Mark, Mary & Other People’s narrow-minded treatment of open relationships would make for a fantastic double feature with any episode of The 700 Club. It’s fairly…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The juggernauts of the fall festival season — Venice, TIFF, NYFF — cast a long shadow, which means that smaller autumn festivals too often get…
Cicada is tonally uneven and its sum is less than its parts, but it still often works on the strength of its authenticity and small honesties.…
Last Night in Soho is a seductive and sumptuous Giallo riff, but suffers from a final act that undermines much of the film’s early power.…
The Spine of Night is a grisly, singular work of nerdcore unorthodoxy that occasionally stumbles but manages to stay upright. The Spine of Night is a…
Bulletproof is a Wiseman-like doc of observation and contrast, refusing sensationalism and impressively navigating its slippery material. Todd Chandler’s Bulletproof is a present-tense documentary, not at…
Roh trades only in tropes, and subverts any inherent eeriness with its heavy-handed application of mood. Emir Ezwan’s debut feature, Roh, is part of an emerging…
Passing’s insularity is both a blessing and a curse, but its internalized emotions simmering just beneath the surface manage to speak volumes. Based on the…
Violet is a distinctly 21st-century woman-celebrating flick, perhaps a bit saddled by its too trite messaging, but still something of a feminist force of nature.…
The Souvenir: Part II plays out largely as protracted epilogue, a fumbling, detached work that negates the first film’s powerful ending. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 1778 painting…