a filmmaker, supplementing his films’ familiar character with greater formal skill and precise critique. Over…
Sincerely, Kentrell is a senselessly assembled product, not without artistry, but lacking in a coherent vision. “YB better.” This simple phrase has become a rallying cry…
A Beginner’s Mind is an impressive collaborative work, one that beautifully reclaims the sounds and emotional heft of Stevens’ mid-aughts folk efforts. As our collective nostalgia…
Gaza Mon Amour finds inspirations in canonical “Mon Amour” films, but takes care to emphasize the present moment and the wya images ferment under occupation. Arab…
The Yearbook immediately situates Baby Queen at the fore of contemporary pop. Baby Queen (real name Arabella Latham) debuted in the pop music scene in 2020…
Star-Crossed is a raw album but distinctly minor, teetering into boring and a notable letdown after Golden Hour. After a busy release cycle unexpectedly launched Kacey Musgraves…
A Southern Gothic is an album that thrillingly pushes at the boundaries of what the blues can be. You can think of genre as a set…
NBA YoungBoy “YB better.” This simple phrase has become a rallying cry of sorts for the millions of prepubescent YoungBoy Never Broke Again (or NBA…
Eternals makes its aims clear, but the whole enterprise is frictionless, resulting in one of the most flavorless Marvel films to date. Meet the Eternals,…
Antlers is a competently made but shallow horror effort, slathered in trauma-heavy metaphor and a questionable abuse narrative. Writing about new horror movies can sometimes feel…
Next of Kin feels untethered from the Paranormal Activity franchise, an unscary film that resists both its found footage formula and any narrative cogency. Paranormal Activity: Next of…
Freeland stumbles when it feels compelled to inject arbitrary conflict, but is an otherwise sturdy, necessarily cynical portrait of modern economic peril. The legalization of recreational…
Warning: Warning is an absolute disaster. An existential slice of sci-fi, Warning is the kind of film that practically begs for a thorough post-mortem. It’s quite…
Val suggests talent behind the camera, but it’s largely wasted on a wisp of an idea. There’s a deep, dark mystery at the heart of director…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or…
Minyan is a delicate film of subtle power, smartly weaving several threads into a rich coming-of-age portrait. Set in 1980s New York, Eric Steel’s Minyan is…
The juggernauts of the fall festival season — Venice, TIFF, NYFF — cast a long shadow, which means that smaller autumn festivals too often get…